Speaker 1: Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick. I'm the pastor of Elevation
Speaker 1: Church and this is our podcast. I wanted to thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you. Hope
Speaker 1: it builds your faith. Hope it gives your perspective to
Speaker 1: see God is moving in your life. Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: I thought what I wanted to ask you before we
Speaker 1: sit down. All right, I've been thinking about this for
Speaker 1: a month. No, I haven't lost. Yeah, about one pound.
Speaker 1: If you were going to preach right now, Let's say,
Speaker 1: let's say a Sunday morning at the Potter's house and uh,
Speaker 1: Pastor Joel was scheduled to preach. Where's Pastor Joel? But
Speaker 1: he got he got injured doing five hundred pounds bench press. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they say, Bishop, Pastor Joel's not preaching, and the
Speaker 1: praise team is finished and Marcus has dragged out the
Speaker 1: music as long as he can. And you've got to preach?
Speaker 1: What text you preach? I think I know, but I
Speaker 1: want to see if I'm right. What Texa? You don't know?
Speaker 1: You don't you know? For God said she had appointed
Speaker 1: me another seed in the stead of Cain, who Abele slew?
Speaker 1: My subject is he'll do it again. No, I didn't
Speaker 1: guess that one. Have a seat, Yeah, have a seat everybody.
Speaker 1: So that's in the Bible, that verse. How many you
Speaker 1: have ever listened to Bishop Jake's preaching? You're like, does
Speaker 1: he have the same Bible that I have? I never, Oh,
Speaker 1: I was going to tell you this. So my oldest
Speaker 1: Elijah the other day, can I tell him? We're on
Speaker 1: the porch, and I quoted Bishop quote to him and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, well, Bishop always says blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah blah, h one of these
Speaker 1: little parables that you spit out like they're you know,
Speaker 1: just this beautiful, beautiful, beautifully crafted thing, right. And he goes, oh,
Speaker 1: that's Bishop. I always thought that was a Bible verse.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying to you is you are so loved
Speaker 1: in the Ferdic home that my kids think you wrote
Speaker 1: parts of the Bible that aren't in the Bible. That's
Speaker 1: how much you mean to us. I've never been told
Speaker 1: that before a boy life. I can't make that all.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. I love you all too. What does that
Speaker 1: feel like, though, to have the to be the most
Speaker 1: imitated preacher in the last fifty years. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that's true, assuming that it is, because assuming that that
Speaker 1: would be true, imitation is the highest form of flattery.
Speaker 1: But if there is anything higher than that and more
Speaker 1: important and flattering itself, is to find the true power
Speaker 1: of being you. Yeah, yeah, why be a cheap copy
Speaker 1: of a great original when you have the option to
Speaker 1: do yourself. So when you're starting to preach, people say,
Speaker 1: be yourself, be yourself. But when you're first starting to
Speaker 1: preach yourself sucks, like not as a human being, but
Speaker 1: as a preacher. It's true. So then you hear, oh,
Speaker 1: don't imitate anyone else. But like I wanted, I actually
Speaker 1: wanted to start the conversation tonight because this book is
Speaker 1: a gift, and thank you for taking the time at
Speaker 1: this stage in your ministry to share this. I think
Speaker 1: it's so relevant and I've I've been waiting for this,
Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of people have. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to start not just talking about communication in general,
Speaker 1: but im okay, right, because imitation isn't always a bad thing, right, No, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you want me to go pass? No okay, no, Well
Speaker 1: it's freach like it's a bad thing. It's the spiritual danger.
Speaker 1: Let me explain what mentorship really means. It means that
Speaker 1: when Samuel grew up and was brought by Hannah into
Speaker 1: the house of Eli, he was unable to discern the
Speaker 1: distinctives between the sound of Eli's voice and God. That
Speaker 1: is an initial stage, that God sounds like the person
Speaker 1: who mentored you. Gradually you come to a point that
Speaker 1: the umbilical chord cuts and you have to go here
Speaker 1: to lay down. The third time before he recognized that
Speaker 1: it was God talking and not Eli, and he says.
Speaker 1: Eli says, when you hear the voice again, go and
Speaker 1: lay down in the same place and say, speak Lord,
Speaker 1: that servant here. So it is my job to gradually
Speaker 1: lead you from God sounding like me until you can
Speaker 1: hear that God sounds like God, and you see, you see.
Speaker 1: And so that weaning process starts with him being weaned
Speaker 1: from Hannah, and now he is being weaned from Eli,
Speaker 1: that he might draw the breast milk from the breasted
Speaker 1: one himself and thereby find the nutrition that he needs.
Speaker 1: The other thing that's important to realize is that we
Speaker 1: are looking at a generational passing of the mic from
Speaker 1: Eli to Samuel, and for Samuel can hear God but
Speaker 1: cannot discern him. Eli has lost his ability to hear
Speaker 1: the voice but can discern him. So there is see Okay, okay, okay. Look,
Speaker 1: Eli couldn't hear the voice. He was sleeping. Okay. Samuel,
Speaker 1: being the young people, could hear the voice but didn't
Speaker 1: understand what to do with what they heard. Okay. We
Speaker 1: have a generation of people that can hear the voice,
Speaker 1: but they like the wisdom to understand what to do
Speaker 1: with what they hear. Eli, on the other hand, has
Speaker 1: lost his ability to hear his adventurous proclivity to step
Speaker 1: out into the unknown. He's playing it safe. His eyes
Speaker 1: are growing dim, his senses are decaying, but his discernment
Speaker 1: is still keen. So what Samuel needs from Eli is
Speaker 1: wisdom and discernment. What Eli needs from Samuel is the
Speaker 1: adventurous curiosity that allows him to hear the unhearable. This
Speaker 1: is all in the first seven minutes, and it's so
Speaker 1: funny that you should bring it up because we are
Speaker 1: on the impetus of a transition now that is similar
Speaker 1: to the transition of days gone by. God said, I
Speaker 1: am going to do something through Samuel that is going
Speaker 1: to cause both the ears of them that hear it
Speaker 1: to begin to tingle. And he chooses to do it
Speaker 1: to a person who has yet to learn the confidence
Speaker 1: to hear the God that is going to do it
Speaker 1: through him. So the promise of God is bigger than
Speaker 1: the reality of the individual, and he has to grow
Speaker 1: into it, just like he had to grow into his
Speaker 1: mother's coat she brought up every year, not knowing for
Speaker 1: sure what size he would be. She makes the coat
Speaker 1: big enough that he can grow into it, and greatness
Speaker 1: must be grown into. Yeah. Okay, so when you're first
Speaker 1: starting out and you're preaching or you're communicating, because this
Speaker 1: book isn't just for preachers, right, but we'll talk about
Speaker 1: preaching because we love to talk about preaching. Let's do that.
Speaker 1: I want you to know that, by the way, my
Speaker 1: whole goal for this experience is for you to get
Speaker 1: a little bit of a taste of like this would
Speaker 1: be us on a Tuesday night in three hours have
Speaker 1: gone by, and this is what I wanted to understand
Speaker 1: about growing into it. When you're inspired by somebody like
Speaker 1: the way I've been inspired by you. First of all,
Speaker 1: did you have somebody that you studied the way that
Speaker 1: I have studied, you had several and I still do.
Speaker 1: I listen at every orator imaginable, whether I agree with
Speaker 1: the message or not. I watch for the delivery, the
Speaker 1: technique and the style. You can learn from litigators, you
Speaker 1: can learn from comedians. You can learn from preachers. I
Speaker 1: know the content I want to deliver it, but the
Speaker 1: vehicle I want to drive at home. Man is a
Speaker 1: conglomerate of all of these different styles and the propensity.
Speaker 1: It's like asking a gospel artist, can you learn anything
Speaker 1: from a jazz artist? Can you learn anything from a
Speaker 1: classical pianist? Absolutely? And incorporate all of those different modalities
Speaker 1: into your style. And the more diversed those modalities are,
Speaker 1: the broader your stage becomes. So what are you listening for?
Speaker 1: When you're listening, I'm listening at how they connect with
Speaker 1: the audience audience. I'm looking at how they enter the room.
Speaker 1: I'm listening at the rhythm. See, great preaching is almost musical.
Speaker 1: Great speaking has a rhythm. It has a cadence, It
Speaker 1: has a voice inflexion and a tone. It has the
Speaker 1: ability to have a rhythm that is syncopated in such
Speaker 1: a way that the hearer can hear it in pace
Speaker 1: and in rhythm, so much so that if you start
Speaker 1: to speak and you draw the audience into the rhythm
Speaker 1: of the pace of the speaking through which you are
Speaker 1: conveying information, and then in the middle of the pace
Speaker 1: and the rhythm us pause. The pause is what I
Speaker 1: call the pregnant paulse It's what David calls see law
Speaker 1: in the Psalms. It is a moment for them to ingest,
Speaker 1: digest and appropriate what has been spoken before. And sometimes
Speaker 1: the exclamation of the importance of the statement is the
Speaker 1: silence that you let it ride in on. Does it
Speaker 1: make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And most young preachers
Speaker 1: are afraid of the silence, so they've run to make
Speaker 1: noise because they need the affirmation that the crowd is
Speaker 1: still there. But you have to have enough confidence in
Speaker 1: the material that God has given you that it will
Speaker 1: do what it was created to do. And the word
Speaker 1: of God does not need crutches. And to those that
Speaker 1: are litigators and prosecutors, and those are who are running
Speaker 1: for election and those who are applying for a job,
Speaker 1: truth needs no If it is true, it is true.
Speaker 1: And the human ability to sense truth is utterly amazing.
Speaker 1: It is not just the verbalization of paragraphs and the
Speaker 1: conglomerates of chapters. It is we hear with more than
Speaker 1: our ears. We hear with our eyes. We hear through
Speaker 1: body language. We hear through voice inflection, we hear through
Speaker 1: pitch and tone. This is what's wrong with marriage, is
Speaker 1: that sometimes your mouth is saying something, but your body
Speaker 1: language is saying something else. And women who are particularly
Speaker 1: intuitive are not just listening at what you said. They're
Speaker 1: listening at your body language and the way your eyes
Speaker 1: flinched and the way you didn't look me in the
Speaker 1: eye when you were saying it, and all of that
Speaker 1: brings them to it. See how the women are clapping.
Speaker 1: Come on, sisters, Come on, sisters, talk to me, Holly.
Speaker 1: And this is how the man gets trapped because he
Speaker 1: thinks I said the right thing, but they don't understand.
Speaker 1: She's hearing with her eyes. Yeah, she's hearing with your behavior.
Speaker 1: She's hearing with how you dropped your pinchion, change your
Speaker 1: tone and looked away and did not look her in
Speaker 1: the eye. And all of that says that you're avoiding
Speaker 1: the straight on gaze that comes when you are sure
Speaker 1: of who you are and what you said. Said I
Speaker 1: drop him, it's fun. That was a great moment to
Speaker 1: understand that as an orator, and every one of us
Speaker 1: in here are orators. Whether we get paid for it
Speaker 1: or not. We deliver messages to our children, to our wives,
Speaker 1: to our husbands and our family. Depends on how adept
Speaker 1: we are a communicating. And here's the challenge. It is
Speaker 1: one thing to communicate a fact to plus two us four.
Speaker 1: Whatever goes up must come down to communicate the fact.
Speaker 1: It is one thing to communicate a feeling. Some people
Speaker 1: do not have not made a connection between heart and mouth.
Speaker 1: The Bible teacher is with the heart man believeth unto salvation,
Speaker 1: but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. So
Speaker 1: to be able to articulate, I'm sad, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: sad today. I am so sad today that it feels
Speaker 1: as if I will never smile again. And I cannot
Speaker 1: explain to you fully the source of the sadness. But
Speaker 1: it is as if all the color has been washed
Speaker 1: out of the earth, and water does not feel wet,
Speaker 1: and though the sudden rose, it did not shine. And
Speaker 1: though I am breathing, I cannot get air. And my
Speaker 1: soul is said to be able to describe a feeling
Speaker 1: to the point that it's depressed all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: You know or or I love you. I love the
Speaker 1: scent of your hair, I love the gleam in your eye.
Speaker 1: I love the way you lay your head on my shoulder,
Speaker 1: and I love the way you need me. And I'm
Speaker 1: not afraid to show me. Well, you know, what do
Speaker 1: you love about me? I love you? That's fine. What
Speaker 1: do you love? Some people do not have the They
Speaker 1: have not worked out in the gymnasium of communication enough
Speaker 1: to express what they are feeling. It is not that
Speaker 1: they're not feeling it, they haven't worked out to use
Speaker 1: the skills that are necessary to communicate what is in
Speaker 1: the heart. And so many marriages explode for the lack
Speaker 1: of something that both of them have, but they drop
Speaker 1: the mic. They don't communicate effectively one to another what
Speaker 1: you need, And so you leave this woman who actually
Speaker 1: had what you needed but didn't know how to give
Speaker 1: it for some other woman who knows how to talk
Speaker 1: it but doesn't mean it like the woman you left.
Speaker 1: And that's also true with the man, irrespective a gender.
Speaker 1: This is what happens, and this is what happens in
Speaker 1: our country, and in our world, where we are talking
Speaker 1: at each other most of the time, couples don't really listen.
Speaker 1: In the book, I talk about listening because I think
Speaker 1: that the art of being a great speaker is being
Speaker 1: a great listener. So I listen at you. I listen
Speaker 1: at you, I listen to other people. I listen at
Speaker 1: everybody speak. I listen at somebody when I'm counseling, and
Speaker 1: I'm a fierce counselor because I listen at you, and
Speaker 1: I remember what you said, and I draw a line
Speaker 1: between everything that you shared with me, because listening is
Speaker 1: more important than speaking. If I lose my ability to
Speaker 1: hear right now, gradually my ability to speak will begin
Speaker 1: to enroll because I can longer hear, so my ability
Speaker 1: speech begins to deteriorate. Because here is an association between
Speaker 1: hearing and speaking. So the art of being a great
Speaker 1: speaker is also being a great listener. Listening at the text,
Speaker 1: Listening at the text. Now, Moses, my servant was dead,
Speaker 1: but as I was, was Moses. So shall I be
Speaker 1: with you? Listen at a God whom Moses dropped, And
Speaker 1: while Israel was still grieving, God turned his head and
Speaker 1: continued talking to Joshua, as if nothing had happened at all. Now, Moses,
Speaker 1: my servant, is dead. But as I was was Moses,
Speaker 1: so shall I be with you? In other words, nothing
Speaker 1: important has changed. I am still the same. Moses is dead,
Speaker 1: but I am still the same. And I will continue
Speaker 1: my purpose irrespective of my vessel. And I am going
Speaker 1: to do it through you not Do you want me
Speaker 1: to do it through you? Not? Would you like for
Speaker 1: me to do it through you as I was with Moses? Sosia. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a boss move. The text is a boss move.
Speaker 1: There is a boss move, and so you But you
Speaker 1: can't read it and get that. You have to listen
Speaker 1: at it. You have to feel the intensity of it.
Speaker 1: You have to hear the sobbing in the background of
Speaker 1: a nation of people who have lost the leader that
Speaker 1: it has taken them forty years to love and it
Speaker 1: will take them four hundred to get over. And while
Speaker 1: they are weeping at the bottom of the mountain, God,
Speaker 1: shit's not one tear over Moses. He knows exactly where
Speaker 1: he is. He will have him escorted by his angels
Speaker 1: out of the situation where they last saw him. Rather
Speaker 1: than tweep, he turns his head and said, I will
Speaker 1: continue everything I was doing through you. That's what's happening now.
Speaker 1: God is turning his head. Great leaders are passing, great
Speaker 1: leaders are retiring, Great leaders are expiring, and God is
Speaker 1: turning his head to the next generation and saying, as
Speaker 1: I was with Moses, so shall I be with you.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine being Joshua being terrified because there's nothing
Speaker 1: worse than coming behind a great speaker. To come behind Moses, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had to preach after you before that's fun comes stop.
Speaker 1: To come behind Moses and to have the responsibility. I
Speaker 1: wrote don't drop the mic to say to young people.
Speaker 1: Number one, the mic is yours. It's not going to
Speaker 1: be yours, it's yours. We are still alive, but it
Speaker 1: is yours. It is your generation that must be reached
Speaker 1: and touched and maintained relevance today. And I am just
Speaker 1: telling you that the mic is heavier than it looks.
Speaker 1: Don't drop it when your feelings are hurt, don't drop
Speaker 1: it when you're angry, and don't drop it. Can I
Speaker 1: ask you about that jump jump? And I think it
Speaker 1: was nineteen ninety seven Michael Jordan played this game. It
Speaker 1: was game five in the NBA Championships, and he had
Speaker 1: the flu and he scored thirty eight points. I want
Speaker 1: to hear that's Michael Jordan's flu game. I want to
Speaker 1: hear a Bishop Jake's flu game story, like a time
Speaker 1: where you stood. I can't think of a time that
Speaker 1: I didn't. I can't think of a time I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't think of a time that I didn't. I
Speaker 1: had back surgery. They dug into my back four inches
Speaker 1: four and l five when I came out of anesthesia
Speaker 1: in the hospital with a day's surgery. That they were
Speaker 1: going to keep me over a couple of days. As
Speaker 1: soon as I woke up, I slid over to the
Speaker 1: side of the bed and threw my feet out and
Speaker 1: stood up on them and started walking. My wife wanted
Speaker 1: to kill me. The doctor thought I was on crack.
Speaker 1: But I heard the doctor say that if I could
Speaker 1: work walk to the nursing station, they would let me
Speaker 1: go home. It hurts so bad that I started sweating,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to go home, and the doctor said,
Speaker 1: let him go. He said, he's not the kind of
Speaker 1: guy you can keep and let him go. Let him
Speaker 1: go home. And I have always been a fighter. Now
Speaker 1: what's this with the pain that came. There's still a
Speaker 1: certain amount of anaesthesia, and you after the the anastesiologist
Speaker 1: is woking you up. You really don't know how fully
Speaker 1: how you feel. For a day when I came out
Speaker 1: of complete anesthesia and the pain is riveting, and I
Speaker 1: had a chance to speak, maybe not that Sunday, but
Speaker 1: the following Sunday, I sat in a chair in front
Speaker 1: of the stage to prove to the devil that I
Speaker 1: don't need my body. I don't need my body to
Speaker 1: be able to preach. There is something going on between
Speaker 1: my heart and my head and my mouth that requires
Speaker 1: nothing on my back. And I sat in the chair
Speaker 1: with my church packed, and I spoke irrespective of pain.
Speaker 1: This is the tenacity that I passed to you with
Speaker 1: the mic. The tenacity says, I will override the way
Speaker 1: I feel and do what I was called to do. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I prophesied as I was commanded. I did a
Speaker 1: reconciliation conference years ago while the million man March was
Speaker 1: going on, and I was criticized and I was threatened,
Speaker 1: and I had death threats on my life and they
Speaker 1: were going to shoot me, and I put my boys
Speaker 1: in the background, because I didn't want their last sight
Speaker 1: of me to be bleeding. But I walked right down
Speaker 1: the streets of Atlanta with thousands of people fully prepared
Speaker 1: to die for what I believe. If you believe a
Speaker 1: thing that you are not willing to die over, it
Speaker 1: is not worthy of your faith. You know I said
Speaker 1: this before, and I shared with you, and I want
Speaker 1: to place this off you and you can tell me
Speaker 1: what you think about it. Thinking it's the final frontier
Speaker 1: of privacy we have left. Our technology had invaded every
Speaker 1: other idiom of communication we have with each other. That
Speaker 1: our texts aren't safe, our face times aren't safe, our
Speaker 1: phone calls are not safe. The only safe place where
Speaker 1: there are no drones, where there are no hackers, it's
Speaker 1: within the confines of my own mind. And with that
Speaker 1: being my final frontier, I refuse to allow you to
Speaker 1: tell me how to think. Yeah, because thinking is all
Speaker 1: I have left. And so once I open my mouth,
Speaker 1: my thoughts have become public. And once they have become public,
Speaker 1: they are going to be scrutinized and criticized and ostracized,
Speaker 1: and they're going to alienate me from this group or
Speaker 1: that group or the other. But that's why I must
Speaker 1: incubate him in the womb of my mind before I
Speaker 1: birthed them out of the canal of my mouth. Because
Speaker 1: once the thought is birthed, I'm sorry, doesn't always retract it. HM,
Speaker 1: when you're I think you said incubate them in the
Speaker 1: womb of my mind before I birthed them through the
Speaker 1: canal of my mouth. That's right. Yeah, no, no no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I want to say something. Is that gross? No? No,
Speaker 1: it's gross that you can do that without ever thinking
Speaker 1: about it. Just say stuff like that. Sickening is maddening.
Speaker 1: The word in Lagos in the beginning, what's the word?
Speaker 1: And the word was with God, and the word was God.
Speaker 1: Logos doesn't begin with speech. It begins with thought. That
Speaker 1: God is pregnant with thought, that he created what he thought.
Speaker 1: Everything we have on. Somebody thought it and then they
Speaker 1: drew it, and then they got a material and they
Speaker 1: sold it, and then they made it. But it started
Speaker 1: as a thought. The chair was a thought, the building
Speaker 1: was a thought, the pulpit was a thought. Everything star
Speaker 1: says a thought. In the beginning was the thoughts of God.
Speaker 1: And the thoughts of God was with God, and the
Speaker 1: thoughts of God were God. And out of the abundance
Speaker 1: of his thoughts he spoke, and it became whatever he thought.
Speaker 1: Let there be light. What is light? What I think
Speaker 1: it is? Let there be light. It wasn't even a word.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even a word. See what I'm saying, But
Speaker 1: it is what I think it is. Let there be light.
Speaker 1: And it became what he thought, and it became what
Speaker 1: he said. But in order to become what he said,
Speaker 1: it had to be what he thought. And so you
Speaker 1: become great in your mind before you become great on
Speaker 1: a stage. And whatever you think you are, you are,
Speaker 1: and I'll show you. I prove it to you. You
Speaker 1: can be a great preacher. And get in the car,
Speaker 1: and the enemy will fight you in your thoughts all
Speaker 1: the way home, because the enemy knows that the thoughts
Speaker 1: are the birth canal through which your preaching comes. And
Speaker 1: if he can convince you that you are not enough,
Speaker 1: he can terminate your ministry. Not because he couldn't shut
Speaker 1: your mouth, but he shuts down your thoughts. For as
Speaker 1: a man thinking in his art, so is he talk
Speaker 1: to me, somebody, look at somebody, say I can do this.
Speaker 1: You affirmation spoken over yourself, particularly if you're a person
Speaker 1: that wrestles with insufficiency complexes, it's the reason you have that.
Speaker 1: The reason you feel that way is because the way
Speaker 1: you talk to yourself. If you change the way you
Speaker 1: talk to yourself, you'll change how your story is. The
Speaker 1: Only thing the woman with the issue of blood did
Speaker 1: that saved her from dying was change how she talked
Speaker 1: to herself. She said, within herself, not to anybody else,
Speaker 1: if I may but touch the hem of his garment,
Speaker 1: I'll be made hole. So the greatest sermon starts within you.
Speaker 1: And so when you what you are saying to yourself
Speaker 1: will either make or break what you are doing with
Speaker 1: your life. So she said, if I may but touched.
Speaker 1: There was no scripture that said if you touch the
Speaker 1: him of his garment, you'll be made whole. But that
Speaker 1: was the way she thought about it, like there was
Speaker 1: no definition for light when God said, let there be light.
Speaker 1: But it became what he thought, And there was no
Speaker 1: definition for her to get healing by touching the hem
Speaker 1: of his garment. But she thought the thought, and she
Speaker 1: said it to herself until it became what she thought.
Speaker 1: If I may be touch for him of his garment,
Speaker 1: how'll be made whole as he falled through the crowd
Speaker 1: on our hands. Oh, I'm doing it again. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm doing it, I said, be just be cool. No,
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear this. I'd love to hear you know.
Speaker 1: We can have a hard time imagining that you would
Speaker 1: struggle with those insecurities. The first time I heard you
Speaker 1: talk about when you used to preach, you put the
Speaker 1: mic on a stand, yeah, because your hands would shake
Speaker 1: so much that you couldn't hold the mic. Yes. And
Speaker 1: I almost thought, I don't believe him. And I mean
Speaker 1: that with respect, just to see who you are, what
Speaker 1: you do. There was a part of me that thought,
Speaker 1: you know, he's saying I'm sweating through my clothes. I
Speaker 1: would stutter so bad. And I think I think it
Speaker 1: took me a minute to believe that, because I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe that that same voice that talks to me that
Speaker 1: way talks to you the same way. I guarantee you,
Speaker 1: I scrutinize, I will go home, I will go back
Speaker 1: to my hotel and scrutinize everything that we said still
Speaker 1: yes tonight, because that's the only way to get better.
Speaker 1: And when you stop getting better, you start dying. When
Speaker 1: a teacher ceases to be a student, they begin to
Speaker 1: be irrelevant. So to have the courage to critique yourself
Speaker 1: and say, I could have done this better, I could
Speaker 1: have done that better, I could have explained this. Wonder
Speaker 1: did they really get what I was saying? Are still
Speaker 1: the voices that live in my head, but they don't
Speaker 1: live too loud? See See, the art of it is
Speaker 1: not to kill the voice, is to cut the volume down.
Speaker 1: So instead of existing out a ten, maybe it exists
Speaker 1: at a three. I don't want to kill it because
Speaker 1: if I kill it, I'll become arrogant. And if I
Speaker 1: become arrogant, the Bible says, when you were small in
Speaker 1: your own eyes, I bless you, And if I become arrogant,
Speaker 1: I will lose my knowinging. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: kill that voice of dissension that balances my accomplishments. And
Speaker 1: so God balances my accomplishment with the throwing in my
Speaker 1: flesh that makes me question myself. So I don't want
Speaker 1: him to remove the throwing in my flesh because I
Speaker 1: need balance for the weight of the glory that he
Speaker 1: placed in my life. But I don't want that voice
Speaker 1: to become so loud that it cannibalizes what He has
Speaker 1: created in me. And so when I say don't drop
Speaker 1: the mic, I'm passing on to younger, newer, because everything
Speaker 1: new isn't young. There may be somebody who's forty or
Speaker 1: fifty who has spent their life doing one thing, and
Speaker 1: yet they're about to be new to doing something they've
Speaker 1: never done before. So this you understand, so new isn't
Speaker 1: about chronological agent. On the other hand, there may be
Speaker 1: somebody who's twenty five who's stuck on being fifteen and
Speaker 1: refuses to grow up, and they're not ready yet, and
Speaker 1: they're not precocious enough to evolve into the magnitude of
Speaker 1: what God has called them to do. So instead I'll
Speaker 1: just leave it a very neutral statement. To whoever's new
Speaker 1: and whoever's next, I want them to understand what's normal
Speaker 1: with communication and to respect communication, so that you don't
Speaker 1: just say us anything to anybody, and you don't become
Speaker 1: a troll on Twitter because you know that words have power,
Speaker 1: and you don't keep saying things to your wife that
Speaker 1: you have to apologize for because you let them incubate
Speaker 1: in your mind. Some of them are aborted and not
Speaker 1: birthed because you find out it was and as important
Speaker 1: as you thought it was. Because eventually she will get
Speaker 1: tired of I'm sorry, and you will lose somebody you
Speaker 1: need because you drove them away with the with the acrimonious,
Speaker 1: vicious tone in which you attack who you love, because
Speaker 1: we often attack who we love, and we're polite with
Speaker 1: people we don't love because of yeah, am I daughter.
Speaker 1: She this is a problem. Listen, men, listen women. A
Speaker 1: lot of times, when a man thinks you won't leave,
Speaker 1: he will. He will abuse you because he is frustrated
Speaker 1: by life and circumstances, and he has to be polite
Speaker 1: to whom he doesn't know, but he feels free to
Speaker 1: attack you because he is attacking him. You treat your
Speaker 1: woman like you treat yourself, and she gets caught up
Speaker 1: in the orbit of your reality. She treats you like
Speaker 1: she treats herself. And so we're two planets connecting, and
Speaker 1: those two orbits come together. And if you are cynical
Speaker 1: and doubtful and a fread, you have nobody else to
Speaker 1: vent that on, but somebody who you think won't leave.
Speaker 1: And so what we have to do is to be
Speaker 1: ride or die enough to stay with you, but not
Speaker 1: enough to allow my stain to give you license to
Speaker 1: abuse me. Okay, so we can talk about anything, but
Speaker 1: you can't vent on me because you're insecure about you.
Speaker 1: So when you said turn it down, I felt every
Speaker 1: one of us in the room kind of asking the question,
Speaker 1: how how to turn it? You know, it's not like
Speaker 1: a knob for the internal critic, for the shame for
Speaker 1: the and so you turn it down? How First of all,
Speaker 1: you have an inner circle of people that you trust
Speaker 1: to reaffirm you. We need each other. We need each
Speaker 1: other no matter who you are, A large or small,
Speaker 1: you need. You need a girlfriend. Every woman in here
Speaker 1: needs a girlfriend who can tell her that that dress
Speaker 1: is not for you. My wife says. My wife says,
Speaker 1: this is why my wife says it. She says she
Speaker 1: either needed a friend or a mirror. You need somebody
Speaker 1: who needs to tell you that purple lipstick is not
Speaker 1: your calling, okay, because you want to try different things,
Speaker 1: and you need somebody who is who has license to
Speaker 1: be honest with you and who can affirm you when
Speaker 1: you're just a friend and tell you you're not worried
Speaker 1: about nothing. You were awesome, You were incredible, and you
Speaker 1: need to let them reaffirm you. Now, here's the bigger
Speaker 1: problem with turning it down. Sometimes we won't let people
Speaker 1: encourage us because we will reject what they say by
Speaker 1: trivializing them. Or you're just saying that because you're my wife.
Speaker 1: You're just saying that because you're my mother, because you're
Speaker 1: addicted to pain. You refuse the physician because you're addicted
Speaker 1: to the pain, and so in order to recover from that,
Speaker 1: you have to let the physician come and bill you
Speaker 1: until you echo what they are saying about you. And
Speaker 1: little by little you come into a place where you think,
Speaker 1: not I can do all things, but I can do
Speaker 1: all things through Christ, which strengthens me. And whatever I
Speaker 1: did and whatever style I did it in as long
Speaker 1: as it accomplished His purpose, not mine, it was enough.
Speaker 1: I was nervous one day and I was going to
Speaker 1: speak in West Virginia. I was a young man, about
Speaker 1: twenty something, and I was real, real nervous, and it
Speaker 1: was in here, what's up, I gotta I got a
Speaker 1: hill billy up in here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, take me
Speaker 1: home country, roll to the place I belong, West Virginia.
Speaker 1: My mama when you know all the wordst of that,
Speaker 1: that's you horizinal I learned on acoustic guitar. Really, that's
Speaker 1: my jam boy. Okay, but but what you have to
Speaker 1: your pastor is crazy. I hate to tell you this,
Speaker 1: but your pastor is crazy. He's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: people in all the world. And talk to h He's incredible.
Speaker 1: He's inquisitive, he's intellectual, he's articulate, he's creative, he's annoying
Speaker 1: it he's amazing. And part of my call in his
Speaker 1: life is to turn down the tone of the other
Speaker 1: voices by saying that was amazing and fighting through the propensity.
Speaker 1: All great people have to be self critical. One of
Speaker 1: the signs of greatness is to be self critical because
Speaker 1: you're a perfectionist. And it's people who hang up a
Speaker 1: code any kind of way, who can leave a closet
Speaker 1: in any condition, who cannot spell check a statement before
Speaker 1: they release it are telling you that I won't be great,
Speaker 1: because greatness is in details, not platforms. So you don't
Speaker 1: have to be rich, you don't have to be famous.
Speaker 1: The more you care about details, the closer you get
Speaker 1: to greatness. You know, and when your details are wrong,
Speaker 1: you want to correct them immediately because it matters to
Speaker 1: you because the moment, the moment you open your mouth,
Speaker 1: you start to teach people who you are. If you
Speaker 1: and I sit down here and nobody knew us in
Speaker 1: the room, and we sat down in the chair, as
Speaker 1: long as we didn't open our mouths, they wouldn't know
Speaker 1: whether we were lawyers or doctors, or gangsters or drug dealers.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't know. They would make certain assessments by our clothing.
Speaker 1: But the moment we utter a word out of our mouths,
Speaker 1: immediately the computer of their brain begins to scan to
Speaker 1: learn about who we are. That's why language is important,
Speaker 1: because it teaches people who you are, and it teaches
Speaker 1: people what you need. A lot of times we're angry
Speaker 1: with people. I have let me confess, I have been
Speaker 1: angry with my wife, really angry, deeply hidden, and angry
Speaker 1: about something she wasn't giving me that I never asked
Speaker 1: her for. And it took me a while to realize
Speaker 1: that women don't read sign language, so men tend to
Speaker 1: talk in sign language. So when we want something, we
Speaker 1: give you a signal, and the signal is so clear
Speaker 1: to us that when you miss the signal, we get
Speaker 1: secretly mad that she that fellas that I write about it.
Speaker 1: You can't tell what that meant, that that I sent
Speaker 1: you the signal, that that is the signal, and you
Speaker 1: miss the signal. How could you miss the sea and
Speaker 1: not realizing that I had to learn how to talk
Speaker 1: because I was angry with her over something she was
Speaker 1: willing to give, but she couldn't read sign language. So
Speaker 1: don't drop the mic on your marriage, don't drop the
Speaker 1: mic on your ministry, don't drop the micael on your career,
Speaker 1: don't drop the Michael on your children, don't drop the
Speaker 1: Michael on the next generation. Just keep talking. If black
Speaker 1: folks and white folks keep talking, we will at least
Speaker 1: we will at least get to be as smart as
Speaker 1: great danes. You don't see brown great danes fighting with
Speaker 1: black great danes. You don't see a white Doberman pincher
Speaker 1: arguing with the brown Doberman pincher. We are the only
Speaker 1: species that allow the color of our exterior to deny
Speaker 1: our common experience. You don't if you know deep sea dibin,
Speaker 1: you don't see all the goldfish hanging out on one
Speaker 1: side and all the bluefish are on the other side,
Speaker 1: and the bluefish are snaring at the goldfish, talking about
Speaker 1: I'm better than you. What does the animal kingdom know
Speaker 1: about species that the human species has yet to learn.
Speaker 1: They know that we are the same species. They know
Speaker 1: that if you start bleeding and I have the same
Speaker 1: type of blood that you do, the difference in our
Speaker 1: skin will not stop the transfusion. They know that my
Speaker 1: kidney will replace your kidney, and your body will accept
Speaker 1: my kidney. Even though I'm a black man and you're
Speaker 1: a white man, we're still men. Why aren't we still
Speaker 1: having this stupid conversation about power when we need to
Speaker 1: allocate power equally and honestly and fairly, and killing me
Speaker 1: won't make you king. So so you're not any greater
Speaker 1: by looking down at somebody. You actually become greater by
Speaker 1: looking up at somebody, because the further you push me,
Speaker 1: the higher you go. You understand what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: so so these types of things I thought, I thought,
Speaker 1: for can I talk about the von Trail for a minute? Yeah? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I thought the Derk charvon Traill talk many things. I
Speaker 1: thought I talked many things. Uh, personally, I agreed with
Speaker 1: the verdict. I thought it was quite obvious you can
Speaker 1: tie my hands all day and lay me face down
Speaker 1: on concrete, and I will not die. And I have
Speaker 1: high blood pressure, I will not die. I might get
Speaker 1: a cramp, and I might get hungry, I might even
Speaker 1: I might even pass gas. But I will not die. Okay,
Speaker 1: I will not die. So offering that as an understanding
Speaker 1: for reasoning of why he is dead seems a little
Speaker 1: bit acidine to me. However, there are greater lessons to
Speaker 1: be learned. You had six white jurors, four African American jewors,
Speaker 1: and two biracial jurors who, when exposed to the same truth,
Speaker 1: drew the same conclusion unanimously. So think about this for
Speaker 1: a minute. That means that if we're not getting along,
Speaker 1: we're not being exposed to the same truth. The Chavin
Speaker 1: case is the greatest argument for democracy in the world.
Speaker 1: It proved that officers could testify against bad officers, and
Speaker 1: that speaking against a bad officer doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: are disloyal to good officers. Is shut down every argument
Speaker 1: we had. What we are at war with is not
Speaker 1: the police, and we're not at war with each other.
Speaker 1: We are at war with abuse and wickedness and human
Speaker 1: depravity and the loss of dignity. We are at war
Speaker 1: with your son laying down in the street, bleeding out
Speaker 1: on a sidewalk, screaming for his mama. And yes he
Speaker 1: is flawed, and yes he has problems, and yes he
Speaker 1: has issues, and yes he may need to be arrested,
Speaker 1: but he does not need to be tried on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: That's all we're saying. We're not saying he's sub virgin married.
Speaker 1: We're not saying to Guy's mother, Teresa. We are saying
Speaker 1: that when you find something wrong with us, treat us
Speaker 1: like you do when you find something wrong with your
Speaker 1: nephew and your niece. That's all. I'm gonna ask an
Speaker 1: honest question in here. Everybody who's ever been drunk at
Speaker 1: least once in your life, would you stand up for
Speaker 1: a minute if you've ever been drunk in your entire life.
Speaker 1: There are as many white folks standing as black drogs,
Speaker 1: There are as many women standing as men. Now let
Speaker 1: me ask your question, did you want to be choked
Speaker 1: to death for it? That's what we're saying. Bishop. We've
Speaker 1: lost them, found out the beginning to hit the souls
Speaker 1: at one point, God bless you, brother. I want I
Speaker 1: wanted to publicly thank you for your patience and and
Speaker 1: guidance on this. I called you when at Mother Emmanuel
Speaker 1: Amy in Charleston. I wanted to speak about it to
Speaker 1: my church, and you picked up the phone to guide
Speaker 1: me through it. You know, you could have you could
Speaker 1: have talked to me. Our church wasn't always diverse, and
Speaker 1: the more diverse our church became, the more I needed
Speaker 1: to learn and the more I needed to listen. And Uh,
Speaker 1: you were there for me, not with judgment or how
Speaker 1: could you be so stupid not to know how to
Speaker 1: speak to this or to not get it. But it
Speaker 1: took many conversations for you to help me even understand
Speaker 1: what I was speaking to and what my silence communicated.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't have known that without you in my life.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have known that without you in my life.
Speaker 1: I also think that a lot of people don't have
Speaker 1: that kind of relationship where they can admit their ignorance
Speaker 1: right without the fear of judgment. You're right, and so
Speaker 1: they practice on Facebook. It's true. Yeah, it's funny, but
Speaker 1: it's true. Yeah, where you can get slaughtered. My advice
Speaker 1: to all the white folks, black folks and brown folks
Speaker 1: in the row is if you have an idea about
Speaker 1: a racial issue, don't try it out on Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: Find you a couple of people that you want to
Speaker 1: talk to about it and say, how does this sound
Speaker 1: to you? And it's not that I'm trying to change
Speaker 1: your opinion, but how do I need to word it
Speaker 1: where it can be heard? Because how you word it
Speaker 1: determines how the other person hears it. And you can
Speaker 1: have the opinion of your choice, but you need to
Speaker 1: be able to word it. It's like talking to your wife.
Speaker 1: It's how you worded you know, you know, does my
Speaker 1: behindling big and disease? Now? Is how you answer this
Speaker 1: question determines the next seven dinners that you're going to
Speaker 1: eat in this house. Evening activities, yes, every evening activities
Speaker 1: and everything are going to be deterred for a long
Speaker 1: time if you don't answer this question right. First of all,
Speaker 1: you have to know whether big is a compliment to
Speaker 1: her or not in one group of communities. Cut the
Speaker 1: camera and cut the camera. You've been on lockdown so long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing you let me out of the house. You're
Speaker 1: gonna get it wrong. Here is the thing, though, it's
Speaker 1: a funny illustration, but it's a good one. Your cultural
Speaker 1: background controls what you think is good. So what is
Speaker 1: bad in one community is a compliment in another community.
Speaker 1: And so in the book I talk about studying your
Speaker 1: audience before you make your statement, because you will know
Speaker 1: whether you are insulting them by what you're saying or not.
Speaker 1: You know. And all of this is not just to
Speaker 1: make better orators. In the Manable, God used the most
Speaker 1: bilingual people to do the biggest assignments. Moses, who is
Speaker 1: born a slave on the hitless of Pharaoh, destined to
Speaker 1: die hidden in his mama's tent, built She built a
Speaker 1: art and put him in the bulrushes and selled him down.
Speaker 1: The noun Pharaoh's daughter picked him up and brought him
Speaker 1: in the palace. So he's a slave raised like a prince.
Speaker 1: He is educated like an Egyptian, but he is connected
Speaker 1: to the slaves. God can use him to go back
Speaker 1: and speak to Pharaoh because he knows the protocol of
Speaker 1: the house in a way that a slave would never know.
Speaker 1: The broader girth of your experiences, the more diversely God
Speaker 1: can use you. Now, Peter walked with Jesus the longest
Speaker 1: Paul was a Christian killer. But Paul spoke in five
Speaker 1: different languages, and Peter only spoke in one, and he
Speaker 1: was a fisherman, and it limited how God could use him.
Speaker 1: He couldn't send Peter to Mars Hill to speak to
Speaker 1: them at Athens because Peter couldn't speak Greek. But because
Speaker 1: Paul was bilingual, he is responsible for most of the
Speaker 1: epistles of the New Testament because of the broadness of
Speaker 1: his exposure, and so not all people get to be
Speaker 1: exposed to all the things that I have been exposed to.
Speaker 1: I went to President Lusevani. His wife hosted a breakfast
Speaker 1: for me and brought in all of the aristocracy of
Speaker 1: Uganda to attend a breakfast on my behalf. The King
Speaker 1: of Swaziland through a dinner party for me, and I
Speaker 1: was a guest of the King of Swaziland. I was
Speaker 1: entertained by Nelson Mandela's family. I have been in the
Speaker 1: oval office of three Democrat, Republican and then Democrat heads
Speaker 1: of state. I spoke on the National Day of Prayer.
Speaker 1: I have spoken many times with Larry King, to Oprah Winfrey,
Speaker 1: to Matt Crouch, to Paul Crouch. Today Star. I have
Speaker 1: spoken to Pat Robertson, I had spoken to Puffy. I
Speaker 1: just did an interview with jez and I just did
Speaker 1: just got off the phone texting Joel Ostein. From Jeezi
Speaker 1: to Joel, is I like that? Oh? Can I ask
Speaker 1: you one question? Sure, if Pastor Stephen Ferdick and Pastor
Speaker 1: Joel Ostein were both on a boat and you had
Speaker 1: to throw one overboard, who had left? Let me find
Speaker 1: out who can swim the best. And I'll answer the question.
Speaker 1: Because I can't afford to lose neither one of you.
Speaker 1: I would left it. See how you get out of it?
Speaker 1: Did you write that down? That's how you get out
Speaker 1: of it when he dress you up. My point is
Speaker 1: not everybody will get those opportunities. I was on death
Speaker 1: row with a girl named Erica, right before they were
Speaker 1: scheduled to execute her. I know what it is to
Speaker 1: say last rites over somebody before they're terminated. I have
Speaker 1: baptized mongoloid babies and talk with the family as they
Speaker 1: let them go off of life support. I spent three
Speaker 1: days in San Quentin mining the ministering the gospel where
Speaker 1: there are no offerings to inmate that have been forgotten
Speaker 1: about him forsaken. I've had thirty thousand formally incarcerated inmates
Speaker 1: to go through our Texas Offenders re Entry Initiative, and
Speaker 1: we were just invited to Canada to appear before Parliament
Speaker 1: to make a case for re entry programs in Canada.
Speaker 1: You can't amass that plethora of information and that exposure
Speaker 1: not effect how you think. I was in the dressing
Speaker 1: room many times with Aretha Franklin. Her number, her cell
Speaker 1: phone is still in my phone. I never erased it.
Speaker 1: You know. I was in behind the scenes with Anita
Speaker 1: Baker on her final tour and was a personal friend
Speaker 1: of mine. I have met gospel artist, jazz artist, hip
Speaker 1: hop artists, some of the greats. Some of them are dead,
Speaker 1: some of them have passed on. My mother went to
Speaker 1: school with Coretta Scott King. My mother went singing the
Speaker 1: choir with Corretta. I had the privilege of having dinner
Speaker 1: in her home on several occasions. She came to the
Speaker 1: dedication of our first church. I had Corretta Scott King
Speaker 1: in the same room with Pat Robinson, in the same
Speaker 1: room with Al Gore, in the same room with James Robinson.
Speaker 1: Now that's confusing that's as diverse and broad as you
Speaker 1: can go. At the end of the day, all of
Speaker 1: those experiences helped to inform me. The first thing I
Speaker 1: did to Dallas when I came to Dollars was not
Speaker 1: run a revival. I rented the Dallas Convention Center and
Speaker 1: threw a party for homeless people, and we fed them
Speaker 1: and we clothed them, and we had a job fare.
Speaker 1: That's how I introduced my ministry to Dallas. Twenty five
Speaker 1: years later, we are still doing that. We are still
Speaker 1: feeding and clothing and serving and giving and helping the
Speaker 1: disenfranchise and the marginalized. I don't say that to break
Speaker 1: I am saying not everybody will go to Buckingham Palace,
Speaker 1: not everybody will go to the Oval Office. But when
Speaker 1: you read what I share, you will gather my conclusions
Speaker 1: without making the trip, and should you go, you will
Speaker 1: have some preparation for understanding that the language you use
Speaker 1: in your circle is not the same language you use
Speaker 1: when you are doing an interview with a business journalist
Speaker 1: or a conservative talk show radio. It's different than doing
Speaker 1: a morning Did you learn that the hard way? I listened?
Speaker 1: I didn't. I listened. Everybody is your teacher my mother
Speaker 1: told me the world is a university, and everybody in
Speaker 1: it is a teacher. When you wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: be sure you go to school. Everybody teaches you something.
Speaker 1: The people who do it wrong teach you as much
Speaker 1: as the people who do it right. They all teach
Speaker 1: you something. My material is best served to people who
Speaker 1: aren't finished with themselves yet, who still have mountains to conquer,
Speaker 1: who still have dreams to dream, who still have valleys
Speaker 1: to cross and rivers to ford. My material is not
Speaker 1: really good for people who are finished and satisfied and comfortable,
Speaker 1: and the only thing you want to do is lay
Speaker 1: on to be somewhere and count how much sand you
Speaker 1: can get on your thigh. I want to empower and
Speaker 1: empot and invest in whose next to lower your learning
Speaker 1: curve of becoming whatever it is you were created to become.
Speaker 1: That's what I want to do. And little, my little phrase,
Speaker 1: don't drop the mic. If. Yes, it's for preachers, but
Speaker 1: it's for dreamers and thinkers, and people who want to
Speaker 1: write scripts and films and do movies, and people who
Speaker 1: want to do more than one thing and you're trying
Speaker 1: to pick which thing to do, and people who have
Speaker 1: diverse talents and interests, but you haven't galvanized them into
Speaker 1: one setting. Because I can relate to that. I was
Speaker 1: called to preach the gospel. I live to preach the gospel.
Speaker 1: I'm never more alive than when I'm preaching the gospel.
Speaker 1: But I was also called to produce films. I just
Speaker 1: did two movies of Lifetime, Lust and Envy. Yeah, seven
Speaker 1: deadly sins, and I was able to share our faith
Speaker 1: on Lifetime's platform. That's an amazing opportunity, and it was.
Speaker 1: It was a powerful opportunity. You only get innovative opportunities
Speaker 1: when you give up on being traditional. That's a quotable
Speaker 1: right there. You only get innovative opportunities when you give
Speaker 1: up on being traditional. Now make it a sermon, put
Speaker 1: a scripture to it. Oh wow, that I haven't used yet.
Speaker 1: Ruth leaves, which is tradition, to follow Naomi into the unknown,
Speaker 1: not knowing what she will have to do or what
Speaker 1: she will have to become. And she travels on her
Speaker 1: donkey down the path into the unknown. She makes a
Speaker 1: commitment by God, shall be by people, my people. And
Speaker 1: whether I dwell as I will dwelling, whether I dies,
Speaker 1: I shall die but she had never seen bethela have.
Speaker 1: She was just courageous enough to walk into the unfamiliar
Speaker 1: and had the dexterity of thought and the nimbleness of
Speaker 1: mine to say to herself, I'll figure it out when
Speaker 1: I get there. Yeah. And so I feel excited. I
Speaker 1: feel excited like I'm feeding somebody. There's a feeling I
Speaker 1: get when I'm feeding somebody that is in this room
Speaker 1: right now. I'm feeding somebody. I don't know who it is,
Speaker 1: but I can tell I can feel it in my spirit.
Speaker 1: I can feel it in my belly. I am feeding
Speaker 1: somebody in this room. I can feel it in my soul.
Speaker 1: You don't fit the pattern. You broke the mole. You're
Speaker 1: out of the box. You think differently. You got ideas
Speaker 1: and concept that you're afraid to share with anybody because
Speaker 1: they don't get you. And God sent me here to
Speaker 1: tell you you're not crazy. That you can be this as,
Speaker 1: that you can produce film and preach the gospel and
Speaker 1: write books and write up as and do commentaries, and
Speaker 1: that you can do more than one thing. That you
Speaker 1: can be an architect and an accountant, that you can
Speaker 1: open up a donut shop and do hair, that you
Speaker 1: don't have to be locked into a prison of how
Speaker 1: people describe you. There is more inside of you than
Speaker 1: what you have discovered. Yet I don't know who I'm
Speaker 1: talking to. Maybe they're streaming online, maybe they're reaching from
Speaker 1: across the waters. But God sent me here to say,
Speaker 1: don't drop the mic. Keep on talking about it, keep
Speaker 1: on dreaming about it, keep on fighting for it, keep
Speaker 1: on saying it, even if you don't have nobody to hear.
Speaker 1: You walk around the house talking to yourself, talking to yourself,
Speaker 1: telling yourself, if I made a touch, if I may
Speaker 1: but touch, if I may but touch the him of
Speaker 1: his garment, I will be may hold. And if you
Speaker 1: have to crawl for it, and if you have to
Speaker 1: get money for it, and if you have to press
Speaker 1: through the crowds of people who don't think you deserve
Speaker 1: to be that close, then push on in there anyway
Speaker 1: and get your touch from God. Most people who have
Speaker 1: greatness inside of them are the last to know it.
Speaker 1: And when you talked earlier about the many times we've
Speaker 1: had conversation, it was oftentimes to help you see what
Speaker 1: is obvious to everybody but you if it were not
Speaker 1: obvious to everybody, else they wouldn't be in here. But
Speaker 1: what they don't realize is that you can see everybody
Speaker 1: but you. And that's what I tell people about me.
Speaker 1: I can see all of you, but I can't see me.
Speaker 1: So if my shirt isn't hand right or my collars up,
Speaker 1: when I see the picture, I hate myself. But the
Speaker 1: reason my collar is up in my pocket square may
Speaker 1: not be straight up, and and and maybe my softs
Speaker 1: will run down is because I cannot see myself. Now.
Speaker 1: Catch this the way that it's true about my appearance,
Speaker 1: it's also true about my gifting. When you are truly gifted,
Speaker 1: you often cannot see it. So you could be gifted
Speaker 1: and see everybody's gift but your own. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: what I was telling you was being a mirror, so
Speaker 1: you could see that was great, that needs work, that
Speaker 1: was awesome, that was not your best sod That trust
Speaker 1: between us creates mentorship because I know you have a
Speaker 1: blind spot like I have a blind spot. Where you
Speaker 1: cannot see yourself like you have a blind spot. And
Speaker 1: if you're not careful, your blind spot will always leave
Speaker 1: you thinking that you are not enough, that you're not
Speaker 1: tall enough, or short enough, or thin enough, or handsome
Speaker 1: enough or cute enough, or smart enough, or bright enough,
Speaker 1: or gifted enough. But even the greats question themselves. I've
Speaker 1: met them. They have the little voice that ran home
Speaker 1: with them too. They double think themselves too. The difference
Speaker 1: between them and us is that they feel the fear
Speaker 1: and do it anyway. They feel the fear and do it.
Speaker 1: This is why I love coming to you, This is
Speaker 1: why I spend my opening night with you, because there
Speaker 1: is an energy in this place of transparency. Then you
Speaker 1: get to have the most intimate, intelligent conversations because you
Speaker 1: draw intelligent, thinking people. Not everybody who's spiritual is also intelligent.
Speaker 1: Crazy people love Jesus too. You could come that out.
Speaker 1: I probably should have said that you have something to
Speaker 1: live for, to go for, to evolve into. I don't
Speaker 1: care if you're seventy, if God was finished within you
Speaker 1: be dead. There's still something in you to contribute. And
Speaker 1: whether you are seven or seventy, don't drop the mic.
Speaker 1: Don't let the enemy talk you into dropping the mic,
Speaker 1: because all of us have a commission to do in
Speaker 1: the earth, and to do that thing that you were
Speaker 1: created to do is what makes your soul dance. It's
Speaker 1: what makes creativity spring up like flowers in springtime and
Speaker 1: decorate the canvas of a ground that has never been plowed.
Speaker 1: Have you ever noticed that some of the most beautiful
Speaker 1: flowers were never planted. They just grew up arbitrarily because
Speaker 1: the season was right. And I want to say to
Speaker 1: you that amissed all of the craziness and chaos and
Speaker 1: confusion in the world today, that it has just broken
Speaker 1: up the soil for the season to be right. And
Speaker 1: I think we have an obligation to tell what we learned,
Speaker 1: how it felt, what we know and what we do
Speaker 1: not know to you so you don't waste time taking
Speaker 1: my classes to jump start you to go to the
Speaker 1: next dimension. And for me, the book is a legacy piece.
Speaker 1: For me, the book is to say to you, I
Speaker 1: know you're scared. I know you overthink things, and I
Speaker 1: know sometimes you don't think you're enough and sometimes you
Speaker 1: feel like an impostor because you know all sides of
Speaker 1: you don't line up with the best of you. Work
Speaker 1: on yourself, improve yourself, repent, confess, cry, crawl, take classes, courses,
Speaker 1: do pilates, whatever you need to do, but do not
Speaker 1: drop the knight because it's your turn and it's your
Speaker 1: time and want I prayed when I was a young man,
Speaker 1: young man pre twenty, I said, Lord, if you ever
Speaker 1: bless me, don't ever let me be know any young
Speaker 1: man's soul. Let me live a life so fulfilled that
Speaker 1: when David comes, I can clap. I don't want to
Speaker 1: get old and get jealous, so that if I digress
Speaker 1: from playing the game, I can always coach and be
Speaker 1: just as fulfilled because I lived everything in its own season.
Speaker 1: You see, And this is the goal you want to
Speaker 1: set for yourself in life, is to live everything in
Speaker 1: it season, so that when the season changes, you're not
Speaker 1: living in the past trying to recreate what is gone,
Speaker 1: and to do you the way you do you and
Speaker 1: enhance that and grow that by your exposure every book
Speaker 1: I ever read, every movie I ever saw, every staff
Speaker 1: meeting I have ever been in. I have got to
Speaker 1: be in the staff meetings of some of the sharpest
Speaker 1: people in the nation. Not to brag. See, we get
Speaker 1: in the room and we do selfies. That's dumb. Get
Speaker 1: in the room, past the selfie. Get the experience. Show
Speaker 1: me you were in the room by what you do
Speaker 1: with your life, not by what your post with your picture.
Speaker 1: If you do that, If you do that, if you
Speaker 1: take more notes than you tweet, wow, then you won't
Speaker 1: feed the house and starve to death. Because when you tweet,
Speaker 1: you feed the house. When you take notes, you eat yourself.
Speaker 1: So be sure. I'm not saying don't tweet. I want
Speaker 1: you to tweet. Tweet tonight. Hashtag don't drop the bike.
Speaker 1: Back home, y'all hear me? Hashtag don't drop the mic,
Speaker 1: watch it on line? Hashtag don't drop the mic, hashtag,
Speaker 1: don't drop the monkey. What's that hashtag again? Hashtag don't
Speaker 1: drop the mike? Yeah, do all of that. There will
Speaker 1: come a day that this room will not be possible,
Speaker 1: But you were here. I sat with Maya Angelou and
Speaker 1: had her be a guest at Magifest. I was sitting
Speaker 1: not too far from her when she quoted her poem.
Speaker 1: At President Obama's inauguration, I was sitting right behind Aretha's
Speaker 1: hat and besides Colin Powell on the stage in the
Speaker 1: freezing cold and the inauguration, and I was there. That
Speaker 1: moment will never happen again. I rode over with Rick
Speaker 1: Warren that moment will never happen again because some of
Speaker 1: the people that it would take to recreate it. Are
Speaker 1: not even here so cherish every moment. I was just
Speaker 1: having a flashback Bishop the first time that we spoke
Speaker 1: at a meal, somebody came to the table and shared
Speaker 1: with me how the church had changed their life. And
Speaker 1: you you did this thing, because I think the greatest
Speaker 1: sermons that you have preached to me have been something
Speaker 1: that was never on YouTube. And I think that's something
Speaker 1: people should should understand about you, is that your best
Speaker 1: sermons usually aren't recorded. It's the way you live your
Speaker 1: life and minister to people. And I remember when the
Speaker 1: guy finished telling me, you know, this is where I
Speaker 1: was in the church changed my life. And you said,
Speaker 1: you did that thing, the thing that you do with
Speaker 1: your eyes where you look and passed my stern them
Speaker 1: into my guts and you go and you had I
Speaker 1: remember this. You had a steak knife and you were
Speaker 1: pointing the steak knife when you said this. So it's
Speaker 1: very very effective communication tool. And you said, that's an
Speaker 1: amazing moment. And I was like, yes, sir, and you
Speaker 1: said and you said, we had just been talking about
Speaker 1: critics and controversy, and you said, don't let them have
Speaker 1: your moment. That's your moment, and that's the knife that's
Speaker 1: still here. And you're saying, I'm just trying to recreate
Speaker 1: it for you, you said, and you you said it
Speaker 1: about about four or five times. What moments have you
Speaker 1: allowed to be stolen that you wish you could take back?
Speaker 1: I was invited to write op eds. Sally Quinn, who
Speaker 1: was with the Washington Post who ran the on Faith section,
Speaker 1: invited me to write op eds for the on Face
Speaker 1: section of the Washington Posts. And I wrote about three
Speaker 1: of them, and I got on and read the comments
Speaker 1: beneath them, and they so discouraged me that I gradually quit.
Speaker 1: And when I saw Sally again, she said, why have
Speaker 1: you stopped submitting your up eds? I said, well, I
Speaker 1: thought I wasn't very good at it because when I
Speaker 1: read the comments beneath them, I thought they don't like me.
Speaker 1: And she looked at me and burst out laughing, and
Speaker 1: she said to me, the average reader of the Washington
Speaker 1: Post has a master's and the average person in the
Speaker 1: comments can't spell. And I then realize that I had
Speaker 1: allowed people to talk me out of a platform who
Speaker 1: weren't even a part of the intention of the founder.
Speaker 1: The reason I stressed that to you is that if
Speaker 1: you're not careful, you'll let somebody who has never been
Speaker 1: in your seat talk you down from the place that
Speaker 1: God has given you. You'll let somebody who can't run
Speaker 1: a barber shop critique you on how you run the church,
Speaker 1: and you will go home and hurt and humiliate it
Speaker 1: because they insulted and tell you what you are to
Speaker 1: do with a platform that God never gave to them.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to realize that if God likes your plan,
Speaker 1: he would have given you the platform. But you have
Speaker 1: to know that, even if you don't say that, you
Speaker 1: have to know that so that you don't fool around
Speaker 1: and walk away from a master's level opportunity because of
Speaker 1: a mediocre comment. I lost that opportunity. I lost that opportunity,
Speaker 1: And I think about I texted you a few weeks
Speaker 1: ago about a sermon that you did on shame. Yes,
Speaker 1: he still wants you. Yeah, And when I watched you
Speaker 1: preach that sermon, I think I actually called you and
Speaker 1: said that was amazing. And then I said that sermon
Speaker 1: looked expensive. You said it was expensive. Yeah, Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the expense of that kind
Speaker 1: of ministry? I think that I invested at preaching texts
Speaker 1: that somehow resonate with the repertoire of my own experiences.
Speaker 1: I think that you cannot preach about my phibus chef
Speaker 1: if you have not been dropped by someone you trusted.
Speaker 1: I don't think that you can talk about him adequately
Speaker 1: into your cripple has a cause that was out of
Speaker 1: your control. I don't think just studying commentaries and Hebrew
Speaker 1: words will adequately enunciate what drives a prince to lodo
Speaker 1: bar and makes him be carried out and lay flat
Speaker 1: on the floor. And for a prince, the child, the
Speaker 1: grandchild of a king, to say I am a dead dog,
Speaker 1: that kind of depletion and loss a pedigree can only
Speaker 1: come within the gaze of someone who can relate to
Speaker 1: that kind of experience of a basement in your life.
Speaker 1: That is the part of preaching that cannot be taught,
Speaker 1: that must be caught, and it must be personal enough
Speaker 1: to you that you are talking about him, but you
Speaker 1: are drawing from you until you and he have become
Speaker 1: so fused together that getting him up off the floor
Speaker 1: is getting you up off the floor. I remember you
Speaker 1: do this to me, See you do this? Why do
Speaker 1: you do this day. I've preached this in London years
Speaker 1: ago my boys were little. One of my sons is
Speaker 1: here tonight. He was there, and I was crawling across
Speaker 1: the floor, trying to make it from the floor to
Speaker 1: the chair, and in dramatizing the approach of the fibers
Speaker 1: Chef who was laid on the floor like a thing
Speaker 1: but called to a chair like a king, and the
Speaker 1: space between the two realities in his life, I started
Speaker 1: crawling because in order to get yourself up off the
Speaker 1: floor to the chair, you have to crawl to get there.
Speaker 1: And as I was crawling and I was almost there,
Speaker 1: the crowd crumbled, and I was glad they crumbled so
Speaker 1: that they couldn't see me crying because I was preaching
Speaker 1: about him, but I was also talking about me, and
Speaker 1: I lost it, And I hope Pestor Matthew sees this tonight.
Speaker 1: I literally lost it myself in the message, because there's
Speaker 1: a point where you are the message, you become someone
Speaker 1: with the message until John one Pin fourteen materializes on
Speaker 1: that stage, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt
Speaker 1: among us, and we beheld the wonder of his glory,
Speaker 1: the only begotten of the Father full of truth and grace,
Speaker 1: until the word is made flesh and you are willing
Speaker 1: to pay the price of the kind of investment that
Speaker 1: personalizes the deliverance of the text, until you are really
Speaker 1: that that you are declaring you will always be impotent.
Speaker 1: Potency that penetrates the human soul is connectivity. And as
Speaker 1: you extrapolate from the text, the facts are nice to
Speaker 1: know that if you're not willing to invest your own pain,
Speaker 1: your own tears, and your own struggle, if you're not
Speaker 1: willing to re examine who dropped you and what you
Speaker 1: would have been had they not dropped you, and how
Speaker 1: you ended up in Lodobarrow when you should have been
Speaker 1: in the succession of Kings. And here comes a second
Speaker 1: chance that by bloodline you deserve, but by situation you
Speaker 1: can't imagine. And yet you start crawling. That crawl, brother,
Speaker 1: is what got you to this day. That crawl is
Speaker 1: what got me to this. That crawl is what gets
Speaker 1: everybody to wherever they're trying to go, crawling against the
Speaker 1: resistance of the adverse winds and the gravitational pool to mediocrity.
Speaker 1: Let me say this. I know we're running a town,
Speaker 1: but this is important for you to get Failing is easy.
Speaker 1: If we're climbing a rope, all you have to do
Speaker 1: to fall is let go. You don't have to study
Speaker 1: books on failing. Falling is simple. Just let go on
Speaker 1: a rope. The gravitational pool will always take you as
Speaker 1: low as it can until there is an obstruction. If
Speaker 1: the floor gives way, it'll take you lower, if the
Speaker 1: ground gives where to take you lower. The gravitational pool
Speaker 1: is never satisfied at how low it will take you.
Speaker 1: And the only thing standing between you and it it's
Speaker 1: the grip you have on the rope. And so though
Speaker 1: your body weight is heavy, maybe not as heavy as mind,
Speaker 1: but heavy, and it is hard to pull the weight
Speaker 1: up higher, and your arms are aching and your sweating,
Speaker 1: and you're tired of everything and everybody drawing off of you.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is look down and remember
Speaker 1: that if you let go of the rope, your fate
Speaker 1: is sealed. And that's what makes you keep climbing. That's
Speaker 1: what keeps you on the wall, and that's why you
Speaker 1: can't drop the mic. I want to say one other
Speaker 1: thing to you. You don't realize you have not met
Speaker 1: all the people that you were talking to. And the
Speaker 1: book talks about my ancestry and the antiquities of my
Speaker 1: faith and the ancestry of my bloodline. And my ancestors
Speaker 1: were what is now Nigerian, and they were from the
Speaker 1: tribe of Ebo, and they came as a couple and
Speaker 1: survived the tempestuous mental passage and did not throw themselves
Speaker 1: overboard in an attempt to drown themselves. Rather than to
Speaker 1: be penalized with the next four hundred years of slavery,
Speaker 1: they chose to withstand the atrocities of the times and continue.
Speaker 1: And that's why I am here, and all of them
Speaker 1: are sitting in this chair with me, my grandmother, my
Speaker 1: great grandmother, and Grandma Nancy Jakes, who was born a
Speaker 1: slave and died a free woman that I remember. She's
Speaker 1: sitting here tonight too, and her father and mother are
Speaker 1: sitting here too, And my great grandfather, Willie James Smiley,
Speaker 1: whose brothers who lived on the other side of the
Speaker 1: street were called Williams because you got the last name
Speaker 1: of who owned you. And though they were full blooded brothers,
Speaker 1: the street that separated them chains the name that defined them.
Speaker 1: And I cannot find them all, but they are all
Speaker 1: sitting in this chair with me today, I am saying
Speaker 1: that we are the sum total of everything that happened
Speaker 1: to all of those who came before us. That your
Speaker 1: grandmother is not dead. She's still living down inside of you.
Speaker 1: And your great grandmother, though you may not remember her,
Speaker 1: has some morsel of wisdom in the way you think
Speaker 1: and drink and process and move and live. And I
Speaker 1: am saying that, on the blood of all of those
Speaker 1: who went before you, you cannot be the generation that
Speaker 1: drops the mikes. You cannot, you cannot, you cannot set up.
Speaker 1: I want to say to you, if you're a white
Speaker 1: American and your people came over on aboute with much
Speaker 1: of nothing, running away from Great Britain and came to
Speaker 1: the possibility of another country, the wow foreboding tempestuous opportunity
Speaker 1: to break away from the domain and the dominion of
Speaker 1: Great Britain and dare to establish a different kind of
Speaker 1: republic that promised freedom and liberty and justice for all
Speaker 1: in spite of the fact that it didn't fully live
Speaker 1: up to the promise, it dared to make the assertion.
Speaker 1: And if they own wagons with pairs of depth and
Speaker 1: sickness and destruction, pressed their way into the inner fibers
Speaker 1: of this nation and took something and built something, and
Speaker 1: became something out of nothing, with no running water and
Speaker 1: no plumbing systems and no highways, no trains and no
Speaker 1: buses and no ovens and no microwaves and no Apple
Speaker 1: phones and no emojis and no twitters and nothing like
Speaker 1: that to help them, and with drawing water out of
Speaker 1: wales and walking for mouths and cooking over live rocks
Speaker 1: and stones that were placed on wood instead of ovens.
Speaker 1: If they survived, then how dare you sit here, with
Speaker 1: all the stuff you've got and let anybody make you
Speaker 1: fair that you cannot make it, that you cannot take it,
Speaker 1: that you cannot rise above the fray and be something
Speaker 1: bigger than yourself. If they survived cholera and disease and
Speaker 1: death and pneumonia and plague and freezing cold and bears
Speaker 1: and lions and prey, and build their houses out of logs,
Speaker 1: then how dare you sit in your nice brick house
Speaker 1: and your jacuzzi in the bags and say that life
Speaker 1: is not worth living. I stuck my hands in the
Speaker 1: claw marks of the Africans, whose claw marks are still
Speaker 1: on the walls of Elmina, where they were fighting not
Speaker 1: to come to America. I ran my fingers down their
Speaker 1: nail prints. I smelled the stench of their body fluids
Speaker 1: that are still existing in the Spanish castles where they
Speaker 1: were held hostage, waiting on the next ship to come.
Speaker 1: I stared at the church that was above it, then
Speaker 1: noticed that the missionaries were also masters, who raped their
Speaker 1: daughters while they sang Amazing Grace. And I listened against
Speaker 1: the waters beating against the rocks, and thought, what kind
Speaker 1: of stuff must my ancestors must have been made out
Speaker 1: of to withstand all the perils and injustices and steal
Speaker 1: insist on sobriety. If we got up at four and
Speaker 1: we were in the cotton fields by six, and we
Speaker 1: picked till the sun went down, with bleeding hands and
Speaker 1: aching feet for days and days until we died, and
Speaker 1: never knew what a paycheck was. Ever, we were the
Speaker 1: first people to come to America with the sign will
Speaker 1: work for food. And the food was the pot liquor
Speaker 1: that the master left. And we eat what we eat,
Speaker 1: because that was all we could have with the feet
Speaker 1: of the pig and the neck of the pig, and
Speaker 1: the chintlings of the pig, because all of the finer
Speaker 1: cuts went to the master. And still we lived, and
Speaker 1: still we lived. And not only did we live, we sang.
Speaker 1: We sang while our fathers were hung and our mothers
Speaker 1: were raped. We sang, having got long to stay here.
Speaker 1: We sang against oppression and death and destruction from the
Speaker 1: enormous Pettis Bridge, with dogs turned loose and water holes
Speaker 1: its beating us down. We sang. We sang as the
Speaker 1: charred bodies of dead little girls were brought out of
Speaker 1: burning churches. We kept singing when they shot the thirty
Speaker 1: nine year old doctor Martin Luther King Jr. In the head,
Speaker 1: We sang while we cried, and we made it. If
Speaker 1: we survived colored bathrooms and extra water fountains, and survived
Speaker 1: the separations of having to learn in the basement of
Speaker 1: the churches and they were burning down by the KKK.
Speaker 1: If Black Wall Street was burned down in Tulsa, if
Speaker 1: we had to endure Rosewood and we still made it.
Speaker 1: You cannot sit there with your apple watch and your
Speaker 1: black skin and tell me you can't make it. There
Speaker 1: ought to be enough fight cavern. There ought to be
Speaker 1: anough fire cover. There up to be enough drive govern
Speaker 1: the conrectis come Hell or our water. I'm on the
Speaker 1: blood of all of my ancestry. I will not be
Speaker 1: the one who drops the light. I will not in
Speaker 1: here and let it die. Will not drop this my sad.
Speaker 1: I will not drop this SI again. I will not
Speaker 1: drop this slike side of gin. Will lot drop this
Speaker 1: slike giming my frid. If you survived the Holocaust, if
Speaker 1: you survived diversity, if you survived the Great Depression, if
Speaker 1: they survived the plans of the past, and all of
Speaker 1: the pneumonias and all of the dephtherias and all of
Speaker 1: the polios and all of the diseases and COVID, will
Speaker 1: not take me out. I will do whatever I have
Speaker 1: to do, and I will fight whatever I have to fight.
Speaker 1: But I refuse to let it take me out, because
Speaker 1: I have too many ancestors who survive to get here
Speaker 1: and die without doing what I was created to do.
Speaker 1: I let nothing separate me from the love of God,
Speaker 1: neither height nor death, nor powers, nor principalities, nor things pasant,
Speaker 1: nor things to come. So this is my little down payment.
Speaker 1: Don't drop the mic. It's just my little way of saying,
Speaker 1: don't you let nobody turn you round. That's the way
Speaker 1: we were saying, don't you let nobody turn you around.
Speaker 1: That's why they were singing on the Norman Pettis brig
Speaker 1: Don't you let nobody turn you round, turn you around,
Speaker 1: turn you round, don't shoe let no bad turn you around.
Speaker 1: She poll walking up the Jeez Hollway. Don't you let
Speaker 1: no body turn you round, turn you around, turn you.
Speaker 1: Don't shoot yet, nobody turn you round. You got to
Speaker 1: keep on walking up the tee away. Don't shoot that nobody.
Speaker 1: Don't let him turn you round. Don't let them turn you.
Speaker 1: Don't you line, nobody turn you got the tiba walking
Speaker 1: up the cheese. They had the water holes on them,
Speaker 1: They had the dogs baiting them. They were bleeding and
Speaker 1: the hoses were cutting into their flesh. And all the
Speaker 1: while they were bleeding, they couple singing us on, I
Speaker 1: ain't gonna let you turn it around. Keep Paul walking
Speaker 1: up the key highway. Don't choo let it what. I
Speaker 1: can't hear you. I can't hear you. Don't to that nobody,
Speaker 1: You got your teeth, poll walks, don't chew that. Nobody
Speaker 1: turn you not author riders not hit replacement, not back sogery.
Speaker 1: Don't you lighting tat you lie? You got your teeth
Speaker 1: ball walking up the team. How don't you that? Nobody
Speaker 1: turn you more? Tell you ah time, don't do that.
Speaker 1: Nobody tied you. You got some kippoll walking. This is America,
Speaker 1: This is America, and we're doing one more time. You're
Speaker 1: gonna help me. Don't do that, no bad time. You
Speaker 1: don't love to turn you. Don't let her tell you.
Speaker 1: Don't do that? Nobody you got some kidpoll whoa whoa
Speaker 1: whoa Bishophidi DAGs everybody you got litening. It's over. It's ye,
Speaker 1: It's over. Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: those of you who give generously to this ministry. Is
Speaker 1: because of you that this ministry is possible. You can
Speaker 1: click the link in the description to give now, or
Speaker 1: visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more information and
Speaker 1: if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe. You can
Speaker 1: share it with your friends. You can click the share button,
Speaker 1: take a screenshot and share it on your social stories
Speaker 1: and tag us at Elevation Church. Thanks again for listening.
Speaker 1: God bless you