Crushing: It's Not the End!

Crushing: It's Not the End!

by T.D. Jakes

Bestselling inspirational author T.D. Jakes reveals God's process for our growth and how we can benefit from life's challenging experiences.

Bestselling inspirational author T.D. Jakes reveals God's process for our growth and how we can benefit from life's challenging experiences.

In this insightful book, #1 New York Times New York Times bestselling author T.D. Jakes wrestles with the age-old questions: Why do the righteous suffer? Where is God in all the injustice?

In his most personal offering yet, Bishop Jakes tells crushing stories from his own journey-the painful experience of learning his young teenage daughter was pregnant, the agony of watching his mother succumb to Alzheimer's, and the shock and helplessness he felt when his son had a heart attack.

Bishop Jakes wants to encourage you that God uses difficult, crushing experiences to prepare you for unexpected blessings. If you are faithful through suffering, you will be surprised by God's joy, comforted by His peace, and fulfilled with His purpose.

CRUSHING will inspire you to have hope, even in your most difficult moments. If you trust in God and lean on Him during setbacks, He will lead you through.

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Hardcover, 272 pages

Published April 16th 2019 by FaithWords

tags: religion, spirituality, self help, christianity, inspirational, business, christian non fiction, christian, faith, nonfiction

Book Quotes

“No matter how hard you might try, you can’t escape the spiritual bond between you and your Maker. You can’t drink it away. You can’t smoke it away. You can’t sex it away.”

“It’s the nights that I cried myself to sleep and my tears crawled across the bridge of my nose that God most often used to develop me into the person I am today.”

“He wants you to offer hope to those being crushed and struggling to understand.”

“When the Master gives us the vision of what he’s going to do in our lives, He shows us the mountain peaks while He hides the valleys. If you saw the climb you would have to endure to get to the mountaintop, you would abandon the entire trip.”

“We may not like to admit it, but what if our crushing is necessary in order for our potential to be fulfilled?”

“The finished product you see on the peaks is the end result of the resurrection in the valley.”

“Blood is the price we pay for access to God, and it comes at great expense. God has invited us to His winepress so that He can do with us that which is necessary to reconnect something temporal to its eternal source. Don’t be surprised and begin to despair at the onset of the crushing you will endure. Don’t run from it; run to it, because you’re not being crushed simply for crushing’s sake. ... Your pain is not going to last and, like the labor pains of an expectant mother, will produce new life. The crushing is meant to do two things: get out of you what’s in you, and get the true you out of the thin skin that encases you. The crushing of the grape not only expresses the juice from the flesh, but it also separates the unusable parts of the grape from the juice. Crushing requires purification. Do you know anyone who would purify something they do not intend to use? ... Your crushing cannot be the end, because God would never purify you if He didn’t intend to use you. Your crushing is nothing more than the beginning of a glorious transformation process that will reveal to the world and you who and what you really are. Just like the grapes being trampled comes first, so does your crushing. There is more to come—so much more.”

“As we undergo maturation, we come to understand that our temporary fruit was never the endgame of an everlasting Master, but rather just a single step in the process of making eternal wine.”

“In our rush to escape the pain, messiness, and brokenness of our lives, we often miss our opportunities for growth. Mired in the muck of our misguided mindsets, we miss what God may be doing in the midst of this dirty place. With a heave, a strain, a shove, a stretch, and a charge upward, we fight to leave the place we were planted, because surely we believe that God has to have something better for us than where we've come from and where we are. ... "Surely," we say in the midst of God's apparent silence, "He will not abandon me in this place of death!" Right when we've lost all hope, we see something we have never witnessed before. When we resolve within ourselves that maybe, just maybe, where we are is our assigned lot in life, God remains vocally silent, but reminds us of his promise by showing us the light we have never seen. We move toward the light, slowly stepping out in faith despite all the pain, filth, shame, and suffering. Breaking through the dark soil where we were placed, we sprout and rise to continue seeing another world of possibilities. The dirty place became the nurturing soil that enabled us to grow and blossom in ways we would never have experienced sitting in the safety of a greenhouse. To keep a seed from being planted is to condemn that seed to never realize its full potential. It is a fact that seeds are meant to be covered and die. Jesus said, "Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (John 12:24)”

“We wallow in doubt and worry and allow ourselves to be consumed by fear and anxiety. Our complaints and doubts, however, come from an individual that has forgotten that God has specifically tailored our struggles so that we would produce succulent fruit. The thought that we’ve been chosen for the pain confuses us because we believe that God is stumbling into our future just like we are. We assume that he’s unaware of what’s just around the corners of life, that His point of view is as limited as our own.”

“God had a strategy in the ugly places because those were the fields in which he decided to cultivate us.”

“My passion for cooking meals for loved ones originated when I was growing up. Because our family didn't have much materially, my siblings and I didn't get excited about gifts and Christmas and birthdays--but we were exuberant in anticipation of the food! I remember my mother preparing and cooking food for days before Christmas. You could smell the aromas wafting throughout the house, and if you were lucky, she would allow you to lick the spoon and taste a little bit beforehand. As a result, my wife and I now delight in showing the same love my mother put into the preparation of special meals into the celebrations we enjoy. From all those years of watching my mother prepare food for the family, and from my own limited experience in the kitchen, I've realized an important lesson: quality takes time. While most people tend to agree with me, no one particularly enjoys waiting patiently for the turkey to come out of the oven or for the pie crust to be made from scratch. We want the quality, but we don't want to wait for it. As I look around, it doesn't take much to see that this current generation is accustomed to fast foods, instant information, and new friendships at the click of a button. Because of such immediate results, we've ignored the diminishing quality of those things we recieve instantly and our subsequent lack of appreciation for them. Our desire for instant gratification has ushered us to the point that we sacrifice excellent quality because of the difficulty and time it takes to produce it.”

“It is from the depths of dark and dirty places in our lives that we scream for God’s attention and help while misunderstanding that, just like with a natural seed, it is the microbes in the soil of life that eat away at our efforts to protect ourselves from harm.”

“God doesn’t cut us to kill us but to heal us. It’s the difference between experiencing the blade of a dagger in a back-alley attack and the blade of a scalpel in an operating room.”

“Being planted and being buried may feel similar—if not identical—but the intention leads to very different outcomes.”

“A pearl of great price is our pain wrapped in God’s perfection.”

“Blood is the price we pay for access to God, and it comes at great expense. God has invited us to His winepress so that He can do with us that which is necessary to reconnect something temporal to its eternal source. Don’t be surprised and begin to despair at the onset of the crushing you will endure. Don’t run from it; run to it, because you’re not being crushed simply for crushing’s sake. Your pain is not going to last and, like the labor pains of an expectant mother, will produce new life. The crushing is meant to do two things: get out of you what’s in you, and get the true you out of the thin skin that encases you. The crushing of the grape not only expresses the juice from the flesh, but it also separates the unusable parts of the grape from the juice. Your crushing is nothing more than the beginning of a glorious transformation process that will reveal to the world and you who and what you really are. Just like the grapes being trampled comes first, so does your crushing. There is more to come—so much more.”

“Crushing requires purification. Do you know anyone who would purify something they do not intend to use? Your crushing cannot be the end, because God would never purify you if He didn’t intend to use you.”

“Imagine if the electric chair or gas chamber had people kneeling around it with no thought of the horrific purpose it once held! But in effect, this is exactly what happened with the cross. No other religion in history has ever used an emblem of horror for its enduring brand. Whether we want to or not, all of us must pick up some kind of cross and follow Jesus into suffering.”

“Israel’s wandering in the wilderness wasn’t just because [God] was angry with them. His continuous moving with them in the wilderness was because He wanted time to get out of them what their years of being slaves had put in them. And the best way to show anyone who you really are is to constantly be in their presence.”

T.D. Jakes

Thomas Dexter "T. D." Jakes Sr. is an American entrepreneur and chief pastor of the The Potter's House, a non-denominational megachurch, with 30,000 members, located in Dallas, Texas.

Jakes is a charismatic speaker and preacher whose sermons are broadcast nationally and internationally over television and satellite television. Jakes is also a prolific author and has written over 30 books, many of which have been featured on the New York Times best-selling list. Jakes is also a songwriter, a playwright, and performer. He founded a Christian record label (Dexterity Sounds) as well as a theater and movie production company as well as a theater and movie production company.
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