Don’t Drop The Mic | A Conversation with Bishop T.D. Jakes and Steven Furtick!

[Music] have a seat yeah have a seat everybody so that's in the bible that verse how many have ever listened to bishop jake's preaching you're like does he have the same bible that i have i never oh i was going to tell you this so my oldest elijah the other day can i tell him we're on the porch and i quoted a bishop quote to him and i said you know well bishop always says one of these little parables that you spit out like they're you know just this beautiful uh beautiful beautifully crafted thing right and he goes oh that's bishop i always thought that was a bible verse [Laughter] what i'm saying to you is you are so loved in the verdict home that my kids think you wrote parts of the bible that aren't in the bible that's how much you mean to us i've never been told that before in my life i can't make that up that's amazing i love you all too what is that what does that feel like though to have the um to be the most imitated preacher in the last 50 years i'm not sure that's true assuming that it is yeah assuming assuming that that would be true uh imitation is the highest form of flattery but if there is anything higher than that and more important than flattering itself is to find the true power of being you yeah yeah why be a cheap copy of a great original when you have the opportunity yourself so when you're starting to preach people say be yourself be yourself but when you're first starting to preach yourself sucks like not as a human being but as a preacher it's true so then you hear oh don't imitate anyone else but like i wanted i actually wanted to start the conversation tonight because this book is a gift and thank you for taking the time at this stage in your ministry to share this i think it's so relevant and i've um i've been waiting for this you know i think a lot of people have um but i wanted to start not not just talking about communication in general but imitation okay right because imitation isn't always a bad thing right no well okay you want me to go pay a snow okay uh no well it's preach like it's a bad thing like it's a spiritual danger let me explain what mentorship really means it means that when samuel grew up and was brought by hannah into the house of eli he was unable to discern the distinctives between the sound of eli's voice and god that is the initial stage that god sounds like the person who mentored you gradually you come to a point that the umbilical cord cuts and you have to go ahead to lay down the third time before he recognized that it was god talking and not eli and he says eli says when you hear the voice again go and lay down in the same place and say speak lord thy servant here so it is my job to gradually lead you from god sounding like me until you can hear that god sounds like god you see you see and and so that weaning process starts with him being weaned from hannah and now he is being weaned from eli that he might draw the breast milk from the breasted one himself and thereby find the nutrition that he needs the other thing that's important to realize is that we are looking at a generational uh passing of the mic uh from eli to samuel and and for samuel can hear god but cannot discern him eli has lost his ability to hear the voice but can discern it so there is say it again see okay okay okay look eli couldn't hear the boys he was asleep okay samuel being the young people could hear the voice but didn't understand what to do with what they heard okay we have a generation of people that can hear the voice but they like the wisdom to understand what to do with what they hear eli on the other hand has lost his ability to hear his adventures some uh proclivity to step out into the unknown he's playing it safe his eyes are growing dim his his senses are decaying but his discernment is still keen so what what samuel needs from eli is wisdom and discernment what eli needs from samuel is the adventurous curiosity that allows him to hear the unhearable this is all in the first seven minutes and what what it's so funny that you should bring about because we are on the impetus of a transition now that is similar to the transition of days gone by god said i am going to do something through samuel that is going to cause both the ears of them that hear it to begin to tingle and he chooses to do it to a person who has yet to learn the confidence to hear the god that is going to do it through him so the promise of god is bigger than the reality of the individual and he has to grow into it just like he had to grow into his mother's coat she brought up every year not knowing for sure what size he would be she she makes the coat big enough that he can grow into it and greatness must be grown into [Music] yeah okay so when you're first starting out and you're preaching or you're communicating because this book isn't just for preachers right right but we'll talk about preaching because we love to talk about preaching let's do that i want you to know that uh by the way my whole goal for this experience is for you to get a little bit of a taste of like this would be us on a tuesday night and three hours have gone by and um bishop this is what i wanted to understand about growing into it when you're inspired by somebody like the way i've been inspired by you first of all did you have somebody that you studied the way that i have studied you i had several and i still do i listen at every orator imaginable whether i agree with the message or not i watch for the delivery the technique and the style you can learn from litigators you can learn from comedians you can learn from preachers i know the content i want to deliver but the vehicle i want to drive at home in is is a conglomerate of all of these different styles and the propensity it's like asking a gospel artist can you learn anything from a jazz artist can you learn anything from a classical pianist absolutely and incorporate all of those different modalities into your style and the more diverse those modalities are the broader your stage becomes so what are you listening for when you're listening i'm listening at how they connect with the audience audience i'm looking at how they entered the room i'm listening at the rhythm see great preaching is almost musical great speaking has a rhythm it has a cadence it has a voice inflection and a tone it has the ability to have a rhythm that is syncopated in such a way that the hearer can hear it in pace and in rhythm so much so that if you start to speak and you draw the audience into the rhythm of the pace of the speaking through which you are conveying information and then in the middle of the pace and the rhythm you pause the pause is what i call the pregnant pause it's what david calls see law in the psalms it is a moment for them to ingest digest and appropriate what has been spoken before and sometimes the exclamation of the importance of the statement is the silence that you let it ride in on does that make sense yeah yeah yeah yeah and and most young preachers are afraid of the silence why so they they've run to make noise because they need the affirmation that the crowd is still there but you have to have enough confidence in the material that god has given you that the people that it will do what it was created to do and the word of god does not need crutches and to those that are litigators and prosecutors and those are who are running for election and those who are applying for a job truth needs no crutches if it is true it is true and the human ability to sense truth is utterly amazing it is it is not just the verbalization of paragraphs and the conglomerates of chapters it is we hear with more than our ears we hear with our eyes we hear through body language we hear through voice and flexion we hear through pitch and tone this is what's wrong with marriage is that sometimes your mouth is saying something but your body language is saying something else and women who are particularly intuitive are not just listening at what you said they're listening at your body language and the way your eyes flinched and the way you didn't look me in the eye when you were saying it and all of that brings into it see how the women are clapping come on sisters come on sisters talk back to me holly and this is how the man gets trapped because he thinks i said the right thing but it but they don't understand she's hearing with her eyes yeah she's hearing with your behavior she's hearing with how you dropped your pitch and changed your tone and looked away and did not look her in the eye and all of that says that you're avoiding the straight-on gaze that comes when you are sure of who you are and what you said [Applause] [Laughter] to understand that as an orator and every one of us in here our orators whether we get paid for it or not we deliver messages to our children to our wives to our husbands and our family depends on how adept we are at communicating and here's the challenge it is one thing to communicate a fact two plus two is four uh uh whatever goes up must come down to communicate the fact it is one thing to communicate a feeling some people do not not have not made a connection between heart and mouth the bible teach is with the heart man believeth unto salvation but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation so to be able to articulate i'm sad you know i'm sad today i i am i am so sad today that it feels as if i will never smile again and i cannot explain to you fully the source of the sadness but it is as if all the color has been washed out of the earth and water does not feel wet and though the sun rose it did not shine and though i am breathing i cannot get air and my soul is sad to be able to to describe a feeling to the point that it conveys kind of depressed all of a sudden you know or or i i love you i love the scent of your hair i love the gleam in your eye i love the way you lay your head on my shoulder and i love the way you need me and i'm not afraid to show me well you know you know what do you love about me i love you that's fine what do you love some people do not have the the they have not worked out in the gymnasium of communication enough to express what they are feeling it is not that they're not feeling it they haven't worked out to use the skills that are necessary to communicate what is in the heart and so many marriages explode for the lack of something that both of them have but they drop the mic they don't communicate effectively one to another what you need and so you leave this woman who actually had what you needed but didn't know how to give it for some other woman who knows how to talk it but doesn't mean it like the woman you left and and that's also true with the men irrespective of gender this is what happens and this is what happens in our country and in our world where we are talking at each other most of the time couples don't really listen in the book i talk about listening because i think that the art of being a great speaker is being a great listener so so i i listen at you i listen at you i listen at other people i listen to everybody speak i listen to somebody when i'm counseling it i'm a fierce counselor because i listen at you and i remember what you said and i i draw a line between everything that you shared with me because listening is more important than speaking if i lose my ability to hear right now gradually my ability to speak will begin to erode because i can no longer hear so my ability to speech begins to deteriorate because there is an association between hearing and speaking so the art of being a great speaker is also being a great listener listening at the text listen at the text now moses my servant was dead but as i was with moses so shall i be with you listen at a god who who moses dropped and while israel was still grieving god turned his head and continued talking to joshua as if nothing have happened at all now moses my servant is dead but as i was was moses so shall i be with you in other words nothing important has changed i am still the same moses is dead but i am still the same and i will continue my purpose irrespective of my vessel and i am going to do it through you not do you want me to do it through you not would you like for me to do it to you as i was with moses social oh it's a boss move the text is a possible it is a boss move and so you but you can't read it and get that you have to listen at it you have to feel the intensity of it you have to hear the sobbing in the background of a nation of people who have lost the leader that it has taken them 40 years to love and it will take them 400 to get over and while they are weeping at the bottom of the mountain god sheds not one tear over moses he knows exactly where he is he will have him escorted by his angels out of the situation where they last saw him rather than to weep he turns his head and said i will continue everything i was doing through you that's what's happening now god is turning his head great leaders are passing great leaders are retiring great leaders are expiring and god is turning his head to the next generation and saying as i was with moses so shall i be with you can you imagine being joshua and being terrified because there's nothing worse than coming behind a great speaker to come behind moses yeah i've had to preach after you before that's how fun come on stop to come behind moses and and to have the responsibility i wrote draw don't drop the mind to say to young people number one the mic is yours it's not going to be yours it's yours we are still alive but it is yours it is your generation that must be reached and touched and maintain relevance today and i am just telling you that the mic is heavier than it looks don't drop it when your feelings are hurt don't drop it when you're angry don't don't drop it can i can i ask you about that jump joe uh in i think it was 1997 michael jordan played this game it was game five in the nba championships and he had the flu and he scored 38 points [Music] i want to hear that's that's michael jordan's flu game i want to hear a bishop jake's flu game story like a time where you stood it i can't think of a time that i didn't i can't think of a time i can't i can't think of a time that i didn't i had back surgery they dug into my back four inches between l4 and l5 when i came out of anesthesia in the hospital with a day surgery that they were going to keep me over a couple of days as soon as i woke up i slid over to the side of the bed and threw my feet out and stood up on them and started walking my wife wanted to kill me the doctor thought i was on crack but i heard the doctor say that if i could work walk to the nurse's station they would let me go home it hurt so bad that i started sweating but i wanted to go home and the doctor said let him go he said he's you're not he's not the kind of guy you can keep and let him go let him go home and i i have always been a fighter now watch this with the pain that came there's still a certain amount of anesthesia in you after the the anesthesiologist is woken you up you really don't know how fully how you feel for a day when i came out of complete anesthesia and the pain is riveting and i had a chance to speak maybe not that sunday but the following sunday i sat in a chair in front of the stage to prove to the devil that i don't need my body i don't need my body to be able to preach there is something going on between my heart my head and my mouth that requires nothing on my back and i sat in the chair with my church pact and and um i spoke irrespective of pain this is the tenacity that i pass to you with the mic the tenacity says i will override the way i feel and do what i was called to do yeah yeah so i prophesied as i was commanded i did a reconciliation conference years ago uh while the million-man march was going on and i was criticized and i was threatened and i had death threats on my life and they were going to shoot me and i put my boys in the background because i didn't want their last sight of me to be bleeding but i walked right down the streets of the land with thousands of people fully prepared to die for what i believe if if you believe a thing that you are not willing to die over it is not worthy of your faith you know i said this before and i'll share it with you and i want to play this off you tell me what you think about it thinking is the final frontier of privacy we have left our technology has invaded every other idiom of communication we have with each other that our techs aren't safe our face times aren't safe our phone calls are not safe the only safe place where there are no drones where there are no hackers it's within the confines of my own mind i and with that being my final frontier i refuse to allow you to tell me how to think yeah because thinking is all i have left and so when you once i open my mouth my thoughts have become public and once they have been become public they are going to be scrutinized and criticized and ostracized and they're going to alienate me from this group or that group or the other but that's why i must incubate them in the womb of my mind before i birth them out of the canal of my mouth because once a thought is birthed i'm sorry doesn't always retract it when you're i think you said incubate them in the womb of my mind before i birth them through the canal of my mouth that's right yeah no no no no i want to say something is that gross no no it's gross that you can do that without ever thinking about it just say stuff like that it's sickening it's maddening the word logos in the beginning was the word the word was with god and the word was god logos doesn't begin with speech it begins with thought that god is pregnant with thought that that he created what he thought everything we have on somebody thought it and then they drew it and then they got a material and they sold it and then they made it but it started as a thought the chair was a thought the building was a thought the pulpit was a thought everything star said the thought in the beginning was the thoughts of god and the thoughts of god was with god and the thoughts of god were god and out of the abundance of his thoughts he spoke and it became whatever he thought let there be light what is light what i think it is let there be light it wasn't even a word it wasn't even a word see what i'm saying but but it is what i think it is let there be light and it became what he thought and it became what he said but in order to become what he said it had to be what he thought and so you become great in your mind become you before you become great on a stage and it whatever you think you are you are and i'll show you i'll prove it to you you can be a great preacher and get in the car and the enemy will fight you in your thoughts all the way home because the enemy knows that the thoughts are the birth canal through which your preaching comes and if he can convince you that you are not enough he can terminate your ministry not because he couldn't shut your mouth but he shuts down your thoughts for as a man thinketh in his heart so is he talk to me somebody look at somebody say i can do this you affirmations spoken over yourself particularly if you're a person that wrestles with uh insufficiency complexes it's the reason you have that the reason you feel that way is because the way you talk to yourself if you change the way you talk to yourself you'll change how your story is the only thing the woman with the issue of blood did that saved her from dying was change how she talked to herself she said within herself not to anybody else if i may but touch the hem of his garment i'll be made whole so the greatest sermon starts within you and so when you what you are saying to yourself will either make or break what you are doing with your life so she said if i may potential there was no scripture that said if you touch the hem of his garment you'll be made whole but that was the way she thought about it like there was no definition for light when god said let there be light but it became what he thought and there was no definition for her to get healing by touching the hem of his garment but she thought the thought and she said it to herself until it became what she thought if i may be touched to him of his garment i'll be made whole and she crawled through the crowd on her hands oh i'm doing it again i'm sorry i'm doing it i should be just be cool no i i i i'd love to hear this i'd love to hear you know we can have a hard time imagining that you would struggle with those insecurities um the first time i heard you talk about when you used to preach you put the mic on the stand yeah because your hands would shake so much yes that you couldn't hold the might yes and i almost thought i don't believe him um and i mean that with respect uh just to see who you are what you do um there was a part of me that thought you know he's he's saying i'm sweating through my clothes um i would stutter so bad and and i think um i think it took me a minute to believe that because i couldn't believe that that same voice that talks to me that way talks to you the same way i guarantee you i screw does i will go home i will go back to my hotel and scrutinized everything that we said still yes tonight because that's the only way to get better and when you stop getting better you start dying when when a teacher ceases to be a student they begin to be irrelevant so to have the courage to critique yourself and say i could have done this better i could have done that better i could have explained this wonder did they really get what i was saying are still the voices that live in my head but they don't live too loud see see the art of it is not to kill the voice it's to cut the volume down so instead of existing at a 10 maybe it exists at a three i don't want to kill it because if i kill it i'll become an arrogant and if i become arrogant the bible says when you were small in your own eyes i bless you and if i become arrogant i will lose my anointing so i don't want to kill that voice of dissension that balances my accomplishments and so god balances my accomplishment with the throne in my flesh that makes me question myself so i don't want to him to remove the thorn in my flesh because i need balance for the weight of the glory that he placed in my life but i don't want that voice to become so loud that it cannibalizes what he has created in me and so when when i say don't drop the mic i'm passing on uh to younger newer newer because everything new isn't young there may be somebody who's 40 or 50 who has spent their life doing one thing and yet they're about to be new to doing something they've never done before so this you understand so newism isn't about chronological age on the other hand there may be somebody 25 who stuck on being 15 and refuses to grow up and they're not ready yet and they're not they're not precocious enough to evolve into the magnitude of what god has called them to do so instead i'll just leave it a very neutral statement to whoever is new and whoever's next i want them to understand what's normal with with communication and to respect communication so that you don't just say just anything to anybody and you don't become a troll on twitter because you know that words have power and you don't you don't keep saying things to your wife that you have to apologize for because you let them incubate in your mind some of them are aborted and not birthed because you find out it wasn't as important as you thought it was because eventually she will get tired of i'm sorry and you will lose somebody you need because you drove them away with the with the acrimonious vicious tone in which you attack who you love because we often attack who we love and we're polite with people we don't love because of yeah am i doing it see this is a problem listen man listen women a lot of times when a man thinks you won't leave he will he will abuse you because he he is frustrated by life and circumstances and he has to be polite who to whom he doesn't know but he feels free to attack you because he is attacking him you treat your woman like you treat yourself and she gets caught up in the orbit of your reality she treats you like she treats herself and so we're two planets connecting and those two orbits come together and if you are cynical and doubtful and afraid you have nobody else to vent that on but somebody who you think won't leave and so what we have to do is to be right or die enough to stay with you but not enough to allow my staying to give you license to abuse me okay so we we can talk about anything but you can't vent on me because you're insecure about you so so when you said turn it down i felt every one of us in the room kind of asking the question how how to turn it you know it's not like a knob for the internal critic for the shame for the and so you turn it down how first of all you you have an inner circle of people that you trust to reaffirm you we need each other we need each other no matter who you are large or small you need you need a girlfriend every woman in here needs a girlfriend who can tell her that that dress is not for you [Applause] my wife says my wife says this is the way my wife says it she says she either needed a friend or a mirror you need somebody who needs to tell you that purple lipstick is not your calling okay uh because you want to try different things and you need somebody who is who has license to be honest with you and and and who can affirm you when you're just afraid and tell you you're not worried about nothing you were awesome you were incredible and you need to let them reaffirm you now here's the bigger problem we're turning it down sometimes we won't let people encourage us because we will reject what they say by trivializing them oh you're just saying that because you're my wife you're just saying that because you're my mother because you're addicted to pain you refuse the physician because you're addicted to the pain and so in order to recover from that you have to let the physician come and and bill you until you echo what they are saying about you and little by little you come into a place where you think not i i can do all things but i can do all things through christ which strengthens me and whatever i did and whatever style i did it in as long as it accomplished his his purpose not mine it was enough i was nervous one day and i was going to speak in west virginia i was a young man about 20 something and i was real real real real nervous and at west virginia what's up i got up with i i got a hillbilly up in here yeah yeah yeah take me home country road to the place i belong west virginia my mama take me home well you know all the words to that that's the first song i learned on acoustic guitar really that's my jam boy okay but but but what you have to [Applause] your pastor is crazy i hate to tell you this but your pastor's crazy he's one of my favorite people in all the world to talk to uh uh he's incredible he's inquisitive he's intellectual he's articulate he's creative he's anointed he's amazing and part of my call in his life is to turn down the tone of the other voices by saying that was amazing and and fighting through the propensity all great people have to be self-critical one of the signs of greatness is to be self-critical because you're a perfectionist and and it's people who hang up a coat any kind of way who who can leave a closet in any condition who cannot spell check a statement before they release it are telling you that i won't be great because greatness is in details not platforms so so you don't have to be rich you don't have to be famous the more you care about details the closer you get to greatness you know and when your details are wrong you want to correct them immediately because it matters to you because the moment the moment you open your mouth you start to teach people who you are if you and i sit down here and nobody knew us in the room and we sat down in the chair as long as we didn't open our mouths they would know whether we were lawyers or doctors or gangsters or drug dealers they they wouldn't know they would make certain assessments buy our clothing but the moment we utter a word out of our mouths immediately the computer of their brain begins to scan to learn about who we are that's why language is important because it teaches people who you are and it teaches people what you need a lot of times we're angry with people let me confess i have been angry with my wife really angry deeply hidden and angry about something she wasn't giving me that i never asked her for and it took me a while to realize that women don't read sign language so men tend to talk in sign language so when we want something we give you a signal and the signal is so clear to us that when you miss the signal we get secretly mad that she that fellas am i right about it you can't tell what that meant that that that i sent you the signal that that is the signal and you miss the signal how could you miss the sega [Applause] and and not realizing that i had to learn how to talk because i was angry with her over something she was willing to give but she couldn't read sign language so don't drop the mic on your marriage don't drop the mic on your ministry don't drop the mic on your career don't drop the mic on your children don't drop the mic on the next generation just keep talking if black folks and white folks keep talking we will at least we will at least get to be as smart as great danes you don't see brown great danes fighting with black great danes [Applause] you don't see a white doberman pitcher arguing with the brown doberman picture we are the only species that allow the color of our exterior to deny a common experience you don't if you go deep sea diving you don't see all the goldfish hanging out on one side and all the blue fish are on the other side and the blue fish are snaring at the goldfish talking about i'm better than you what does the animal kingdom know about species that the human species has yet to learn they know that we are the same species they know that if you start bleeding and i have the same type of blood that you do the difference in our skin will not stop the transfusion they know that my kidney will replace your kidney and your body will accept my kidney even though i'm a black man and you're a white man we're still men why are we still having this stupid conversation about power when we need to allocate power equally and honestly and fairly and and killing me won't make you king so so you're not any greater by looking down at somebody you actually become greater by looking up at somebody because the further you push me the higher you go you understand what i'm saying so so so these types of things i thought for can i talk about the charvin trial for a minute yeah absolutely i thought the derrick schalvin trial uh talked many things i i thought i thought it taught many things uh personally i agreed with the verdict i thought it was quite obvious uh you you can tie my hands all day and lay me face down on concrete and i will not die and i have high blood pressure i will not die i might get a cramp and i might get hungry i might even i might even pass gas but i will not die okay i will not die so so offering that as an understanding for reasoning of why he is dead seems a little bit asinine to me however there are greater lessons to be learned you had six white jurors four african-american jurors and two biracial jurors who when exposed to the same truth drew the same conclusion [Applause] unanimously so so think about this for a minute that means that if we're not getting along we're not being exposed to the same truth case is the greatest argument for democracy in the world it proved that officers could testify against bad officers and that speaking against a bad officer doesn't mean that you are disloyal to good officers it shut down every argument we had what we are at war with is not the police and we're not at war with each other we are at war with abuse and wickedness and and human depravity and the loss of dignity we we are at war with your son laying down in the street bleeding out on a sidewalk screaming for his mama and yes he is flawed and yes he has problems and yes he has issues and yes he may need to be arrested but he does not need to be tried on the sidewalk that's all we're saying we're not saying he's the virgin mary we're not saying the guy's mother teresa we are saying that when you find something wrong with us treat us like you do when you find something wrong with your nephew and your niece that's all i'm gonna ask a honest question in here everybody who's ever been drunk at least once in your life would you stand up for a minute if you've ever been drunk in your entire life there are as many white folks standing as black talks there are as many women standing as men now let me ask you a question did you want to be choked to death for it that's what we're saying bishop um we've lost him you lost some memories found out the deacon and hit the sauce at one point god bless you brother i want i wanted to publicly thank you for your patience and and guidance on this um i called you when at mother emanuel amy in charleston um i wanted to speak about it to my church and you picked up the phone to guide me through it you know you could have you could have talked to me our church wasn't always diverse um and the more diverse our church became the more i needed to learn and the more i needed to listen and uh you were there for me not with judgment or how could you be so stupid not to know how to speak to this or to not get it but um it took many conversations for you to help me even understand what i was speaking to and what my silence communicated and i wouldn't have known that without you in my life i wouldn't have known that without you in my life i also think that a lot of people don't have that kind of relationship where they can admit their ignorance right without the fear of judgment you're right i and so they practice on facebook [Music] it's true yeah it's funny but it's true yeah where you can get slaughtered my advice to all the white folks black folks and brown folks in the room is if you have an idea about a racial issue don't try it out on twitter or facebook find you a couple of people that you want to talk to about it and say how does this sound to you and it's not that i'm trying to change your opinion but how do i need to word it where it can be heard because how you word it determines how the other person hears it and you can have the opinion of your choice but you need to be able to word it it's like talking to your wife it's how you word it you know you know does my behind look big in these things now is how you answer this question determines the next seven dinners that you're going to eat in this house evening activities yes every evening activities and everything are are going to be deterred for a long time if you don't answer this question right first of all you have to know whether being is a compliment to her or not in one group of communities cut cut the camera and cut the camera you've been on lockdown so long this is amazing you let me out the house you're going to get it wrong here is the thing though it's a funny illustration but it's a good one your cultural background controls what you think is good so what is bad in one community is a compliment in another community and so in the book i talk about study your audience before you make your statement because you will know whether you are insulting them by what you're saying or not you know and and and all of this is not just to make better orators in the bible god used the most bilingual people to do the biggest assignments moses who is born a slave on the hitlist of pharaoh destined to die hidden in his mama's tent built uh she built a ark and put him in the bulrushes and sailed him down the now pharaoh's daughter picked him up and brought him in the palace so he's a slave raised like a prince he is educated like an egyptian but he is connected to the slaves god can use him to go back and speak to pharaoh because he knows the protocol of the house in a way that a slave would never know the broader your girth of your experiences the more diversely god can use you now peter walked with jesus the longest paul was a christian killer but paul spoke in five different languages and peter only spoke in one and he was a fisherman and it limited how god could use him he couldn't send peter to mars hill to speak to them at athens because peter couldn't speak greek but because paul was bilingual he is responsible for most of the epistles of the new testament because of the broadness of his exposure and so not all people get to be exposed to all the things that i have been exposed to uh i i went to uh president museveni uh his wife hosted a breakfast for me uh and and brought in all of the aristocracy of uganda to attend a breakfast on my behalf the king of swaziland threw a dinner party for me and i was a guest to the king of swaziland i was entertained by nelson mandela's family i have been in the oval office of three democrat republican and then democrat heads of state i spoke on the national day of prayer i have spoken many times with larry king to oprah winfrey to matt crouch to paul crouch today star i have spoken to pat robertson i have spoken to puffy i just did an interview with jeezy and i just did just got off the phone uh texting uh joel osteen from cheesy to joel is i like that oh can i ask you one question sure if pastor steven furtick and pastor joel osteen were both on a boat and you had to throw one overboard [Laughter] [Applause] let me find out who can swim the best and i'll answer the question because i can't afford to lose neither one of you uh see how you get out of it did you write that down that's how you get out of it when he tries to tell you up my point is not everybody will get those opportunities i was on death row with a girl named erica right before they were scheduled to execute her i know what it is to say last rites over somebody before they're terminated i have baptized babies and talked with the family as they let them go out for life support i spent three days in san quentin mentoring ministering the gospel where there are no offerings to inmates that have been forgotten about and forsaken i've had 30 000 formerly incarcerated inmates to go through our texas offenders reentry initiative and we were just invited to canada to appear before parliament to make a case for reentry programs in canada you can't amass that plethora of information and that exposure not affect how you think i was in the dressing room many times with aretha franklin her number her cell phone is still in my phone i never erased it you know i i was in behind the scenes with anita baker on her final tour and was a personal friend of mine i have met gospel artists jazz artists hip-hop artists some of the greats some of them are dead some of them had passed on my mother went to school with coretta scott king my mother went sang in the choir with coretta i was i had the privilege of having dinner in her home on several occasions she came to the dedication of our first church i had coretta scott king in the same room with pat robertson in the same room with al gore in the same room with james robinson now that's confusing that's as diverse and broad as you can go at the end of the day all of those experiences helped to inform me the first thing i did to dallas when i came to dallas was not run a revival i rented the dallas convention center and threw a party for homeless people and we fed them and we clothed them and we had a job fair that's how i introduced my ministry to dallas 25 years later we are still doing that we are still feeding and clothing and serving and giving and helping the disenfranchised and the marginalized i don't say that to brag i am saying not everybody will go to buckingham palace not everybody will go to the oval office but when you read what i share you will gather my conclusions without making the trip and should you go you will have some preparation for understanding that the language you use in your circle is not the same language you use when when you are doing uh an interview with a business journalist or conservative talk show radio is different than doing a morning show did you learn that the hard way i listened i didn't i didn't i listened everybody is your teacher my mother told me the world is a university and everybody in it is a teacher when you wake up in the morning be sure you go to school everybody teaches you something the people who do it wrong teach you as much as the people who do it right they all teach you something my material is best served to people who aren't finished with themselves yet who still have mountains to conquer who still have dreams to dream who still have valleys to cross and rivers to forward my my material is not really good for people who are finished and satisfied and comfortable and the only thing you want to do is lay on the beach somewhere and count how much sand you can get on your thigh i want to empower and impart and invest in who's next to lower your learning curve of becoming whatever it is you were created to become that's what i want to do and and my little my little phrase don't drop the mic it yes it's for preachers but it's for dreamers and thinkers and people who want to write scripts and films and do movies and people who want to do more than one thing and you're trying to pick which thing to do and people who have diverse talents and interests but you haven't galvanized them into one setting because i can relate to that i i was called to preach the gospel i live to preach the gospel i'm never more alive than when i'm preaching the gospel but i was also called to produce films i just did two movies a lifetime lust and lusting and envy yeah seven deadly sins and i was able to share our faith on lifetime's platform that's an amazing opportunity and and it was it was a powerful opportunity you only get innovative opportunities when you give up on being traditional that's a quotable right there you only get innovative opportunities when you give up on being traditional now make it a sermon put a scripture to it oh wow that i haven't used yet uh ruth leaves moab which is tradition to follow naomi into the unknown not knowing what she will have to do or what she will have to become as she travels on her donkey down the path into the unknown she makes a commitment that god shall be my god thy people my people and whether i'll dwell as i will dwell and whether i dies i shall die but she had never seen bethlehem she was just courageous enough to walk into the unfamiliar and and and had the dexterity of thought and the nimbleness of mine to say to herself i'll figure it out when i get there yeah and and so i feel excited i feel excited like i'm feeding somebody there's a feeling i get when i'm feeding somebody that that is in this room right now i'm feeding somebody i don't know who it is but i can tell i can feel it in my spirit i can feel it in my belly i am feeding somebody in this room i can feel it in my soul you don't fit the pattern you broke the mold you're out of the box you think differently you got ideas and concepts that you're afraid to share with anybody because they don't get you and god sent me here to tell you you're not crazy that you can be this and that you can produce film and preach the gospel and write books and write op-eds and do commentaries and that you can do more than one thing that you can be an architect and an accountant that you can open up a donut shop and do air that you don't have to be locked into a prison of how people describe you there is more inside of you than what you have discovered yet i don't know who i'm talking to maybe they're streaming online maybe they're reaching from across the waters but god sent me here to say don't drop the mic keep on talking about it keep on dreaming about it keep on fighting for it keep on saying it even if you don't have nobody to hear you walk around the house talking to yourself talking to yourself telling yourself if i made my touch if i may but touch if i'm able to touch the hip of his garment i will be made whole and if you have to crawl for it and if you have to get money for it and if you have to press through the crowds of people who don't think you deserve to be that close then push on in there anyway and get your touch from god most people who have greatness inside of them are the last to know it and when you talked earlier about the many times we've had conversation it was oftentimes to help you see what is obvious to everybody about you if it were not obvious to everybody else they wouldn't be in here but what they don't realize is that you can see everybody but you and that's what i tell people about me i can see all of you but i can't see me so if my shirt isn't hanging right or my collars up when i see the picture i'll hate myself but the reason my collar is up in my my pocket square may not be straightened and and maybe my socks are run down is because i cannot see myself now catch this the way that is true about my appearance is also true about my gifting when you are truly gifted you often cannot see it so you can be gifted and see everybody's gift but your own and and what i was telling you was being a mirror so you could see that was great that means work right that was awesome that was not your best shot that trust between us creates mentorship because i know you have a blind spot like i have a blind spot where you cannot see yourself like you have a blind spot and if you're not careful your blind spot will always leave you thinking that you are not enough that you're not tall enough or short enough or thin enough or handsome enough or cute enough or smart enough or bright enough or gifted enough but even the greats question themselves i've met them they have the little voice at ride home with them too they double think themselves too the difference between them and us is that they feel the fear and do it anyway they feel the fear and do it this is this is why i love coming to you this is why i was with my opening night with you because there is an energy in this place of transparency then you get to have the most intimate intelligent conversations because you draw intelligent thinking people not everybody who's spiritual is also intelligent [Music] crazy people love jesus too uh you could cut that out i probably shouldn't say that you have something to live for to go for to evolve into i don't care if you're 70. if god was finished with you you'd be dead there's still something in you to contribute and whether you are seven or seventy don't drop the mic don't let the enemy talk you into dropping the mic because all of us have a commission to do in the earth and to do that thing that you were created to do it's what makes your soul dance it's what makes creativity spring up like flowers in springtime and decorate the canvas of a ground that has never been plowed have you ever noticed that some of the most beautiful flowers were never planted they just grew up arbitrarily because the season was right and i want to say to you that amidst all of the craziness and chaos and confusion in the world today that it has just broken up the soil for the season to be right and and i think we have an obligation to tell what we learned how it felt what we know and what we do not know to you so you don't waste time taking my classes to jumpstart you to go to the next dimension and for me the book is a legacy piece for me the book is to say to you i know you're scared i know you overthink things and i know sometimes you don't think you're enough and sometimes you feel like an impostor because you know all sides of you don't line up with the best of you work on yourself improve yourself repent confess cry crawl take classes courses do pilates whatever you need to do but do not drop the light [Music] because it's your turn and it's your time and i'm one i prayed when i was a young man young man 3 20. i said lord if you ever bless me don't ever let me be no any young man saul let me live a life so fulfilled that when david comes i can clap i don't want to get old and get jealous so that if if i digress from playing the game i can always coach and be just as fulfilled because i lived everything in its own season you see and this is the goal you want to set for yourself in life is to live everything in its season so that when the season changes you're not living in the past trying to recreate what is gone and to do you the way you do you and enhance that and grow that by your exposure every book i ever read every movie i ever saw every staff meeting i have ever been in i have got to be in the staff meetings of some of the sharpest people in the nation not to brag see we get in the room and we we do selfies that's dumb get in the room pass the selfie get the experience show me you were in the room about what you do with your life not by what you post with your picture if if if you do that if you do that if you take more notes than you tweet then then you won't feed the house and starve to death because when you tweet you feed the house when you take notes you you eat yourself [Music] so be sure i'm not saying don't tweet i want you to tweet tweet tonight hashtag don't drop the bike back home y'all hear me hashtag don't drop the bike watch it online hey don't drop the knife hashtag don't drop the money what's that hashtag again hashtag yeah do all of that there will come a day that this room will not be possible but you were here i sat with maya angelou and had her get to be a guest at magnafest i was sitting not too far from her when she quoted her poem at president obama's inauguration i was sitting right behind aretha's hat and beside colin powell on the stage in the freezing cold at the inauguration uh and i i i was there that moment will never happen again i rode over with rick warren that moment will never happen again because some of the people that it would take to recreate it are not even here so cherish every moment i was just having a flashback bishop that the first time that we spoke um at a meal somebody came to the table and shared with me how the church had changed their life and you did this thing because i think the greatest sermons that you have preached to me have been something that was never on youtube and i think that's something people should understand about you yeah is that your best sermons usually aren't recorded it's the way you live your life and minister to people yeah and i remember when the guy finished telling me you know this is where i was and the church changed my life and you said um you did that thing the thing that you do with your eyes where you look and pass my sternum into my guts and you go and you had i remember this you had a steak knife and you were pointing the steak knife when you said this so it's very very effective uh communication [Laughter] and you said that's an amazing moment and i was like yes sir and you said and you said we had just been talking about critics and and um and controversy and you said don't let them have your moment touch your moment and that's the night is still here and you're saying i'm just trying to recreate it for you you said and and you said it about about four or five times what moments have you allowed to be stolen that you wish you could take back i was invited to write op-eds sally quinn who was with the washington post who ran the on faith section and invited me to write op-eds for the on-face section of the washington post and i wrote about three of them and i got on and read the comments beneath them and they so discouraged me that i gradually quit and when i saw sally again she said why have you stopped submitting your outfits i said well i thought i wasn't very good at it because when i read the comments beneath them i thought they don't like me and she looked at me and burst out laughing and she said to me the average reader of the washington post has a master's degree and the average person in the comments can't spell and and i then realized that i had allowed people to talk me out of a platform who weren't even a part of the intention of the founder the reason i stressed that to you is that if you're not careful you'll let somebody who has never been in your seat talk you down from the place that god has given you you'll let somebody who can't run a barbershop critique you on how you run the church and you will go home hurt and humiliated because they insulted and told you what you ought to do with a platform that god never gave to them they don't seem to realize that if god likes your plan he would have given you the platform [Applause] but you have to know that even if you don't say that you have to know that so that you don't fool around and walk away from a master's level opportunity because of a mediocre comment i lost that opportunity i lost that opportunity and i think about um i texted you a few weeks ago about a sermon that you did on shane yes he still wants you yeah and when i watched you preach that sermon i think i actually called you and said that was amazing and then i said um that sermon looked expensive you said it was expensive yeah can you um talk a little bit about the expense of that kind of ministry i think that i am best at preaching texts that somehow resonate with the repertoire of my own experiences i think that you cannot preach about mephibosheth if you have not been dropped by someone you trusted i don't think that you can talk about him adequately until your chris into your has a cause that was out of your control i don't think just studying commentaries and hebrew words will adequately enunciate what drives a prince to load a bar and makes him be carried out and lay flat on the floor and for a prince the child the grandchild of a king to say i am a dead dog that kind of depletion and loss of pedigree can only come [Music] within the gaze of someone who can relate to that kind of experience of a basement in your life that is the part of preaching they cannot be taught that must be caught and it must be personal enough to you that you are talking about him but you are drawing from you until you and he have become so fused together that getting him up off the floor is getting you up off the floor i remember i remember you you do this to me see this you do this how do you do this hey i preached this in london uh years ago my boys were little one of my sons is here tonight he was there and i was crawling across the floor trying to make it from the floor to the chair and in dramatizing the approach of mephibosheth who was laid on the floor like a thing but called to a chair like a king and the space between the two realities in his life i started crawling because in order to get yourself up off the floor to the chair you have to crawl to get there and as i was crawling and i was almost there [Music] the crowd crumbled and i was glad they crumbled so that they couldn't see me crying [Music] because i was preaching about him but i was also talking about me and i i lost it and i hope pastor matthew sees this tonight i literally lost it myself in the message because there's a point where you are the message you become so one with the message until john 1 14 materializes on that stage and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld the wonder of his glory the only begotten of the father full of truth and grace until the word is made flesh and you are willing to pay the price of the kind of investment that personalizes the deliverance of the text until you are really that that you are declaring you will always be impotent potency that penetrates the human soul is connectivity and as you extrapolate from the text the facts are nice to know but if you're not willing to invest your own pain your own tears and your own struggle if you're not willing to re-examine who dropped you and what you would have been had they not dropped you [Music] and how you ended up in lodibar when you should have been in the succession of kings and here comes a second chance that by bloodline you deserve but by situation you can't imagine and yet you start crawling [Music] that crawl brother is what got you to this stage that crawl is what got me to this stage that crawl is what gets everybody to wherever they're trying to go crawling against the resistance of the adverse winds and the gravitational pull to mediocrity let me say this i know we're running a time but this is important for you to get failing is easy if we're climbing a rope all you have to do to fall is let go [Music] you don't have to study books on failing falling is simple just let go in a row the gravitational pull will always take you as low as it can until there is an obstruction if the floor gives way it'll take you lower if the ground gives way or to take you lower the gravitational pull is never satisfied and how low it will take you and the only thing standing between you and it is the grip you have on the road and so though your body weight is heavy maybe not as heavy as mine but heavy and it is hard to pull the weight up higher and your arms are aching and you're sweating and you're tired of everything and everybody drawing off of you all you have to do is look down and remember that if you let go of the rope your fate is sealed and that's what makes you keep climbing [Music] that's what keeps you on the wall and that's why you can't drop the mic i want to say one other thing to you you don't realize you have not met all the people that you're talking to and the book talks about my ancestry and my the antiquities of my faith and the ancestry of my bloodline and and my ancestors were what is now nigerian and and they were from the tribe of ibo and they came as a couple and survived the tempestuous middle passage and did not throw themselves overboard in an attempt to drown themselves rather than to be penalized with the next 400 years of slavery they chose to withstand the atrocities of the times and continue and that's why i am here and all of them are sitting in this chair with me my grandmother and my great-grandmother and grandma nancy jakes who was born a slave and died a free woman then i remember she's sitting here tonight too and her father and mother are sitting here too and my great-grandfather willie james smiley whose brothers who lived on the other side of the street were called williams because you got the last name of who owned you and though they were full-blooded brothers the street that separated them changed the name that defined them and i cannot find them all but they are all sitting in this chair with me today [Music] i am saying that we are the sum total of everything that happened to all of those who came before us that your grandmother is not dead she's still living down inside of you and your great-grandmother though you may not remember her has some morsel of wisdom in the way you think can drink and process and move and live and i am saying that on the blood of all of those who went before you you cannot be the generation that drops the light you cannot you cannot cannot stand up i want to say to you if you're a white american and your people came over on a boat with much or nothing running away from great britain and came to the possibility of another country the wild foreboding tempestuous opportunity to break away from the domain and the dominion of great britain and dare to establish a different kind of republic that promised freedom and liberty and justice for all in spite of the fact that it didn't fully live up to the promise it dared to make the assertion and if they on wagons with perils of death and sickness and destruction pressed their way into the inner fibers of this nation and took something and built something and became something out of nothing with no running water and no plumbing systems and no highways no trains and no buses and no ovens and no microwaves and no apple phones and no emojis and no twitters and nothing like that to help them and withdrawing water out of whales and walking for miles and cooking over live rocks and stones that were placed on wood instead of ovens if they survived then how dare you sit here with all the stuff you got and let anybody make you think that you cannot make it that you cannot take it that you cannot rise above the fray and be something bigger than yourself if they survive cholera and disease and death and pneumonia and plague and freezing coal and bears and lions and prey and built their houses out of logs then how dare you sit in your nice brick house and your jacuzzi in the back and say that life is not worth living [Music] i stuck my hands in the claw marks of the africans whose claw marks are still on the walls of el mina where they were fighting not to come to america i ran my fingers down their nail prints i smelled the stench of their body fluids that are still existing in the spanish castles where they were held hostage waiting on the next ship to come i stared at the church that was above it then noticed that the missionaries were also masters who raped their daughters while they sang amazing grace and i listened against the waters beating against the rocks and thought what kind of stuff must my ancestors must have been made out of to withstand all the perils and injustices and still in system surviving if we got up at four and we were in the cotton fields by six and we picked till the sun went down with bleeding hands and aching feet for days and days until we died and never knew what a paycheck was ever we were the first people to come to america with the sign we'll work for food and the food was the pot liquor that the master left and we eat what we eat because that was all we could have with the feet of the pig and the neck of the pig and the chitlins of the pig because all of the finer cuts went to the master and still we lived and still we live not only did we live we sang [Music] we sang while our fathers were hung and our mothers were raped we sang haven't got long to stay here we sang against oppression and death and destruction from the enormous pettis bridge with dogs turned loose and water hoses beating us down we sang we sang as the charred bodies of dead little girls were bought out brought out of burning churches we kept singing when they shot the 39 year old dr martin luther king jr in the head we sang while we cried and we made it if we survive colored bathrooms and extra water fountains and survive the separations of having to learn in the basement of the churches that they were burning down by the kkk if if black wall street was burned down in tulsa if we had to endure rosewood and we still made it you cannot sit there with your apple watch and your black skin and tell me you can't make it there ought to be enough fight down in here there ought to be enough fire down there ought to be enough traffic that can says come hell or have water upon the blood of all of my ancestors i will not be the one who drops the light i will not get here and let it die i will not drop this mike's head i will not drop this mic that again i will not drop this i said yeah i will not drop this might give him a praise [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so if you survive the holocaust if you survive adversity if you survive the great depression if they survive the plagues of the past and all of the pneumonias and all of the diphtherias and all of the polios and all of the diseases [Music] and kovid will not take me out i will do whatever i have to do and i will fight whatever i have to fight but i refuse to let it take me out because i have too many ancestors who survive to get here and die without doing what i was created to do i'll let nothing separate me from the love of god neither height nor death nor powers nor principalities nor things doesn't nor things to come [Applause] so this is my little down payment don't drop the mic it's just my little way of saying don't you let nobody turn you around that's the way we were saying don't you let nobody turn you around that's what they were singing on the norman prettiest breed don't you let nobody turn you around turn you round turn you right don't you let nobody don't you let nobody turn you down [Music] don't you let nobody [Music] they had the water hose on them they had the dogs bite them they were bleeding and the hoses were cutting into their flesh and all the while they were bleeding they kept on singing their son ain't gonna let you turn me around keep on walking up the key highway don't you let what i can't hear you [Music] i can't hear you don't you let nobody you've got to keep on walking don't you let nobody turn you not arthritis not hip replacement not back surgery go to that empire you've got to keep on walking up the key away don't you laugh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] don't you let nobody turn you you got to keep is america this is america [Music] [Applause] can we do it one more time y'all gonna help me you don't you let nobody [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you got to keep [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] bishop td jakes everybody [Music] you got this for me it's over it's you we're done it's over [Music] you

Channel: T.D. Jakes

Views: 303,490

Rating: 4.9322033 out of 5

Keywords: td jakes, faith, potters house, bishop jakes, The Potter's House of Dallas, TPH Dallas, td jakes sermons, bishop td jakes, inspiration, td jakes motivation, motivation, sermons, td jakes ministries, motivational speaker, motivational speech, gospel, motivational, td jakes sunday, td jakes 2021, td jakes sermons 2021, elevation church, Steven Furtick, Don’t drop the mic

Id: v6dTsG2PCeM

Length: 104min 7sec (6247 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021