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I snagged this video from over at JanJoy’s place, so hat tip to her for all the great stuff she often posts.

I really enjoy TD Jakes, I’ve read his books, listened to some of his sermons. He just always seems to drop a  good word on me at the perfect time. A couple of my favorite things he’s said, “Don’t be your husband’s pastor. Don’t be inviting another man into your home.” 

Oh, you betcha! Those are some wise words.  We do that, we women, especially if we’re maternal. We’ll lecture our kids, then lecture our husbands, oh hold up there! Watch that last one. It’s very easy to slide into, and often unintentionally demeaning. You’re actually now treating a grown man like a child.

We are not attracted to our children. Maternal feelings are not romantic feelings, so when we begin to perceive grown men as our children, we kill off attraction signals, too. We slay romance. We cook our own goose.

Sometimes women like to make appeals to authority too,  so like, “Well, the pastor said..” That’s what TD Jakes means about “not inviting another man into your home.” Some men really hate church and some of that is because women have made church “the other man,” and now they feel as if they are forced into competition with a perceived threat.

Poor guys, I wish more of them understood that pastors are often men themselves, that pastors are often full of praise and encouragement, and not condemnation.

I can’t remember exactly where he said it and this is a total paraphrase, but basically he once told  women, “the enemy doesn’t want to kill you, he just needs to get you to pick up burdens you weren’t designed to carry.” That will become such an exercise in futility, it will just fill you with despair, end in failure, and kill off your hope. The enemy kills men outright, but he just crushes women and breaks our hearts. Why? I don’t know, I just know that analogy really  resonated with me once and probably saved my life.

“He just needs to get you to pick up burdens you weren’t designed to carry.” That’s always been a huge issue for me and often the world, dysfunctional family members, even many men, will all be working against you, trying to get you to pick up burdens you weren’t even designed to carry.

Some of those bits of TD Jakes wisdom are captured here in this video.