I thought what I wanted to ask you before
we sit down. All right. I've been thinking about this for a month. No, I haven't lost any weight yet. About one pound. If you were going to preach right now, let's
say a Sunday morning at the Potter's House and Pastor Joel was scheduled to preach. Where's Pastor Joel? But he got injured doing 500 pound bench press. And they say, Bishop, Pastor Joel is not preaching,
and the praise team has finished and Marcus has dragged out the music as long as he can. And you've got to preach. What texts do you preach? I think I know, but I want to see if I'm right. What texts do you preach? You don't know. You don't know. You don't know. For God said she had appointed me another
seed in the stead of cane who able slew. My subject is he'll do it again. No, I didn't guess that one. Have a seat. Yeah. Have a seat, everybody. So that's in the Bible, that verse? How many have ever listened to Bishop Jakes
preach and you're like, does he have the same Bible that I have? 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, well, Bishop always says, one of these little parables that you've spit
out, just this beautiful, beautiful, beautifully crafted thing. And he goes, oh, that's Bishop? I always thought that was a Bible verse. I'm saying to you is you are so loved in the
Furtick 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 does that feel like though to be the
most imitated preacher in the last 50 years? I'm not sure that's true. Assuming that it is. Assuming that that would be true, 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 option to be yourself? So when you're starting to preach, people
say, be yourself, be yourself. But when you're first starting to preach,
yourself sucks. Not as a human being, but as a preacher. That's true. So then you hear, oh, don't imitate anyone
else. 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 been waiting
for this. I think a lot of people have, but I wanted
to start not just talking about communication in general, but imitation. Okay. Because imitation, isn't always a bad thing,
right? No. Well, okay. You want me to go past no. Okay. Well, it's preached 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 here 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 so that weening 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 passing of the mic from Eli to Samuel, and for Samuel
can hear God, but cannot discern him. Eli has lost his ability to hear the voice,
but can discern it. Say it again. Okay. Okay. Okay, look. Eli couldn't hear the voice, 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 lack the wisdom to understand what to do with what they hear. Eli, on the other hand, has lost his ability
to hear his adventuresome proclivity to step out into the unknown. He's playing it safe. His eyes are growing dim. His senses are became, but his discernment
is still keen. 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. It's so funny that you should bring him up
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 makes the coat big enough that he can
grow into it and greatness must be grown into. 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. Yeah, let's do that. I want you to know that, by the way, my whole
goal for this experience is for you to get a little bit of a taste of this would be us
on a Tuesday night and three hours have gone by and 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 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? Oh, I'm listening at how they connect with
the audience. I'm looking at how they enter 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 and flexion 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 used pause. The pause is what I call the pregnant pause. It's what David calls Selah in the songs. 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 most young preachers are afraid of the
silence. Why? So they 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 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 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 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 inflection. 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 flinch and the way you didn't look me in the eye when you were saying it
and all of that brings them to, 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 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. Should I drop it? Where'd it go? No, it's fine. That was a great moment. To understand that as an orator, and every
one of us in here are 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 in communicating, and
here's the challenge. It is one thing to communicate a fact, two
plus two is four. Whatever goes up, must come down. To communicate a fact, is one thing. To communicate a feeling, some people 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. I'm sad today. 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 describe a feeling to the point
that it conveys- Yeah, I'm kind of depressed, all of a sudden. Or 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 are not afraid to show me. Well, what do you love about me? I love you. That's fine. What do you love? Some people do not have, 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 dropped 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 that's also true with the man, 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 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. I'm a fierce counselor because I listen at
you, and I remember what you said. 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 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 texts, listen at the texts. Thou Moses, my servant was dead, but as I
was with Moses, so shall I be with you. Listen at a God who Moses dropped and while
Israel was still grieving, God turned his head and continued talking to Joshua as if
nothing had happened at all. Now, Moses, my servant is dead, but as I was
with 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, oh, it's a boss move. The text is a boss move. Yeah, it's a boss move. But you can't read it and get that. You have to listen that 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 a 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 wrap, 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. Oh, come on, stop. To come behind Moses and to have the responsibility,
I wrote Don't Drop The Mic 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. Can I ask you about that? 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. That's Michael Jordan's flu game. I want to hear a Bishop Jakes flu game story,
like a time where you stood. I can't think of a time that I didn't. I can't think of a time. 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 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 not the kind of guy you can
keep and let him go home, and 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 anesthesiologist has 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
and my head and my mouth that requires nothing of my back. And I sat in the chair with my church packed
and I spoke irrespective of pain. This is the tenacity that I passed 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. I was prophesied that I was commanded. I did a reconciliation conference years ago
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 Atlanta
with thousands of people, fully prepared to die for what I believe. If you believe a thing that you are not willing
to die over, it is not worthy of your faith. I said this before and I'll share it with
you and I want to play this off you. 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 texts aren't safe, our FaceTimes
aren't safe, our phone calls are not safe. The only safe place where there are no drones. Yes, where there are no drones, where there
are no hackers is within the confines of my own mind. And with that being my final frontier, I refuse
to allow you to tell me how to think because thinking is all I have left. And so once I open my mouth, my thoughts have
become public. And once they've become public, they're 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 birthed them out of the canal of my mouth. Because once a father's birth, I'm sorry,
does it always retract it? I think you said incubate them in the womb
of my mind before I birthed them through the canal of my mouth? That's right. No, no, no, no, I want to say something. Is a gross? No, no, it's gross that you can do that without
ever thinking about it and just say stuff like that. It's sickening is maddening. The word logos in the beginning was the word
and the word was with God, the word was God. Logos doesn't begin with speech, it begins
with thought. That God is pregnant with thoughts, that He
created what He thought, everything we have on somebody thought it, and then they drew
it, and then they got the 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 starts as a 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 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 before
you become great on a stage. And 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 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 think of it in his heart, so is he. Talk to me, somebody. Look at some and say, I can do this. I can do this. You affirmation spoken over yourself particularly
if you're a person that rustles with insufficiency complexes, it's the reason you have that,
the reason you feel that way is because of 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 what you are saying to yourself will
either make or break what you are doing with your life. So she said, if I may, but touch, 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 life 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 maybe touch the hem of his garment I'll
be made whole, as 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. I'd love to hear this, I'd love to hear we
can have a hard time imagining that you would struggle with those insecurities. The first time I heard you talk about when
you used to preach it, put the mic on a stand because your hands would shake so much that
you couldn't hold the mic. And I almost thought I don't believe him. And I mean that with respect, just to see
who you are? What you do? There was a part of me that thought he's saying
I'm sweating through my clothes, I would stutter so bad. And 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 here to you, I scrutinize. I will go home, I will go back to my hotel
and scrutinize 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 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, I wonder, did they really get what I would say are still the voices that live in
my head, but they don't live too loud. See the art of it is not to kill the voice
is to cut the volume down. So instead of existing at a 10, maybe it exists
at a 3. 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 loyalty. So I don't want to kill that voice of dissension
that balances my accomplishments. And so God balances my accomplishments with
the thorn 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 I say don't drop the mic, I'm
passing on to younger, newer, newer, because everything new is a 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 going something
they've never done before, you understand? So newism isn't about chronological age. On the other hand, there may be somebody who's
25 who's stuck on being 15 and refuses to grow up and they're not ready yet and 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 is next. I want them to understand what's normal 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 keep saying things to your wife that you have to apologize for because you
let them incubate in your mind. Some of them are boarded at my birth 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 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... Am I got it? You see this is a problem. Listen, men, listen women, a lot of times
when a man thinks you won't leave, he will abuse you because he is frustrated by life
and circumstances and he has to be polite 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 ride or
die enough to stay with you, but not enough to allow my staying to give you license to
abuse me, okay? So we can talk about anything, but you can't
vent on me because you're insecure about you. 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 down. It's not like a knob for the internal critic,
for the shame and so you turn it down how? First of all, 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 a girlfriend, every woman in here
needs a girlfriend who can tell her that that dress is not for you. This is where 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? Because you want to try different things and
you need somebody who has licensed to be honest with you and who can affirm you when you're
just afraid until 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 with turning
it down, sometimes we won't let people encourage us because we will reject what they say by
trivializing them. You 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 bill you and tell you echo what they are saying about you. And little by little, you come into a place
where you think not I can do all things, but I can do all things through Christ, which
strengthens me. And whatever ever I did and whatever style
I did it in as long as it accomplished his purpose, not mine, it was about. 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 West Virginia was up, I got to heal belly
up in here. Take me home country road to the place I belong
West Virginia Mountain mama take home. Well, you know all the words to that. That's the first song I learned on acoustic
guitar Really? That's my jam. Your pastor is crazy, I hate to tell you this,
but your pastor is crazy. He's one of my favorite people in all the
world I've talked to. 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 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 perfectionists. And it's people who hang up a coat in and
kind of way who can leave a closet in any condition, who cannot not 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 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. And when your details are wrong you want to
correct them immediately because it matters to you. Because 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 mouse they wouldn't
know whether we were lawyers or doctors or gangsters or drug dealers, they wouldn't know. They would make certain assessments by our
clothing. But the moment we utter a word out of our
mouth 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 can give you
a signal. And the signal is so clear to us that when
you miss the signal we get secretly mad that she... Fellows, am I right about it? You can't tell what that meant, that I sent
you the signal that that is the signal and you miss the signal. How could you miss that? 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 your career, don't drop the mic on
your children, don't drop the mic up the next generation just keep talking. If black folks and white folks keep talking
we will at least get to be as smart as great Danes. You don't see brown, great Danes fighting
with black great Danes, you don't see a white Doberman pincher arguing with a brown Doberman
pincher. We are the only species that allow the color
of our exterior to deny our common experience. If you go deep sea dive and you don't see
all the goldfish hanging out on one side and all the blue fisher on the other side, and
the blue fisher is smearing that 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 killing
me won't make you king. 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 these types of things I thought for, can
I talk about the Chauvin trial for a minute? Yeah, absolutely. I thought the Derek Chauvin trial taught many
things, I thought it taught many things. Personally, I agreed with the verdict, I thought
it was quite obvious. 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 pass gas, but I will not die,
okay? I will not die. 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
unanimously. So think about this for a minute, that means
that if we're not getting along, we're not being exposed to the same the truth
The Chauvin 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 human
depravity and the loss of dignity. 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 flowed 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. We're not saying the guy is Mother Theresa. 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 going to ask an 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
blacks. 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? No. That's what we're saying. Bishop, we've lost them. You lost some members in it. We've lost. Found out the deacon and hit the sauce at
one point, God bless you, brother. I wanted to publicly thank you for your patience
and guidance on this. I called you at Mother Emanuel, AME in Charleston. I wanted to speak about it to my church. And you picked up the phone to guide me through
it. You could've talked to me, our church, wasn't
always diverse. And the more diverse our church became, the
more I needed to learn and the more I needed to listen. And 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
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 without the fear of judgment. You're right. And so they practice on Facebook. It's true. It's funny but it's true here 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 is how you
word it. Does matter handling big in these seats now,
isn't it. 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 going to be deterred for a long time if you don't answer this question right. First of all, you have to know whether big
is a compliment to her or not. In one group of communities... Cut the camera and cut the camera. You've been on lockdown so long, this is amazing. You let me out the house, you got to get it
wrong. Here's 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 studying
your audience before you make your statement, because you will know whether you are insulting
them by what you're saying or not. 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 hit list
of Pharaoh, destined to die, hidden in his momma's tent, she built a arc 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. I went to President Museveni. His wife hosted a breakfast for me 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 of the king of Swaziland. I was entertained by Nelson Mandela's family. I have been in the Oval Office of three Democrat,
Republican and 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, to Daystar. I have spoken to Pat Robertson. I had spoken to Puffy. I just did an interview with Jeezy and I just
got off the phone, texting Joel Osteen. From Jeezy to Joel is... I like that. 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, who would live? Let me find out who can swim the best and
I'll answer the question because I can't afford to lose either one of you. I would get it. See how you get out of it? Did you write that down? That's how you get out of it when he tries
to tie 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 rights over
somebody before they're terminated. I have bypassed Mongoloid babies and talked
with the family as they let them go off of life support. I spent three days in San Quintin ministry
of 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 cell phone is still in my phone. I never erased it. 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 are passed on. My mother went to school with Coretta Scott
King. My mother sang in the choir with Coretta. 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 Robinson, in the same room with Al Gore, in the same room with James Robinson. 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 preparations for understanding that the language you use
in your circle is not the same language you use when you are doing an interview with a
business journalist or a conservative talk show, radio is different than doing a morning
show. Did you learn that the hard way? I listened? 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 ford. 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 counter 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. My little phrase, don't drop the mic, 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 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 on Lifetime Lust and … Lust and Envy. Envy. Yeah, Seven Deadly Sins, and I was able to
share our faith on Lifetime's platform. That's an amazing opportunity. 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, but a scripture to it. Oh wow. That, I haven't used yet. 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, "Thy God shall be my God, Thy people my people
and where thou dwellest, I will dwell and where thy diest, I shall die." But she had never seen Bethlehem. She was just courageous enough to walk into
the unfamiliar and had the dexterity of thought and the nimbleness of mind to say to herself,
"I'll figure it out when I get there." So I feel excited. I feel excited like I'm feeding somebody. There's a feeling I get when I'm feeding somebody
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 could 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 hair,
that you don't have to be locked up to a prison of how people describe you. There is more inside of you than what you
have discovered yet. I don't know who talking to, maybe they'll
stream it online. Maybe they'll reach it from across the water. But God sent me her 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 made my touch, if I
made my touch, thy him or his garment, I will be made whole." 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 often times to help you see what is obvious to everybody
but you. If it were not obvious everybody else, they
wouldn't be in. 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 collar's
up, when I see the picture, I'll hate myself. But the reason my color is up and my pocket
square may not be straightened and maybe my socks are rundown 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 could be gifted and see everybody's
gift, but your own and what I was telling you was being a mirror. So you could see that was great. That needs work. 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. 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 that run 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 why I love coming to you. This is why I will spend 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. Crazy people love Jesus too. You can cut that out, I probably shouldn't
have said 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 70, 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 is what makes your soul dance. It's what makes creativity spring up like
flowers in spring time 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'm going 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 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. Sometimes you feel like an imposter because
you know all sides if 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 mic because it's your
turn and it's your time. I prayed when I was a young man, young man,
pre 20. I said, Lord, if you ever blessed me, don't
ever let me be no any young man's soul. 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 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 mood 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 do selfies. That's dumb. Get in the room, pass the selfie, get the
experience. Show me you were in the room by what you do
with your life, not by what you post with your picture. If you do that, if you take more notes than
you tweet, then you won't feed the house and starve to death because when you tweet, you
feed the house. When you take notes, you eat yourself. So be sure... I'm not saying don't tweet. I want you to tweet to my #dontdropthemic. Back home, y'all hear me? #dontdropthemic. Watch it online. Hey, I said, don't drop the mic. #Dontdropthemic. What's that hashtag again? #Dontdropthemic. 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 to be
a guest at Mic Fest. 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. 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 at a meal, somebody came to the table and shared with me how the
church had changed their life. 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 is that your best sermons, usually
aren't recorded. It's the way you live your life and minister
to people. I remember when the guy finished telling me,
"This is where I was and the church changed my life." And you said you did that the thing that you
do with your eyes, where you look past my sternum into my guts, and you go... I remember this, you had a steak knife and
you were pointing the steak knife when you said this. So it was very, very effective communication
tool. And you said, "That's an amazing moment" and
I was like, "Yes, sir." We had just been talking about critics and
controversy and you said, "Don't let them have your moment. That's your moment." And then the knife is still here. I'm just trying to recreate it for you. You said it 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 invited me to write op-eds for the On Faith section of The
Washington Post and I've wrote about three of them. 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 updates?" 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. 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." 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 stress that to you is that if
you're not careful, you'll let somebody who has never been in your seat talk to 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 are to do with the platform that God never gave to
them. You don't seem to realize that if God likes
your plan, he would have given you the platform. 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... I texted you a few weeks ago about a sermon
that you did on shame. 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 that sermon looked expensive. You said it was expensive. Can you 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 cripple has a cause that was out of your control. I don't think just studying commentaries and
Hebrew words would adequately enunciate what drives a prince to Lo Debar, 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 within the gaze of someone who can relate to that kind of experience of a
basement in your life. That is a part of preaching that can not 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. You do this to me. You do this. Why do you do this? I've preached this in London. 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 then 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,
the crowd crumbled, and I was glad they crumbled so that they couldn't see me crying. Because I was preaching about him, but I was
also talking about me. And I lost it. And I hope pastor Matthew sees this tonight. I literally lost myself in the message, because
there's a point where you are the message. You become someone 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, and how you ended up in Lo Debar 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 started crawling. That crawl brother, is what got you to this
day. That crawl is what got me to this day. 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 on 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. You don't have to study books on failing. Falling is simple, just let go of the rope. 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, it will take you
lower. The gravitational pull is never satisfied
at how low it will take you. And the only thing standing between you and
it, is the grip you have on the rope. And so though your body weight is heavy, maybe
not as heavy as mine, but heavy, and maybe it's 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, 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 the
antiquities of my faith and the ancestry of my bloodline. And my ancestors were in what is now Nigeria,
and they were from the tribe of Igbo. 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'm 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 that 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. 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 a great grandmother, though you may
not remember her, has some morsel of wisdom in the way you think and 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 mic. You cannot. You cannot. Can I stand up? I want to say to you, if you're a white American
and your people came over on a boat with much of nothing, running away from Great Britain,
and came to the possibility of another country, the wow foreboding tempestuous opportunity
to break away from the domain and the dominion of Great Britain, and bear 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 and no trains and no buses and no ovens and
no microwave and no Apple phones and no emojis and no Twitters and nothing like that to help
them, and were drawing water out of wells and walking for miles and cooking over live
rocks and stones that were placed on wood instead of ovens. If they survived, how dare you sit here with
all this 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 survived cholera and disease and death
and pneumonia and plague and freezing cold 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? I stuck my hands in the claw marks of the
Africans whose claw marks are still on the walls of Elmina 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 my ancestors must have been made
out of, to withstand all the perils and injustices, and still insist on surviving." If we got up at 4:00, and we were in the cotton
fields by 6:00, and we picked until 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'd eat what we'd eat because that was
all we could have, was the feet of the pig, and the neck of the P and the chitlins of
the pig, because all of the finer cuts went to the master and still we lived. By God. And still we lived. And not only did we live, we sang. We sang. While our fathers were hung and our mothers
were raped, we sang. Haven't gotten long to stay here. We sang against oppression and death and destruction
from the Edmund Pettus 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 of burning churches. We kept singing where 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 survived colored bathrooms and extra
water fountains and survived the separations of having to learn in the basement of the
churches that they were burning down by the KKK. If the Black Wall Street was burned down in
Tulsa, if we had to endure a Rose Wood 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 fighting down here. There ought to be enough fire down here. There ought to be enough trial down here that
connects us come hell or high water, upon the blood of all of our ancestors. I will not people whose drops the mic. I will not get here and let it die. I will not drop this mic. Say it. I will not drop this mic. Say it again. I will not drop this mic. Say it again. I will not drop this mic. Give him a praise. If you survived the Holocaust, if you survived
adversity, if you survived The Great Depression, if they survived the plagues of the past at
all of the pneumonias and all of the diphtherias, and all of the polios, and all of the diseases,
then COVID 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 had too many
ancestors who survived 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 depth, nor powers, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come. 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 would say it. Don't you let nobody turn you around. That's what they were singing on the Edmund
Pettus Bridge. (singing). 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 that song. (singing) What? I can't hear you. I can't hear you. (singing) Not arthritis, not hip replacement,
not back surgery. (singing). This is America. This is America. Can we do it one more time? You all want to help me? (singing) Bishop TD Jakes, everybody. You got this for me? It's over. It's you. We done? It's over.
