Dig Your Way Out Of It - Bishop T.D. Jakes and Friends

[Music] well i was praying about what to do and one of the things that i'm learning is that when god delivers a mighty word when god delivers a strong word that it's not always good to throw another word on top of that word without really digging down into that word oh amen amen because just because we taught it doesn't mean that you fully got it bri bring that shovel because i said something about digging out digging out yeah we're we're gonna dig this thing now this particular shovel pastor robinson let me borrow it this is one of the shovels that we use for the groundbreaking of the building you're in right now see that and that means that that that the building you're in right now started with with a shovel and a big hole in the ground and for me this means a whole lot of stuff this means a whole lot of stuff because at the time i held this shovel in my hand to thrust it into the ground to build an 80 i think it was a 86 83 million dollar building uh i didn't have the money i didn't i didn't even have i didn't even have the down payment on the money i didn't have a loan approved i didn't have a bank that was give us the money i had enough money to dig out the hole and we dug we we dug out the hole not just with shovel but with bulldozers we dug out the hole we dug the hole we dug the hole and it was a big huge hole and it was so exciting and the church was excited and they were dancing and shouting because i was preaching faith and power and we dug the hole and they started shouting until grass started growing in it and they were still shouting a little bit but then then water started filling up the hole and time passed and i couldn't get a breakthrough and and while we were digging the hole to build the building i ended up having to dig a hole to bury my mother so when i see this shovel i see a whole i see a whole lot of things i see stress and struggle and and pain and and i finally drove past the whole i draft pass this was a hole i drafted past it every day going around to the building i told god i said i'm not worried about that building i said i'm not building that for my children i don't have a five this is for your children and if you don't provide for your children i'm gonna have the biggest swimming pool in dallas i am i'm gonna put some concrete in it and paint it blue and just open up the biggest swimming pool that they have ever seen in all their life because the battle is not mine [Music] y'all don't hear what i'm saying it belongs to the lord i said it belongs to the lord and and we're we're gonna talk tonight uh i got so many uh praise reports and testimonies uh from from building for expansion when i was teaching on it sunday so many people said it blessed them and touched them it changed their lives people were talking about how they were crying how they were touched we're going to go a little bit deeper because everywhere i could go on instagram facebook twitter everywhere else they were saying i got my shovel and i'm ready to dig and somebody was showing me emojis of people digging i i didn't even know they had emojis of people digging i guess they call them emojis those little video things and and they digging they just digging and digging then digging and digging then they start digging again the same dig that they dug before and everybody was sending me stuff like that about digging and stuff like that and i wondered in my mind beyond the excitement when it comes to practicality do we really understand what that means let's back up a minute and go back to the text where i started from when when i started into the text i i was i was in second kings 3 8 through 19 and and i'm not gonna give you the whole thing but tonight instead of talking about building for expansion we're gonna talk about dig your way out okay dig your way out i made a statement in the early part and it says and he said which way shall we go up and he answered the way through the wilderness of edom so the king of israel went and the king of judah and the king of edom the king of israel the king of judah and the king of edom now i want to stop there and say something to you the king of israel jehoshaphat no jehoram the king of judah jehoshaphat and the king of edom had nothing in common they had nothing in common they had different belief systems they had different people but they had come together because they had a common enemy the moabites were trying to destroy them and the reason i stress that point is that sometimes people only want to work with people who are like them who look like them or who act like them or who vote like them or who think like them or who worship like them you know people have all these ideas what are you doing with so-and-so and so come out from among them and be separated but be separated doesn't mean that god won't use other people to be a blessing in your life in fact god used prostitutes oh y'all don't know your bible he he he he used some of the most ungodly people he sent old backslidden jonah to preach the gospel jonah the runaway preacher who openly defied and disobeyed god sent him to run a revival and the revival was effective the whole nation got saved and jonah got mad and god still used it because in order to accomplish his purpose god will use whosoever he will to get done what he's trying to get done you should learn something from god about that when god gives you a purpose he may not use your relatives and he may not use your friends and he may not use who you had in mind but when god determines to bless you you've got to build a circle that doesn't stress you come on somebody you got to build a circle that doesn't stretch you and some of you are so particular about who you connect with that your vision is delayed suppose the king of judah would have said i have been loyal to god i have served god when when the king of israel way back when you all were serving idols and worshiping bail your mama was jezebel i had no deal with you your mama was jezebel tried to kill my teacher why would i have anything to do with you your father was an idolater and even though you weren't as bad as they were you have your issues with jehovah he said no no no no for the immediate need it is expedient that we form connection to overcome the moabites because the moabites have threatened to kill us and come on king of edom i'll take you too i'm not an edomite but i'll connect with you there are not be such a thing as black churches and white churches and latino churches and millennial churches and boomer churches and baptist churches and methodist churches and all kind of we got all kinds of ways to describe our biases but in reality when you get in trouble i mean really in trouble when you really get in trouble i've been in trouble and had a doctor and couldn't spell his name but if he could get me better if he could get me better i went and got the treatment you hear what i'm saying i went to and i'd be asking my wife what was his name again but if if the medicine is good if the surgery is good i do i never asked the paramedic what his faith was before he he he came on a carpet no no no don't touch me you you no no you jehovah witness you can't touch me no no i don't care what you are give me that oxygen give me that put the oxygen on we will convert you later but right now i got to breathe we'll have a religious theological debate in a minute but right now i'm focused on breathing now maybe you're different maybe you would rather asphyxiate but me i like breathing i know that's crazy but i kind of like breathing and if i can get some oxygen i don't care whether it's white folks oxygen or black folks oxygen or jamaican oxygen or haitian or oxygen i just a brother like me just want some oxygen you understand what i'm saying i don't care whether what color my waiter is i don't care if it's a woman or a man if i if i want some chicken just bring me some chicken he can bring a little boy bring me some chicken bring me some chicken i want to eat they formed an alliance and the alliance led to the destruction of the moabites because they understood how to make connection and then they started through the wilderness and they got in the middle of the wilderness at the word of the prophet and they found out in order to go further they had to dig ditches into a dry riverbed now the riverbed was already big enough to hold water but what god was going to do was so much bigger than the riverbed that the prophet said dig ditches in your valley and seven days into the trip they had to dig ditches in their valley in the wilderness without water in the hot sun so they had to sweat it out and god did not alleviate the sweat to perform the miracle oh god did not alleviate the sweat see see a lot of us we are sitting back like this you know when the lord gets ready he gonna make the way and i'm gonna sit here and wait on the lord had they sat there in the wilderness and waited on the lord they would have died they had to have the faith to go as far as they could with what they had and as they as they began to sweat in the wilderness every shovel god didn't send them no cloud no thunder no encouragement no sign that help was on the way somebody watching me right now you don't even see daylight you don't see no sign that help is on the way but just because you don't see no wind and just because you don't see no rain that mean you're not gonna get water the lord said i'm gonna send you the water you're not gonna see it coming how many people are ready for a blessing you don't even see coming and unexpected supernatural blessing to sustain you and give you increase and take you to the i don't know about you but i'm ready i'm ready for it i'm ready for i'm ready for god to rock my world and blow my mind all at the same time to rock my world and blow my mind and i'm making room for it i'm making it increa increase increase my my constant prayer is increase my capacity to pass to to go from pastoring in west virginia a storefront church to pastor in this church god had to increase my capacity i had never had to believe god for that kind of money and that kind of crowd this many pews and this much staff i got as many staff members as i had church members at one time and i said god you're gonna have to increase my capacity capacity capacity for pressure capacity for deadlines capacity for stress capacity for anxiety i got here i ran into problems that i had never seen in west virginia but if god thought enough of me to sin me whom the lord calls he qualifies and i came to tell every person in this room you can do this i know it's hot but you can do this i know you're sweating but you can do this i know it's tough and the ground is hard but you can do this or god wouldn't have put you in the situation in the first place if you can't do this look at somebody and and just yell at them like you yell at your kids don't use your little nice voice you use the word like you yell at your kids say you can do this [Applause] [Music] you can do this you can do this don't give up on your dream don't give up on your hope don't give up on your promise don't give up on your prophecy don't give up on your destiny don't give up on what god calls you can do you can do this it may stretch you it may expand you it may enlarge you you may have to build more structure but you can do this i rebuke every devil that's been telling you that you don't have what it takes to get the job done you can god i feel like i'm talking to somebody already you you you can do this i never did it before yeah but you can do this they've never done it before but you get to i didn't study this at school yeah i get that but you can do this i don't have a degree in that yeah i get that but you can do this if you couldn't do this god wouldn't put you in the situation whom he calls he qualifies you can do this you can do this and if you don't know what you're doing get somebody who does and partner with them say i got the calling and you got the information let's get together and make this happen you can do this partnership right there that partnership is the way to prophecy when you partner god makes it possible god told eve it must prevail so you bring forth children but she couldn't do it by herself he said the seed of the woman should rise up and bruise the head of the serpent and the serpent shall bruise his heel hey problem woman ain't got no seed but she had a partner but her partner didn't have no womb but y'all don't hear what i'm saying see all of creation is built on partnership and connections and i'm wondering are you making the right connections for what's next in your life and what are you willing to slay what are you willing to slay to get there what are you willing to change in order to get there how much of what you say that's just how i am that's the kind of stuff we got to put on the cross we got to put that just how i am we got to nail it to the cross see y'all all right we're putting jesus on the cross y'all all right we're putting lambs on the cross you don't even mind putting goats on the cross but when i start talking about putting you on the cross you get real quiet but in order to get what god wants to get done you got to get rid of just how that's just how i am and start saying here i am lord make me what you want me to be enlarge my territory increase my capacity strengthen my gates i'm ready to go to the next level i'm ready for this lord anyway you bless me lord i'll be satisfied if i have to go get me 12 disciples i'm going to change the world before i get out of here hey peter stop fishing i'm going to get you hey matthew stop collecting tax i'm going to go get you hey phillip come on over here boy i'm gonna get you and little by little start putting together the strategy that it takes when no is not an option say with me no it's not an option [Applause] i'm gonna dig my way out of it i'm gonna i'm gonna roll a video and i'm gonna bring out a panel of people and we're gonna talk about four people who had to dig their way out of things and we're gonna have a talk a very practical talk of how do we take what we hear on sunday and use it on monday how do we take what we shouted about we sang about we know god said it just say up the lord dig ditches in your life hallelujah yeah now uh excuse me uh how do i do that uh i i did bring my shovel you know i didn't bring my shirt i didn't have a bulldozer because i thought you was gonna do something cute like you did before and let it just rain like you know you know you you could make it rain without digging noah didn't have to dig and you you you made it rain uh you know you you you you made it rain when elijah prayed you can't compare your story with somebody else's story what god has for you is for you who am i talking to already wait till you meet this panel and watch what they had to dig through to get where they are rotate god put your greatest miracle in your greatest mess you gotta sweat in the dry places and the lord told me to tell you you've gone as far as you can go by yourself god said i want you to have sweat equity because if you don't sweat you won't take care of this i want you to put your back into it please welcome our special guests executive director of tori a prison re-entry program which she has grown into a nationally recognized reintegration platform that has provided a second chance to over 35 000 returning citizens tina naidu seven-time emmy-winning reporter and winner of the national edward r murrow award for her coverage of domestic violence she is a survivor who became a voice for all survivors rebecca lopez he is a pastor author speaker and advocate who inspires with his life story of transformation and redemption pastor michael phillips an accomplished business professional and executive with cvs health he is also dedicated to serving ministering to and mentoring inner city children and young people dr michael anthony hicks jr god said dig it out one more time give him a big round of applause but y'all look good i feel like i'm on the talk or the view or something am i whoopi i guess that makes me feel pretty if i'm wrong with you that's cool welcome here we're glad to have you here we're glad for your life we're glad for your story we're glad for your accomplishments we're glad for the things that god has done in your life uh and and we're glad that you didn't quit i'm real glad you did great yeah i'm glad that you didn't quit sometimes god allows you to go through things so that you can model for someone else how to go through because we don't always grow up in homes where we had models sometimes we grow up in homes where we had mess and god will put us in a church or on a job or in a community where somebody can model to us that things don't have to start well to end well as you like to say wrong lanes have right turns you you can start out wrong and and end up right we were talking in the back rebecca and and you're on tv and you've been on tv for a while and you've been in our church how long have you been in our church more than 15 years now has it been 15 years my god thank you dude and you've been at wfaa how long we were going on 25 years 25 years on wfaa and had seven emmy awards and the prestigious national edward r monroe award for your coverage of domestic violence how yeah yeah that's that's big stuff i happen to know because i'm your pastor you you covered domestic violence but you've been through domestic violence my first memory as a child i was probably about four or five years old i remember it so vividly was my dad beating my mother up and my mom was trying to reach for a phone uh on that back then the phones were on the walls and she was trying to grab the phone off the wall and she was just screaming for help and i was standing there feeling helpless not knowing what to do not knowing how to help her wanting to help and i was just i just cried and cried and cried and cried and then on top of that i was sexually abused as a child starting at about five until i was 10 years old so you know my life i felt unworthy a lot of times you and i've had this conversation before so i kept doing things in my life in my personal life in my work life i was in my career i was excelling but in my personal life i was totally broken i was broken because i felt unworthy unlovable so i kept making the same mistakes and doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results you know thank you for saying that and thank you for your transparency and and thank you for enduring that for what what really sings out to me is that you can be doing good in one area and be doing really bad in another area and people are so mesmerized by how you're doing good in that area that that they don't see your pain how much how much pain did you ingest to to have been raised in an abusive home uh molested as a child and and seemingly can't escape the prison of feeling unworthy there was a lot of pain bishop a lot of nights where i cried myself to sleep i went from one bad relationship to the next to the next thinking that that's how i was gonna find the love that i needed and it was the wrong place i was like that song i was looking for love in all the wrong places and i came to you and you said stop reaching back to what's familiar you you're better than that dig dig deep inside of you and find something better for your life and i'll never forget on a thanksgiving day i was at home and i was alone and i was crying on the floor by myself with no one to spend my thanksgiving with my son had gone off with his father because i went through a divorce and so and i lost everything in that divorce and i'm there in an apartment i'm broke i mean bishop i'm telling you there were times when i was having to go through seat cushions here i am on channel 8 news and i am broke looking for money just to put gas in my car and i was i was just very desperate and a friend said come to church with me and i grew up catholic so i didn't know what to expect and i came here and it was there were people running around and i wasn't sure what to expect it was a culture shock for me but you know it i heard you and i heard you loud and clear do something different yeah and i had to dig deep and i did something different i joined god's leading ladies and before you knew it i had saved up money yes god's playing ladies other than graduates out there i saved up money where i couldn't even afford to put gas in my car i started shopping at ross dress for less i started saving all this money and i raised enough money to buy myself a house 20 000 cash wow wow wow oh you ought to shout for her it must have been very difficult because you work in a profession where those women wear bad dresses they wear those expensive 500 800 dresses and you're shopping to pay for less in any place you can i actually had somebody come up to me and say you know people are talking about you they wonder why your hair looks the way it does and why you look like you were wearing cheap makeup and why you dress so shabby and you know i mean i had scuffed up shoes i couldn't i couldn't afford anything because i was trying to focus on my son and raising my son and putting food on my table i really honestly i had to get to a point where i just said you know what i don't care what people think about me i don't care i i don't and i still feel that way if i mean to me it's all about who you are inside it funny that while you were struggling to to learn how to feel worthy and not go back to what's familiar which is not easy to do by the way because once a pattern is set up in your life it's hard to break a pattern and and you it's easy to be what you see and and in the midst of growing to become worthy you still have priorities right because a lot of women wouldn't have been worried about raising their son they'd have been worried about doing their hair and i focused everything on him he became well he is my pride and joy you guys know jacob he's actually worked around here at the potter's house and you know when i look at him now in college and doing and i okay now i'm gonna get emotional doing the things that he's doing and he loves god and he used to sit right there on the second row and sometimes he'd be playing on his phone i'm like bishop is preaching you know and he but he but you you but what you preached got into his soul and he is such a great human being and um that's the proudest thing i think i've ever done in my life was i put him first wow wow wow wow all of us are working on ourselves about something we're not there yet we get working our way to worthy is a process and it's a mental thing and it's a personal thing and even if you got your hair done and your makeup done and you paid five thousand dollars for a dress still doesn't necessarily mean that you're any better on the inside how what did you say to yourself after you walked out of my office i remember us talking after you walked out of my office what did you say to yourself that started to bring yourself to dig your way out inside see digging your way outside isn't always the problem digging your way out inside that's the problem that's where the enemy wants to really destroy you what what kind of things did you have to say to yourself because i want people who are watching online and people who are in the room because they're not going to all stand up and hold their hand up but there are people in the room right now who are going through what you're going through in one shape or another and it is not uncommon for somebody who has been sexually abused as a child to feel unworthy when you start out being used you feel like a toy and so it's very natural for you to become somebody else's toy you know and i if i do this will you like me if i do that will you like me if i do this will you love me and so you get into this exchange game what did you start saying to yourself you know i think i just got to the point where i was sick and tired of being sick and tired i was just sick of myself i was sick of going through the same thing and i think my friends were sick of me too because they're like if you come to me one more time to talk about the same problem over and over you just keep repeating it yourself why do you keep doing this and i finally said you know what i have to stop i am going to stop and i literally went through my phone and i deleted people's numbers people that i knew were dragging me into places i shouldn't go into things that i and that being who i didn't want to be i deleted i literally i cut people out of my life and that may sound harsh but i had to cut some people out of my life in order for me to grow and i kept remembering my friends like why doesn't god bring you know bo as we all pray for boaz um and finally my friend said you know what stop searching stop looking start loving yourself start digging deep in yourself and start spending time on you spend time go through god's leading ladies go through things that make you better and that's what i did and you know i guess i'll probably announce it now i have now he was sitting right in front of me one of my best friends for 15 years but i couldn't see him because i was over here you know thinking that all these other you know fun guys the bad guys were the people that you know were the fun people but he was right in front of me one of my best friends and we have an incredible relationship and um and i believe that you know god has finally blessed wow so so you ended up with mr frond instead of mr familiar exactly wow somebody ought to say man to that do you know how much courage it takes to be a public figure and to stand on the stage and talk about your private life that's the sacrificial lamb that's an offering because rebecca has to go to work tomorrow at wfaa and do the news and she had to cover domestic violence having experienced it no wonder you won an award in it because you threw your heart into it yeah the um there was a story of a woman named deanna cook and she died calling 9-1-1 she wanted help and no one could they couldn't get to her because there was a failure in the system both from the reaction of the dallas police department and also what was happening in the 911 call center and she died and i heard that tape i heard her for eight minutes dying pleading for help and i thought that could be my mom and so when i look and when i tell the stories of domestic violence victims that brought it all back to me and i wanted to change things and so my stories on domestic violence and how dallas police responded and what they did actually changed the way dpd now responds to domestic violence calls wow wow wow see when when i talk about bill for expansion everything you went through god then put you in a place of expansion where you had a voice that little girl who watched her mother get beat up didn't have a voice but now you have a voice that's able to move things through the police department through the whole city and want all these awards god gave you a voice and empowered you and those of you that are listening at me right now you might be in a situation where you feel voiceless but god is going to give you a voice and he's going to give you influence and he's going to give you the ability to change your situation and the reason you went through everything you went through is so you could become an answer to somebody else's problem and meet their need talk to me somebody talk to me talk to me i'm i'm going to get to to the rest of you but your story is so provocative to me to me when you when you when you look back over your life and and you and you look at jacob and you're raising your son while you're raising yourself you know that was probably one of the hardest things for me because i was ashamed of who i had become and i kept looking at him and i wanted him to just be different i wanted him to be better than what i was and that was hard it was a struggle because i wanted so hard for my son just to see strength even though i was falling apart inside and that's when i knew i had to change bishop when i i came and i sat right there on the second row and i heard you preach and like everyone has probably experienced i felt like you were talking directly to me and and i said you know what this is what i need to do this is where my son and i need to be and that's how i grew i grew because god got inside of me and god spoke to me god got insanity it was god it was it was god so part of her digging was deleting she didn't need a shovel every time she deleted a number she was digging her way out so it's no need for her to go home and start digging in the backyard because that's not the shovel she needed she needed the shovel to be able to say no and to get saying no gave her her voice back everything she's saying has something to do with getting your voice back the ability to say no that's getting your voice back the ability to win awards as a news anchor that's getting your voice back to the ability to cover a story you used to be in y'all are not talking to me let's get your voice back and before it's over i'm going to give you a chance to ask questions so stay online and i want you to start sending questions in because maybe you might need uh some direct information from one of my guests tonight that will help you to become who you are tina you have done such an amazing job with tori thank you you have been here since you were in school i have watched you grow up you look just like you did the day i first saw you you haven't changed a bit i have watched you grow up you've been here since you've been in school you've become the director of our texas offenders reentry initiative you've won how many awards for tori a lot a lot of them all got all kinds of awards recently you went to canada tell us about that um so i was invited to canada based on um a partnership a relationship that was built at project gideon a couple years ago so um we were sitting at lunch during project gideon you told us to go kill our giant and come back we didn't know what the giant was so we're just having this conversation and richard bragdon who's now the member of parliament there he was a pastor that had come to the conference and he said you know i really like the work that you guys are doing can you come to canada and show us what you're doing so about three three years later i go out there i visit their prison i talk to their ceos their businesses and at the time he was running for office he didn't win and so i didn't think anything of it and here we were this year 2021 in february i get a call and he says tina um i'm actually a member of parliament now i'm a private member and there's a lotto system and this never happens but i have been chosen to write a bill and this private member's bill is going to come through senate and i need you to be a witness in the senate committee hearing i know you do this all the time so um i ended up where yes so an american girl goes to canada in the middle of a pandemic to speak before the parliament of canada to change their policy on how they handle ex-offenders yes sir yes sir um yeah it's it's an incredible it was an incredible um feeling it was just it was it was so surreal because for so long i've followed you you know i've been here 25 years and you never do church like traditional church and you're always talking about global and infiltrating markets and partnerships and intersecting worlds and and so i just never knew what our little small program in texas was going to do but when it went when when when the queen heard in canada you know and it actually went into law in july 2021 um somebody ought to shout this place down right now again if you have a question drop it in the comments we're going to take as many of them as we can you know uh there there's a line and a poem says life for me hasn't been no crystal stairs you you you've done some amazing things but you've had some low moments talk to me about not tina the the young adult uh the wife of sean nadu who's out there sean and look looking all good and waving at you and trying to flirt in the middle of the message talk to me about tina the little girl and and how much digging did you have to do take me to the first shovel okay um so i'm a i'm the daughter of an immigrant immigrants from india uh so back in the 70s when there was a nursing shortage here in the states they recruited from india and uh similarly where we are today with a labor shortage and my parents came here to a country they did not know they did not know the language but they were recruited and as i started you know i was born here but there was such a cultural divide in our house because when i went to school i was a certain culture when i went to a an american church i was a certain culture but then when i would come home it was a whole nother set of rules and the thing that was really crazy for me growing up was i i just always felt divided like inner conflict all day long um because i was i grew up in a christian home and i think it's um it was a pentecostal home which for a lot of reasons reminds me of holiness pentecostal was very very strict and my father was a very um he was a blue-collar worker that i i don't know he was just a very angry person and there were so many times like similar to rebecca's story that i watched my mom you know work 12-hour shifts come home serve do all these things and still get beat up and called crazy names and then that violence just extended to the children so my older brother he would get the brunt of it you know my father was a fanatic about principles and how he did things and so he'd go to work at five in the morning and he demanded that we get up at five in the morning so we'd get up for prayer at five in the morning with him and if if we didn't get up we got beat and my father was a type you know you picked the switch off the tree he kept it on the mantle we knew it was coming if i heard my older brother scream i would try to run down the stairs before i got the beating that was my upbringing it was very it was very it felt like a war zone like you just never knew what was gonna set him off and i mean from the time i was a kid i have been thrown up against a wall i've you know been beaten with hangers and switches i've been chased around the house you know so that fear was set into me very young my voice was silenced at a very young age but one of the things i really learned from my father was that women weren't valued so things that were done around the house you know things that were expected of us things that were said to me and my father will tell you this even until this day he built he felt that women and children should be disciplined and so it was so contradictory to what i was learning in church it was so contradictory to what people were saying god was like your father and my father was so abusive and so i didn't understand that relationship and i can tell you i i know what it feels like to let your cheeks cheekbones feel like they've shattered i've passed out i've had bloody noses um i'm a tough girl that's why these streets don't scare me trust me i i you know i fought my way all the way until i was 18 and um and here's my ditch so i knew i had to get out of hell's kitchen i couldn't live there any longer there was something inside of me that god had called me to do and i didn't know what it was but my father would literally he'd sit in the audience if i was leading worship and he would stare me down and he would foam at the mouth like he would just get angry i knew he could punch me right after church and i always knew how to put on my game face we hosted pastors every weekend and that whole thing for me help that that taught me how to play church because i couldn't understand how men of god would come to our house and have such a gift but not know what was going on behind closed doors then get up and i knew it wasn't right but i didn't know what to do and when i would go to american churches and i'd go to american counselors or pastors they would just kind of hush you you know like ah oh yeah you know okay and when i say you're the first person that i finally heard over the pulpit talk about things that were so taboo in the church at 18. i had no idea you were coming to dallas in 1996 but god had me coming here to go to the university of texas at arlington and i remember this is my ditch as a brown kid you know as an indian child there is this stigma that you are a model minority you're supposed to be good in math and science i i'm not good at either one of those things and typically you you go into being a doctor an engineer a lawyer these high level professional degrees i knew that's the only way i was going to get out of the house now my parents never would teach me how to go to college i would just hustle like ear hustle with everyone where are you going okay so i found out that uta had a program for pre-med and i made up this whole story that my parents thought that that was my natural next step and so i got out here no money fought my dad for a check now mind you it's different if you're broke but my dad was wealthy and he wouldn't give you a dollar i mean there were days that my car would break down and i would call him and he'd say well you know if you were here you wouldn't have that problem and i'd be in the hood like social working okay and project like drug deals happen right in front of me and i you know it was like my street smart from prior living that helped me survive but it was your ministry and there were so many times in the ministry that every time i came to church remind you in 96 when i found you and actually november was when i came and i remember the first sunday i came in the in the green sanctuary that we had over there and that first sunday i was all in like the vision you put out i just knew i knew i was home and then you you were talking about the city of refuge we were building um and you talked about this women's crisis center and i was like okay i'm going to be the director of that whenever that happens i'm i'm going to do that so that's what i'm going to go to school for well i'm pre-med first year school i'm flunking out math and science and i remember crying and praying to the lord because mind you my father told me i was stupid my whole life he always told me i was good for nothing i wasn't intelligent i wasn't pretty you know i believed all these things and you got to remember that critic is who i hear in my head all the time and no matter and i would constantly try to please him to hopefully shut him shut down the noise but he kept moving the goal post like you could you just never measured up but as a kid you didn't know that so you just keep trying well when i got here and you started speaking these messages there was a book you wrote daddy loves his girls and i i was reading the book and all of a sudden my perspective on who god was that he wasn't out to get me like my dad but he was for me um he just gave me this whole new perspective and and so i just kept coming and seven days a week literally i would go to school and after school i'd drive a pioneer parkway and i'd come right here i was in the youth council i was in the youth group i was in that tv building it used to be the youth sanctuary i mean whatever you i could get my hands in that's what i was in i was in the choir you know i did everything because i it was my lifeline and and so as i okay so let me tell you about i change degrees so i'm not pre-med anymore but i'm sitting there crying i'm like oh my god i'm gonna have to go home a failure everything he said is gonna be true and i'm sitting in an award ceremony at uta and someone's getting an award for social work and god says clear as a day the holy spirit sit next to me why not social work and i said god social work i mean doctors make this and social workers make sense and clear as day god said are you a tither and i said yes i'm a tither he said well money's never going to be an issue for you and i can i can be a witness to that statement i earned this fact as my pastor would say um but i you know that shifted my my degree plan but when i when i told my parents my dad said to me and i i still remember he said he said just pack your bags and come home he's like you're not smart you know he's like go take the postal clerk exam and come work at this post office over here at least you'll have a job and i just remember thinking god what how do i convince my parents you told me this and then i come to church and you're saying your gift will make room for you and bring you before great men you know okay so i get to um that summer we go to india you know how jehoshaphat asked for a prophet i didn't ask for a prophet but i told you a real pentecostal so prophet came to our house in india my parents i understand their language i don't speak their language very well the prophet doesn't speak english the prophet is literally praying with us he lays hands on us he's speaking in tongues social blah blah blah social and then he stops and he goes daughter god is calling you into social work now mind you it's all in my parents language not in english so after the prayer session the pastor comes to me and he again asked me in my parents language what is social work he never heard of it and when i think about how god has over and over and over in my life just showed up and showed out [Applause] what i can say is that after i think i i received my last two black eyes when i was 23. um [Music] pastor robinson over there has walked me through so many seasons and uh he you know he really helped me to clarify some things because i grew up christian and i remember my father didn't come to my wedding wait wait wait did you say your last two black guys you were 23 yes sir with a master's degree wow and do you know i was the first person in my family to get a master's degree but they never came to celebrate me they never came to celebrate you and if you ask my father amongst the family functions or events hey what's your daughter doing now oh she don't know she don't know what she's doing and as a girl the only girl in the house i would watch other indian girls and i saw how their their dads would dote on them and people would constantly say to me oh you must be spoiled your daddy's daddy's girl and then they knew my father was so well off they never knew my suffering they never knew the cost and when people make fun of me for coming to this church they don't know if they don't know the healing that i rested they received i don't come here for you know like they they see me on stage now but they have no idea that i stopped your sermon in the green church and i remember getting delivered at one point i was dancing through your sermon and security was fixing to sit me down and you i heard you say leave her alone there there were so many seasons in my life that you you would say something and that one word is what i would hold on to through the ditch and i would dig my way out you said when i got fired i was like there you go see he was right i'm dumb i'm never gonna and you said that that that day you said this setback is just a setup for what god is getting ready to do in your life and those things i hung onto and and these same people that fired me remember at 40 when we went and did the press conference for them and they were asking for me back yes and you were like no [Laughter] that kind of stuff god has just done over and over in my life and i think i experienced a lot of father hurt and work for me was the way that i would succeed you would say the best way to shut your critic's mouth is to succeed so i wouldn't respond to my haters you know i wouldn't respond just kept on working and and the work spoke for itself and it would succeed keep digging yeah yeah but but i do want to share this with you because for four and four decades later your body keeps score and although it was easy for me to just work and work and work and try to push down because i didn't know how to deal with feelings but i knew how to win so i just kept doing that my body shut down and i didn't know how to get my mind back and ptsd is a real real thing um i think god shut down the world with cobot 19 so i could go get therapy i you know i i'm a clinician i'm a therapist i used to tell everybody all the time every therapist has a good therapist but i myself hadn't processed that those triggers the pain and the thing that was shutting my body down my anxiety just out of control um but again therapy dig a ditch yeah yeah so for somebody for her digging a ditch was deleting for you you digging a ditch was getting some therapy even though you're a therapist you got the therapy that you needed and many of the things that you talk about that happen here at the ministry happened at a time that i didn't like personally know you you know it was just you were just facing the crowd when i said leave her alone it was just a holy spirit instinct that said leave her alone you know just i just knew through the spirit to leave her alone the the time that stands out strongest to me there was a dig you out moment you were now working and leading and running our department and right in the middle of it you lost your brother and and i never saw you fall solo in in my life and and you kept calling me and asking me you know questions about it can you just touch on it for the person who's stuck in grief right now and thinks he'll never get out sure um grief is a real thing and i thought i had experienced it before you know losing grandparents and all but i think losing my older brother knowing that we had went through the hell we went through growing up and he had taken the brunt of it i was expecting our story to change in the end right we gonna be on top of the world we're gonna you know we're gonna succeed we're gonna show him and he died on me and he was my buffer tony if you saw him he was 6'3 270 pounds i wasn't his little sister like we you know when we would go places tony was the one that was always you know all right get back okay okay you know calm me down would he he was the buffer and i didn't have the buffer anymore and and i went into a real dark place i never lost god but i lost him i i would come here and i couldn't find him and i remember crying and leaving church one day and i said god i feel like i'm in this tunnel and there's like holes of light a little bit coming through somewhere even if i let go of your hand please don't let go of mine i was so scared because if i lost god i felt like i was going to lose everything he's the only thing that's kept me anchored i was scared for you i prayed for you i've never seen you that low before and maybe you're watching tonight and and your heart is broken it's the only pain that the pharmacist has no prescription for there is no prescription no no aspirin no injection no vaccination you just have to walk through it [Music] in the dark by faith and we walk by faith and not by and it took a while to see that smile come back but it's back now it's back now it's right now i want to i got so much to get to i don't i don't i don't know who to pick on next i got two michaels to pick from i think i'm going to take this one first okay first talk to me about your life and and you grew up in the hood i did uh they would have in our day call you an at-risk child they would have um i grew up in the inner city dallas i grew up in pleasant grove and in south dallas i've actually had friends that have came through your tory program before um and yes they would call it more so at risk only because the lack of resources that are there it's not the people it's the lack of resources um i actually unlike most of my friends i did get a chance to grow up in a two-parent household so that sets the tone for everything even if outside of the home there may be chaos right so you can only stay in your house for so long your parents can't bubble wrap you and say oh no you can't go outside now you gotta eventually go outside and when you go outside you see the poverty you see hopelessness you see people doing whatever it is that they have to do to survive and and with that you kind of don't see a blueprint for success you see a blueprint for how to be a worker you see a blueprint for how to be blue collar but you don't see a blueprint for success nobody's running up to your school house to say oh this is how you do it or no one is coming to tap you on the shoulder to say hey i believe in you let's go do this you kind of most of us that come from the inner city have to find our own niche and hold on to that one good thing that'll lead us to the next level in life that's that's basically what i had to do bishop i i believe what what really inspired me was seeing the sacrifices of my parents seeing my father work two jobs and hurting hands hurting from doing the work that he was doing and seeing my mother go to work every day and getting up early getting us dressed and then hey y'all go on catch the bus i gotta go to work to try to make sure that we had enough just had enough to go on into the next day so when you see that type of thing a mentality in you comes about to where i can't let them down they have done too much they have sacrificed too much and even if you help me understand something because some kids see that and get better and some kids see that and get bitter right some kids see that and it becomes fuel and some kids see that and get rage how did how did you avoid the pitfall of saying all around me there's darkness and if my parents are working all the time that's one side of the story but that's the other side of the story is they're gone all the time i think for me i had friends in my neighborhood where i grew up from that they did different things that i wouldn't think about doing but i also seen them their mother's tears as well see when you're in that environment you're thinking that you know if your parents work a lot or if you come from a single-parent household that me going out doing something extra that may not be legal is going to help the situation when actually it hurts it more so i never wanted to see my mother cry in a courtroom i never wanted to see my mother cry because the police is coming to handcuff me i didn't want her to see those tears i wanted my mother to have tears of joy from seeing me graduate or seeing me go somewhere and do something with my life so actually having first sight and seeing cousins and friends mothers actually really get on their knees and cry and pray to god that the police or whoever let their child go it does something different to you so you can either use it as fuel or you can you know do you really want to see your mother cry like that my answer was no i didn't want to so you you went to school you did well in school you you earned you earned a sociological bachelor of arts degree in 2011 from southeastern oklahoma state university a mba in 2013 from the university of phoenix and his doctorate he got his doctorate of business administration from walden university this year thank you how with little money okay you got no money bishop no money so what kept you going um so i hold a lot of different promises near and dear to my heart and um i i want to tell this story only because i do mentor a lot of young men and they have either their grandmother and if you're lucky you actually got a chance to see your great-grandmother as well i was lucky enough to where my father was not raised by his mother he was raised by his grandmother which equally was my great grandmother and those people from the 1920s are different yes they live by a different creed they live by a different cold i think you talked about this in your last song they live off survival yes my great grandmother did not she didn't finish middle school she had to go to work so i believe i was in college at the time and she was i was going through a lot of different things in college i actually went i believe i went through depression in college because what i wanted to do i couldn't no longer do anymore and i was just trying to find my way and from for most kids that grew up in the inner city sports is a way out sports was actually a way for me to go out i got my even though i graduated from southeastern oklahoma state my first way of getting out of dallas texas i went to howard university that's a permanent african-american school [Music] that's right that's pretty cool right and uh but i never got a chance to play i didn't get a chance to play because i hurt myself my freshman year then i really hurt myself my sophomore year so all of that stuff is up in the air because i can't do something that i been accustomed to doing for a long time actually kind of find a little identity in it right and so i had a chance in the summertime to have a car ride with my great grandmother and that car ride changed my whole outlook of life she said baby i don't know what you gonna do what she tell you i don't care what you do but can you just finish school for me can you just finish school for me big mama never got an education and that blew my mind because normally when we talk it's not that serious i didn't even turn the radio like usually you know she was like you can turn your radio up you know young kids play the radio and stuff like that but when we were talking it was dead silence i know i had the radio on i didn't hear nothing that day i didn't hear anything and she was like can you just finish school for me do something that no other male in our family has done and when i thought about that i say wow she's right i think only my uncle was the only one that went to school so i took that to heart and i ran with it and so every level there's no excuses for me not to go out and go accomplish at all what is the highest level of education i don't care if i'm smart enough or not smart enough i figured it out because i made a promise to that woman that i would make sure her last name would mean something wow wow well she she must have she she must have tried got to cry some tears of joy to see you make the accomplishments that you've made uh because my eyes are a little wet too give it up for him one more time and let's appreciate it don't forget if you've got questions that you want to send in don't be afraid to send them in we'll be glad to answer your questions we're having an opportunity to learn how to dig your way out of the adversities of life where you start doesn't matter where you finish is everything where you finish it's everything and there might be some rest stops along the way and there may be some road blocks along the way and you may have a flat tire and you may have to thumb but if you make up in your mind you're going to get there you're going to get there and don't let anybody turn you around don't let anybody turn you around you almost turned around michael phillips you you you you're a pk uh you grew up in a christian home uh your father was a pastor you come from generations of preachers and and you you you ended up in a mess tell us about it absolute mess not just a mess a hot mess yeah i'm a fourth generation preacher uh who vowed that he would never preach ever ever but that didn't work out quite well for me and the reason i vowed i would never preach was because my father he died when i was 12. and that just caused the pain that still to this day i have issues with and like my brother dr michael over there i also [Music] had an escape from some of that pain through sports and for me it was basketball that was going to be my passport to the world but my freshman year in college on a full-ride scholarship i got into a car accident wait wait let me slow you down a little bit you lost your father at how were you 12 i was 12 you were 12. i was 16. what did he mean to you everything he was my model he was my father was a pastor and full-time truck driver he had his own rig and he would drive during the week and then passed the church on the weekends and he was my model he was my anchor he was everything i thought a man was supposed to be and when he died suddenly he had a he had a stroke he had a blood clot in his leg that traveled from his leg to his brain and burst which caused a stroke and a heart attack simultaneously that he didn't recover from and i remember being at camp i was at a basketball sports camp when i found out he was sick and in the hospital and they told me he was going to be all right everybody said he was going to be all right and they came to get me early from the camp they didn't tell me that he had died i can still see the bathroom of the hotel across from the hospital that my mother and grandmother brought me into i can still see the faces in the room everybody was full of grief and you can see their eyes well with water so i knew something was wrong and they took me in the bathroom because they didn't want me to run or make a scene and i just cried but not violently just without understanding he was my model you always say that it's hard to become what you don't see i will add to that to say but it's very easy to become what you're always exposed to and because i lost my model it became easier for me to go to the street because that's what i was exposed to so a little church where he grows up in church singing hymns clapping hands praising god with a father and a mother and fourth fourth generation didn't want to preach ended up being a preacher ended up being a drug dealer yeah all the way not just a little bit i was slanging y'all for real for real right live it was it was serious business yeah yeah we we you don't even look like a director no that's for see that was the kick that's the cool thing about well i'm sorry was it was it was the cool thing about it that i could play in different worlds i could play in different worlds and so church became my cover the church with your cover that was my cover i would play the drums and i would play the piano on sunday i didn't know that but the rest of the week i was out there getting money yeah that was my cover and i did that all through high school until i got my scholarship and then i decided i can have a different life so i thought i was going to have a different life you thought you were dead for life yeah you thought you were going to have a a different life you thought you were right yeah i thought so i thought yeah yeah but you you you were a drug dealer with all due respect you wasn't that good because you got caught well not quite don't say it like that it don't fail no so how did you end up so i lost my scholarship got to the car accident this is important because in the car accident i woke up in the hospital my lord torso got caught underneath the dash my upper torso went through the windshield and i woke up in the hospital strapped to a board and i couldn't feel anything and then they rushed me into surgery and then when i came to i'm in the hospital with my leg surgically done up and they told me i would never walk again let alone play ball again so in my recovery which was more painful not physically but mentally and emotionally because i had lost my passport to the world because no one ever told me i could be something different than a ball player so a doctor or a lawyer or anything else was was out of the car as a matter of fact from first grade all the way up to middle school i was told i would end up in jail it wasn't until my senior year that somebody told me i was smart and so to go back to the smart part of not being a bad drug dealer the way we got caught was by accident some guy was running from local narc police and he ran into one of our stash houses we had we had a whole block full of stash houses we we actually had the whole block and then we had an abandoned school across the street so we controlled about three miles who is wish me and my team my you and your team my squad your squad so a squad and a gang is sort of the same thing same thing we weren't a gang yeah yeah this was this was a group of guys ironically this was a group of guys who had disappointments and setbacks we all went to school together but we all decided we was going to sell drugs together and so some kid ran into the stash house running from local narc police was your mother still preaching my mama was preaching every sunday so now you got a single mother still preaching every sunday raising an angry black man that's right and boy was i angry i didn't know what to do with my pain and what i discovered was the pain that you are not willing to transform you will transmit wait a minute the pain that you're not willing to transform you will transmit you will transmit that's a tweetable right there the pain that you're not willing to transform you will transmit dig into that a little bit more i transmitted my pain through anger and i built a facade of having power as a drug dealer over all of these other people who were self-medicating their pain i didn't self-medicate my pain my medicine was power and so i exercised my power by being angry by being a quote-unquote boss by by telling addicts what to do and where to go by overseeing the the little little dudes on the corner that we would watch and they would hit people off and thinking that i'm going to be a kingpin or something like that and that's what i did with my pain so i transmitted it to everybody i came in contact with because i didn't know how to transform it that didn't come till later so i want every single mother raising a black boy to hear this but i also want couples to hear this because it's not just single black mothers that run the risk of raising a boy that you love but has an anger you can't get out it is possible to be a father and have a son who's angry in a way that you can't get out this this is a real problem in our community what he just touched on is a real problem in our community repressed anger and he says rather than to medicate it his drug of choice was power well power can manifest itself in a lot of different ways it can manifest itself in abuse it can manifest itself in murder it can manifest itself in rage it can manifest itself in crime it can manifest itself a lot of different ways power can take on a lot and i only say that so you can help so i can help you identify that what you call demons and what you call devils and what you're putting all on might be an angry child who's angry about something that they didn't get and i want you to at least understand it this angry young black man who had every reason to turn out right ends up turning out wrong because he's he's mad about daddy in fact with the exception of him everybody on this stage was mad about daddy he either either he was abusive either he was beating me or he left me giving giving you more mama didn't didn't replace not having daddy that made it worse it made it worse it made it worse so so the best thing my mother did was to let me take my lumps it's the best thing that she did because there was nothing that she could do but just love me even if that was from a distance even if that was going to be through a jail cell so saving you from trouble and getting you out of trouble and fighting for you wasn't helping you you you had to bump your own head i had to bump my own head because discipline for a man is an expression of love that's right and in the absence of yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we we don't believe you love us if there's no discipline there and the disciplinary the disciplinary individual that you expected was gone so discipline had to come when a church boy who grew up sitting in a playing drums ended up sitting in a jail cell yes sir take me there you never forget the eerie clink of a jail cell door shutting it echoes and it reverberates around the concrete floors and center block walls and when they shut that door on me i was in pre-trial detention they set my bail at 10 million dollars they gave me a recall charge and i was facing 30 years in jail so here i am in pre-trial detention now me and my dumb self that's the better word of choice being my dumb self is thinking well i'm gonna be in here with my homies i'm good like we gonna go up you know we we go i'm straight because i know everybody in there but they put me in federal prison and then they took me i so i turned my own self in i don't want to leave that part out i was on the run when the guys raided our spot because we didn't know who was trying to hit us federal officers raided my mother's house when i found that out i figured let me take off and figure things out later so i'm going down i-95 i'm in richmond and from from baltimore i'm in richmond in about two and a half hours on a good day that's a four hour drive i'm there in two and a half moving getting out of dodge i stopped at a bob evans to eat i know what about i'll never forget it i stopped out of bob evans to eat and my mother called me on my neck at this hour before right we're going a next tell two-way and she hit me up and she said baby whatever you're facing we can face together say my can't talk to you talk to you later you know i gotta go got in my car heading down 95 trying to get to florida and all of a sudden i knew i had to turn around i knew i had to turn around i knew if i kept running this was going to be my life and i didn't want it to be my life and so i decided to turn around the problem was i was in the wrong lane on a very busy intersection and so i had to flag roll my window down flag everybody down and literally just kind of beg for help to get over and that's when i learned that wrong lanes have right turns wow yeah wrong lanes have right turns so let let me do this because cause because this is a big story and and it's got a lot of twists and turns in it it it includes uh almost staying in jail a judge making a decision that landed him in oru instead of prison and he was high at oru at a chapel service am i doing good you're doing real good okay and and and ended up getting saved finishing school and he made a statement to me the other day [Applause] i went to prison but my son went to harvard my son went to harvard that's right class of 2020 class of 2020. yeah the statement wrong lanes have right turns you've got a book coming out your first book my first book ever wrong lanes have right turns if if you've ever been in a wrong lane like any of the lanes we talked about up here and you can't figure out how to get out or you or your daughter is in or your son is in or your sister is in or your mother is in a wrong lane and you can't figure out how to make a right turn i certainly recommend that you order this book on amazon and i'm not trying to sell books i'm trying to stop us from having wrong turns after wrong lanes that that that if it if it were possible for somebody who ended up could have been paralyzed all your life could be in jail right now right now right now right now and i heard your son deliver the address for princeton my son gave the commencement address for the class of harvard 2020. harvard i'm sorry it's on youtube you can check it out yeah it was so amazing i listened to it three times and then called him in baltimore to tell him how amazing he was it doesn't matter where you started mine is where you're finished that's right bishop can i tell him the picture on that cover real quick what that means just for a second put the cover back off so this cover of this book is me at 12 years old six months after my father died and instead of going to church that my mom dragged me to i decided to go down on the corner and play dice because i hated going to church because it reminded me of my father's death that little 12 year old boy was angry scared confused and the world's worst enemy but what god has done in my life the very building the very church that i was in front of playing dice 17 years later i'm sorry my pastor's had about to kick in 17 years later i started my church in that building so when you talk about digging your way out you gotta keep digging and if you don't have a shovel remember god's got a drill he'll get down as far as he's got to get to get you out of what you are in all of us up here are a living witness and a test come on somebody our living witness and a testimony to what god can do i don't think it can be said any better than that i don't think it can be said any better than that and we're just about out of time i don't see any questions on the screen i'm oh lulu asked bishop how do you learn to trust god in the midst of your digging what if you're digging isn't working if if you're alive to write the question you can't say the digging isn't working you can you can only lulu you can only say that it isn't working as fast as you want it to work the stories that you see up here didn't happen as fast as they told it they told it in a few minutes but they lived it over decades they lived it over decades and literally what you got to understand is there are no quick fixes to complicated problems this woman is working a job and still wrestling with the problem for years while raising her child and raising herself this this young man didn't get out of the hood and end up with a doctorate degree quick so when you say how do you trust god in the midst of your digging what if you're digging isn't working that that last question what if you're digging isn't working is satanic that's what the enemy says to you when god is working on your life he tries to make you think that it's not working and you and you and the first question is is is definitely christian how do you trust god in the midst of your digging you got nobody else to trust you got nobody else to trust you got no other place to go you got nothing else that's gonna have a positive end we trust god because we got nobody else we can trust there's nobody to trust like god not your mother not your father not your sister not your brother not your lover not your lady not your boyfriend not your girlfriend i don't care what you're into you got nobody you can trust like you can trust god to fix your life but just because he doesn't work with your time schedule doesn't mean that he's not working in your behalf now and the final thing i want to say to lulu is don't let your emotions be misunderstood as faith it doesn't have to feel like it's working to be working it doesn't have to look like it's working to be working it's working when it doesn't feel like it's working it's working when it doesn't look like it's working it's working when you don't see like it's working it's still working in your behalf it didn't look like it was working on this young man right here it didn't look like it was working for her right there i can remember preaching sunday after sunday after sunday and her face didn't change and the mask of grief was all over her and it didn't look like it was working but i kept preaching and preaching and preaching and preaching and preaching and preaching and preaching and one day a smile broke out on her face and one day she started clapping her hands again and one day she got up on her feet again it doesn't happen on your schedule but that doesn't mean it's not working i'll take another quick question jones john 98 asks how do you not self-sabotage when you're building for expansion and how do you become comfortable in success how do you not self-sabotage you may need therapy you may need counseling you may need to talk to somebody you need to identify self-sabotaging behaviors that exist in your life and delete delete delete delete delete until you get down to something solid and stable and secure and that is a journey that is a journey my friend that is a process that's not me laying hands on you and you fall out in the floor and you get up and you find no it's not like that you don't still have different things in your life you got to work through to get to the bottom of identifying self-sabotaging behaviors that work in your life and then when you get in success it's going to feel weird and it's going to feel awkward but but when you get in success sit in it anyway sit in it feeling funny feeling awkward feeling out of place feeling like you playing a role in a movie feeling like it's really not you eventually you're going to begin to wear it and it's going to fit you and it's going to become you but the reason that you don't feel comfortable in it is because it's foreign to you and but anything foreign eventually becomes familiar it starts out foreign it works its way to familiar and you lose your fear of the people up there and you you lose your fear of the air up there and you start belonging up there till all of a sudden when you get ready to go back to where you used to be now you feel uncomfortable there because even though they knew you when they don't know you now you're gonna you're gonna win if you don't quit you're gonna get comfortable if you don't quit you're gonna settle into it if you don't quit but at first when you walk around in it it's gonna feel like you're living in somebody else's house that you're working somebody else's job that you're living somebody else's dream and you're not gonna feel worthy of the position that you're in and you're not gonna own it yet it takes a while to own it it takes a while to own it and rest in it and relax in it and part of the biggest problem is it's the fear that it won't last the fear that it won't last and that's not just money that's love that's relationships that's people that's children we live with the fear that it won't last but while you're living with the fear that it won't last it's lasting and little by little by little by little you start to relax into it and say oh it's not going anywhere because it's not what's happening around me it's what came out of me it's mine it's really mine i really earned it i really built it that's why it's important that it not be given to you you have to earn it with your own two hands so because if i give it to you i can take it from you but if you build it yourself it's yours and you own it and you can walk in it thank you for your question there's a couple of things i want you to do i want to encourage you to go back and and share and watch bill for expansion and and dig your way out on the official youtube channel i want to encourage you to watch the tory graduation that we just put up on our youtube channel and see and now that you have seen the woman who is running it not only do you see the story of the lives she's changed you begin to understand why the devil beat her all her life because he knew she was going to grow up and change 30 000 people's lives and he tried to shut her down and stop her from getting there her story proves why hell was afraid of her in the first place and whatever you do whatever you do tonight i want you to go on amazon and i want you to find wrong lanes have right turns and i want you to pre-order it so you be the first one to get your copy and i don't want you to just read it i want you to study it i want you to write notes on the side of it i want you to pick out little parts that speak to you and speak to your situation because it is a guide how to deal with anger that's gone out of control in young men and young women in old men in old women anger will hit anybody and it comes out in anxiety and frustration and a coldness and a disconnection from other people where you will not allow intimacy to invade your space because deep down inside anger becomes defenses that guards your hurt but the walls will come down if you keep walking around them long enough the walls will come down and wrong lanes will have right turns i want you to study it i want you to get a study group i want you to get a book club i want you to start talking about it online i want you to start ministering to each other i want you to share it with your son i want you to have a conversation about it i want you to do it in such a way because there's healing and deliverance available for you right now and i want to pray for you right now in the name of jesus if you've been on the wrong lane if you found it difficult to make a right turn if you've come from an impossible situation if you've had a grief that you couldn't get over if you've been in a situation where you're all uh in a position but on the on the outside but on the inside your heart is broken and you feel unworthy and you feel dysfunctional and you're all dressed up but on the inside you're all tore up i want to pray for you right now that the healing delivering power of the holy spirit will come into your life and touch you if you're about to give up on your dream and you're halfway there and you feel like you want to quit and drop out of school and drop out of your dream or give up your business or walk away from your house or walk away from your life i want to pray for you right now that you have the experience this young man had in his car that arrest you that makes you fight a little bit further and dig a little further till you get a breakthrough in your life in fact if you're in this room and you're going through that and you're out of breath and you're digging and the water hasn't come yet and you're digging and you don't see any water and there hadn't been any wind and there hadn't been any rain and you're about to pass out with your shovel in your hand i want you to run up here and let me pray for you while i pray for them because you will not die in this wilderness and you will not die with your shovel in your hand you will not stop digging until you come out with a testimony and i want you to see yourself on this stage and i want you to see yourself telling your story on this panel and i want you to see yourself coming out because if you can envision the invisible you can do the impossible if you can get it in your mind it can happen in your life it can happen to you i want you to envision yourself writing your book i want you to envision yourself with your doctorate degree i want to envision yourself on your television show i want you to envision yourself changing the lives of inmates all over the world and speaking to parliaments and speaking to nations i want you to envision yourself because these people are ordinary people they're not celebrities they're not stars they're not famous they're just people who kept digging they don't have any magic tricks there are no magic bags there are no supernatural angels standing over their head dropping dust down on them that you cannot have the same power that raised them from the dead will also quicken your mortal body and raise you and deliver you if you own drugs he'll deliver you if you're selling drugs he'll deliver you if you're suicidal he'll deliver you if you've got a history of falling in love with bad men and bad women he'll deliver you if you're in a situation where you're being beat down even after the whipping stuff you're still beating on yourself he will deliver you jesus died that you might live and that you might have life more abundantly and i want to pray for you that are in this circle and i want to pray for you that online that the power of the holy spirit would touch you and meet you where you are right now father in the name of jesus lift your hands up father right now in the name of jesus as i lift up your sons and daughters before you some of them are tired they're digging and they're tired and they're digging and they're hurt and they're digging and they're angry and they're digging and they're frustrated and they're digging and they're upset and they're digging and they're confused but oh my god today in the name of jesus strengthen their hands strengthened their resolve strengthened their commitment they've come too far to give up they've come too far to give in they've come too far to give out and father i pray in the name of jesus that by the power of the holy spirit that you would give them the strength to keep on digging till they get what they're after their sons are looking their daughters are looking their parents are looking their neighbors are looking their sisters and brothers and little sisters and little brothers are looking at them and i pray right now in the name of jesus that the people around this altar will be the first in their family to do something amazing i don't care what it is i don't care whether it's getting a degree start a business or bake a cookie i want you to do something that you've never done before the man with the withered hand did something he'd never done with before and stretch forth his hand the man who was laid daily at the gate called beautiful did something that he'd never done before he picked up his bed and started walking the man who was sick of palsy did something that he'd never done before he was lowered into the presence of jesus and changed and that's how you know you're delivered when you do something that you've never done before i believe god with you right now and all of you that are watching online that you're going to do something that you've never done before god is going to do a wonder in your life i decree and declare in the name of jesus that the power of the holy spirit will begin an inner work in your life that's so strong that you won't stop digging till you see the waters fill up the ditches and fill up the whales and fill up the holes and fill up the hurts and fill up the pain and fill up the agony and fill up the strife in your life right now in the name of jesus he whom the son has set free is free indeed and i speak freedom over your life i speak freedom over your life i speak freedom over addictions i speak freedom over anger and frustration and resentment and envy and strife and guilt and despair i pray in the name of jesus that god would touch you right where you are and that you would never be the same again and that you find your right turn that you find your right turn that you find your mr fun that you find the purpose of your life to go back to the inner city where you came from and be different from them that you find the power of god to change 30 000 inmates and address nations i pray god that you would do something that would blow your mind i pray god that god would touch you in such a supernatural way that you would do something so amazing that you will replace the people on in these chairs and tell your story to the world there is a story in you that's dying to come out there's a story in you that's dying to come out there's a story in you with a happy ending there's a story in you with a bright future all you got to do is keep digging and you're going to hit it you're watching online there's a story in you that's yet to be told it ain't over yet it ain't over yet keep digging keep digging the water is coming it doesn't come in a weekend it doesn't come in a week sometimes it doesn't come in a year but if you keep digging everything god promised you is going to come to pass you don't get no doctorate degree in a year you don't get a doctor degree in two years you don't get it in four years he had to fight for it and work for it and sweat for it and work a job and work a job and study late at night while other people were acting a fool it's time for you to discipline yourself and get down to the business at hand because god has a plan for your life i feel the anointing of the holy ghost through this place right now touching every part of you right now changing every part of you right now breathing life into every part of you and you ain't seen nothing yet the holy ghost is touching you and setting you free and i want everybody standing up here to give god some kind of praise and i want everybody online to give god some kind of praise and i want to hear praises fill up this building [Music] come on and praise it come on and praise them online praise them in your living room praise them on your couch praise them in your dining room praise it at your kitchen table praise them in your car pray them over your phone praise it praise them on facebook praise them on youtube let everything that have breath praise ye the lord god ain't through with you yet it ain't good english but it's great faith god ain't through with you yet god ain't through with you they said he'd never walk they said he'd never be free they put a 10 million dollar bond on him and he's preaching and walking and living and moving and god ain't through with you yet your story isn't over you don't have to end up like your friends you don't have to die in the street you don't have to be a statistic [Music] father as we come to the end of this bible class i pray this word would burn in somebody's heart tell us all they think about tonight i pray it would burn into somebody's heart until they started deleting numbers our prayer would burn into somebody's heart until their life is so changed that they completely change directions i pray that you would heal somebody who's been beaten all their life they may have been beaten all their lives but i pray they never believe it they never accept it they never own it they never claim it and i pray that somebody got the courage tonight to rebuild your life and expand yourself and get ready for better because better is coming your way god bless you have a great night [Music] you

Channel: T.D. Jakes

Views: 2,200,929

Keywords: td jakes, faith, wtal, woman thou are loosed, megafest, potters house, bishop jakes, pastors and leadership, pastors, leaders, instinctbishops, village, 2 Kings 3:8-19 (KJV), Dig Your Way Out Of It, finding power in your struggle

Id: 12doIuGo2Z4

Length: 110min 55sec (6655 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 11 2021