Situations that leave you feeling “crushed” can sometimes make you feel hopeless. In a powerful conversation about his new book Crushing: God Turns Pressure into Power, Pastor T.D. Jakes of the Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas, explains to Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church, in North Carolina, why crushing “is not the end.”
“In our lives when God gets ready to serve us to the world, there are certain crushings that we go through. There are certain crushings that you are going through right now in your life and sometimes people don’t see it. They don’t know that you’re being crushed because sometimes you’re being crushed in your heart, your emotions,” Jakes says.
“I was doing research for my book and I found out that the same part of the brain that processes physical pain, processes emotional pain. So my brain doesn’t know whether my heart is broken or whether you stabbed me in the leg. The same part of the cerebellum that sends the message that you’re in pain, is just as intense about a broken heart as it is about a stabbed leg,” he explains. “So all of a sudden I’m in trauma but there’s no paramedic because I’m not bleeding. I’m not being crushed on the outside where you could put a tourniquet on it and send me to the emergency room.”
God can use many situations to put you through a “crushing” and no one is exempt Jakes says.
“I’m being crushed in my heart. I’m being crushed by failed expectations. I’m being crushed by the fact that I’m older now and I thought that I would be further than I am and I am not. God has a whole lot of ways to crush you. I have been crushed by bankruptcy. I’m being crushed by disappointment. I’m being crushed because I love somebody who won’t love me back. I’m being crushed because I have a child that disrespects me. There are all kinds of ways for you to be crushed in places that people don’t see and it affects you like you are being stabbed,” Jakes says.
“This trauma of the soul cannot be treated in the hospital. This trauma of the soul, this secret crushing that God allows us to go through sometimes in our life that is beyond explanation. And yet there is not a person in this room, young or old, black or white, rich or poor, intellectual or illiterate who escapes it. You cannot live in this world and not need what I’m talking about. Something in your life is going to be what God uses to crush you, but remember that crushing is not the end,” he adds.
Listen to the complete conversation below.
Im in the crushing transformation now @51yrs old. It’s so frightening that somedays I fight to get out of bed, yet I know God has a plan for my life. I know I should have been dead,yet he’s caring for me. Nobody great God, I know you love me. ImNothing without you Lord.
I wish TD Jakes had explained that God does not do bad things to us, My sister who is older and didn’t get saved until she was in her 40;s believes that he is saying that God will crush us and do evil to us to force us to do his will. She believes that God is both good and bad. God is good all the time! She believes God told her to move and sell her home and now she is in a bad situation, where she is unhappy with her life and that it is part of God’s crushing. She believes TD Jakes is affirming this. I told her God is good all the time and God brings good out of our bad situations. but we are always better off in the end. she says we have limited free will. That we have to take whatever the sovereign God throws our way. I know she is mixed up about some things but the crushing thought did not help her in any way.