A sermon from TD Jakes.
If you know me, you already know how much I love going to church, and especially love TD Jakes – so much so that I flew to Dallas in the beginning of this month to attend The Potter’s House and visit my cousin (I’ll save that for another post).
Anyway, I attend One Church LA, and found out that TD Jakes was going to be the guest preacher today… but I’m in Chicago. Thank you for live streaming. Here are my church notes from today:
THE FINAL REVIEW: TD JAKES
• This is the final review on the the final sunday of your final year of your captivity
• John 15:1-8
• If he abide in me, and my words abide in you – You shall ask what you will, and it shall be given onto you
• If you don’t stick to your values when you’re being tested, they’re not values at all – they’re hobbies
• 2016 is not going to the next level, you’re going to the next dimension. If you wanted to go to the next level that’s just taking one step
• Anytime the opposition intensifies, it’s a sign that you’re on the verge of something significant
• You never try to rob somebody who doesn’t have anything. If the enemy is trying to rob you it’s only a sign that you’re carrying something threatening and intimidating to him. I’m trying to explain why you went what you went through in 2015
• The enemy wouldn’t be attacking you if you were already his. He is attacking you because he knows you’re carrying something so valuable so you can’t make it to the next year
• Everyone talks to you about what you’re going to leave behind, but there are some things you ought to take with you
• Every time you go through something, there’s a wisdom and abiding that remains in your life that you need to take into your next life.. or else everything you went through was for nothing
• Everything you went through was for a purpose
• Three things you need to get to the next dimension: Relationships, you must produce, you must be resilient.
• Relationships are your greatest resource
• You have gone as far as you can go by yourself – and that’s why you’re stuck
• You need to develop the relationships for the next dimension
• I don’t want anything that doesn’t come through Him
• I don’t want a gig, a friend, a companion that doesn’t come through Him. If it comes from Him, it’s safe. If it doesn’t, I’m not sure of it.
• Love God, and love people.
• God is going to teach you through relationships. He’s going to teach you how to be like Him, how to not be so ego-centric, etc.
• The person that God put in your life that is driving you crazy… He sent them so you could have a crucified life. He sent them so you can learn forgiveness, He sent them so you can learn patience, e sent them so you can learn to shut up – and you’ve been trying to rebuke them and you’re grieving. He sent them so you can understand relationships, and relationships require submission and humility. Relationships require that you don’t say everything you think.
• The connection is more important than the climate. You’ve been trying to change the climate but all you have to do is change the connection because if the connection is good you can get through the climate
• You cannot go into 2016 without connections. You’ve been trying to fly solo… You have to come down with everyone else
• The first thing the enemy attacks in your life are your relationships
• Don’t be a hermit, it’s not good for a man to be alone
• In an attempt to protect yourself, you have restricted yourself
• He’s allowed you to be stomped so you can’t go anywhere anymore
• God cannot bless you against His own law
• In order to be fruitful, you must be relational… even though you’re scared, even if you’re hurt, even if you’re afraid someone is going to let you down, you have to run the risk… After all, He runs the risk on you everyday and you’re no greater lover than me. I gave my only begotten son and fell for a fool like you, watched you betray me and still redeemed you. And you’re too good to be hurt? Get out of here.
• You must be reproductive! Anything that doesn’t produce, God hates it
• How dare you suck up air and not produce? You just do you… that’s all you’re going to do? You think God brought you here just to do you? You selfish little tree. I’m giving you another year to bring for the fruit and if you don’t, I’m going to cut you down to force you to be relationship, and if you don’t learn after that, I’m going to put something in your space grateful enough to produce
• The enemy wasn’t trying to kill you, he was trying to kill your dream and your future
• Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, I taketh away. I will not allow you to stay connected to me and not be productive
• God will not allow you to hang onto me and not be anything
• In order to be something, you have to be willing to change. You can’t wear your old clothes.
• You’re trying to remain what you were instead of what you’re going to be. God is throwing you out so you can change and find out what you can be and what you can become. Baby, you haven’t seen anything yet.
• This MUST be the most productive years of your life
• If you don’t do it now, you won’t get it done
• Just because you’re younger than me, doesn’t mean you’re young. I did all my building and conquering your age. What I killed in my 30’s I eat in my 50’s
• If you’re not going to kill it now, you’re not going to kill it
• Stop crying about where you are, you’re getting ready to leave where you are
• God is not going to fix where you are, you’re leaving
• Everything in me that beareth no fruit, I get it out of the way… Think about all the fruitless things you were attracted to that He cut away. All the people you had patience for that He didn’t. Every branch that have no fruit, I take it away. Why are you reaping over something God has rejected? Why are you standing around the grave of what could have been? You’re not grieving the loss of the person, you’re grieving the loss of what you had in mind. If you change your mind, you will stop the grief.
• You can’t go into 2016 grieving over 2015. Every branch that beareth not fruit, I cut it away. Every branch that beareth fruit, in order to reach the epitome of reproductivity. In order to reproduce, something ALWAYS has to be cut.
• When God cuts you, it doesn’t mean he cast you away. He cut you so you can go from fruit, to more fruit, to much fruit.
• You have been as fruitful as you can be without pain, the next dimension doesn’t come without the shedding of blood, people, or things you define yourself by
• There’s nothing worse to God to see a much fruit person, in a fruit situation. You have to get around much fruit people, not fruity people.
• I’ve never had a hater that was doing better than me.
• Haters are always people not doing better than you, because people who are doing better are too busy to be in your business anyway.
• If you run with lesser people, your life will always be complicated
• If you had not been afflicted, you would not have seen the glory of God
• You must get the testimony of Job – Though He slay me, yet shall I trust Him
• If he cut you, it’s only because He’s trying to birth something greater in you
• I will not fight the knife of the surgeon like I fought the fight of a assailant. One comes to kill you, the other comes to correct me. Never fight your doctor
• The greatest problem with this generation? You give up too soon
• You quit because you were raised by a phone. When you stroke it, you get an expected response. You were trained by things that give you an expected response.. So when you run into something that doesn’t give you an expected response, you say it doesn’t work. Life is not an apple product.
• You have to labor with it, and dig, and rake, and plant, and water, and what, and wait, and wait and wait for what God is going to give you on the level He is going to give it to you, you have to wait for it. If you work it, it will work. You can’t work it one day, and expect it to come at 2pm. Stay when it’s raining, stay when it’s sunshine. Stay when they like you, stay when they don’t like you. You can stick it out.
• If you ask what you will, and you don’t quit, you are going to get what you want.
• You’ll never get where you want to go if you get a “no” and quit
• You don’t have to hit a button to “like” me, I’m still God’s child
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