Speaker 1: Welcome to the Elevation Church podcast. Today, we want to
Speaker 1: share a conversation that Pastor Stephen had with Bishop T. D.
Speaker 1: Jakes about moving past the painful, crushing seasons of life
Speaker 1: and into God's purpose for your future. We hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy this special presentation. Come on, give it up for
Speaker 1: this red jacket color in living color. I love you, bye,
Speaker 1: Excited to hear you talk for the next seven hours.
Speaker 1: It's good to see you. It is good to be
Speaker 1: seen and not viewed. I get it. How many old
Speaker 1: preacher jokes do you have? Like that, like give me
Speaker 1: another one, Oh, don't do that, don't do that. You
Speaker 1: have to listen. They come organically. The first time you
Speaker 1: hung out with me, you scared me, saved so like
Speaker 1: he was nice enough to spend a day with me
Speaker 1: talking about preaching. And in the middle of telling me
Speaker 1: about preaching, he starts preaching about blind Bartimaeus, and he
Speaker 1: starts acting out every character in the story of Blind Bartimaeus,
Speaker 1: and blind Bartimaeus hollers in the story and it's just
Speaker 1: me and him in the room, and he hollers, full
Speaker 1: throat bishop voice across the desk at man, I still
Speaker 1: my don't but I've told people about that. I told
Speaker 1: him you can preach on anything. Well, it's not really that.
Speaker 1: What we were talking about is it's spinning the texts. Yep.
Speaker 1: Because on one hand I'm a preacher and on the
Speaker 1: other hand, I'm a film producer. And one of the
Speaker 1: things you have to decide whenever you do a film,
Speaker 1: you have a story, somebody brings you a story, and
Speaker 1: you decide to write a script for it. You have
Speaker 1: to decide which character is going to be the narrative,
Speaker 1: who's going to be talking. And so if you take
Speaker 1: that principle and you apply it to the Bible, is
Speaker 1: it going to be told through the eyes of blind
Speaker 1: Bartimaeus or is it going to be told through the
Speaker 1: eyes of Jesus or is it going to be told
Speaker 1: through the other of the disciples? Because every POV point
Speaker 1: of view leads you into a different realm of truth.
Speaker 1: You see, it depends on whose perspective. It's like a
Speaker 1: husband and a wife live in the same house, have
Speaker 1: same i address, eat the same food, but they're having
Speaker 1: two different experiences. And so the point of view determines
Speaker 1: the relativity of the truth, the power of the truth,
Speaker 1: the significance of the truth is all brought about by
Speaker 1: who's talking. You take the prodigal son. It's one thing
Speaker 1: to talk about it from the son's perspective. It's another
Speaker 1: thing to talk about it from the older brother's perspective.
Speaker 1: It's yet a third thing to talk about it from
Speaker 1: the father's perspective. Okay. Each perspective opens up a new
Speaker 1: ventricle of truth and feeling and perspective. And when you
Speaker 1: look at it in his totality, then you see the
Speaker 1: substratum of truth itself. All right, we've been going five minutes.
Speaker 1: You've already said ventricle and substrate, so slow it down.
Speaker 1: There's a reason I played my shot from Hamilton when
Speaker 1: you came out, and you know why? You tell him?
Speaker 1: Can I tell him? Yeah? Bishop Jakeson and I got
Speaker 1: to watch Hamilton together a while back. So what I
Speaker 1: thought would be fun, just a game and then we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the book. It's going to be
Speaker 1: very spiritual. He woreed me to brace myself for something
Speaker 1: he was going to surprise me with. So it's it's better.
Speaker 1: It is better than a dance off. But what I
Speaker 1: would like to do is play a game where I
Speaker 1: give you a song title from Hamilton the musical Oh Wow,
Speaker 1: and you preach us a one minute sermon on that
Speaker 1: song title with a text, and how many of you
Speaker 1: would love to experience this? I thought you would. I
Speaker 1: thought you would. How y'all doing over there? This is
Speaker 1: going to be the best night of your life. It
Speaker 1: starts right now, starts with this. Okay, So the song
Speaker 1: that we came out to, that you came out to,
Speaker 1: my shot, what's the text and what's the sermon? My shot?
Speaker 1: My shot is the young prophet who Elijah commissions to
Speaker 1: shoot the arrow, and depending upon how far he shoots it,
Speaker 1: it determines what he could have had and said, if
Speaker 1: you would have struck the ground more times, you could
Speaker 1: have gone further. The power of the text exists in
Speaker 1: the reality that God does not make the shot for us,
Speaker 1: but he gives us all of the ingredients that are
Speaker 1: necessary to be successful. And so what is my time
Speaker 1: to make my shot? You see, I can't wait on
Speaker 1: God to make the shot. But I have to have
Speaker 1: the will and the tenacity and the vision and the
Speaker 1: drive to pull all the way back far enough to
Speaker 1: take my shot. Such a nator say it's my shot
Speaker 1: if I shouted for you when you had your shot,
Speaker 1: Shot for me when I have my shot, if I
Speaker 1: was glad for you when you had your next one.
Speaker 1: The room where it happens, Oh gosh, Thomas coming into
Speaker 1: the upper room after Christ has risen from the dead,
Speaker 1: and he comes into the room having missed the initial
Speaker 1: inaugural moment that Christ reappears to his disciples. Now he
Speaker 1: comes to the room. The power of being in the
Speaker 1: room will determine the destiny of his ministry and his life.
Speaker 1: He comes to a room that he enters into the door,
Speaker 1: but Christ comes through the door, spirit enough to come
Speaker 1: through the door, and man enough to eat fish inside
Speaker 1: the door. He boggles the mind of the disciples. But
Speaker 1: that was not what convinced Thomas to believe. What caused
Speaker 1: Thomas to believe, because otherwise Thomas would have thought he
Speaker 1: was a ghost. He says, reach hither your hand, and
Speaker 1: feel the nailprints in my hands, and touch my side,
Speaker 1: and be not faithless, but believe. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the doubting Thomas is converted only because he is in
Speaker 1: the room. Now touch your neighbors, say I'm in the room,
Speaker 1: even if I'm in overflow in the room one more more.
Speaker 1: You want to say more about that one? No, I can,
Speaker 1: because I was like, I was on a basic track.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like, my shot is David ngeliaf but okay,
Speaker 1: yours is better. No, no, Or we could go in
Speaker 1: the room where they are mourning over the the corpse
Speaker 1: of a twelve year old dead girl, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Jesus puts him all out of the room
Speaker 1: until nobody's in the room but her and Jesus, and
Speaker 1: there alone he raises her up from the dead because
Speaker 1: he is gone into the room with her, you know.
Speaker 1: And can you imagine what it would be like to
Speaker 1: be outside the door and certainly hear the sound of
Speaker 1: ruffling feet and thinking to yourself, who is that movie?
Speaker 1: I hear the scampering of little feet, and I know
Speaker 1: it could not be this girl, because I know she's dead.
Speaker 1: I touched her and she was cold. I touched her
Speaker 1: and she was stiff. I touched her and I knew
Speaker 1: for sure that she was absolutely dead. But I hear
Speaker 1: the sound of the scampering of a twelve year old's
Speaker 1: feet because she was in the room with the right person.
Speaker 1: She got back up again. So my conclusion is if
Speaker 1: everybody forsakes me, and everybody leaves my room, as long
Speaker 1: as Jesus Us is in the room, I can still
Speaker 1: get back up a jip. So to all of you,
Speaker 1: to all of you out there who are weeping over
Speaker 1: who walked out the room, who left you, who forsook you,
Speaker 1: who did not stand up with you, As long as
Speaker 1: you've got Jesus in the room, you can still get
Speaker 1: backed up again. Go to be in the room. Ah,
Speaker 1: don't think of nothing else. I'm running out, Yes, dude,
Speaker 1: Who lives, who dies? Who tells your story? Who lives?
Speaker 1: Who dies? Who tells your story? Early in the morning,
Speaker 1: the breaking of day, the women wrapped themselves up to
Speaker 1: go down to the tomb. Loyal to Jesus, who has
Speaker 1: become extremely controversial, has been executed, not crucified, executed on
Speaker 1: the cross, and yet they are still going down even
Speaker 1: though he did not do what they thought he was
Speaker 1: going to do. These women rise up early and go
Speaker 1: down to the tomb. Only when they arrived at the tomb,
Speaker 1: with the dew on the ground and the mist in
Speaker 1: the air, and the fragrance of death still lurking in
Speaker 1: the inner chamber, the stone has been rolled away, and
Speaker 1: sitting on top of the stone. On each side is
Speaker 1: an angel saying he is not here. He has risen
Speaker 1: from the dead. And the question then becomes, since he
Speaker 1: is not here, who tells the story? This woman comes
Speaker 1: running back. It is totally inappropriate in a misogenic age
Speaker 1: that a woman would be the first one to carry
Speaker 1: the message. But there are some times and some seasons
Speaker 1: that you have to break the protocol of the day.
Speaker 1: Because Jesus was looking for somebody who was bold enough
Speaker 1: to walk into a room full of men and tell them.
Speaker 1: I know for myself he is rhythm from the dead,
Speaker 1: why alive to tell his story? Good night everybody. I
Speaker 1: thought that would be amazing. It was one hundred times
Speaker 1: better than I said. You always amazing. It was scary
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, so I want to ask you that
Speaker 1: I want to get into the I want to get
Speaker 1: into the content of the book. Crushing God turns pressure
Speaker 1: into power. And I was thinking, how last time you
Speaker 1: were here, you're a sore ar like eagles on the
Speaker 1: cover and yeah, and now we're crushing. Yeah, so what happened?
Speaker 1: One one is not diabolically opposed to the other. For
Speaker 1: the eagle sore is about flying, But for the eglet,
Speaker 1: sore is about falling. If the eagle stirs her nests
Speaker 1: and the eaglets are pushed out of the comfort of
Speaker 1: their nests, is that not crushing? If their food supply
Speaker 1: is now cut off and they are pushed out by
Speaker 1: their own mother to fall off the side of a cliff,
Speaker 1: is that not crushing? Why would mama do that to me?
Speaker 1: Why would mama not feed me? And in the process
Speaker 1: of the eglet falling flapping its wings in hysteria, it
Speaker 1: is the thing that crushed the eglet that causes it
Speaker 1: to sow. And what the substratum up you told me
Speaker 1: not to esus, what epitomizes. The whole value of crushing
Speaker 1: is to explain to people not to be confused when
Speaker 1: the crushing proceeds a soaring, because a lot of times,
Speaker 1: if we only tell you about sowing and we don't
Speaker 1: tell you about crushing, when something crushing happens in your life,
Speaker 1: it looks like what we preach is not true. Right,
Speaker 1: Whereas crushing is the process and soaring is the promise.
Speaker 1: You cannot have promise without process. And we live in
Speaker 1: a time where people preach more about the promises and
Speaker 1: less about the prom So what happens is when you
Speaker 1: come to church and you hear about the promise, and
Speaker 1: you go home and you find yourself in the process
Speaker 1: your life is a contradiction to your faith. But you
Speaker 1: are so loyal to Jesus that you would never admit
Speaker 1: that you are not seeing the manifestation of what your
Speaker 1: pastor is talking about in your life. And it looks
Speaker 1: like that you must be doing something wrong, because they
Speaker 1: are talking about the blessings and the healing and the
Speaker 1: soaring and the power of God and the strength of God,
Speaker 1: and how all things are yours and all promises are
Speaker 1: yea and amen, and you're the head and not the tale,
Speaker 1: and above and not beneath. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: in the midst of them saying all of those things,
Speaker 1: you are going home and dealing with marital issues, children
Speaker 1: who won't obey or comply, a sister who doesn't like you,
Speaker 1: a father who always preferred the other sister or daughter,
Speaker 1: and you're saying, how is my life in such shambles?
Speaker 1: Never realizing that those that God is going to anoint
Speaker 1: the most, he always crushes the most severe. When we
Speaker 1: were talking about the arrows. A moment ago and we
Speaker 1: were talking about striking the ground, and we were talking
Speaker 1: about the bow an arrow. You must realize the further
Speaker 1: the arrow is going to be shocked, the more it
Speaker 1: must be pulled back. And I wrote crushing in part
Speaker 1: because I have never met anybody who did exceptional things
Speaker 1: in their life who had not at some point endured
Speaker 1: exceptional crushing. It is the force to which you have
Speaker 1: been pulled back that determines the height that you will fly,
Speaker 1: you see ye, And I wonder about that because I've
Speaker 1: seen you at the height of success, and yet you've
Speaker 1: shared with me your own crushing, and some of that
Speaker 1: was external, some of it was internal. Some of the
Speaker 1: things that you've shared with me privately gave me hope
Speaker 1: to know that God is using a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that I think this qualify me and that will
Speaker 1: be the actual place of power. But what I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you on a deeper level is do you
Speaker 1: think that there is a certain process by which we
Speaker 1: accept that crushing that either turns it into something powerful
Speaker 1: or something destructive in our life. Is the pressure of
Speaker 1: the things that we go through in itself a growth mechanism,
Speaker 1: or is there a response that's required from us to
Speaker 1: make it turn into something. You know, that's a great question,
Speaker 1: and you know, a couple of things come to my mind.
Speaker 1: When I married my wife, I was pastoring. I've been
Speaker 1: pastoring for two years. I pastored a very small church
Speaker 1: in a rural area of West Virginia called Montgomery, West Virginia.
Speaker 1: Though I lived in Charleston. I was pastoring and working
Speaker 1: a full time job. I had a brand new car.
Speaker 1: I had my own place. I mean, I wasn't wealthy
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but I had the car, in
Speaker 1: a good job, and I had my own place, and
Speaker 1: I was good enough to say I do. And not
Speaker 1: long after I said I do, the whole country shifted
Speaker 1: and the Union car bade shut down the part that
Speaker 1: I worked for, and many other industries began to leave
Speaker 1: the Roustvelt States, and I was unemployed and ran out
Speaker 1: of unemployment, and eventually they repossessed my car, and eventually
Speaker 1: I could not feed my children. And eventually it got
Speaker 1: so low that the deacon sloan me a car. But
Speaker 1: the car was so raggedy that they hid it in
Speaker 1: the back of the church. No, I'm serious. It was
Speaker 1: a nineteen sixty seven volume with the floorboard rusted out
Speaker 1: of the bottom of it, and I had to put
Speaker 1: carpet over the bottom of the floor so my kids
Speaker 1: feet didn't go through. And they didn't want anybody to
Speaker 1: know that the pastor had that kind of car, so
Speaker 1: when we had guests, they would hide my car in
Speaker 1: the back because that was the stage of life I
Speaker 1: was in. It got so bad that the car broke
Speaker 1: down on the side of the road and I had
Speaker 1: to thumb to get to church and climb across the
Speaker 1: coal cars on the railroad tracks to go into the
Speaker 1: church to preach faith. I never stopped preaching. I never
Speaker 1: let up on preaching the power of God and the
Speaker 1: strength of God, even though it became so bad that
Speaker 1: we want at one point had to go gather apples
Speaker 1: to feed the kids because we had nothing at all
Speaker 1: to eat. God knew that later in my life he
Speaker 1: was going to bless me extraordinarily and some people would
Speaker 1: later question, are you serving God for stuff? So he
Speaker 1: allowed me to be crushed early so that no matter
Speaker 1: what they said, I would know, you understand what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Because they were going to come in at the end
Speaker 1: of the movie and make assumptions. But I lived through
Speaker 1: the first of the movie to validate the fact that
Speaker 1: it was not for the things he gave me that
Speaker 1: I do what I do. It was because of the
Speaker 1: love and the passion and the annoying thing. And so yes,
Speaker 1: it makes you, and sometimes it also creates a narrative
Speaker 1: for you that completes your ability to reach both high
Speaker 1: and low. I can reach the guy in the homely shelter,
Speaker 1: and I can reach the guy in the penthouse sweep
Speaker 1: because I have learned how to at a bound. I
Speaker 1: suffered lax and I've had peny, and I have learned
Speaker 1: whatever state I'm in, therewith to be contented. Some things
Speaker 1: God takes you through or not for you, but it's
Speaker 1: so you can reach somebody else. Sometimes sometimes he crushes
Speaker 1: you because he's going to bless you so much. He
Speaker 1: does not want you to get arrogant like your predecessors,
Speaker 1: and so he humbles you. Anytime he's going to exalt you,
Speaker 1: he humbles you. You take the two fish in the
Speaker 1: five blows of Bread when they brought it to Jesus.
Speaker 1: They brought it to Jesus to multiply it. And the
Speaker 1: first thing he did was crushing. He took it, and
Speaker 1: he blessed it, and he broke it. As he broke it,
Speaker 1: he started crushing the fish and the bread, And the
Speaker 1: more he crushed it, the more it multiplied. The more
Speaker 1: he crushed it, the more it multiplied, the more he
Speaker 1: crushed it, the more it multiplied. And all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you find yourself in a state of complication, and
Speaker 1: somebody comes in and says, look at all of that fish.
Speaker 1: But you know that when you first came into his
Speaker 1: hands you were not enough. It was his crushing that
Speaker 1: made you more than enough. So sometimes it's intrinsic, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it is so that you are relevant for other people.
Speaker 1: I want to give you one more quick example. Look
Speaker 1: at Air. You can give me one more not quick example. Okay,
Speaker 1: look at Moses goes up on the mountaintop to get
Speaker 1: the tin commandments from God. Simultaneously, he also has the
Speaker 1: experience of getting the plans for the tabernacle, and there
Speaker 1: he is. God designs the garments. Now, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: we'll have a name brand somewhe but to be designed
Speaker 1: by God. Erin's robes were designed by the almighty God.
Speaker 1: And God says, of all the people that have escaped
Speaker 1: the trauma of Egypt. There is one guy that I
Speaker 1: will allow to come into the holies of holies and
Speaker 1: not die, and that guy is going to be able
Speaker 1: to access My presence and represent the children of Israel.
Speaker 1: The guy he is talking about has been left in
Speaker 1: charge at the bottom of the mountain, and so while
Speaker 1: God is designing what will be blue and what will
Speaker 1: be purple, and what will be crimson, this guy has
Speaker 1: got the whole camp strip neked, dancing, neked around a
Speaker 1: golden calf in the process. When Moses comes down off
Speaker 1: the mountain, he is so shocked he drops the Ten
Speaker 1: Commandments because the one that God has promoted has fallen
Speaker 1: into an abyss so low that it seems like there's
Speaker 1: a disconnect between what happened up here and what happened
Speaker 1: down there. But it is really the wisdom of God.
Speaker 1: Because had God allowed anybody else to be the high
Speaker 1: priest when people got ready to come and share their sins,
Speaker 1: he might be arrogant. But because God had so crushed him,
Speaker 1: he was humble enough that no matter what your sin was,
Speaker 1: he would remember his own, and that humility would make
Speaker 1: him able to be able to connect with you and
Speaker 1: bekin both to the problem and kin to the answer.
Speaker 1: This is a shadow of Christ who became sin for
Speaker 1: us that we might be the righteousness of God. He
Speaker 1: is in all points without sin, but tempted like as
Speaker 1: we are, so that we can come to him, and
Speaker 1: he can be touched by the feeling of our infirmity.
Speaker 1: He became it so he could deliver us from it. Erin,
Speaker 1: it's the shadow CHRISTI is the reality. I always figure
Speaker 1: that's what makes you stop and take time and care
Speaker 1: about people. Is the years that you were preaching barbecue
Speaker 1: sauce on your tie because you were making the chicken
Speaker 1: for the fundraiser in the back of the church before
Speaker 1: you preach. See, they don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you what I did. I think I
Speaker 1: explained it pretty well. No no no, no, no no, no, you didn't.
Speaker 1: You didn't do good at all. Just sit back. Let'
Speaker 1: don't make sure you I do. My spiritual father's coming,
Speaker 1: and he's coming with five bus loads of people to
Speaker 1: celebrate my second or third or fourth anniversary. And I've
Speaker 1: got maybe thirty members at best, counting pregnant people in debtfos,
Speaker 1: and so we have to have all of this food
Speaker 1: for all these bus loads of people he brought. So
Speaker 1: my wife and I had to cook it. But we
Speaker 1: didn't want to look like we cooked it. We wanted
Speaker 1: to look like we had enough members to cook it.
Speaker 1: So I had my bowtie one because it's my anniversary,
Speaker 1: and I had my pseuito on, and they said, you know, now,
Speaker 1: let's receive the pastor and his wife. And I marched
Speaker 1: down the aisle, you know, like I had all of
Speaker 1: these members, which most of them were really his, and
Speaker 1: he leaned over and whispitt of me and said, you
Speaker 1: left a little barbecue sauce on your fingernails. I love that,
Speaker 1: you know what. I love it too, because you know what,
Speaker 1: I have always been tenacious. I have always been relentless.
Speaker 1: I never allowed my circumstances to destroy my intensity and
Speaker 1: my drive and my feeling that God was going to
Speaker 1: do something in my life. Yeah. So, having come from
Speaker 1: a season of obscurity, and this is not six months
Speaker 1: of obscurity, this is how many years, oh years, I
Speaker 1: mean years I was in a churchhip. I preached twice
Speaker 1: in seven years. My job was to clean out the
Speaker 1: baptism pool and to shampoo the rugs three times a year,
Speaker 1: and on a Saturday, I would do that. I drove
Speaker 1: my pastor around, I cleaned up the church, I worked
Speaker 1: in the ministry, and I hardly ever missed a service,
Speaker 1: though I was hardly ever called on to speak. Obscurity
Speaker 1: though pastor is a great gift. It's a great gift.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that God develops an embryo in obscurity.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that Moses was hidden in the tent
Speaker 1: three months. There's a reason that christ dwelt in obscurity
Speaker 1: till he was thirty. Obscurity gives you a chance to
Speaker 1: have development, to fight your own devils, to overcome your obstacles,
Speaker 1: to get your priorities in alignment. The problem we have
Speaker 1: today is that people want a success for which they
Speaker 1: have not been groomed for. Success that you have not
Speaker 1: been roomed for is like having birthing a baby prematurely.
Speaker 1: The chances of survival go down the earlier the baby
Speaker 1: is exposed. And to be exposed too soon it's not
Speaker 1: a blessing, it's curse. You don't want anything before it's time,
Speaker 1: nothing before it's time. There's a time and a season
Speaker 1: for every purpose under heaven, and so you don't want
Speaker 1: to get married too soon. You don't want to buy
Speaker 1: a house too soon, You don't want to be exposed
Speaker 1: to crowds too soon. And so, because he loves you,
Speaker 1: it's not punishment, it's preparation. Because he loves you, he
Speaker 1: hides you in obscurity. Anything that's valuable you protect. When
Speaker 1: I say in a hotel, there's just safe for you
Speaker 1: to put your valuables in obscurity, not because they're invaluable.
Speaker 1: And there's somebody listening in us right now who feels
Speaker 1: like they've been overlooked because they're not good enough. That's
Speaker 1: not right. You have been hidden because you are valuable.
Speaker 1: When the time is right, When the time is right,
Speaker 1: when you are strong enough to withstand the elements to
Speaker 1: which you will be exposed to, you will be revealed.
Speaker 1: You understand. Yeah, And I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: the contrast, because the pressure of success is the type
Speaker 1: of crushing as well. Oh. Absolutely. And usually it's looked
Speaker 1: at in a linear way. You know, if you'll tend sheep,
Speaker 1: then you'll kill Goliath, and then what and then you'll
Speaker 1: have greater responsibility, and then you'll have more battles and
Speaker 1: bigger battles. So I want to ask you this personal
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on. I want to drive that home.
Speaker 1: The reward you get for overcoming your last challenge is
Speaker 1: your next challenge. That's basically what I was saying. Now,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this. I really want to ask
Speaker 1: you this. In your life, what has been a greater pressure,
Speaker 1: the frustration of obscurity or the pressure of success. I
Speaker 1: didn't have the frustration of obscurity because I never got
Speaker 1: into this to be exposed. I never wanted to be famous.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be effective. See, I think our motives
Speaker 1: have to be right. So when I talk about some
Speaker 1: of the worst parts of my life, they say I'm
Speaker 1: real bad and everything. But at the time it didn't
Speaker 1: feel bad because I had nothing to compare it to,
Speaker 1: and my job was to glorify God in the situation
Speaker 1: I was in and to continue to lead the flock
Speaker 1: I was in. You cannot be so driven by ambition
Speaker 1: that you see obscurity as punishment. So I think for me,
Speaker 1: the hardest part was managing what we call sess because
Speaker 1: that creates expectations, and the expectations are as different as
Speaker 1: there are people. When you have thirty people, you only
Speaker 1: have thirty people's expectations to manage. The more you are
Speaker 1: known around the church, your church grows, and then the state,
Speaker 1: and then the country and then the world. There are
Speaker 1: eight almost eight billion people on the planet. Somebody's not
Speaker 1: gonna like you, and before they wouldn't know you. Right,
Speaker 1: Like somebody is on YouTube right now commenting on our
Speaker 1: clothes right our oh everything everything everything. He shouldn't have
Speaker 1: that on. You know. I was at my son in
Speaker 1: laws church. I had on some jeans. You know, they
Speaker 1: were the ragged kind of rip jeans, because that's because
Speaker 1: that's how they dress out. They're and I was trying
Speaker 1: to be cool, like coming here, I stress out coming here,
Speaker 1: you know, rest for you, Thank you. I put great
Speaker 1: thought into this outfit. I am geared for suits and ties.
Speaker 1: I have all kinds of suits and ties. And then
Speaker 1: I come to you and I panic and I think,
Speaker 1: oh god, I have to be casual. What am I
Speaker 1: going to wear? And I started to like a girl
Speaker 1: and send and pictures to people. Do you think I
Speaker 1: said wear this is what? And the other thing about
Speaker 1: being big is this I'm preach in so many different worlds.
Speaker 1: I'm preaching worlds where they would church you for wearing this,
Speaker 1: and then I'll go and preach in a place where
Speaker 1: if I wore a suit and a collar, you would
Speaker 1: think it was strange. Being global causes you to be
Speaker 1: relevant in so many rooms where the rules are different,
Speaker 1: and you have to be flexible enough to be able
Speaker 1: to function in various types of situations and still be
Speaker 1: true to who you are are you see Yah, The
Speaker 1: Bible say it this way. To him who much is given,
Speaker 1: much is required. So the more that's given to you,
Speaker 1: the more that's required of you. That's why you ought
Speaker 1: not to despise the preparation, because what got you applauded
Speaker 1: over here will get you killed over here. And you
Speaker 1: won't even know that you have stepped into a different arena,
Speaker 1: and you don't understand that this is not that. There's
Speaker 1: nothing worse than sing A preacher who walks in the
Speaker 1: room and he thinks that this is that, so he
Speaker 1: goes into whatever the thing is that he does, and
Speaker 1: he's God's done whatever he does about God, and somebody's
Speaker 1: getting happy, but somebody saying, why is he singing? Why
Speaker 1: is he singing? So you're normal as somebody else is weird.
Speaker 1: And the more God promotes you. The more ampidexterous you
Speaker 1: have to be to be able to serve the body
Speaker 1: of Christ, because the body is vast, and God forbid
Speaker 1: that you get an opportunity. Because I don't just want
Speaker 1: to serve the body of Christ, I also want to
Speaker 1: be relevant in affecting the culture, because I don't just
Speaker 1: want to preach where the amen's run free. I want
Speaker 1: to go into the wild, into the jungle and capture
Speaker 1: and ride and ride a lion's back and pull him
Speaker 1: by the main and pull him and say, set down,
Speaker 1: you know, snatch him by his hand and say what's
Speaker 1: my name? You know? You know, you know, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want to go. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know your shock. You'll be okay. We're gonna bring Yeah,
Speaker 1: you brought me. We're gonna have fun. We're gonna have fun.
Speaker 1: Most of the preachers today only preach to Christians. At
Speaker 1: the time I came up, we would pitch a tent
Speaker 1: in the roughest part of town. I mean I preached
Speaker 1: it in a tent in the bronx where people were
Speaker 1: throwing needles down on the altar. They were coming in
Speaker 1: and throwing crack cocaine down on the altar. There were thugs.
Speaker 1: There were people in there with guns and knives, and
Speaker 1: I was happy. I was happy because I was young
Speaker 1: and I was wild, and I was preaching get away
Speaker 1: from that gate about the lame man at the gate
Speaker 1: called beautiful, and I was preaching get away from that
Speaker 1: gate where there wasn't a big amen section like this.
Speaker 1: Today people always want to go into an environment that
Speaker 1: is friendly fire. But the Bible said, go into all
Speaker 1: the world and preach the Gospel to every reader, living creature,
Speaker 1: black creatures, white creatures, brown creatures, intellectual creatures, illiterate creatures.
Speaker 1: When I first got to Dallas, I knew. I knew
Speaker 1: that my ideology had to change. When I first got
Speaker 1: to Dallas, I threw a party for the homeless people
Speaker 1: rented out in the civic Center and brought all of
Speaker 1: these clothes and food and stuff. That was how I
Speaker 1: opened up my church. And so we had all of
Speaker 1: these homeless people in there. And when I was leaving,
Speaker 1: this man looked at me with tears in his eyes.
Speaker 1: It's hurt for me to tell it, and he said,
Speaker 1: I love you, mister bishop. And I drove away in
Speaker 1: the car, and I thought he doesn't even know what
Speaker 1: a bishop he is. And immediately I knew either you're
Speaker 1: going to reach the world or you're going to honor
Speaker 1: your traditions. Wo you have to go beyond your traditions
Speaker 1: in order to be effective. And if you're going to
Speaker 1: do that, that pliability what psychologists would call AQ, your
Speaker 1: optability adaptability quote, your ability to adapt to environment comes
Speaker 1: from being crushed. It comes from the I was gonna
Speaker 1: say the women would relate to that, but the women
Speaker 1: today don't do this. So the older women might remember
Speaker 1: when we needed bread dough. The younger women don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about because they get the bread already
Speaker 1: made at the grocery store. But when you go home
Speaker 1: and ask your grandmother if I'm right about this, that
Speaker 1: if you're going to make biscus from scratch, you have
Speaker 1: to need the dough. And the more you crush it,
Speaker 1: the more pliable it becomes, and ultimately the bread will
Speaker 1: rise because you pressed it. And if you're going to
Speaker 1: be adaptable enough to fit into the future God has
Speaker 1: designed for you, then it is it is the crushings
Speaker 1: that prepares you not to be more loyal to your
Speaker 1: traditions than you are your calling, not to look down
Speaker 1: your nose at somebody who is into what you just left.
Speaker 1: Because church people get amnesia. Okay, church people get amnesia quick.
Speaker 1: They turn up there and I, oh, my god, the
Speaker 1: smell of smoke, Come, my god, it and it was
Speaker 1: just three years ago. You were sucking on one like
Speaker 1: it was a straw, you know, you know, and now oh,
Speaker 1: I just oh they used they said, a profane where
Speaker 1: to come on, Henry, Let's leave, No, don't leave, let's stay,
Speaker 1: Let's stay. Jesus. What made Jesus so radical? The religious
Speaker 1: people hated Jesus. What made him so radical is that
Speaker 1: Jesus went to the wine bibbers, and he went in
Speaker 1: the street and he touched people who were hurting, and
Speaker 1: they loved him. They loved him Jesus. That was so
Speaker 1: relevant that he looked no different than the people around him.
Speaker 1: He looked so ordinary to his environment that the Roman
Speaker 1: soldiers had to hire somebody to point him out. So
Speaker 1: Jesus wasn't into standing out. He was interfitting in, Okay,
Speaker 1: because in order for him to redeem us, according to
Speaker 1: the law, you had to be a kinsman redeemer. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in order to be a kinsman redeemer. He has
Speaker 1: to be kin to the thing he wants to redeem.
Speaker 1: And what makes a minister effect of a not condescending
Speaker 1: is when you're reaching for that soul. This is the truth,
Speaker 1: when you're reaching for that soul. The most effective ministers
Speaker 1: are the ones who see a little bit of themselves
Speaker 1: in the people coming down the aisle. Yeah, because you don't.
Speaker 1: If you're not kin to them, you won't care about them,
Speaker 1: and you won't labor with them, and you won't work
Speaker 1: with them, and you just walk out of wave and
Speaker 1: go about your business. But when you akin to them,
Speaker 1: you are moved with compassion because you know that could
Speaker 1: have been you, that used to be you, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it's still you because you don't live in victory every day. See.
Speaker 1: But the pressure, the pressure of fitting into a religious
Speaker 1: environment can tempt you to hypocrisy because we become more
Speaker 1: concerned about being accepted by the people we worship with
Speaker 1: than we are about used by God. So going into
Speaker 1: environments that intimidate you excites you. Oh yeah, you like it?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're a glutton form. Yeah, yes, what intimidates you? Oh?
Speaker 1: Any anything that's foreign. A lot of times I'm speaking
Speaker 1: in environments that are not faith based at all. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I have to be able to deliver truth in a veil.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I have to put it in a in a
Speaker 1: film subtly to make it palatable enough that they don't turn,
Speaker 1: but potent enough that it captures something on the inside,
Speaker 1: and so that can be intimidating. I like to be
Speaker 1: in a room full of smart people. I like to
Speaker 1: to hear people preach who make me feel stupid. It's
Speaker 1: such a turno like it, like, yeah, yeah, it really is,
Speaker 1: it is it is. I love it the best for
Speaker 1: the guy preacher is so good that I feel like
Speaker 1: just throwing my bottom up there that I claim because
Speaker 1: you just described me every Monday listening to you get
Speaker 1: out of here and I want to ask you about
Speaker 1: this is going to sound so silly how I say it,
Speaker 1: But I wrote down pms and it's early to be
Speaker 1: going there. But I put it from the perspective of
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of times on Saturday, I'm texting
Speaker 1: you frantically like, hey, I've got people showing up and
Speaker 1: they need to hear from God, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if I have yet. You know, I hope so. And
Speaker 1: you're kind to me, and then there's coming down after
Speaker 1: preaching a message. But it's so much more than preachers
Speaker 1: in here. I thought it would be helpful to talk
Speaker 1: about not just pre message syndrome post message syndrome from
Speaker 1: a preaching standpoint, But I want you to describe yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: your pressure management system, because all right, I love the book.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's about how fruitfulness is not the end
Speaker 1: that the gardener, the vine dresser crushes the grapes to
Speaker 1: make wine. That process of pressure, if it's not managed correctly,
Speaker 1: it can paralyze you. It can actually make you. It
Speaker 1: can shut you down. And you've transcended so many limitations
Speaker 1: and broken barriers and stood up with your handshaking and
Speaker 1: done things. Oh yes, And I want to know how
Speaker 1: you do it because like I need to know, parents
Speaker 1: need to know, business owners need to know, how do
Speaker 1: you manage the pressure without the pressure beginning to overwhelm
Speaker 1: you and consume you. If the pressure overwhelmed me and
Speaker 1: to assume me, then the pressure would have aborted my destiny.
Speaker 1: And I refuse to allow how I feel to abort
Speaker 1: what I'm called to. You touched on so many things
Speaker 1: that are so important. First of all. I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave them with the feeling of you being uncertain
Speaker 1: of your message. He's never uncertain of his message. He's
Speaker 1: uncertain of himself. And the reason he's uncertain of himself
Speaker 1: is because everybody in this room can see everybody in
Speaker 1: this room, but they can never see themselves. And so
Speaker 1: your pastor can see everything, but he can't see himself.
Speaker 1: So when you can't, that's why you have a mirror,
Speaker 1: because you can't see yourself. I can see everybody. I
Speaker 1: see all of you, all the way up in the back, hie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how you doing? How you doing? I see you got
Speaker 1: that yellow shirt on your arms. Sold I see you
Speaker 1: up here. But yeah, yeah, I'm talking about you. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw yeah. Yeah, chocolate man and yellow shirt. I
Speaker 1: got you. The problem in life, when you are truly gifted,
Speaker 1: you can't see it. When you are truly gifted, When
Speaker 1: you are truly gifted, it is your normal. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so the frustration is you're trying to manifest your gift,
Speaker 1: and you are manifesting your gift, but you don't know
Speaker 1: that that is your gift because your gift is your normal.
Speaker 1: People who can sing aren't trying to sing they just can.
Speaker 1: People who can write aren't trying to right, they just can't.
Speaker 1: And so when they write things, they say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's not good. Oh my god, it's not good. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's not good because you can't see yourself.
Speaker 1: So sometimes the more gifted you are, the more vulnerable
Speaker 1: you are, and the more affirmation you need from your
Speaker 1: inner circle. Because I could walk off a straight stage
Speaker 1: and feel like strangling myself with a belt because that
Speaker 1: was very graphic, good good, that's part of That's My
Speaker 1: ministry is to give you pictures. So the reason I
Speaker 1: think about strangling myself with the belt is because you should.
Speaker 1: You should hear the guy that's preaching in me, and
Speaker 1: there I am trying to give you what he's giving me.
Speaker 1: I'm never preaching against the guy who preached before me
Speaker 1: or the guy who preached after me. I'm preaching against
Speaker 1: the guy who preaches inside of me. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: bar is so high that a lot of times I
Speaker 1: walk home to the the state and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: why don't you get somebody else? I blew it. I
Speaker 1: didn't get it across. I'm not sure that they got
Speaker 1: it the way you got it to me. You got
Speaker 1: it to me so bad I couldn't sleep that night,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure I can get it out. So
Speaker 1: really gifted people are sensitive and they're vulnerable, and you
Speaker 1: have to learn how to function within that sensitive, vulnerable space.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to give you a couple of things
Speaker 1: that will help you to do it. Insulate yourself with
Speaker 1: a few inner circle people who love you enough that
Speaker 1: you can be vulnerable in front of and yet are
Speaker 1: honest enough. My daughter, let me tell my story. My
Speaker 1: daughter Sarah wrote this paper. Yeah, I know, she wrote
Speaker 1: this paper one time and she sent it to me,
Speaker 1: and I was a day where what just happened was
Speaker 1: something so far away to you talk about it? Oh,
Speaker 1: I talk about it in the book. I mean she
Speaker 1: was the least likely child Lord have mercy if you
Speaker 1: would have asked me, you know which one I would
Speaker 1: have met. Anyway, I talked about it in the book.
Speaker 1: You gotta read the book. She wrote a paper and
Speaker 1: she sent it to me. And the thing about me is,
Speaker 1: my wife says, I'm brutally honest. I say, I'm just
Speaker 1: honest shed verse two. Then she said, a brutally honest
Speaker 1: I will tell you the truth. She wrote this paper.
Speaker 1: My daughter wrote this paper. She sent it to me
Speaker 1: and I read it. And I remember I was in
Speaker 1: LA at the time that I read, and I was busy.
Speaker 1: I probably would have been more tactful at and I've
Speaker 1: been so busy, but I was busy. And I read
Speaker 1: through it and I said, Sarah, I said, I don't
Speaker 1: even know what you're talking about it. I said, I
Speaker 1: know you. You can write better than this. She need
Speaker 1: to go back and write this over again. And she
Speaker 1: said okay. She said that I'll give it another spit.
Speaker 1: I realized now in retrospect that I probably should have
Speaker 1: softened it. A bit. Later on, she wrote her first book,
Speaker 1: and I sat down to read the book, and I'll
Speaker 1: be honest, I sat down to read the book because
Speaker 1: she's my daughter, and she wrote it, and I was
Speaker 1: going to read it. And it's the way they used
Speaker 1: to cook, and some stuff they cooked their mother would need.
Speaker 1: I would eat anything they cook, just so they have
Speaker 1: confidence in itself. So I said, I'm going to read
Speaker 1: this book. And I started reading it and I called
Speaker 1: her and I said, Sarah, I sat down to read
Speaker 1: the book because she wrote it, and I couldn't put
Speaker 1: it down. I said, I read from the first page
Speaker 1: to the last page, and I didn't stop because the
Speaker 1: rhythm of your writing, the eloquence of your speech, the
Speaker 1: visual images that are created through the opulence of your
Speaker 1: vocabulary was so overwhelming that I was mesmerized. And I
Speaker 1: left her that message and she called me back. She said, Daddy,
Speaker 1: She said, Naddy. She said, I want to keep this
Speaker 1: voice message forever. She said, I want to keep it
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. And I said, Sarah, I said,
Speaker 1: it was just what I thought. She said, I know.
Speaker 1: She said, that's what made it real. She said, I
Speaker 1: could trust your compliments because of your criticism. You need
Speaker 1: somebody who's not just going to say it because they
Speaker 1: liked you, or said because they love you. You want
Speaker 1: to get the absolute truth from them and inner circle
Speaker 1: of people who will tell you like it TI is
Speaker 1: so that you can trust them that when they say
Speaker 1: it's good. Because the reason you have to trust them,
Speaker 1: it's like a blind man for seeing our dog. You
Speaker 1: gotta trust the dog because the dog can see you
Speaker 1: can't see yourself, and you have to be okay with
Speaker 1: that or you're never gonna get anything done. For God,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go just a little bit deeper. Jesus takes
Speaker 1: a blind man and takes a blind man out of
Speaker 1: best say it, and he lays hands on him, and
Speaker 1: then asks a blind man, what do you say? The
Speaker 1: healing is all predicated on honesty, the courage to tell
Speaker 1: Jesus you touch me in it didn't work in front
Speaker 1: of your disciples. He says, I see I'm better, but
Speaker 1: I see men walking the streets, and Jesus touches him again,
Speaker 1: or I believe fits in his eye and tells him
Speaker 1: to go wash in the pool, and the man has
Speaker 1: to take the first steps in the dark. The first
Speaker 1: time I went the mic to preach, my hands were
Speaker 1: shaking so bad that when I held the mic, I
Speaker 1: was nervous when I picked it up. But when I
Speaker 1: knew that they could see that I was nervous, that
Speaker 1: made it worse. So it started. It starts ship. It
Speaker 1: was like a It was kind of like a tambourine
Speaker 1: or something, you know. So the next time I had
Speaker 1: them adjust the height of the mic. I didn't quit preaching.
Speaker 1: I had them adjust the height of the mic and
Speaker 1: put my hands behind my back so they couldn't see
Speaker 1: my hands, and I preached the first five or ten
Speaker 1: minutes with my hands behind my back until enough annoying came,
Speaker 1: because when the annoying comes, the fear goes. And then
Speaker 1: I took the mic and started preaching. You cannot let
Speaker 1: your fear hold you back from your destiny. You have
Speaker 1: to feel the fear and do it anyway. Do it broke,
Speaker 1: do it scared, do it nervous, it trembling. Do it
Speaker 1: on your knees, do it with help, do it on crutches,
Speaker 1: do it in a wheelchair. Because you don't want to
Speaker 1: end up in a nursing home sitting on a bed pan,
Speaker 1: wondering what would have happened if you'd only had more currents.
Speaker 1: You don't want to end up in an old folks home.
Speaker 1: And your dying thought is I wish I had a
Speaker 1: because the one thing that you will never get is
Speaker 1: more time, So you don't have time to allow your
Speaker 1: fear to incarcerate you. When you have the key, reach
Speaker 1: around there, unlock the door, and step into your destiny.
Speaker 1: Don't you feel like a lot of stuff gets thrown
Speaker 1: around at a cliche level like this, Like I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this reading the book. You have this great
Speaker 1: section on pruning and feel free to preach on John
Speaker 1: fifteen at any point during this question if you want.
Speaker 1: But I was thinking how sometimes Christians use language to
Speaker 1: cover up lifestyles. So you know, I really wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you this tonight. Do we sometimes use pruning as
Speaker 1: an excuse for our bad decisions? In other words, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody walked away from me, God is pruning me. They
Speaker 1: walked away from you and your self centered and your
Speaker 1: breath smells bad, you know, or whatever, But that is
Speaker 1: pruning too. Some people only learn through those kinds of
Speaker 1: chastenings because anytime you won't hear God's warning, he will
Speaker 1: chasten you, and whom the Lord loveth he chastens. And
Speaker 1: you're right, they're not leaving because God is pruning you,
Speaker 1: But they're leaving because of your behavior. But your behavior
Speaker 1: is making them leave with just still a pruning because
Speaker 1: it comes down to how many will you have to
Speaker 1: lose for you to change? Okay, I want to go
Speaker 1: into that bishop. So is there a difference between being
Speaker 1: crushed by the hand of God versus suffering the consequences
Speaker 1: of your own decisions? I think there. Sometimes God uses
Speaker 1: his hand and sometimes he uses yours. Yeah, yeah, sometimes
Speaker 1: he uses yours. But see, you cannot get God's people
Speaker 1: out of God's hand. Whether they are dysfunctional, whether they're
Speaker 1: emotionally dwarfed, they are still God's people. Whether they make
Speaker 1: bad decisions or stupid decisions, or terrible mistakes, you cannot
Speaker 1: get them out of God's hand. The souls that are
Speaker 1: in the Father's hands, no man can pluck them out.
Speaker 1: Some of them are smart soul, some of them are
Speaker 1: proud soul, some of them are arrogant soul, some of
Speaker 1: them are prejudiced souls. But they are in God's hands.
Speaker 1: And God will keep working with them, and working with them,
Speaker 1: and reshaping them, and breaking them and making them again,
Speaker 1: breaking up again, until they become what he had in mind.
Speaker 1: Every branch of me that bears fruit, every branch of
Speaker 1: me that's going kind of good, he says. The reward
Speaker 1: is I prune it that it might bring forth more fruit.
Speaker 1: And ultimately herein is when our Father glorified verse eight,
Speaker 1: that you bring forth much fruit. So shall you be
Speaker 1: my disciples. In between fruit and more fruit is always
Speaker 1: a knife. When God gets ready to take you up,
Speaker 1: he always cuts you back. There will be some exodus,
Speaker 1: There will be some loneliness. There will be some crushing place,
Speaker 1: some weeping, wallowing stage of life because you are his
Speaker 1: and he knows exactly where to cut you. In the book,
Speaker 1: I talk about my mother had a rose bush and
Speaker 1: I decided to help her out. And I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, and I went out there to do like
Speaker 1: I had seen her do. I was going to prune
Speaker 1: the bush, and I almost killed it. The difference I
Speaker 1: used the same knife, and it was the same bush
Speaker 1: that I'd seen her prune the year before. I used
Speaker 1: the same knife, but in my hand it was a weapon,
Speaker 1: and in her hand it was a tool. God knows
Speaker 1: exactly where to cut you to make you more productive.
Speaker 1: I was doing the right thing, but I was cutting
Speaker 1: in the wrong place. Mama knew exactly where to cut
Speaker 1: that bush in order to make it go from fruit
Speaker 1: to more fruit to much fruit. God knows exactly where
Speaker 1: to crush you to bring you to the place that
Speaker 1: you need to be. I want to throw this in
Speaker 1: what started this journey? I was getting ready to preach
Speaker 1: at Lakewood and uh, and I was sitting outside and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden I got a download. And it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to explain what a download is. I mean,
Speaker 1: all the technical people know what it is as it
Speaker 1: relates to technology. But that's kind of what we finally
Speaker 1: got to in technology. The Holy Spirit was always there
Speaker 1: because the Holy Spirit has always downloaded. Knowledge from the
Speaker 1: Divine comes in waves. It doesn't come in reason. Right.
Speaker 1: Behold is a download. They missed that that was so
Speaker 1: good it was. They get it when they watch it back,
Speaker 1: Preach it Sunday, It'll be all right. The word revelation
Speaker 1: is the Greek word apocalypse. It means to unveil. Behold,
Speaker 1: it is a download. All of a sudden, you know
Speaker 1: something that you didn't know, and it comes in a
Speaker 1: fullness and it comes and God started giving me this
Speaker 1: downloaded Oh my god, it was. It was not a
Speaker 1: normal one. It was a big one. It was too
Speaker 1: big to be a sermon. I was writing all over
Speaker 1: legal past, trying to keep up with it and trying
Speaker 1: to trying to trying to get it all together, because
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I begin to realize that when
Speaker 1: Jesus held up the cup in the Last Supper, that
Speaker 1: there was and he says, the New Testament is in
Speaker 1: my blood, that that what was in the cup had
Speaker 1: synergy with the one who held it. The grape you see,
Speaker 1: is one of the few fruits that that is raised
Speaker 1: to be crushed. And Christ was born to die, and
Speaker 1: as he held the cup, he was also the cup
Speaker 1: was a reflection of him, except that the cup had
Speaker 1: already been raised and crushed and resurrected in its eternal form.
Speaker 1: And Christ was about to be And he says, take
Speaker 1: and do this in remembrance of me. I was born
Speaker 1: to die. You're about to see me be crushed, but
Speaker 1: understand that as he crushes me like this cup, he
Speaker 1: is transforming me from grapes to wine. And I wrote
Speaker 1: this because there are so many people listening at us
Speaker 1: right now who are being crushed, some in obvious ways,
Speaker 1: some in childhood ways. There are people in here have
Speaker 1: been raped. There's people in here have been molested. There's
Speaker 1: people in here have been abused verbally, emotionally, mentally, raised
Speaker 1: without parents, never been loved, never been treated right, and
Speaker 1: they have been crushed. There are people who are being
Speaker 1: crushed right now in situations that don't work, in circumstances
Speaker 1: that are overwhelming. Sometimes the pressure is visible and you
Speaker 1: can see the assailant, but other times it's invisible. It's
Speaker 1: an emotional it's a mental, it's a turmoil. It's an
Speaker 1: internal conflict that crushes you, and you suffer in invisible ways,
Speaker 1: like a child that's been whipped and sent to school.
Speaker 1: But they wore clothes to hide the scars. And there
Speaker 1: you are walking amongst people and nobody can see that
Speaker 1: your scarred beneath it all. That's what crushing is. And
Speaker 1: there are people in this room right now who have
Speaker 1: or will or are enduring crushing moments, and they are saying,
Speaker 1: where is God? And he's under the clothes with you.
Speaker 1: He's in the pain with you. He's in the situation
Speaker 1: with you. He's in the turmoil with you. No nobody
Speaker 1: else is as brutally, brutally give me this, brutally brutally
Speaker 1: honest as God about crushing. It's right up front. The
Speaker 1: whole emblem of Christianity is a cross. Duh, It's not
Speaker 1: a crown. He comes right out front and tells you,
Speaker 1: if any man will be my disciple, pick up his
Speaker 1: cross and follow me. Come on, let's die when you win.
Speaker 1: An I talk about this in the book. I talk
Speaker 1: about the tabernacle, and the Tarbernacle stands out in the
Speaker 1: middle of the wilderness, and the flapping of the goat
Speaker 1: skins out of the the badger skins out in the
Speaker 1: middle of the wilderness. The white flapping of the skins
Speaker 1: is an indication that God wanted to meet with Man, Oil,
Speaker 1: mo Ed and Hebrew the tent of meetings, and you
Speaker 1: must come in at the door. And the door stands
Speaker 1: out starkly different from the walls around it, with its blue,
Speaker 1: and it's crimson and it's purple. It's blue for the
Speaker 1: grace of God. It's crimson for the redemptive power of God.
Speaker 1: It's purple for the majesty of God. The door stands
Speaker 1: out because it's a picture of Jesus that says, I
Speaker 1: am the door. The moment you walk through the door,
Speaker 1: the very first thing you see is a brazen altar,
Speaker 1: a dying place. No couches, no chairs, no furniture, no candles,
Speaker 1: no sense and fragrances, no aromas, no aroma therapy. The
Speaker 1: very thing you smell is the stench of burning flesh
Speaker 1: and the dripping of blood into a pan beneath it.
Speaker 1: Because God puts the pain upfront, he never hides or
Speaker 1: disguises the fact that the moment you walk into the door.
Speaker 1: You have to pay something for promotion. You have to
Speaker 1: go through process to get a promise. You have to
Speaker 1: go through pushes in order to have a crown. He
Speaker 1: puts it right right up front. He doesn't give you
Speaker 1: the labor. He doesn't you know how. They come along
Speaker 1: and they give you the little towels on the plane
Speaker 1: and all the little scented stuff. Before you do, he does,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, no. You will wash later, you will
Speaker 1: burn first, you will rear and grown. And and let
Speaker 1: me prove to you. Let me prove to you the
Speaker 1: Apostle proves to us in the New Testament. I beseech
Speaker 1: you there for a brother, and by the mercies of God,
Speaker 1: that ye present your body a living sacrifice, holy and
Speaker 1: acceptable under God. A living sacrifice is something that is
Speaker 1: put on the altar, alive. Squirming, tied to something that
Speaker 1: doesn't work, tied to something that doesn't move, tied to
Speaker 1: a marriage that doesn't work, tied to a job that
Speaker 1: doesn't work, tied to a city where you're not respected,
Speaker 1: tied to a situation where you're squirming. And God uses
Speaker 1: squirming situations to crucify the flesh. And it's all up front,
Speaker 1: and if you can make it past the first piece
Speaker 1: of furniture, then he'll wash away the stain of the
Speaker 1: blood off of your hands and take you on into
Speaker 1: an area that smells better. Because the first room, the
Speaker 1: first outer court, smells like burning flesh. But if you
Speaker 1: make it to the most holy place, what calms down
Speaker 1: the stench of death. It's the smell of burning incense.
Speaker 1: The prayers and praises of the saints drive back the
Speaker 1: smell of death. And what it costs you to be
Speaker 1: who you are, it costs you to make it now.
Speaker 1: You didn't come through that door to smell death. You
Speaker 1: came to that door to have an encounter with God.
Speaker 1: But you have to walk through the whole process and
Speaker 1: then get to the veil, and get past the veil
Speaker 1: into the holies of holies. You have gone from daylight, daylight,
Speaker 1: natural light, light that everybody sees, to candlelight, which is
Speaker 1: revelatory light, the light of God's word, to their kind
Speaker 1: of glory, which is divine light. Every step you go
Speaker 1: from transition to transition, it smells different, it looks different,
Speaker 1: it feels different. You pass the table of shoe bread,
Speaker 1: where the Bible is specific to say that the table
Speaker 1: of shoebread must be made out of fine flower. Now
Speaker 1: today we don't get that because if you want fine flower,
Speaker 1: you go buy it. But in the wilderness, if you
Speaker 1: want fine flower, were you crush it? The finest flower
Speaker 1: was the only thing that God's bread could be made
Speaker 1: out of. In other words, it had to be crushed
Speaker 1: and crushed and crushed and crushed and crushed until it
Speaker 1: was fine enough to be bred. And in our lives,
Speaker 1: when God gets ready to serve us to the world,
Speaker 1: there are certain crushings that we go through. There are
Speaker 1: certain crushings that you're going through right now in your life,
Speaker 1: and sometimes people don't see it. They don't know that
Speaker 1: you're being crushed because because sometimes you're being crushed in
Speaker 1: your heart, in your emotions. I was doing research for
Speaker 1: my book, and I found out that the same part
Speaker 1: of the brain that processes physical pain processes emotional pain.
Speaker 1: So my brain doesn't know whether my heart is broken
Speaker 1: or whether you stab me in the leg. The same
Speaker 1: part of the cerebellum that sends the message that you're
Speaker 1: in pain is just as intense about a broken heart
Speaker 1: as it is about a stabbed legs. You understand. So
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I'm in trauma, but there's no
Speaker 1: paramedic because I'm not bleeding. I'm not being crushed on
Speaker 1: the outside where you can put a tourniquet on it
Speaker 1: and send me to the emergency room. I'm being crushed
Speaker 1: in my heart. I'm being crushed by failed expectations. I'm
Speaker 1: being crushed by the fact that I'm older now and
Speaker 1: I thought I would be further than I am, and
Speaker 1: I am not. God has a whole lot of ways
Speaker 1: to crush you. I'm being crushed by bankruptcy. I'm being
Speaker 1: crushed by disappointment. I'm being crushed because I love somebody
Speaker 1: who won't love me back. I'm being crushed because I
Speaker 1: have a child who disrespects me. There are all kinds
Speaker 1: of ways for you to be crushed in places that
Speaker 1: people don't see, and it affects you like you are
Speaker 1: being stabbed. This trauma of the soul cannot be treated
Speaker 1: in the hospital. This trauma of the soul, the secret
Speaker 1: crushing that God allows us to go through sometimes in
Speaker 1: our lives, are beyond expl explanation. And yet there's not
Speaker 1: a person in this room, young or old, black or white, rich,
Speaker 1: or poor, intellectual or illiterate who escapes it. You cannot
Speaker 1: live in this world and not need what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: You cannot live in this world. I need it. Something
Speaker 1: in your life is going to be what God uses
Speaker 1: to crush you. But remember that crushing is not the end.
Speaker 1: Crushing is not. Then after the grapes have been smashed,
Speaker 1: I started into this download, and I saw the Bible
Speaker 1: said in Genesis that the heel that the seed of
Speaker 1: the woman would bruise ahead of the serpent, and serpent
Speaker 1: would bruise his heel. And I looked at the heels
Speaker 1: of Jesus. And I looked at the bruised heel of Jesus,
Speaker 1: and immediately I was taken in the spirit. And I
Speaker 1: saw women trembling on grapes. And when I saw the
Speaker 1: women trembling on grapes, I saw the stains of the
Speaker 1: grapes on the heels of their feet. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the Holy ghosts begin to connect the blood
Speaker 1: and the redemptive power of Jesus Christ with the crushing
Speaker 1: of the grape. And when I looked at Jesus holding
Speaker 1: the cup, I knew that he was in the cup.
Speaker 1: And yet he was holding the cup, and immediately I
Speaker 1: sensed in my spirits, said, I want you to go
Speaker 1: tell my people that crushing is a stage. It's not
Speaker 1: a destination. It's not a destination. It's not a destination.
Speaker 1: Do not, do not. I gotta get this out because
Speaker 1: this is important. Some people take on a pathology of pain,
Speaker 1: and they make the crushing their address, and they live
Speaker 1: in what should have been a stage, and no matter
Speaker 1: what you do, you cannot pull them out of it,
Speaker 1: because pain becomes their normal. They will provoke you till
Speaker 1: you fight them. They will push you away to you
Speaker 1: reject them because it is the thing that they are
Speaker 1: most familiar with, and they don't understand that they self
Speaker 1: sabotage their success. You're not fighting a demon, You're not
Speaker 1: fighting the devil. You are fighting the fact that you
Speaker 1: have become so accustomed to pain that it is your
Speaker 1: place of residency. And I challenge you today to shatter
Speaker 1: your way out, to break your way out. If you
Speaker 1: can't get out of the door, come out of the window.
Speaker 1: I challenge you today. I challenge you to be happy,
Speaker 1: even if being happy feels funny. I challenge you to
Speaker 1: have joy if you feel even if it feels like
Speaker 1: it's phony, even if it's not you, if it's not
Speaker 1: your personality, it's not going to be you at first.
Speaker 1: What do you mean? How do you do that? Because
Speaker 1: because when you are used to being miserable, you will
Speaker 1: provoke everything around you until you are miserable. Your self
Speaker 1: sabotagey because you made what should have been a process,
Speaker 1: you have made it permanent, and now it's you doing it.
Speaker 1: It's not God doing it. It's you doing it to yourself.
Speaker 1: And God is steadily trying to rescue you out of
Speaker 1: the pit, Joseph, but you won't grab the rope because
Speaker 1: you have become so comfortable in the pit that even
Speaker 1: when God sends the minion knites to pull you out
Speaker 1: of the pit, you choose to stay in the pit
Speaker 1: because you like it down here. I like it down here.
Speaker 1: Ain't nobody bothered me down here. I just like to
Speaker 1: be by myself. I want to be alone. I'm just
Speaker 1: that kind of person I'm being No, you're not. It
Speaker 1: is not good for man to be alone. Your creator
Speaker 1: said you were not designed to be alone. You have
Speaker 1: allowed the process to become permanent. So when you break out, Stephen,
Speaker 1: you feel strange. You feel like an immigrant. You feel
Speaker 1: like a foreigner, you feel like you're in a strange situation,
Speaker 1: and you want to retreat back to the familiar, because
Speaker 1: even though it's toxic, it's become your normal. And so
Speaker 1: when you start getting into these other atmosphere you can't
Speaker 1: wait to get back to the familiarity of this self
Speaker 1: inflicted torture that you put on yourself. And anybody who
Speaker 1: says you preach nice so you look nice good, you
Speaker 1: don't believe them because believing them would free you. You
Speaker 1: you you don't believe them. If you believe them, that
Speaker 1: would free you. Jesus said, you shall know the truth,
Speaker 1: and the truth shall make you free. That means if
Speaker 1: I was the double, all I have to do to
Speaker 1: keep you balance, keep you from knowing it. You can
Speaker 1: be beautiful, just don't know it. You can be wonderful,
Speaker 1: just don't know it. You can be effective, just don't
Speaker 1: know it. You can be smart, just don't know it.
Speaker 1: And so the enemy keeps you blind to what you
Speaker 1: have because you're not used to light. The hardest thing
Speaker 1: in the world is to go from dark rooms into
Speaker 1: bright light. And so all of a sudden you say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's too much. And so when God does want to
Speaker 1: emancipate you, you have a tendency to go back into
Speaker 1: the crushing place because it is your familiar place. But
Speaker 1: in order for you to find your strength, you have
Speaker 1: to not only go into the crushing, you must come
Speaker 1: out of it. You cannot make wine underfeat. It has
Speaker 1: to come from the crushing stage to get to the
Speaker 1: wine stage. It has to survive and talk about the
Speaker 1: fermenting stage and all of that in the book, and
Speaker 1: it has to go through these different stages ultimately to
Speaker 1: become wine. And grapes are at their best when they
Speaker 1: are wine. Grapes are at their best when they are wine.
Speaker 1: They are strongest when they are wine. They are more
Speaker 1: effective when they are wine. They can affect the consumer
Speaker 1: when they are wine. They infiltrate the blood system when
Speaker 1: they are wine, like you got to go through digestion.
Speaker 1: You understand what I'm talking about. Please, please please, I
Speaker 1: feel in my spirit God breaking through some deeply personal
Speaker 1: things in this room. Some things that we don't get
Speaker 1: on Sunday morning and that we don't talk about, and
Speaker 1: that we don't expose people to. Some pathologies, some ways
Speaker 1: in which you process yourself that keeps you underfoot. And
Speaker 1: I wrote crushing to tell you, yes, you go through it,
Speaker 1: and I go through it, and we go through it,
Speaker 1: and we all go through it. And I've never met
Speaker 1: anybody extremely gifted who has not gone through extremely crushing.
Speaker 1: But none of them stayed there. And I believe that
Speaker 1: many of you your time has come to come out
Speaker 1: from underfoot, even if the foot is your own, and
Speaker 1: to finish the process of becoming what God had in mind.
Speaker 1: Jesus says, Father, Now glorify me with the glory that
Speaker 1: I had with you before the foundations of the world.
Speaker 1: Take me back to what you had in mind. Now.
Speaker 1: The cross is the transportation, It is not the destination. Wow.
Speaker 1: First thing my grandmother taught me I was walking through
Speaker 1: the house. I was a little boy. I'll never forget it.
Speaker 1: I had bought a crucifix somewhere and it's still you know,
Speaker 1: a crucifix has Christ on the cross. And she said, no, baby,
Speaker 1: she said, don't wearry that. He's not there anymore. He's
Speaker 1: not there anymore. It's important that the cross be empty
Speaker 1: to remind you that he did not get stuck in
Speaker 1: a stage. I mean, said, touch somebody and say I'm
Speaker 1: not there anymore. I'm not there anymore. Some people need
Speaker 1: you to be there because they have built a system
Speaker 1: around your pain, and they have they have created jobs
Speaker 1: around your dysfunction, and they don't want you to get
Speaker 1: well because if you got well, they're afraid that they
Speaker 1: might not be important to you. And sometimes it's not
Speaker 1: in their interest for you to recover. I'm going on
Speaker 1: and on. Let me turn up. I should write a book, aside,
Speaker 1: I should write a book. It's like therapy. I'm settled.
Speaker 1: I should I should write a book because what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about is so personal that you should be in
Speaker 1: your bed reading this where I told them, I told
Speaker 1: them now this is I'm old school, so look over me.
Speaker 1: This is even look over. I still like books. Now
Speaker 1: we have the books and stuff like that. That's nice.
Speaker 1: And to all of you that are different, get the
Speaker 1: e books and then we have audiobooks and we have
Speaker 1: it in Spanish and all that kind of stuff. I
Speaker 1: like books. I like books so that I can dog
Speaker 1: hear the pages and bend it back and abuse the
Speaker 1: book and write my stuff on top of the book.
Speaker 1: Because when you hear a writer, think that's what reading is.
Speaker 1: Is to hear your writer think. It impregnates you with
Speaker 1: thought until you start thinking things that are not even
Speaker 1: in the book. And so I like to write little things,
Speaker 1: little notes that came to me as a result of
Speaker 1: something I read in the book. And I like to
Speaker 1: get like a little bit of jelly on the book
Speaker 1: and spill my coffee on it, or just a little bit,
Speaker 1: just a little bit, so that I got high lighted
Speaker 1: parts of the book and notes in the book, and
Speaker 1: a little bit of jelly and a little coffee. But
Speaker 1: then somebody wants to bob, no, you can't have my book.
Speaker 1: That's a DNA in there, my favorites, and to beget
Speaker 1: a wife from me. That's my book. You cannot lead.
Speaker 1: If you do not read, you cannot lead. We have
Speaker 1: raised a world that has everything so automated that we're
Speaker 1: afraid of quiet. We want little sound bites information. So
Speaker 1: what happens? Let me tell you what this generation does.
Speaker 1: I can post an excerpt from the book on Instagram.
Speaker 1: It can blow your socks off and you will repost it,
Speaker 1: but not read the book. So you walk away with
Speaker 1: cliches but no wisdom. So when the enemy tries you
Speaker 1: and finds out that there's nothing beneath you but something
Speaker 1: that you reposted but you really don't understand, and you
Speaker 1: really have delved down into and he starts attacking you
Speaker 1: on the level that you spoke on. You're not able
Speaker 1: to stand up against it because you don't have the
Speaker 1: roots you understand. I'm sad. I sense that coming through
Speaker 1: in the book that you're frustrated with this microwave mentality. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're frustrated with this skim the surface spirituality. Yes, that
Speaker 1: you're seeing a failure of it in the church and
Speaker 1: in our lives. Yes, And I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave this world without making sure that what our
Speaker 1: fathers passed to us, it's passed to you. Our father
Speaker 1: sat around the dinner tables and talked about the Lord,
Speaker 1: and we would wash dishes and do anything just to
Speaker 1: be in the kitchen or be around where the conversations
Speaker 1: were being held. And and and the level of our
Speaker 1: thought was cultivated because we got to be in the
Speaker 1: room where it happened, where it happened, where it happened.
Speaker 1: And so I'm writing, and I'm teaching, and I'm speaking
Speaker 1: at this season in my life because I think I
Speaker 1: see a fading away, generals going home, generals going home,
Speaker 1: or Roberts gone home, Billy Graham gone home. Countless people
Speaker 1: gone home that that we loved and cherish of all
Speaker 1: racist colors and hymns all denominations. Some of our top
Speaker 1: thinkers are going home, and they're being replaced with our
Speaker 1: top tweeters. And so we're now breaking because it's trending.
Speaker 1: My god, it's trending. You know, it's trending. It's trending.
Speaker 1: And what I want is to get the word in
Speaker 1: a place that can't be hacked. Thy word have I
Speaker 1: hid in my heart so that what I'm talking about
Speaker 1: is so deep. It has to get in you to
Speaker 1: heal you. It can't just be something cute you put
Speaker 1: on so you get more followers. I don't want to
Speaker 1: do that with you. I didn't come up here so
Speaker 1: you get more followers. I want you to get this
Speaker 1: down in you so that when you had one of
Speaker 1: those bad nights like I've had, where you're curled up
Speaker 1: in a corner and you really secretly want to die,
Speaker 1: that you have enough inside and you to pull you
Speaker 1: up off of the floor and get you back up
Speaker 1: from your feet a going I want to put enough
Speaker 1: word in you so that when you are holding your
Speaker 1: mother like I held mine, and watch her gasp and die,
Speaker 1: and feel her body get cold in your arms and
Speaker 1: rock her to see stiff, that you'll have something inside
Speaker 1: of you that will not break, that will not fade away,
Speaker 1: that will not fall apart, that will make you able
Speaker 1: to stand even if the person you love walks out
Speaker 1: on you, that you cry, but you don't die. This
Speaker 1: this is not about selling books. It's about leaving footprints.
Speaker 1: I'm okay. If you don't get in the book, I'll
Speaker 1: be fine. I'm good. This is not about commercialization. I
Speaker 1: say I'm good because all my kids are grumba. I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm good. We can downside and live in the trailer somewhere.
Speaker 1: We make it. We'll be all right. We will make
Speaker 1: it to old age. We are in old age now,
Speaker 1: but we're in denial. I want to leave footprints behind.
Speaker 1: My son is in this room right now. I want
Speaker 1: to say something that outlives me. I want to say
Speaker 1: something that catches in when I'm dead. I want to
Speaker 1: say something that becomes fuel for the next two hundred years,
Speaker 1: that lives on in your mouth and the mouths of
Speaker 1: your children. I'm way past needing to be known, have
Speaker 1: smell the fragrance of his presence as unworthy as I am,
Speaker 1: and I have this this need to tell you, and
Speaker 1: he's more than amazing, that he's greater than religion, and
Speaker 1: he's better than your dogma and your creed and your
Speaker 1: doctrines and your theology. That sometimes he saw the only
Speaker 1: thing in an unstable world that keeps you from falling
Speaker 1: absolutely apart. So I call it crushing, and I want
Speaker 1: to tell you so I'm going to be honest with you.
Speaker 1: The subtitle really is in mine, it's what the it's
Speaker 1: what the publishers. One of my title really was crushing
Speaker 1: is the end, because the substratum of the Bunk is
Speaker 1: really about not getting stuck in a stage and deteriorating
Speaker 1: and rotting and giving it up on yourself and your
Speaker 1: dreams and how to be productive at every stage of
Speaker 1: your life and not to think because you have a setback,
Speaker 1: that this is not God and that you can't win
Speaker 1: and that you can't be successful. Because I would not
Speaker 1: be here if I believe the first ten years of
Speaker 1: my pastor, and I wouldn't be here. Wow, I passed
Speaker 1: the first few years of my church, sitting on a
Speaker 1: piano bench. My foot was the drum I played for
Speaker 1: myself while I was preaching. I took all the money
Speaker 1: from my job and put it into my church. My
Speaker 1: mama was frying fish and chicken behind the wall because
Speaker 1: she believed in my d and had success been determined
Speaker 1: by numbers, I would have quit. But the Bible said,
Speaker 1: after you suffered a while, I'll establish shit and make
Speaker 1: you perfect. When I started preaching all over the country,
Speaker 1: like you're preaching all over the country, I was still
Speaker 1: pastoring the storefront and they were making fun of me
Speaker 1: because I was preaching in all the biggest churches around
Speaker 1: the country, and I came home to a storefront. It
Speaker 1: was so small that when people came to visit me,
Speaker 1: I was standing at the front door and watch them
Speaker 1: drive past. No, I'm not being fun. I'm telling the truth.
Speaker 1: They would be looking for my church. It was at
Speaker 1: that point. It was right across the street from Rose
Speaker 1: City Cafeteria in South Charles and Westernginia, and they would
Speaker 1: be driving past. They were looking for one of those
Speaker 1: big places. They went right past my church like it
Speaker 1: wasn't even there. When I got on national television. I
Speaker 1: had one person, one staff person in our entire ministry.
Speaker 1: We had eight thousand dollars in the bay and the
Speaker 1: first time one eight hundred Bishop Too rang in. I
Speaker 1: had all the church mothers answering the phones. I had
Speaker 1: a phone in the pulpit. I had a phone in
Speaker 1: the sound room. I had a phone in my office,
Speaker 1: and I had a phone in Beverly's office. And I
Speaker 1: had all these old ladies asking the fellow saying what
Speaker 1: ain't hand Bishop too? And they were writing stuff, and
Speaker 1: we couldn't even read what the people had said. We
Speaker 1: couldn't read the prayer request because our hands was shaken.
Speaker 1: And I only I didn't own a duplicator. I borrowed
Speaker 1: a duplicator from Brian Keith Williams and drove to Columbus,
Speaker 1: Ohio to get it. To just start duplicating pape. It
Speaker 1: does not matter where you start, do you hear me?
Speaker 1: It does not matter where you start, It matters where
Speaker 1: you finish. It does not matter how you suffer. It
Speaker 1: does not matter how they laugh at you and make
Speaker 1: fun of you. They told jokes about me. They said
Speaker 1: I never have anything. They said I couldn't preach. They
Speaker 1: said I couldn't pastor they said, they said, they said,
Speaker 1: they said, they said that none of it was true,
Speaker 1: None of it was true. Do you have to hold
Speaker 1: your truth inside of you? You have to know when
Speaker 1: all hell is breaking loose, and he that has begun
Speaker 1: a good work in you shall perform it until the
Speaker 1: day of Jesus Christ. I know I'm probably gone over it.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm suppore to do. How many
Speaker 1: people are being blessed tonight? How many people needed this
Speaker 1: word from God about trusting tone everybody in here who's
Speaker 1: been through something Prussian just touch somebody and tell them
Speaker 1: it crushed me and crust me. But I survived. Crowd
Speaker 1: but I survived, and trust me, but I survived. I
Speaker 1: went to a test that I survived because I figure
Speaker 1: if you would tell them that it crushed you. I
Speaker 1: think that if you would tell them and stop acting
Speaker 1: like you don't relate to this, then we would see
Speaker 1: survivors and other people would learn that that you that
Speaker 1: there's something beyond the crushing. That grapes do turn to wine,
Speaker 1: that crosses turned to crown, the pain turns to power,
Speaker 1: the scars turn the stars. Somebody needs to know that
Speaker 1: you and Honeyboo didn't live together happily for fifty years.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you just came home because that's where your shoes were.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she faced the east and you face the west,
Speaker 1: and your hip bones didn't even touch. You was so
Speaker 1: far apart. I can sleep on you know, that little
Speaker 1: rail on the side of the mattress. I can get
Speaker 1: my whole big body, the entirety of my two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty plus bounds, can lay right on that edge
Speaker 1: all night long and knock fall off the edge. Yes
Speaker 1: it can, Yes it can. We got people that get
Speaker 1: married and if everything isn't wonderful, in nine months, they're out.
Speaker 1: They've been in twelve churches, they quit every job they
Speaker 1: had because they don't recognize your worth and who you are.
Speaker 1: Shut up, Shut up, grab a broom, sweet mop, do something.
Speaker 1: God puts you there to learn something. It's not always
Speaker 1: about the money. Sometimes it's about the moment. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: about somebody you met. Sometimes it's somebody got sent you
Speaker 1: there to influence. Everything is not about you. We talk
Speaker 1: like this, you and I all the time. If all
Speaker 1: of y'all left, we would still be sitting there talking
Speaker 1: like this. We talk like this on the phone because
Speaker 1: you know what your pastor has greatness in him, and
Speaker 1: you know what greatness needs. Greatness always needs a friend.
Speaker 1: Greatness always needs somebody to say I'm scared. Greatness always
Speaker 1: needs somebody who will not judge you criticize. Greatness always
Speaker 1: needs a soft place to fall because sometimes being great
Speaker 1: ain't so great. Sometimes being great means being crushed and
Speaker 1: not being allowed to whimper. Sometimes being great means bearing
Speaker 1: the fact that you're in a crushing season and helping
Speaker 1: other people and going home empty yourself. Sometimes being great
Speaker 1: means giving all of your courage to people until they
Speaker 1: go home encourage and you get in your card discourage
Speaker 1: and sit up to two or three o'clock in the
Speaker 1: morning trying to get yourself to sleep. So before you
Speaker 1: become jealous of anybody you see on any stage, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be preaching the hip hop. I don't
Speaker 1: care what it is poetry, drama, art, science, math, technology,
Speaker 1: I don't care what platform it may be. They didn't
Speaker 1: get there because they were cute. They got there because
Speaker 1: they were crushed. And all I want to be is
Speaker 1: it's some soft place for you to say I'm tired
Speaker 1: or i'm mad, I'm aggravated, I got a revolution, I
Speaker 1: heard from God, or I feel empty. And the reason
Speaker 1: I want to give you that is because I know
Speaker 1: so well what it is to need that, and I
Speaker 1: know how valuable it is when you are crushing secret places.
Speaker 1: Nobody comforts you when you are Superman. Nobody knows your
Speaker 1: Clark kim Ya. And for every heroic mama, grandmama, big mama, daddy,
Speaker 1: big brother, uncle, single parent in this room, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. You know that Mama's not always
Speaker 1: as happy as the kids think she is. You know
Speaker 1: that it's not always as easy to be daddy as
Speaker 1: it looks like it is. You know what it is
Speaker 1: to have to be consistent while you are being crushed.
Speaker 1: It is to you that I write, It is to
Speaker 1: you that I breathe. It is you that gave me calling.
Speaker 1: All of these years, I'm called to you. I always
Speaker 1: have been, I always have been, I probably always will be.
Speaker 1: Can I can I get up? I want to get up.
Speaker 1: I want to get up. I want I want to
Speaker 1: tell you that I'm I'm here for you. I ain't much,
Speaker 1: I ain't much, but he called me because of you.
Speaker 1: When I first started preaching earlier in my ministry. I
Speaker 1: wasn't used to big stages, of big crowds, and all
Speaker 1: of the heat, and all of the and all of
Speaker 1: the criticism and all of the envy and all of
Speaker 1: the strife and all the stuff. Let me fix my clothes, Lord,
Speaker 1: fix the old man up. If you're gonna be standing
Speaker 1: behind me, Lisia can at Lisia can do it. Fix
Speaker 1: me up. And when this old country boy first got
Speaker 1: exposed to what it costs to be up front, I
Speaker 1: didn't want it. And I'd gone to evangel Temple in
Speaker 1: d C. And preach, and I decided, I'm appreciate night,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quit. The Washington Post had written a blistering
Speaker 1: what I thought was a blistering article about me, because
Speaker 1: that's what they do. They never write blistering articles about
Speaker 1: preachers that aren't big enough to be known, because then
Speaker 1: the controversy sales product. You have to be big enough
Speaker 1: to be attacked. I should have seen it as a compliment,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't mature enough to understand that levels bring
Speaker 1: new devils and that promotions bring new problems. And I
Speaker 1: didn't understand that to be in the paper at all,
Speaker 1: Even though I wasn't misunderstood, and the paper meant that
Speaker 1: I was significant enough to be evaluated. I hadn't gotten
Speaker 1: there yet, so I wanted to quit. And I decided
Speaker 1: this my last sermon. I preached my head off and
Speaker 1: I said that's it. And I was in act Ours Fellowship,
Speaker 1: and they kept worrying me about some woman downstairs that
Speaker 1: morning to see me. And I said, well, she's there
Speaker 1: when I come down. Because I was tired, I wasn't
Speaker 1: going down. That was my way. Again. I said, she's
Speaker 1: there when I come down, I'll talk to her. Well.
Speaker 1: I finally came downstairs. This woman was standing there. She
Speaker 1: was tiny and frail and shaken, and she said, I
Speaker 1: came all the way here to see you. She said,
Speaker 1: I just got out of the hospital. I checked myself out.
Speaker 1: She said I was carrying a dead baby in my
Speaker 1: boom and the baby was rotting inside of me. And
Speaker 1: I've never been so sick in all of my life.
Speaker 1: And she said the only thing that kept me alive
Speaker 1: was hearing you preach. Wow. And she said, if you
Speaker 1: didn't keep preaching, I would have died. And she said
Speaker 1: the Lord spoke to me and told me to get
Speaker 1: up out of the hospital and go find you and
Speaker 1: to tell you it's not for them that you preach.
Speaker 1: It's for us. She said, it's for us. It's not
Speaker 1: for them, it's for us. I staggered back like she
Speaker 1: shot me. I got in the car, man and I
Speaker 1: cried all the way all the way home. I couldn't
Speaker 1: stop crying because that woman I didn't even know reminded
Speaker 1: me why I am breathing. Now. That was early in
Speaker 1: my ministry and right at the point it was beginning
Speaker 1: to explode. Last year, two years ago, I was on
Speaker 1: a book tour and this woman walked up to me
Speaker 1: at the signing and she said, you remember that lady
Speaker 1: that came to see you at evangel Temple. And when
Speaker 1: she said I started crying. I lost it immediately. She said,
Speaker 1: I'm that woman, and I told her. I said, I
Speaker 1: prayed nor name or nothing. I prayed that I would
Speaker 1: see her again to tell her thank you, because when
Speaker 1: I was being crushed, she reminded me of why I breed.
Speaker 1: While God was toughening me up enough to stand the
Speaker 1: weight of something that he called me to do that
Speaker 1: I didn't even have, for he sent an angel right
Speaker 1: out of the hospital to tell me don't get stuck
Speaker 1: in the crushing, that when this is over, you shall
Speaker 1: come forth as kid. And I feel like I'm here
Speaker 1: for a reason. I don't care whether you get a
Speaker 1: book or not. But I'm here for a reason. I
Speaker 1: wrote the bookfore reason. I'm standing here for a reason
Speaker 1: because I think that I'm supposed to give to you
Speaker 1: what was given to me. That if you are in
Speaker 1: or have been in your question place, don't you die here.
Speaker 1: Don't you let somebody standing on the outside and you
Speaker 1: say something about you that makes you die. Don't you
Speaker 1: let somebody who left you or forsook you, or divorce you,
Speaker 1: or denied you or betrayed you make you hate your
Speaker 1: life enough that you stop breathing before you see the
Speaker 1: fulfillment of the promise of God in your life. And So,
Speaker 1: whether you're in this room, or whether you're in one
Speaker 1: of the campuses, or whether you're in an overflow room,
Speaker 1: or whether you're standing outside peeking in the door, whether
Speaker 1: you're streaming online, I wrote a book that ain't sexy
Speaker 1: and ain't for about the promises of God. In Three
Speaker 1: Ways to be Blessing, Five Ways to get a new car,
Speaker 1: and two Ways to get your house painted while you
Speaker 1: sit on your couch. I wrote to the people who
Speaker 1: have been crushed. I want, I want, I want to
Speaker 1: do something. I'm gonna keep going till he grabbed me.
Speaker 1: I want you to reach out and touch somebody next
Speaker 1: to you, and not just assume that they're okay, even
Speaker 1: if you're married to them. I'm serious, because you can
Speaker 1: be being crushed laying next to somebody who has no
Speaker 1: idea that you are being crushed, and some of us
Speaker 1: are so masterful at being crushed at it that it's
Speaker 1: become normal. You might be touching somebody right now who
Speaker 1: has got stuck in a state of crushing and they
Speaker 1: can't get out. You might be touching somebody who runs away,
Speaker 1: anybody who looks like they care about them because they're
Speaker 1: scared of rejection and the only way of coping is
Speaker 1: to not let you in, because if I don't let
Speaker 1: you in, then I don't have to see you go.
Speaker 1: You might be touching somebody who was abused as a child,
Speaker 1: great birelative, and they are all made up and gusted
Speaker 1: up and looking good, and they don't want you to
Speaker 1: know that they have nightmares and terrors and flashbikes. You
Speaker 1: might be touching somebody who's trying to be a father
Speaker 1: and didn't have one, trying to be a man and
Speaker 1: never saw one. You might be touching somebody who's trying
Speaker 1: to find love and live with the man, but they'd
Speaker 1: never lived with a man before, and they don't understand men,
Speaker 1: and they're married to a man, but they talk to
Speaker 1: him like he's a woman because they never had a father,
Speaker 1: and men are a mystery. You might be talking to
Speaker 1: somebody who's trying to raise a child and you gave
Speaker 1: him everything, and they're still angry and disrespectful, and you
Speaker 1: work like a dog, so they'd have the best of everything,
Speaker 1: And now when you need them the most, they don't
Speaker 1: understand you. And you don't feel appreciated, and you don't
Speaker 1: feel loved, and you come to church sometimes it's your
Speaker 1: only escapist to get in the house of God and
Speaker 1: worship yourself till you are drunk because you can't deal
Speaker 1: with what's going on in your life. Squeeze that person's
Speaker 1: hand right there, because that's who I came to talk
Speaker 1: to tonight. And we come in all colors, and we
Speaker 1: come in all racists, and we come in all genders
Speaker 1: and all ages. Because the one thing about pain, it
Speaker 1: ain't never prejudice. It to get everybody. It a get anybody,
Speaker 1: It to get any gender, any race, any orientation. Pain
Speaker 1: will come anywhere. So squeeze a hand to let them
Speaker 1: know that they are not alone. And so here I stand, Lord,
Speaker 1: with these your people. These are your grapes, clusters and
Speaker 1: clusters and clusters of grapes that at some point, at
Speaker 1: some time or another, they have gone through something, maybe
Speaker 1: going through something right now. But oh God, I know
Speaker 1: you're the wine maker. Whoa glory to God. I know
Speaker 1: you are the wine maker. I know you're not finished
Speaker 1: with them. I know you're not through with them. I
Speaker 1: know it ain't over yet. I know it's not over yet.
Speaker 1: And I pray God that you give them, give them
Speaker 1: a faith injection in this little bit of time I
Speaker 1: tried to impart just a fragment of what you gave me.
Speaker 1: I pray Lord, not only would they get the things
Speaker 1: that I wrote in the book, but I pray God
Speaker 1: that you would say stuff to them that I didn't
Speaker 1: know the right, that you would talk to them about
Speaker 1: the specific tool you used in their life to crush
Speaker 1: them and go beyond that and show them the triumphant
Speaker 1: plan that you have to raise them up above where
Speaker 1: they have ever been before. I pray God that revival
Speaker 1: would break not so much in the country, not so
Speaker 1: much even in the church. I'm not praying that revival
Speaker 1: would break out in elevation. I pray revival would break
Speaker 1: out in your chest. I pray that revival would break
Speaker 1: out in your spirit, and in your mind, and in
Speaker 1: your being and in your soul. I pray that worship
Speaker 1: service would break out in your car, that you go
Speaker 1: home worshiping God so strong that you'd have to sit
Speaker 1: in the parking lot for a while to get yourself together,
Speaker 1: because the glory of the Lord has set all over you,
Speaker 1: and the power of God has overshadowed you. Father. I
Speaker 1: pray for this young lion pauling behind me. I pray
Speaker 1: that his teeth be sharp and his back be straight.
Speaker 1: I pray that his head be held up high. And
Speaker 1: I pray Lord that you'd make his feet at Hind's
Speaker 1: feet strong enough to climb for years and years and
Speaker 1: years and years and years to come, and that he
Speaker 1: would do like David and serve his generation well. I
Speaker 1: pray that the power of God would overshadow every pastor
Speaker 1: in this room, in the overflow in other places, watching online,
Speaker 1: every leader, every feeder, every single mama, every daddy trying
Speaker 1: to be a dad, every man trying to pull his weight,
Speaker 1: every young boy trying to figure out who he is
Speaker 1: and get himself together, and wishes he was further than
Speaker 1: he was right now. I pray that the poem God
Speaker 1: would find him. Thank you for the opportunity to be
Speaker 1: used in this small way to speak to these your
Speaker 1: children in Jesus' name. Amen, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to
Speaker 1: this ministry. Is because of you that this ministry is possible.
Speaker 1: You can click the link in the description to give
Speaker 1: now or visit Elevationchurch dot org slash podcast for more
Speaker 1: information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe.
Speaker 1: You can share it with your friends. You can click
Speaker 1: the share button, take a screenshot and share it on
Speaker 1: your social stories and tag us at Elevation Church. Thanks
Speaker 1: again for listening. God bless you