The Shock of Suffering - Bishop T.D. Jakes

[Music] greetings in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior grace and peace be multiplied unto you from God our Father I want to say good morning to the Polish house and to all the saints who are gathering from around the world to view this broadcast I believe that God has given me a word that will bless your life stir your spirit and challenge the way you think I'm excited to be with you this morning I'm excited that you have logged in from wherever you are to have this virtual experience and though it is in fact a virtual experience that does not diminish the fact that it can be virtual and still be spiritual it can be virtual and still be anointed it can be virtual and still be effective so prepare your hearts and prepare your minds as we prepare to go into the Word of God and more importantly that the Word of God might go into us because these are the kinds of times that we need the Word of God to go into us we need his word to saturate our spirits I'm going to Matthew 21 1 through 10 so you get ahead of me we need we need the Word of God to get deep down in ourselves and in our spirits and speak to us in such a supernatural way that we don't leave the way we came and in perilous times in times of uncertainty now more than ever we need to consider and contemplate not only the Word of God but our understanding of God's Word that understanding being the truth we stand under how does this become applicable in my daily life for me it does no good to have to embrace the historicity of the text and not have any contemporary relevance with what's going on in our lives today and right now everything in the world is going on in our lives so let's go to the Word of God we're going to be in the Gospel of st. Matthew chapter 21 verse 1 through 10 and a reason they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives Jesus sent two disciples saying to them go to the village ahead of you and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her coat by her untie them and bring them to me if anyone says anything to you say that the Lord needs him and he will send them right away this took place to fulfill what was spoken through the Prophet say to the daughter of Zion see your King comes to you gentle and riding on a donkey and on a Colt the foal of our donkey the disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them they brought the donkey and the Colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on a very large crowd a very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road the crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted Hosanna Hosanna to the son of David blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord hosanna in the highest heaven when Jesus entered Jerusalem the whole city was stirred and asked who is this I want to take this text and I want to use this subject the shock of suffering the shock of suffering can you say man spirit of the Living God fall afresh on us as we go into the Word of God today that it might be illuminated in our spirits that it might be indelibly etched into our hearts and minds that we might be transformed by the renewing of our mind that we might be shaped into the very image of Christ in the earth now like never before we need to be Christ in the earth the salt of the earth a city set up on a hill that cannot be here and causing our faith to shine out even beyond our fears and even beyond our anxieties and even beyond our complexities and even beyond our uncertainties allow our faith to shine out and saturate us endow us with power in the mighty name of Jesus we pray somebody who believes that his word shout a man you may be seated I'm excited to have this opportunity to talk to you because of the perils of the time said we're living in I believe the Word of God is more relevant right now than ever before we need his word to guide us through the turbulence that we're in right now and really it's a test of our faith because I didn't say that we need our fellowship to Guyana South fellowship is important fellowship is biblical fellowship is right Fellowship is something that we were made to have God said it's not good for man to be alone I get that but this is not a test of our ability to interact with each other this is a test of how deeply are we rooted and grounded in God's Word for the Word of God is what sustains us when the test is on and it occurs to me it's a little bit amazing that there's not been much focus in recent days on the whole lit season very little focus very little being said about it very little being talked about because I think we are so preoccupied with the uncertainty of how we might end up suffering that we fail to recognize that the God we serve becomes emblematic of suffering itself and I must confess to you I don't I don't always enjoy preaching this particular message from this particular text on Palm Sunday only because it is so traditional and I've been doing it for 43 years that sometimes I'd rather preach something else rather than to preach the very predictable nevertheless one I looked at this text I'm not just preaching it because it is in fact Palm Sunday but I'm preaching it because I looked at the text again through the lens of what we're going through right now I found it very very very very very fascinating when I began to look at the text that I'm looking at the text at a time that all around the world believers are going through various levels of suffering some are suffering on respirators some are suffering with the uncertainty of having loved ones on respirators and waiting to hear up from doctors who are overlaid with more patients than they can handle not enough equipment to maintain in some areas not enough beds to accommodate the victims nurses working sick and everybody struggling trying to make the unworkable begin to work and there is suffering in the midst of that suffering I've been inundated with calls from pastors and leaders and friends with various predicaments and and easing trying to ease their anxiety and handle my own and then to understand that a lot of people were simply just claustrophobic because in certain regions of our country we have been shut in the house and we have not been allowed to go out or not only to go certain places or only under certain circumstances we're not used to being in the house set low and we say we are suffering and I question in my own mind and all I realize that there is a certain amount of suffering involved in and not being able to go do what you want to do I wonder in the third-world countries where there are various and levels of engagement if they would think we were suffering I wonder if they would think that we were suffering shut up in our air-conditioned houses and central heat in our house is a carpet on the floor and we are built in kitchens and our dishwashers and our television with our 300 channels I wonder if they would feel bad for us you begin to understand then that suffering is relative and suffering depends on what you're going through I'm wondering if the AIDS patients in the AIDS ward would think that we were suffering just because we didn't get to make the hookup with our friends and hang out at our favorite restaurant and go to our favorite the eight or go to our favorite church to worship I wonder when we stand before God in the face of the apostles who were solid asunder and crucified upside down and some of them were beheaded I wonder if they would accept our definition of suffering in the context of what they went through if we stand up there with Paul and all of them and Peter and James and John and they all start talking about how they were beaten and how they were stoned and how they were crucified and we get up and say yeah I was shut up in my house for weeks I wonder how that really defined suffering recently I did an interview and whenever you go out there and you start doing interviews at times of crisis one of the most predictable questions that you will most often get is how could God be good and allow such suffering I want to say to you this morning as a Christian one of the things I love about being a Christian is that being a Christian means that God does not hide suffering from the conversation he's having with us about faith now I must confess if we preacher some time hat if we don't talk about it like we should we don't preach about it like we should sometimes we don't even have a good theology around suffering itself because suffering isn't exciting it doesn't make people want to come today it doesn't get them motivated nobody wants to come but we don't do as good a job as Jesus did because Jesus did not hide suffering from his followers in fact when he made his appeal for them to follow him if the criteria of his invitation was take up your cross and follow me now because we see the cross as an emblem of worship we really don't give it that at the time jesus said take up your cross and follow me crosses were not seen as an emblem of worship but rather a torture mechanism for a convicted criminal it would be like take up your electric chair and follow me take up your gas chamber and follow me there is no spiritual connotation to take up your cross yet so when Jesus starts talking to them about taking up your cross it's not taken up a pretty thing it's taken up a cursed thing a emblem of suffering and agony and guilt and and an emblem of degradation in it and social disruption and then in judicial discord a cross was not something that people shouted about they did not understand it in that context they struggle to understand Jesus anyway because when you look at this particular week they understood it better in retrospect than they did in real time this week starts out with the triumphant cacophony of believers coming around to celebrate Jesus they have come with their palms in their hands and their coats out and they're singing Hosanna is interesting because it is the triumphant entry to a terrifying week that is to say that it starts out in such a pageantry and and enthusiasm and excitement and positivity but it doesn't stay that way by the end of the week there's an arc to the story that is so sharp and so profound that from the way it starts the the ending is unpredictable as we read about the beginning the beginning is laced with the pageantry of elegant worship in it and almost like a parade a crescendo Jesus has become quite popular so popular that he has upset ke office of priests and met all of the priests of those in the synagogue are now seeking to kill him because they said he's about to take the whole world so it is there's no question that Jesus had impact and another text you will understand that he has just raised Lazarus from the dead he has caused so much excitement and enthusiasm to break out around him that they are afraid that he is going to shift the support from the synagogue over to this little ideology that Christ comes to Bree so one hand you've got all of these people the Bible says a great multitude has come to celebrate him and Jesus has requested that they bring a donkey in and they bring a Colt in and that he's going to ride it into Jerusalem to fulfill Scripture and they're basically having a worship service amazing pageantry of worship and praise and singing and celebrating the goodness of God and it starts out with that kind of power it is amazing that the week starts out with such power and the ends of such pain we have a tendency as preachers and as Christians to pick and choose some parts of the Bible that we like to talk about so it's more exciting to talk about Hosanna than it is to talk about crucify him we see more emphasis placed on Hosanna we will mention the crucifixion but only in the context of how he saved me from my sins we don't mention the crucifixion in terms of his agony because at the beginning of the week he is so exciting that everybody wants to follow him by the end of the week Isaiah has said there is no beauty about him that we should desire him they have beat him so bad that nobody wants to look anybody then start out that way it's amazing to me that we have not focused on that this season because we are so shocked ourselves and I want to talk about this whole shock thing the whole shock of suffering we're shocked ourselves that we could be at the pinnacle of success of the stock market and business is growing up in jobs going up everywhere people buy in the homes and everything going wonderful and all of a sudden through this virus all of a sudden we've been shocked shock market starts crashing job markets start crashing people start losing their jobs and sorry it's a face uncertainty and the shock of suffering has become so agonizing that we've had to labor to hold on to our churches to hold on to our jobs to hold on to our minds to hold on to our sanity because the shock of suffering the shock of suffering it should not shop Christians seeing as the whole emblem of our faith brings suffering out of the shadows and puts it center stage it shouldn't shock Christians that we have a God who spared not his own son we should not grapple with the question that the world does how could a good God allow bad things to happen to me not when he spared not his own son that if he spared not his only begotten son then I know that he will not spare me all the more will I be a chastisement to validate the fact that I am a son and an illegitimate heir of salvation for whom the Lord loveth the Bible said he chasing it when we start looking at this kind of thing and we start grappling with suffering I was amazed at the people who were talking about the celebrities that were doing posts and confinement and down in the comments some people were talking about oh they're just like us because they seem to draw some comfort from the fact that these people who bribed in big cars that live in nice homes are now confined just as they were and they said there's some solidarity because no matter whether you're rich or you're famous or you have notoriety or you have political power or you're the CEO of a fortune 100 company we're all going through the same thing and there was some fellowship in the suffering and I laughed with their comments I didn't respond if I stayed out of the fray of the discussion but I laughed at their comments because they almost seem to find some vindication of the fact that these people who seem to have these ideal lives were now confined to a place of suffering because as my mother taught me misery it loves company Oh y'all don't hear what I'm saying to you misery loves company but the reason I thought it was funny is we didn't need a coronavirus to share suffering suffering exists in the life of everybody black or white or brown suffering does not discriminate by the color of your skin or the class or the height of your notoriety suffering will make its way right into the house of a mansion as well as it will somebody sleeping up under a bridge no one escapes suffering just because they're not suffering in the way that you're suffering doesn't mean that they're not suffering at all beautiful people suffer rich people suffer poor people suffer third-world countries suffer first world cousin nobody escapes suffering you may be high you may be low you may be rich you may be poor but with the Lord God gets ready everybody's got to move and yet there seems to be some mystery around suffering as if some people suffer and some people don't we may not suffer from the same things but God is too just to allow anyone to escape suffering not even Jesus now my brothers and sisters we find Jesus in this moment of great adulation and celebration and they're waving their palm trees I remember being a little boy they used to take little palms and make crosses out of them and pin it on us on Palm Sunday and that was my first understanding of Palm Sunday the church would be decorated with palm leaves all around and celebrate Palm Sunday and all the choir was saying in the pageantry and all the beauty and all the things that that right now we're missing we don't have that kind of celebration right now because our faith is being tested because our commitment is being tested because the Word of God that we have heard and often taken for granted has become scarce enough that now is become a priority and oddly enough the people who didn't always Church when they could now we're complaining about not being able to come to church in our faith this be well you don't hear what I'm saying to you our faith is being challenged our faith is being challenged to the core because suffering now seem strange to us suffering now becomes a question that I have to respond to in the press because of the disease the the complexity of how could God be good and allow suffering no one escapes suffering in fact the Bible says that he is a present help in the time of trouble and so what I want to suggest to you that that the crowd is around him in the celebration but they leave before the sufferers yeah they're singing and the celebration they're rejoicing in the celebration but they leave before the suffering begins and I want to submit to you for your consideration that Jesus is more powerful in his suffering than he is in his celebration and if we are really like Jesus that means that there is a power that we exude in suffering that we do not experience and celebration and little job said though he slay me yet shall I trust him there's some kind of anointing that comes out of you when you have pressure applied that you would not experience any other way you hear what I'm saying to you and so let us not allow the the the oddity of the in the Western world of seeing a man riding on a donkey covered by coats and palm branches laid mixed with coats all over the ground let us not be so distracted by these elements that we do not notice the fact that the crowd does not stay I said the crowd does not stay I wonder in my mind where where the singing at the end of the week when he really needed to be worship when he really needed their support I wondered where were the worshipers and the dancers and the celebration and the crescendo of glory at the moment of his real hour of suffering when he could have used a few hosannas he could have used somebody reminding him you may be on a cross but you're still my king Oh y'all hear what I'm saying that's what faith is who can look beyond the cross and steal see the king I wondered what happened to the crowd that in just one week the crowd would dissipate the Apostles would step back from their positions and one would start cussin and one would start doubting and one would be trained by the head in just one week we see Christ starting the week in celebration and ending the week in a place of suffering now I want to be honest I don't like suffering I don't want to suffer I prefer not to suffer they've never been a morning I woke up and said I hope this is a suffering day and I want to be honest about it I haven't seen a new year they say this is my year to suffer hallelujah No yeah I don't ask for it but God still orders us to go through periods of suffering up until now in this country we've enjoyed the luxury of looking out of the sanctity of our democracy through the window and other countries and talk about those people are dealing with a playing and those people are dealing with a disease and look at them they have a virus at all let's pray for this country and that country never thinking that the viruses will cross the waters and fly across on plays and now we have become them and they be careful how you handle other people in the moment of their suffering and look at a condescending way and then because what I'm suffering today oh you don't hear what I'm saying what I'm suffering today you can be suffering tomorrow it's my dawn of the day but it'll be yours tomorrow be careful how you handle my boy because you got a son coming up and suffering will come to your house and the real test is I don't need to be tested in my moment of celebration I need to be tested in the moment of my suffering how committed am i when the crowd is gone how committed I am i when the storms begin to reach how committed am i in the moment of adversity I'm so grateful to God while I appreciate all the things he's done for me and I I am so blessed to come and stand in this church and see people all the way up to the top balcony and see them praising and magnifying God but I want the devil to know that I'm not serving God for the crowd that if I have to stand by in a building like I did years ago and preach the four or five people that God is still God said he still if he thinks for one minute that I lose my learning when I lose my crowd he didn't understand where I came from I've been through too much to get here and lose my authority all the people people didn't give it to me and they can't take it away they can't take it away do you hear what I'm saying to you glory to God this be a moment normally I'd say touch your neighbor and say they can't take it away but maybe you got to touch yourself and remind yourself they can't take it away if they didn't get a shot ha if I didn't give it that they can't they can't take it away there have been moments in all of our lives of suffering where we suffered in isolation we suffered without anybody knowing that we were suffering we stayed up at night all night long and put on a happy face and faked it the next day and nobody knew that you were going through a personal crisis there is not a person in this room or watching or live or sitting on a couch or holding an iPad or looking at your phone right now who had gone through personal moments of great tragedy great adversity pressure pressing down on you and to sleep you've aged until food won't digests until rashes break out of your body somebody knows what I'm talking about to go through personal suffering and yet there is now amongst us some fraternity in our suffering there is some fellowship in our suffering it's nice to know that I could pick up the phone and call somebody who's going through what I'm going through right now yeah I just get some kind of comfort out of knowing that I don't have to explain to you what I'm going through because we are suffering in the same the fellowship of suffering brought me to Paul say o that I may know him in the Fellowship of his suffering but here we find the Apostle asking God I want to meet you in the Fellowship of your suffering I'm not the kind of Christian that's gonna say Hosanna on Monday and then run from you about Thursday I wanted to know all of you that I might know him in the Fellowship of his suffering from the power of this resurrection I want to talk to you this morning about a God who will meet you in suffering who will meet you in a crisis who will meet you at a cemetery who will meet you in the school I want to talk to you about a god that ago in a hospital room and meet you in your dying hour I want to talk to you about a God who will wipe the tears away from your eyes I want to talk to you about a God who can be touched by the feeling of our infirmities I want to talk to you about a God who will hold your mind together when your marriage is falling apart I want to talk to you about a God there to keep you from collapsing even though you're going through a personal crisis I want to talk about a Christ that will show up in a crisis I need Christ in my crisis I need him in my crisis more than I do in my moment of exultation I need him in my frustration I need him in my anger I need him in my uncertainty I need him in my confusion and I need to know where's Peter ass I need to know that God cares when the storm is raging I need to know that God cares when the Lightning is flashing I need to know that God cares when I can't go about life as normal I need to know that God cares when I'm sitting in a waiting room and ICU unit waiting for words and waiting for an answer I need to know that God cares when I've lost my job I need to know that God cares when my wife has walked away I need to know that God cares when my husband is left I need to know that God tears when I don't know how I'm gonna feed these kids next week and I earn the right by the way to preach this message just because you met me at this stage of the week does not mean that I have not had other stages of the week I know what it is to preach victory and come home to a house with no lights I know what it is to talk about God being a provider and then have to believe him to get the water turned by coal I know what I'm talking about the right to preach this message I know what it is to swallow my feelings and preach over my mother's casket I know what it is to endear affliction and because I have had fellowship with him in suffering it hasn't just been success I have known him through tears I have known him through agony I have preached in this very Church with my body wracked with pain and pain running up and down my legs and just coming out of surgery I stood here and Briana have known him in suffering and I am a witness that he will not forsake you I gotta speak up for it I can't let you just talk about it I can't let you just blog about it I can't let you just get out there and say just anything about him he will meet you in suffering he will meet you when mama won't meet you with when daddy won't meet you when sisters and friends won't meet you when your prayer partners won't meet you hallelujah and say anybody that can testify that he's not a fair-weather friend but he'll stick by your describe the crowd the Saints today will leave tomorrow they'll wave their branches in you're afraid so much you can't see the road and they'll forsake you before the week is out the crowd that shouts surely you are the king will doubt you before the week is out be careful how you sign up with everybody throwing rocks at somebody else because the same people who are throwing rocks at him are just waiting on you and they're tired on you and throw rocks at you but when they try to rock you goddess still be with you Stefan told me they were stoned in him and he was looking up and Jesus was standing up on the right hand of the Majesty on high giving him a standing ovation Wow Wow Wow he was being stole y'all hear what I'm saying oh my god I feel I feel by helping here this morning y'all don't hear what I'm saying that God will stand up for you with men sit down love you in the hour of your agony and in case you're going through something whether it's survivors or something that's the fact everybody watching is going through something I want to tell you about a God who will stand by you when you're suffering I was reading about a German philosopher his name is Jurgen Moltmann and this this young man is now a theologian and a scholar but early in his life he was drafted into the military the the Nazi military of Germany and in World War two yorgen fought with the German Nazis he came in and was drafted at 16 but by nineteen he had come up under attack in his aircraft and had been captured a prisoner of war now you'll must understand this is in the adolescence of his life when you are still developing as a human being and he has to develop in gunfire in pain in agony in falling planes and smoke and blood and agony and he has now been captured by some European soldiers and they have drugged him away as a prisoner of war and he does not yet know God and he wonders if there were such a thing as a god how could he let me go through this so your organ is now a prisoner of war and he's been captured and while he has been captured and I believe if I'm not mistaken he was he was held in Scotland or somewhere like that in captivity and treated like any prisoner of war at eighteen nineteen years old suffering agony and abuse and mistreatment so much that he despaired of life itself and an American gentleman who was working in the prison slipped him a Bible and he started reading about our God just because you got nothing else to do and he stumbled up on the Gospel of st. mark and started reading about Christ being crucified and he read the lines Eli Eli lama sabachthani that is to say my God my God why has thou forsaken me and it was on the premise of Christ's suffering that jörgen has an encounter with God he said I can serve a god like this because he feels like I feel he's going through what I'm going through I can serve Him because I connect with the fight then there are moments of uncertainty that make you feel for say wow wow forsaken me I want to preach I want to preach to some people who have gone through some Eli lama sabachthani moments and all of a sudden you find Koinonia you find fellowship with God in suffering that you connect with the agony of the Cross I went to God that I had time or even the ability to articulate effectively the agony of the Cross I don't know whether the real was that the spiritual agony that he who knew no sin became sin for us that he became what he hated that he became what he despised oh my god oh I could stay there a little while and talk to some people who had become what you hated who have done things that you said you despised man but I don't know whether it was an agony of a holy God becoming the emblem of sin and shame and being smitten of his father I don't know whether to talk about the agony of being smitten of his father or whether I should talk about the agony of him being beaten by creatures he created that they beat him with the cat of nine tails until they ripped his flesh wide open and and the history says his entrails were hanging outside I know I don't know whether to talk about that part of it I don't want to talk about that this the disgrace of being stripped in front of your followers and being standing there naked covered in nothing but blood I don't know whether to talk about that I don't know whether to talk about the part that they drove nails into his hands and nails into his feet him put a crown of thorns on him and snatched his beard somebody pull ahead snatch his beard out of his face and he's bleeding from everywhere he's waiting from everywhere and there in the moment of his greatest suffering we see the greatest encounter he has with God that Jesus says more in power in his suffering than he did in his celebration this this this was what captured your gun moment and blew his mind in such a way the organ says I connect with him because he is one with me in suffering that I cannot promise you that God will not allow us to go through suffering i cannot definitively say that he will always snatch us out of suffering we liked preach that but there are some times that God allows you to go through suffering that you might have an encounter with him through suffering that you could not have in other way I know the best way to close the message is to tell you how he's gonna bring you out but the real active the reality is sometimes he takes you through I'll be there good god I'll be right there in the fire with you because I am a God they does not run away when you suffer I am a God who will not try to escape your pain and he has been flamboyant in his discussion about being jehova shamma being present with us with you always always Paul tells Timothy when my hour came to trial no man stood with me notwithstanding God stood with me that's what he tells Timothy he stood with me when others for certainly and I want to talk to you about the shock of suffering that maybe we need to adjust our theology maybe we have taught enough on five steps to be blessed and and I got the blessing of Abraham nothing wrong with that sir but maybe we've done enough teaching on being overcome us and then champions and walking in victory maybe we've done enough preaching about how God will snatch you out maybe we need to change our theology and adjust it to the point that we embrace a God who walks through it with you God who goes through the fighter with you who goes into pain with you who goes into suffering with you I couldn't understand as a young preacher I said God how can you use me to heal other people literally lay hands and see them heal and then bring me home to a mother with Alzheimer's how could I be so annoying that I remember leaving the church who still wet with sweat from preaching and going in the hospital and laying across her body with the sweaty body and laid on her nasty Mahela and spear she died and the enemy said what you gonna preach now I'm talking about seeing God in suffering walking you through the pain and the enemy said you you you couldn't even heal your own mother and how can you stand up in front of them and preach now I said not only will I preach now I'll preach your funeral I stand over top of her and I couldn't do it in my own strength but I met him in the suffering so I want to talk to you about this whole shock we have about suffering is not a result of our God it's a result of our teaching we have not been taught enough about suffering see back when I came along my grandmother's generation came out of the Great Depression and all the souls were about suffering I'm going through I'm going through I'll take the way with the Lord's despise whew in Jesus and I'm going to anybody singing about suffering no more when the Depression was over the revelation of suffering seemed to dissipate out of our hymn books and so if you want to sing a song about suffering you have to go back about 40 years because our revelation is seen through the lens of our situation so the way we see God is a reflection of our point of view when things are going good we see him in the hosanna lens things go bad can you still see him in the crucify him lives sooner or later if you live long enough you will have both extremes you're gonna have the dichotomous experience of being victorious over here and agonized over here a big hole in this area and being broken in a few you began to walk away with certain conclusions like jörgen did that that I can serve a God like this because I found him in my suffering I know it's not a seductive invitation I know it's not as dramatic and aurochs pleasant as this world would like to have that it's hard to get people to come to Jesus now so we promise you Cadillacs and Mercedes that Rolls Royce has come to Jesus and God's gonna give you a bigger house come to Jesus and he can bring your children out of prison come to Jesus and he's a we're quick to make promises it's easy to write checks on somebody else's account come on here as long as you're right on somebody else's got anybody could write you a big check when it comes out of somebody else's account but walking with God cannot just be a bunch of quick preachers with slick hair saying nice things to excite big crash should I write up you will have a week like this so late if you live long enough the the pageantry of your wedding will go through the painting of marriage if you live long enough the the luxury of holding a little beautiful baby in your arms that starts out in your arms ends up on your heart yeah you gonna have a week like this and I came to warn you don't let the hose analyst fool you I cannot promise you that everybody who starts with you is gonna stay with you then everybody who celebrates you will be there with these turned bad for you [Applause] [Music] but it looks real when they throw you in the fire he'll get in the fire with you when they throw you in the furnace he'll be walking around in the furnace with you he'll stand right there by you because there is something there's some kinetic energy there's some connectivity there's some kinship there's some kinship that we have with him in the agony and the suffering of life so don't be shocked when suffering comes such a face as Flint because we are not serving a God or faith that is built on just promises of good time he didn't just give you sunshine and not tell you about rain he didn't just give you pleasure and not be open about pain the epitome every time you see a cross I want you to see that God is the honey of him saying keeping it real he's keeping it 100 that you gonna suffer so don't be shocked in the suffering there is a revelation to be seen in the suffering I thought to myself he had the biggest crowd at the most insignificant moment and all that left him before the suffering mixed his finest hour for his finest hour is not when we lay down our coats and we they lay down our parlays his Frye this hour is when they stripped back his flesh and he commends his body over to his father and says I've done all I can do and they hold him down for the count and say he will not be back and for three days it looked like he was a liar Oh y'all don't be what I was there for three days you could think anything you wanted to think for three days you could say anything you wanted to say about it for three days you could say see he was a phony and a fraud for three days you can pull your hands up and say there's nothing to it Friday you could laugh Saturday you can laugh but uh early Sunday morning he slapped the smile off your face he took the grin out of your teeth early Sunday morning with no witnesses and no crowd and no palm trees it nobody singing not one saw nobody said holes anywhere said it's over step from death into life y'all don't hear what I'm saying step from hell and death into life itself sorry I have overcome and said you can overcome two now in order to be an overcomer you gotta have something to come over as I close I'm gonna hear what I'm saying you can't being over Karma and not have something to come over hallelujah you can't be a chat there and you ain't been in a fight you can't be victorious if you don't have an opponent if you don't have an opponent you don't have a victory but I'm here to try feel like preaching y'all I'm here to tell you hallelujah I'm here to tell you I'm here to tell you and you and you I'm here to tell all you that I'm watching a lie but most of all I'm here to tell the enemy I want to tell them that I want to preach to the devil for a minute if you think I'm shocked you don't know me if you think I'm gonna quit you underestimated me take it not strange that these fiery trials have come against you hallelujah so to meet you in the fire there to meet you in the furnace that a meet you in the hospital gotta meet you in your agony there to meet you in your suffering there to meet you in the hospital there to meet you in the cemetery there to meet you in your pain that a meet you were born of all over you meet you will leprosy that Ameche the unemployment line gotta meet you where they threw you out evicted you ha put you away said you'll never be back that'll meet you the homeless shelter that'll be chaired the divorce court [Applause] [Applause] the clothes I feel glory in this place the anointing of the Lord is here as I close this message I want you to understand you don't have to be shocked you have to be prepared the thing that stood out the most to me in this test is that though they were saying Hosanna they fail to understand that he could not restore Jerusalem and be the king they expected him to be until he was on the cross they didn't expect and anytime something hits you that you didn't see coming anytime you started out the week talking about the crown and ended up the week laying on the cross don't be shocked in your suffering now no covet 19 has taken the headlines the coronavirus has taken up all the news it is overshadowed the discussion of the crucifixion it's making all the headlines that's all anybody wants to talk about even church folks have forgotten that we were in a lynch season because it sub isn't worried about do a head of a mass going right I'm a six feet away from you I'm I am I'm washing my hands long enough and I'm not making fun all of that we need to do all of that and wash anything else you got the water just stay alive I'm not again see any of that but don't let Corona steal the headlines from Christ because if there's anything greater than Corona its Christ the stronger than Corona it is a Christ of God I heard the Bible say when I see the Blood I will pass over you and so my brothers and sisters as I close this message today I want to dismiss shock out of your spirit dismay out of your heart and in the midst of your suffering not after it's over in the midst of whatever your suffering to whatever degree your suffering I want you to feel for him I want you to look for him you're gonna look for him beaten and bruised locked up in a prison a young man on the verge of suicide he reached out and he touched the suffering Savior and said he suffered so he understands what it's like to be me our God does not flee from your pain he does not evacuate the house in the middle of your loneliness if your tests came back positive he won't back away from you he won't even put on a suit to cover himself to be in the room with you if other people are scared of you he is not scared of you if you're going through some other agony today we have a God who doesn't start a week that he doesn't finish he's dissing Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end the first and the last ambition TD jakes a senior pastor of the Pollard's house and I'm going to Pastor this church as long as God gives me strength in my body if I have to do it through cyberspace then I'll do it through cyberspace until we get together face to face I'm gonna preach this gospel the unadulterated Word of the Lord the Bible told me to do it in season and out of season and reprove and rebuke with all long-suffering the book said the time will come that men will not endure sound doctrine keeping to themselves teachers having itching ears just want to hear something to make you feel but life will take you to things that do not feel good but they work together for the good of him that are the called according to the purpose of God and so as I close this message to all of you that are perhaps suffering in a multiplicity of ways and to those of you who are suffering in ways that are not detectable to others because on the outside you stuff looks good your lawn is manicured you have no weeds flowers of ruined houses payment but somewhere on the inside of that house you deal with things then ah that feel to the soul like aroma that make you feel like I can't breathe but I'm telling you you can I'm telling you you can still breathe I'm telling you you can still live I'm telling you you can remain connected if you lose this Pollyanna Eastern world Santa Claus understanding of Christianity and know that every question in life does not have an easy answer every story will not have a happy ending everybody doesn't walk away healed in the end some people like mephibosheth hopped the whole rest of their life some people like Jacob live all the way the rest of their life never experiencing the miraculous power of the God that they serve and yet he's God in your lip he's God in your pain he's God in your suffering he's gone in your singleness he's God in your loneliness he's gone and he's God in your unhappy merriness he's God in your wheelchair he's God in your positive rapport he's God in your negative report he's God in your meals he's gone over your pain he's caught over your family this isn't hard that we offer to you a God that does not flee the scene of the crime a God that sticks closer than a brother and if you ever needed the Lord before we sure do need him now I've got some people watching me that don't even normally listen and no preacher don't even turn this all on Sunday but pressure has pushed you to a point that you're reaching outside of yourself and reach reach reach reach reach reach reach reach just like Jorgen Mullen did until you touch the cross touch his bleeding hand touches bleeding and know that he knows what pain feels like and he will be with you and strengthen you and sometimes he will deliver you from it but if he doesn't deliver you from it he'll grace you to go through it this is the God I want to share with you today that sticks closer than a brother if you do not know him and the free pardon of your sins I want to challenge you to come to know him today you can't build a house on sand because sin is not stable and emotions about stable and if you build your house on sand when the storm comes is go come down feelings will move today I'm happy tomorrow I'm not you cannot feel your faith of feelings and circumstances and no days of God because he gave me a husband I know days of God cuz they got the mortgage of proof no I know there is a God if there is no house I know there is a God if my spouse leaves me I know there is a God if I shut up in the hospitai because my faith is not built on my circumstances the fto faith is built on your circumstances all the enemy has to do to kill your faith is attack your circumstance you got to build your faith on the integrity of God's Word you

Channel: T.D. Jakes

Views: 1,119,847

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Keywords: td jakes, faith, potters house, bishop jakes, The Potter's House of Dallas, TPH Dallas, td jakes sermons, bishop td jakes, inspiration, td jakes motivation, motivation, sermons, td jakes ministries, motivational speaker, motivational speech, gospel, motivational, td jakes sunday, td jakes 2020, td jakes sermons 2020, td jakes 2020 motivation, the shock of suffering, online church service, how to stream church online, coronavirus sermon

Id: xFWHR7ozY2o

Length: 59min 18sec (3558 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 05 2020