Instinct Order Printed Copy

Author: T D Jakes
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About the Book

"Instinct" by T.D. Jakes explores the power of intuition and following one's instincts to achieve goals and fulfil one's potential. The book emphasizes the importance of listening to one's inner voice and using it as a guidance to make life-changing decisions and navigate challenges. Jakes shares personal anecdotes and practical advice to help readers tap into their instincts and live a more purposeful and fulfilling life.

St. Patrick

St. Patrick, (flourished 5th century, Britain and Ireland; feast day March 17), patron saint and national apostle of Ireland, credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland and probably responsible in part for the Christianization of the Picts and Anglo-Saxons. He is known only from two short works, the Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Letter to Coroticus, a denunciation of British mistreatment of Irish Christians. Patrick was born in Britain of a Romanized family. At age 16 he was torn by Irish raiders from the villa of his father, Calpurnius, a deacon and minor local official, and carried into slavery in Ireland. He spent six bleak years there as a herdsman, during which he turned with fervour to his faith. Upon dreaming that the ship in which he was to escape was ready, he fled his master and found passage to Britain. There he came near to starvation and suffered a second brief captivity before he was reunited with his family. Thereafter, he may have paid a short visit to the Continent. The best known passage in the Confessio tells of a dream, after his return to Britain, in which one Victoricus delivered him a letter headed “The Voice of the Irish.” As he read it, he seemed to hear a certain company of Irish beseeching him to walk once more among them. “Deeply moved,” he says, “I could read no more.” Nevertheless, because of the shortcomings of his education, he was reluctant for a long time to respond to the call. Even on the eve of reembarkation for Ireland he was beset by doubts of his fitness for the task. Once in the field, however, his hesitations vanished. Utterly confident in the Lord, he journeyed far and wide, baptizing and confirming with untiring zeal. In diplomatic fashion he brought gifts to a kinglet here and a lawgiver there but accepted none from any. On at least one occasion, he was cast into chains. On another, he addressed with lyrical pathos a last farewell to his converts who had been slain or kidnapped by the soldiers of Coroticus. Careful to deal fairly with the non-Christian Irish, he nevertheless lived in constant danger of martyrdom. The evocation of such incidents of what he called his “laborious episcopate” was his reply to a charge, to his great grief endorsed by his ecclesiastical superiors in Britain, that he had originally sought office for the sake of office. In point of fact, he was a most humble-minded man, pouring forth a continuous paean of thanks to his Maker for having chosen him as the instrument whereby multitudes who had worshipped “idols and unclean things” had become “the people of God.” The phenomenal success of Patrick’s mission is not, however, the full measure of his personality. Since his writings have come to be better understood, it is increasingly recognized that, despite their occasional incoherence, they mirror a truth and a simplicity of the rarest quality. Not since St. Augustine of Hippo had any religious diarist bared his inmost soul as Patrick did in his writings. As D.A. Binchy, the most austerely critical of Patrician (i.e., of Patrick) scholars, put it, “The moral and spiritual greatness of the man shines through every stumbling sentence of his ‘rustic’ Latin.” It is not possible to say with any assurance when Patrick was born. There are, however, a number of pointers to his missionary career having lain within the second half of the 5th century. In the Coroticus letter, his mention of the Franks as still “heathen” indicates that the letter must have been written between 451, the date generally accepted as that of the Franks’ irruption into Gaul as far as the Somme River, and 496, when they were baptized en masse. Patrick, who speaks of himself as having evangelized heathen Ireland, is not to be confused with Palladius, sent by Pope Celestine I in 431 as “first bishop to the Irish believers in Christ.” Toward the end of his life, he retired to Saul, where he may have written his Confessio. It is said that an angel conveyed to him that he was to die at Saul, the site of his first church, despite his wishes to die within the ecclesiastical metropolis of Ireland. His last rites were administered by St. Tussach (also spelled Tassach or Tassac). Legends Before the end of the 7th century, Patrick had become a legendary figure, and the legends have continued to grow. One of these would have it that he drove the snakes of Ireland into the sea to their destruction. Patrick himself wrote that he raised people from the dead, and a 12th-century hagiography places this number at 33 men, some of whom are said to have been deceased for many years. He also reportedly prayed for the provision of food for hungry sailors traveling by land through a desolate area, and a herd of swine miraculously appeared. Another legend, probably the most popular, is that of the shamrock, which has him explain the concept of the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God, to an unbeliever by showing him the three-leaved plant with one stalk. Traditionally, Irishmen have worn shamrocks, the national flower of Ireland, in their lapels on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.

God So Loved the World, He Sent You

Long before he made the world, God the Father prepared to send his one and only Son to earth. He loved him “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24), and yet even then he knew how much the baby born in Bethlehem would suffer. We know the Father knew because our names were “written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8). Before God planted the first pine tree, the Christmas story had already been planned. Before he lit the sun with fire, he had already begun digging the ground where the cross would one day stand. He always knew that Jesus would one day take on flesh and, eventually, shed his own blood. Can you imagine the all-wise, all-powerful author of life and history preparing his Son to live as one of us — and to die a uniquely horrible death? Even our wildest dreams would look like scratch drawings on a napkin compared with the intimacy they shared in divinity for an eternity before history — before there was even time to count. God So Loved His Son But the sent one himself gives us stunning glimpses into how the Father had prepared him: “I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. . . . For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (John 10:15–18) When the Son came to earth, he came covered in his Father’s love. When the Father set his love on us, at the excruciating expense of his Son, he did not love his Son less. He loved him more for his sacrifice. Jesus says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again” (John 10:17). God’s love for his Son didn’t keep him from sending his Son to save us. Love for his Son prompted God to send him. The Father sent Jesus with unparalleled love, and with unrivaled authority. Jesus says, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:18). The Father harnessed all the power of heaven for this mission, and entrusted it to the humble child from Nazareth. He held nothing back. Jesus, who was human in every way that we are, could say the scandalous and unfathomable: “All that the Father has is mine” (John 16:15). As much as he suffered as man, he did not come to earth empty-handed; he came bearing the universe. He came as God. But with the limitless love and unassailable authority of his Father, he was sent to die. Feel the awful heaviness of the full meaning of Christmas in his words: “I lay down my life for the sheep. . . . I lay down my life. . . . This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:15, 17–18). The Father did not merely send Jesus to take on flesh, but to lay it down. The Spirit conceived a Christ to be crucified. For lost and wandering and helpless sheep — for you and me. Jesus was sent to lose everything that we might gain everything. He became poor — in birth, in life, and in death — that we might inherit his heavenly wealth (2 Corinthians 8:9). Sent in love, sent with authority, sent to die — and to save. As the Father Sent Me The wonder and weight of Christmas — a sending conceived in the mind of God before the foundation of the world, a sending on which every event in history turns and hangs — fills one sentence from Jesus with staggering significance. He prays to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18) Nothing compares to the Creator of the universe sending the radiance of his own glory, the exact imprint of his nature into his creation. Until Jesus sends you. After he rises from the dead, he says it again, before he ascends into heaven, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). As the Father sent the Son — planned before the foundation of the world, demonstrating God’s infinite beauty, strength, and worth, paying for the sins of people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, with billions and billions of destinies hanging in the balance — so the Son now sends us. As the Father sent his Son on a specific and spectacular mission, so the Son has set us loose on a world in need of hope (John 17:21, 23). As the Father sent his Son with precious words to proclaim, so the Son has given us something to say, a Lord to adore, and a commission to obey (John 17:14; Matthew 28:19–20). As the Father sent the Son to suffer for love, so the Son sends his sheep into the wolf pack (Matthew 10:16). As the Father set joy before his Son, so the Son has promised us his very own joy (John 17:13), now in part, forever in full. As the Father sent his Son with love, so the Son has loved us (John 15:13). And so he has sent us into the world. God So Loved the World We have not descended from heaven, but in Christ we are not of this world. Jesus says of you and me, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17:16). But while neither he nor we are of this world, he has stationed us here for now. Jesus prays, “I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world” (John 17:11). He is not in the world anymore, but we are. Instead of staying to bring in by himself all the sheep who are not yet of this fold, he ascended to mission control — the throne of the universe — and sent us in after him. Having completed his once-for-all mission of securing redemption — the work only he could do — he entrusted us with telling the whole world what he had done. He says to his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18–19). As he had heard the Father say, “Go,” he now sends us into the world — with his authority, his words, his help, his joy, and his own presence: “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). To whom has God sent you? The people in your family, on your street, near your office are not the offspring of chance. God lovingly placed them within arm’s reach of forgiveness, hope, and joy — by placing you near them. They were not alive a hundred years ago, but they are now. They will not live where they do in a hundred years, but they do now. God arranged and orchestrated every person in your life for his glory (Acts 17:26–27), just as he guided all of human history for thousands of years before Christ came — and then he sent you precisely where you are — with words and joy, in love, to suffer and say and save. As you celebrate the greatest sending again this Christmas, remember God so loved the world, that he also sent you. Article by Marshall Segal