Planted with a Purpose by T. D. Jakes

Author:T. D. Jakes [Jakes, T. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FaithWords
Published: 2020-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

The Wait

A big part of becoming who God has called us to be looks like waiting to our human eyes. Yet, in the midst of our waiting, we are often being developed into the people God needs us to be for the next stage of our lives.

When I accepted my call into ministry, I remember pleading with God to allow me to preach. It was tough and often confusing. To be called and to sit in the background and listen to people speak from books of the Bible they couldn’t even properly pronounce was the most aggravating experience of my life. It was during my inner court period that the Lord was developing my gift. I would be in the shower, preaching to bars of soap and washrags. I would be walking through the woods of West Virginia, laying hands on trees. All of this might sound comical to you, but I now see these moments as part of a season of fermentation, a critical part of the winemaking process. I spent years cleaning out the baptismal pool and leading devotional services before worship began, wondering when it would be my time to stand and proclaim the infallible Word of God. My heart would ache because I knew I had something to offer. Like the disciples, my heart was rent because the process didn’t happen like I wanted.

But waiting was far more beneficial because the Lord was working on something marvelous in a secret place. He was working on my character. He was working on my heart. He was working on my nervousness. He was working on my motives. He was working on my wisdom. He was working on me, boiling off every single impurity because there was no way God was going to present to the world an unrefined, unfermented, underdeveloped product.

I was a minister for seven years before I preached my first sermon, and I had hundreds of messages lined up and ready to go. But the Lord had me in a holding pattern, and it felt like it would never end. All of it was for a reason, and I didn’t realize the greater reason—the wine reason—until Bishop Carlton Pearson called me to speak at Azusa. I preached a sermon there that was later seen by Paul Crouch. Paul Crouch saw only a piece of that sermon on television, but it was during a trying, pressing, and crushing time in his own life. It was just by God’s handiwork and timing that Paul saw that one part of my sermon being played and, from there, called me and invited me to be on TBN.

During the fermentation period—the waiting time—you may be tempted to say there isn’t much taking place, but you fail to realize that there is progress in the waiting. You may find yourself in a holding pattern but you don’t realize that your flight has been moved from fortieth in line to second. This is because transition doesn’t feel like work; it often feels like waiting.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.