“Tonight, you didn’t just walk into a church. You walked back into the ring,” Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts told the women who packed into Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church Friday night. “There are some devils that you have been fighting that it’s time for you face head on.”
“Hallelujah” and “amen” after “amen” rang from the crowd as she introduced herself and her event. The building was on fire from the start.
The church was the venue for the St. Louis stop of her “Refuse to Lose” tour, which is selling out across the country. The program officially began at 7:30 p.m., but women began lining up along Dr. Martin Luther King Drive at least two hours before – and that line stretched for about two blocks. Once everyone was inside, there was not a single seat available in the mega church.
They came for a word from Roberts, daughter of Bishop TD Jakes and a rising star in her own right within the faith community.
“Honestly, I never thought that this would be my life,” Roberts confessed.
Yes, she is the daughter of perhaps the most famous figure within today’s black church. But her life took several detours early on.
At the tender age of 13, Roberts became pregnant. As a teen mother, she lived in the wilderness of the world for a while before returning to her faith. She suffered through depression and shame triggered by the life experiences not expected to be the reality of the daughter of one of the most spellbinding and revered voices in contemporary religion.
“You are standing in God’s strategy for my life right now,” Roberts said. “But I had to go through a teenage pregnancy to get here. I had to go through depression to get here. But God said, ‘I have a strategy for your life. And I am going to use all of those things and you are going to take all of those things to rooms you never should have been in.’ If I’m not 13 and pregnant, you would not be in this room.”
The evening began with an exercise of transparency. She asked the women to reveal the internal struggles and personal challenges that may create a hindrance for them on their path to purpose.
“You are waiting for me to preach and your life just preached a message,” Roberts said. “[it said] ‘I’m standing up to this thing and it won’t have the end of me.’ I’m tired of pretending like I’m not depressed when I am. I’m tired of pretending like I’m okay when I’m not. Tonight, I’m going to look that devil right in the face.”
The event stretched on for nearly three hours. In addition to a preached word delivered by Roberts, the programming also included praise, worship, song and a format that gave women in the audience – and those touring with Roberts – an opportunity to share their triumphs, testimonies and trials.
“Tonight, I don’t want you to hide,” Roberts said. “I want you to bring not just your strengths, not just the things that you are proud of. I want you to bring your fears into the room too. I want you to bring your insecurities. I want you to bring your issues. Because it is only when we bring all of ourselves to God that he is able to give us the transformation and identity exchange that we need.”
‘Disruption is not destruction’
When Roberts took the stage to deliver her message as the culminating event, she focused on moving beyond life’s setbacks and walking into God’s plan.
“Disruption is not destruction,” Roberts said. “The enemy only disrupts things that are in progress. That means if you were stagnant, you would have never been disrupted. If you weren’t destined to be anything, you would have never been disrupted.
Again, she referred to her own life to support her sermon.
“God told me, ‘I’m going to use every disruption to help you connect with other people who have been disrupted,’” Roberts said. “If there would just be one woman in this room that lays hold of God’s strategy in spite of the disruption she’s been through, it’s enough to turn this whole room upside down.”
She told the woman that disruption only comes to those in progress towards their destiny.
“if you were stagnant, you would have never been disrupted,” Roberts said. “If you weren’t destined to be anything, you would have never been disrupted. If you were supposed to be little old ordinary girl who no one ever paid attention to, you would have never seen that that thing was an issue It’s not meant to haunt you. It’s meant to tell you ‘that’s not who you are.”
A word for the women
The evening was an evening of worship for women and by women.
“I want to talk to the women who feel ordinary, not really sure that there’s anything special about you – those women who are not really sure that there’s any purpose connected to her name,” Roberts said. “Mary is just an ordinary woman before she receives the word. The difference between ordinary Mary and supernatural Mary, is that Mary said yes.”
She asked the women to put themselves in Mary’s shoes.
“The text says that the moment she said yes Mary moved,” If you said yes, and all of your actions are still the same, then your actions are really saying no – and you are really saying no. But when you say yes to God, he is expecting you to start moving in a way that you’ve never moved before.”
Roberts also talked about the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth – and how when God revealed her future, it was Elizabeth who confirmed and reassured her.
“You are here because you needed to be in a room with other women who understand what it’s like to have miracles on her hands,” Roberts said. “You need to be next to a woman who understands you have a miracle on your hands. The enemy thought that if he divided women, that we wouldn’t get together and facilitate a move of God.”
The room exploded again when Roberts told them they were sitting next women who could confirm what God was doing in their lives.
“Something happens when women get together. The Holy Spirit becomes contagious,” Roberts said. “Sometimes what you need is another woman to hold the ropes for you so that you know it’s time for you to get back in the ring. I don’t want to be Mary tonight. I want to be Elizabeth. I want to confirm for you that you are not dreaming, and you are not hallucinating. That you were called for more.”
I want to confirm that yes you were disrupted, but you were not destroyed.
“I started shrinking my life according to what happened to me,” Roberts said. “You have been asking God to bless something that is beneath him. He sees you as bigger than what you’ve been asking for. You’re asking for the next paycheck. I hear God say, ‘ask me for generational wealth.’”
She told the women that God was calling them back to the fight of their lives.
“This is a fight for the life he always had for you – before you saw the things you were never supposed to see and experienced the things you were never supposed to feel,” Roberts said.
“I know you’re tired. I know you are tapped out. But God said that there is a second wind. It’s miracle season and we can’t leave a woman behind.”
