Crushing 'God Turn Pressure Into Power'

Title: Crushing 'God Turn Pressure Into Power'

Author: Bishop TD Jakes

Publisher: FaithWords

Number of Pages: 262

About This Book

Book Review About Bishop TD Jakes Book "Crushing"

In this crushing process, the enemy of your soul will send obstacles your way in order to convince you to abandon what God is doing in your life. Things you could not imagine will spring out of nowhere. People you thought you knew will disappoint you, fail you, betray you. Circumstances and events that seem to have no rhyme or reason will suddenly become the poetry you are forced to recite each day as the script of your life. I’ve been in the ministry for over forty years, and you’d be shocked at the problems and pressures that tried to run me off and sentence me to a life of mediocrity.

The process of developing excellence is never microwaved, and the transformation in which God has us requires staying power. Are you willing to stay in the midst of the pain? Are you willing to sacrifice the time it takes to be your best? Will you sacrifice what is good in your life in order to achieve the greatness latent within you? The change and transformation we’re enduring is a test of time. If we continue with the Master, the end result legitimizes the trauma of our pasts. If you don’t bear the fruit of continuance, I become suspicious of the root of your conversion. In other words, you can tell how real God’s process is in your life by whether you continue with Him. After all, you can only fake your desire for transformation for so long. That’s why it requires faith—confidence in what cannot be seen by our mortal eyes and hope in the supernatural power of God to do the impossible in your life. Change is a savage business, and you will easily part with its end results if you forget what it cost you. Yet with such a high price being required of us by the Master, who has an expected end for us, how could we ever forget that the wine He is producing in us is well worth it? Can we believe that the price we’re paying as we water our seeds of greatness with our blood, sweat, and tears is truly worth it?

Our Personal Savior, Jesus Christ is the person gathering the grapes of our lives, having to reach between our branches to obtain them. Additional the risk of getting pricked and bruised by our thorns we use to protect ourselves. Simultaneously, He is the person who treads the grapes in the press, getting His feet scarred in the process. Looking at Christ, we should see that He is creating the wine out of us and His own bruised places because it’s in the crushing vats that the wine of the grapes and the blood of His feet are mixed. Jesus Christ is truly paying a personal cost for our transformation. We might grasp a small understanding of our own pain in moments of crushing, but have we ever stopped to think about and appreciate what it costs God to see us through the process? The protection that’s required to keep us safe, and the provision we need in order to keep growing and evolving? Parents understand the overwhelming sacrifice it costs to successfully develop a child into a healthy and mature adult.

Making wine requires more than changing the way we need to see in our life. Spiritually speaking, making wine requires bloodshed. The importance of blood throughout Scripture cannot be overestimated because, through it, we see that our position with God is changed. As a result, it makes sense that our identities would change, as well. We see this transformative process illustrated in numerous ways throughout the Bible, but one instance has always intrigued and disturbed readers including me. God’s blessings become reality in our lives when we rejoin the Master’s plan by lining up with it in faith, like Abraham. In essence, when we created a reconnection with God, we step into what He has stores for us. Our transformation into wine requires that we be signed and sealed by blood. Wine figures heavily throughout Scripture and points us to the work of the Holy Spirit.