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    So You Call Yourself a Man?: A Devotional for Ordinary Men with Extraordinary Potential
    So You Call Yourself a Man?: A Devotional for Ordinary Men with Extraordinary Potential
    So You Call Yourself a Man?: A Devotional for Ordinary Men with Extraordinary Potential
    Ebook172 pages3 hours

    So You Call Yourself a Man?: A Devotional for Ordinary Men with Extraordinary Potential

    By T. D. Jakes

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    T.D. Jakes introduces readers to men of the Bible in this devotional favorite. The readings help men realize that God created them to be free, powerful, and filled with purpose. Each short devotional includes a reading, Scripture, and suggestion for prayer.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaker Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 1, 2007
    ISBN9781441213419
    So You Call Yourself a Man?: A Devotional for Ordinary Men with Extraordinary Potential
    Author

    T. D. Jakes

    T.D. Jakes is the CEO of TDJ Enterprises, LLP, as well as the founder and senior pastor of The Potter’s House of Dallas, Inc. He’s also the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including, Crushing, Soar!, Making Great Decisions (previously titled Before You Do), Reposition Yourself: Living Life Without Limits, and Let It Go: Forgive So You Can Be Forgiven, a New York Times, USA TODAY, and Publishers Weekly bestseller. He has won and been nominated for numerous awards, including Essence magazine’s President’s Award in 2007 for Reposition Yourself, a Grammy in 2004, and NAACP Image awards. He has been the host of national radio and television broadcasts, was the star of BET’s Mind, Body and Soul, and is regularly featured on the highly rated Dr. Phil Show and Oprah’s Lifeclass. He lives in Dallas with his wife and five children. Visit T.D. Jakes online at TDJakes.com or follow his Twitter @BishopJakes.

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      Book preview

      So You Call Yourself a Man? - T. D. Jakes

      Jesus!

      Getting Up From Your Lame Position

      Waiting on Man to Get Into Position

      These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

      Genesis 2:4–5

      Things must be in place before God will act. The Bible tells us that at the beginning of creation, God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. This does not mean that the earth was without water. Up to this time, God had caused a mist to come up from the earth to give moisture to the earth. There had been no downpour, however, from the heavenlies.

      Why? Because there was not a man to till the ground.

      There are some things that God has planned to do, has made provision for doing, and desires to do that He will not do until man is in place to receive what God intends to give.

      The blessing is there . . . in God’s safekeeping.

      The need is there . . . insistent, resistant, persistent in its pain and suffering.

      But the blessing won’t be applied to the need until man’s heart is in a position for God to act according to His own laws of redemption, healing, and deliverance.

      There are some things that God has in the heavenlies that will not be released to you until you are in the proper position spiritually, relationally, emotionally. Oh, you may be experiencing a mist—but in your spirit, you have a restlessness that there must be something more. You have an inner knowing that you aren’t fully where you ought to be. You have an uneasiness, a frustration that causes you to say, Why am I no further than this in my life?

      Rather than blaming your wife, your parents, your boss, or your race . . . you are wise to ask yourself, Is God waiting on me to be in a different spiritual position before He pours out a blessing on my life?

      When you are in alignment with God and His purposes, He will open up the heavens and cause it to RAIN on you! You’ll experience such an outpouring of God’s blessings that you won’t know how to contain them.

      Ask God today WHERE He wants you to be spiritually so that you might receive the downpour of His heavenly blessings.

      Recognizing the Lame at the Gate

      Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful.

      Acts 3:1–2

      The lame man who was brought to the Beautiful Gate was incapacitated, and because he was in that condition, he needed special care. While other men walked in and out of the temple area, this man was carried to the temple.

      There was nothing wrong with this man in many areas of his body—he could see, hear, touch, and speak. He could move his arms and upper torso. In fact, there was only one thing wrong with this man—his ankles had no strength.

      If there is something wrong in only one area of life, however, and that area of weakness is severe enough, a man’s entire life can be affected. The operation of a man’s life—the function, the activity—can be so impacted that it will feel to that man as if everything has gone wrong. That was the case with this man. Only one thing was wrong with him, but that one thing created a whole-life problem.

      When a man is handicapped, he needs to be carried. He cannot support his own life, pull his own weight, or operate in his own strength. This has nothing to do with whether or not the man is a good man in his heart and motives. It has to do with his having a bad problem.

      The lame man’s problem had made him dependent upon other people. His problem interfered to a certain extent with their lives—he had to be carried by other men to a place where he could beg, and then carried home at the end of the day. He could not get to where he wanted to be on his own.

      This man no doubt felt discouraged and low in self-value. When a man has to be carried about, unable to move about on his own, he feels demeaned. When a man has to beg for a living and is not allowed to participate fully in the activities of other men, he feels diminished.

      Not only was this man lame in his ankles, he had a lameness in his emotions and his spirit. One area of weakness had created another in his life. Not only were his ankles lame; he was lame.

      Virtually all men are in that position today. We each have a weakness in our lives that keeps us from functioning as a whole person. But what do most of us do? We deny our own lameness. And we pass by others who are lame because we don’t have either the courage or the compassion that it takes to stop and help them.

      It’s time we quit kidding ourselves. We each have a need for God’s healing power. Others have needs, and they need for us to help them experience God at work in their lives. Yes, we are all lame at the gate at some point in our lives, in some area of our lives.

      The good news is that God sends people to the gate where we sit to help us receive what God has for us to receive. Watch for that person in your life. Look for that person to come. And be very aware that you may be the person that God is sending to bring deliverance to a lame man.

      Be on the alert for a person who may be sitting at a gate through which you will pass today.

      What Are You Expecting?

      And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple; who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked an alms.

      Acts 3:2–3

      What do you want when you go to church? Why are you really there? What is it you are seeking? Are you present only so that you can tell others that you go to church? Are you there so that you can play a role that you think gives you some kind of status in your community? Are you there just to keep peace in your family and to avoid the nagging and pleading of your wife or your mother or your children?

      Jesus once asked a group of people concerning John the Baptist, Who did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind? A man clothed in soft raiment? A prophet? (See Matthew 11:7–15.)

      It’s an important question for us to ask ourselves: Who are we going to church to see and hear?

      If we are going to church just to hear the choir sing or to hear a preacher speak, we are making the same mistake that the lame man made when he was carried to the Beautiful Gate that day. He was looking for the wrong thing. He was seeking alms. He wasn’t expecting healing.

      We also need to ask ourselves some serious questions about the way we regard the people we meet on a day-to-day basis: How are we looking at other people? What do we expect from our encounters with them?

      So often we approach people the same way this lame man did. We are looking for what they are going to do for us. We are looking for what we can get from them. We aren’t looking for what it is that God wants to do in us or through us.

      I call this a get-over spirit. The person with a get-over spirit is always looking for someone or something to help him get over his problem. He’s looking for what he can take from others, or what they will give to him freely—which is no different than almsbegging—without any effort or responsibility on his part.

      People with a get-over spirit are users. They use people, but don’t really love them. They latch onto people and seek to take from them what they desire or lust after—it may be sex, it may be money, it may be fawning adoration. They have little interest in other people apart from what they can get from them that will help them make it from today to tomorrow.

      God calls us to see Him when we see other people. He calls us either to give to other people as He would give to them, or to receive from other people as if we are receiving from the Lord Himself.

      When we go to church, we are to go with an expectation that God is going to speak to our hearts and heal our lameness.

      When we encounter other people, we are to regard them with love and compassion—open to receive what good thing they may say to us to encourage us in the Lord, and also open to say and give to them whatever the Lord prompts us to say and give.

      In this way we live in freedom—freely receiving and freely giving. (See Matthew 10:8.)

      Identify precisely what you are expecting from God today.

      Why Are You Who You Are?

      A certain man lame from his mother’s womb. . . .

      Acts 3:2

      Have you ever stopped to think about who you are and how you got to be who you are? Have you wondered how it is that you got through all the things you have been through? Have you ever thoroughly considered your own life?

      So many men are so busy looking at their lame ankles—their problems, their needs, their area of weakness—that they fail to see the big picture of their own lives. They don’t have an awareness of where they are in their lives, primarily because they don’t have a clear picture of where they have been.

      This man who was carried to the Beautiful Gate had not become crippled as the result of an accident or an illness. He hadn’t fallen from a rooftop or been thrown from a horse or been run over by a cart. He had been born lame. He had never known anything other than lameness all of his life. His lameness was not a disease, but a weakness. The bones of his feet and ankles simply had never gained strength.

      This man actually had two advantages that many men do not have today.

      First, the

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