http://reachmorenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/BishopTDJakes2006-1030x1024.jpg
Have you been stalled in your walk with Christ? Has something happened that has made you want to quit your relationship with Him? For some of you this message will be a lifeline. Others of you will want to hear it so that you can share the heart of TD Jakes message with others who are falling apart. TD begins by telling you this is a powerful message. IT IS! –Ray
TD Jakes – The Awakening
http://reachmorenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Sarah-Jakes-v7-qm00rCxXm.jpg
The mistake people make, including the majority of Christians and the majority of parents, is that they see each person’s life as a single snapshot that is never going to change. But that’s not at all how life works. People do change, and Christ is never limited by the stupidity any human can involve themselves in at any given time or however long they wallow there.
Humans are not paralyzed in time, but have the potential at any moment to be drastically changed for the better. But I absolutely guarantee you, without the unconditional love of Christians – the very same kind of love that Jesus Christ has for every human – multitudes of people will remain locked in bitterness or in a tragic lifestyle that ultimately will destroy them.
Larry and I are not out to bash churches. Being a pastor is often like being a tightrope walker with the balance they have to maintain in every area. Sadly, many pastors have fallen off the tightrope and their congregation has either run away in horror or haven’t even noticed.
Any church should be an obvious place of love – Christ’s love. Otherwise it may as well be a social club for only certain kinds of people. When you take a seat at church do you notice who is sitting next to you and do you warmly greet them? You never know what someone is going through unless you let them know that you care about them first. And no matter what they tell you, if you are even in the slightest judgmental, you will be signaling them that you aren’t to be trusted.
Without love you profit nothing – 1 Corinthians 13. That’s true with your kids, your parents, your neighbors, EVERYONE. If Sarah had felt the love of the church at the age of 13 – the love that everyone is supposed to feel from a church congregation – she might not have had to go through such hard places. Here is Sarah again to make this clear…. –Ray
http://reachmorenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/sarajakes5_zps733b8dfc.jpg
I renamed this episode – Jonah and other runaways – Sarah Jakes. Maybe I’m enjoying this day with Sarah because I’ve been there, done that. No, I’ve never been a stripper. Nobody would want to see that!!! But I have lived on the backside of the desert in a place that was as bad and even worse than Sarah did.
I can’t say I was running away from God. But I can say that I was running away from life. I kept a relationship with Christ even while empty. But I knew I’d never be back in ministry because I had so seriously failed my Lord. At a time like that, in fact, I didn’t feel I could use the word “Lord” to describe Him. I did know He was my Savior all through those four and a half years – much longer than Sarah did her thing. And amazingly, though I absolutely can’t promise this to everyone who scurries away from God, I was met on the other end of those years by those who reached out to restore me – Georgia and Bill Johnson. How I thank God for them. Bethel church in Redding, California, was my place of restoration with Georgia by my side. She had nothing to do with the four and a half years, but she’s been there for me ever since. And Bethel was the greatest place on Earth to be made whole again.
So this episode in the series on Sarah Jakes may shock you. “TD Jakes daughter was WHERE??!!!” And her description of how her parents handled her returning home shows me that she had Christian parents to the max. Where had Sarah been? As she says, “In the belly of a fish.” Here’s Sarah to explain…. –Ray
http://reachmorenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Paula-White-Ministry-Breast-Implants.jpeg
What about divorce? This is the second in the series of the Sarah Jakes’ videos. Here she talks openly with Paula White and Paula speaks very openly with her. Both of these women are serving Christ in ministry and are divorced, which brings up the absoquestion Is divorce so much failure before God that it disqualifies a divorced person from ministry? The answer is no, but it should require a time of healing and restoration. This week I’ll be posting my new article The Bible on Divorce.
Of course, because these are women in ministry, some Christian male chauvinists would say THAT ALONE would disqualify them from ministry. That’s a totally un-biblical thought. I will very soon be teaching a series on Women in Ministry and explore the whole subject biblically. It’s a series I used to teach in many churches.
Paula White considers TD Jake’s her spiritual father. Her divorce from Randy White after both of them pastored the huge Without Walls mega-church in Tampa, Florida, hasn’t slowed her down.Paula has gone right on in ministry with both pastoring and speaking in churches worldwide. She is often seen on Christian television, heard on radio, and is a powerful minister of the gospel. On this video she very openly discusses what led to her divorce from Randy. –Ray
http://reachmorenow.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/sarah_tdjakes_daughter.jpg
What do you do when you’re single daughter is pregnant? Sarah Jakes’ bestseller Lost and Found seeks to answers the questions WHY would a daughter raised in a loving Christian home allow herself to become pregnant at the age of 14? Or for that matter, at any age? HOW could they do that to their parents? And how should the parents respond?
For more than a year in the late sixties, I was chaplain at the William Booth Salvation Army home for unwed mothers in Oakland, California. I vividly remember my first night of ministering to these girls. Before I spoke in the chapel, the girls had thrown a protest in their dining hall. They didn’t want this man “preaching at them”. Most of them by far felt totally removed from the love of God. So all they could think was that I was going to bring condemnation too, just as their parents had when they found out about their pregnancy. I sit here realizing that happened almost fifty years ago!
Many of the girls in the home eventually came to Christ and it was remarkable to see their new joy. You could clearly see they had been born again. I thrill to the memory of it. But rather than the nightmare all these girls were going through at the home decreasing in the past fifty years, teenage pregnancy out of wedlock is today a nationwide epidemic Christian parents and all other parents need to know what to do about it. Shall they abandon the love of God and cast their daughter out, stone her? Or?
I also remember what I had thought before and after I first saw the unwed girls. Before I saw them, I expected to see a group of hard-bitten mob-type girls and was shocked to discover that almost all of them were just young frightened kids who looked like they lived next door. Their boyfriends had abandoned almost all of them. Their parents had abandoned almost all of them. And they believed God must have abandoned them too if they had had any relationship with Him before their pregnancy. I never condemned them or preached at them, instead I focused on sharing the love of Christ with all of them. Christ would never leave nor forsake them no matter what they did. We are ALL sinners saved by grace who become saints in His eyes (Galatians 2:20 – 21). God’s love is unconditional with no strings attached (John 3:16). Honestly asking Christ into your life to be your Savior (Romans 10:8–11) is to be set free. Sin has awful consequences in this world, but be of good cheer, Christ has overcome the world.
I highly commend Sarah Jake’s book to you. No matter how young we were saved by Christ we were just like the title of her book – Lost and Found. Because this is such a vital subject, I am going to take most of today to share her testimony with you. Sarah is honest and has the kind of answers Christians should know, not because this same situation will necessarily happen to them, but because they will have God’s answers, love and grace, to share with those parents and daughters who face it.
http://img.youtube.com/vi/eNG3fpbCT5g/0.jpg
What happens when you’re a Christian and everything you do flops like a headless chicken? Sarah Jakes takes us on the journey with Ruth and Naomi when they return to their hometown. I had never heard Sarah before, but when I did, I knew you had to hear her too. And this message will give you the answer to why I feel that way.
Sarah is the daughter of probably the best known black pastor in America, TD Jakes. She leads the women’s ministry at The Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas. Part of what she is sharing with her heart is from the fact that she went through a very hard divorce. She’s a beautiful person like TD is and an outstanding Christian.
From the Bible book of Ruth, Sarah talks to those in despair because nothing’s going right. This is Christmastime when everything should be wonderful, happy, merry, ho ho ho! And yet NOTHING in your life may fit those descriptions. All you can see for 2015 is still more heartache, gloom and doom. You are wondering if maybe you’ve already died and been sent to hell.
For those who the above descriptions fit, this message is for you. For those, on the other hand, who are sitting on a happiness cloud and life is full of joy and excitement, this message is for you. And for those who are experiencing ups and downs that leave you laughing on the outside and crying on the inside, this message is for you. Any Christian who is on that happiness cloud needs to be like Ruth, not looking down on the discouraged, but caring enough to give the very best of yourself to them.
Always avoid catching the sometimes highly contagious despair of somebody else. Just care. Sarah will make all this clear. –Ray
Sarah Jakes – When Winter Becomes Home (0)
