How To Build Your Vision From The Ground Up | Q&A With Bishop T.D. Jakes

I want to read you something, and this was written by Judd Apatow. He was writing about the comedian Albert Brooks and how he got a chance to work with one of his heroes. And just a couple of sentences, but he said something that I would love to say about Bishop Jakes before he comes and ... He said, "In your dreams as a young guy, you imagine your heroes to be one thing, and then you get a chance to work with one of them, and he's actually even better." He said, "Deep down, all comedy nerds hope

that at the end of our lives we will have made one movie as good and true as Albert Brook's best movies." I'll modify that a little bit. Deep down all preachers and leaders hope that at the end of our lives we will have preached one sermon as good and true as Bishop T.D. Jakes worst sermon. Would you put your hands together Elevation Church and welcome to the stage the one, the only, Bishop T.D. Jakes. I don't know how we're supposed to do this, but I want to tell you right off that bat, this is my

Steven Furtick outfit. This is me trying to be cool like your pastor. Did I do pretty good? Cool, man. So I inspired you? You inspired me. Can we call it even now for all of the stuff I've ripped off from you over the years? The only problem is my thighs can't breathe. That's a problem. So if we see you leaning over ... Yeah, I need a EMT for my knees, but I'm good. Woo. Woo. You can't dance in these things, man. You can't? You know you just got to jump up and down. Can you soar?

I can soar in them. I can soar in them. How would you like to hear Bishop T.D. Jakes and Pastor Steven Furtick sing I Believe I Can Fly by R. Kelly, a duet to begin this interactive experience? Is that something you might be interested in? All the millennials are like, "R. What?" Right. Maybe we'll do that at the end. No, let's not. Do you like that song? Yeah, I like the song. What are some songs that you like to listen to, Bishop Jakes, that don't get played in church? That don't get played in church? Woo.

Cut the cameras. Oh, you guys can be seated, we're hanging out now. They're so excited. I like Luther Vandross. I like Anita Baker. You know. I like, lesser known but extremely talented is, Keiko Matsui. Keiko Matsui is a Japanese jazz pianist that is absolutely out of this world. And I listened at her this evening before I came over here, so I'd have my international flavor. Yeah. So I like all kinds of music. I like classical music. I like gospel music, of course. I like just about every kind, every genre. Even some country. I'll go country

on you every now and then. Greatest rock and roll band of all time? Oh, god, now I'm in trouble. I don't go rock and roll. No? Though it's funny, I grew up in the Jimi Hendrix era, so you know, anybody call you Jimi Hendrix? No. Big poster over on my wall. My life's ambition was to have his Afro. I had women braiding my hair till my eyeballs were up like this, trying to get my hair to grow. It never happened. I didn't hair till the Jheri curl. That was your moment. You don't know nothing about

the Jheri curl. Yes, sir, I do. You don't know nothing about that. I mean not from personal experience, I've seen pictures. You've seen pictures of it. Well, when I used to preach years ago, I wore a Jheri curl and I had a towel around my neck. And when I got to really preaching ... you've seen some pictures or something? Yeah. And the Jheri curl, the juice would fly across the center aisle, and everybody would get … in the spirit. Those were the days when the power of God was falling. Is that the secret? That's the

secret, you've got to get a curl. I'm in trouble. I'm so excited about this new book, "Soar." Excited to talk to you about it tonight. Thank you. I've been reading it. It's kind of weird, though. I had to do my research to interview you, and so I put in Amazon, because the book is subtitled, "Build Your Vision From The Ground Up," and focuses on leadership, entrepreneurship. So I put entrepreneur in Amazon search, and over 56,000 results. Over 56,000 results. And then I put in leadership. Over 257,000 results. Amazing. Which made me wonder, for my first

official question of the interview, what was missing from the conversation that made you want to add your voice? Timing. What we need depends on where we are in the history of this country. The topography of this country has changed in terms of how we make a living quite a bit from agricultural. We went through that phase to the Industrial Age to the Information Age, that we're currently in right now. And people have had to retool themselves in order to keep up with trends they didn't choose. Now we're in an era where people of my generation

sent our kids to school, because we trained them to think 'a job.' And we said if you go to school and you get a good education, you're going to come out and you're going to get a great job, and that was true when I was coming up. But that's not true today. Today, you can ... am I right about it? Today you can go to school, you can get a great education and come out with a good bill. A whole lot of debt, and end up working at Burger King. Nothing against Burger King. But, how

do we ... I have to be careful, brother like me gets sued on a regular. The question then becomes how do we, with our education and our disappointment, living in our mother's house, sleeping on the couch, eating cereal at noon, retool ourselves so that we can be functional in the 21st Century? I listen at the argument that our country's having right now. It's hard to listen to. But, beneath all of the chatter, the Red Belt states and the inner cities are crying about the same thing, the lack of opportunity. And we're looking to the White

House to solve the problem. And the reality is, that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen. And we need solutions. And this goes beyond ... we like to talk in terms of, we have nice terms for it, but it's really black and white ... urban and Red Belt states is really black folks, white folks. But now, we're both getting broke. Okay, which is a scary situation. And you've got smart, bright, gifted, talented people who can't find an opportunity. Also, in our community, and even in other communities, you have this dilemma of people who

made mistakes when they were young, some criminal justice issue, and 25 years later they can't get a job or a place to stay. Right. That's a real problem. So rather than to go get a job, I thought it was important to talk about being a job. You know, yeah, about being a job. About hiring yourself, about the opportunities that exist to create your own reality, your own business, your own company. To be the CEO of you. The CEO of you. Yeah, and I think it surprises a lot of people to hear you talk like that,

who are only familiar with you as a preacher. Right. Right. I mean, there's no doubt, okay, when I go to preach for Bishop Jakes, I've had the privilege to do it three times, I think, I spend as long trying to figure out what I want to say in my introductory remarks to honor him because of what he's meant to me, as I do on my message. And I never can quite find the words, but the last time I think I was with you I gave you a nickname. I don't know if you remember- Oh, yes.

I called you the Slasher. Yes. Yes. And I called you that because- got me arrested. I called him that because no matter what title someone would put with the name T.D. Jakes, they would have to put a slash after it. Yes. So, you're a pastor slash author, New York Times best-selling, multiple number one, 793 weeks author ... slash producer, slash record label executive, slash philanthropist, slash father, slash husband, slash ... so I call him Slasher. Probably the first time you've ever been called that. That got me an FBI investigation, that's good. Thank you very much.

At the heart of that nickname, though, is a lot of admiration. I wonder, when did you decide not to be limited by one title or one function? I never knew that the way people described you would become a prison, until they did it. When I met me, I was not a preacher. So, I didn't know that they would incarcerate me with the title. You are at your best when you are authentic to your core, and you have to be what you are, not what they call you. Sometimes, you understand what I'm saying? Sometimes people will

call you a name and you start living up to the name, and it limits you from what else God wants to do in your life. And by the way, I get a lot of credit for inventing this, but the credit is really misplaced, because when you think of the Apostle Paul, he was a writer. He was a thinker, respected by the thinkers of his age at a time when there were profound thinkers in Paul's age, known for his ability to be progressive intellectually. He was a speaker, he was a writer, he was a tent maker.

He was able to influence Aquila and Priscilla, not because of his preaching but because of his business. They shared the same business. And out of that business influence and affluence, a relationship emerged that affected the kingdom. When you look at Jesus, who was a carpenter's son, and later they called him a carpenter. He who handled wood, ended up nailed to a tree. And what happens in life, as we evolve as a person, we cannot allow ourselves to be incarcerated by anything that people would describe us with, because we limit then what the Holy Spirit can

do in your life. You understand? I do. Let me jump in, say this one quick thing. I think if Jesus had come in our day, he would have been a filmmaker, but because they didn't have films he told parables. But if you think about it, parables are movies made of words. If he were to come today, he would have done films. Imagine how that would look like today. Most of what we call church, we would have to teach Jesus. Jesus never saw an usher. He never saw a greeting committee. Jesus never saw a choir. Jesus

never met a deacon. Jesus never had a board. Jesus never had a whole lot of things that we would have to go through and say, "Now, Jesus, don't sit over there, that's the reserved section. And Jesus, when you get ready to leave, put your finger up and tip out." These accoutrements that attach itself to religion often block our view from revelation. Because I was raised by a dying father, born in between two dead babies, I really value the preciousness of life. The baby before me died, and the baby after me died, and my mother clutched

to me as only a mother can who has lost a child. And an appreciation for the value of life and a refusal to allow anybody to take away the great privilege of being alive. I will think for myself. I will move in my own direction. You can say whatever you want to say about it, but I'm going to be me. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. At the core of everything "Soar" is saying, don't be limited. Don't put a period, because you did one thing that you can't do something else, that you can't be

something else, that you can't evolve as an individual, that you can't explore other idioms of thought. Let me shut up, because I get to talking, I'll talk to No, that's great. I want to dig deeper into that, because the arc of your teaching and one of the most influential messages that I've received from you is, get out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you open your mouth, some version of that's going to come out. Maybe from the Old Testament or maybe from a chicken's egg, there's some way that you're going to tell me 'get

out of your comfort zone." Mm-hmm. I wondered though, because I've also heard you teach so much about your capacity, that each person has a God-given capacity ... for the person who is trying to decide, "Who am I? What can I do? I don't know yet. I haven't tried yet. I think I know what I have. I don't know if I have it or not," how do we know the difference between staying in our comfort zone versus going beyond our capacity? You're only measured in terms of success by his investment, in terms of contribution. If He

gave one man one talent, another man two talents and another man five talents, He didn't expect the man with one talent to produce ten. But at least give me two. The man who had two talents came back with four. The man with five talents came back with ten. The man with two talents came back with four, the man with five came back with ten. Those are the same things. That's a hundred fold. The man with one came back with nothing. Now, the Apostle Paul says that when we compare ourselves with one another, in so doing

it is not wise, because we don't have the same starting place. So if I'm going to make success predicated on what my neighbor had, that is only fair if I started with what my neighbor started with. Let me ask you this. What if I'm not clear about what I've started with? Because, I've heard you do this thing before, too. Okay, the advantage I have interviewing you is I have a library of things that you've said. I don't think there's been a sermon- That I don't remember, by the way. Yeah, so I have. I'm scared to

death The upper hand. But you do this thing ... All right, I saw him do this thing at a preacher's conference once, and he said ... I won't imitate your voice. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. He has this really intense mode. There's a wide open Bishop Jakes, and then there's a very intense, very ... it's many gears, but with equal intensity, and it's terrifying. But, it was a pretty big moment and you say, "There's nothing that I have that you don't have. I have one mouth. You have one mouth. I have two ears. You

have two ears." And you know how descriptive he is. He went all the way to the toenails. And I'm just being honest, Bishop, respectfully, I was thinking, "That's not true." You have this mind and this ability and this voice. Even as a preacher who admires you so much, there's a part of me that goes, "I know the point is that God has given each of us a calling, but I think a lot of us, when we hear about the parable of the talents, we don't know. Well, do I have one? Do I have two? Do

I have five? I don't want to get out there and do something stupid that I wasn't meant to do, but I don't want to stop short." You're really hitting on something. First thing, I am in touch with myself in a way that a lot of people are not. I know me. I've dated me. It's funny, but it's true. I've dated me, I know me. You know when you date somebody, you explore them to see who they are. Most people are so busy dating other people they've never dated themselves. You understand? When God says to Adam,

the very first command God says to Adam, is to be fruitful. You can only be fruitful if you are seedful. Okay, so we're talking about the difference between fruit and seed. Identifying your seed is what causes you to be fruitful. The first revelation of seed should happen in your family. You should have parents who are looking at their kids looking for seeds. I'm going to give you my grandbaby story, you asked for it. You're going to get it. You're just going to get it. So, we're in my church and it's dark and my grandbaby's in

there, and a bunch of friends are in there, and we're taking pictures and can't find the light. The lights are complicated and I can't figure out how to turn all the stuff on. And so we're trying to get some pictures. And so, my grandbaby ran and she says, "Wait a minute, Pa. I'm going to get a flashlight." She went up under the pew where we have hidden flashlights, snatched down a flashlight and brought it over, said, "Now take the picture." I said to her, "Baby, don't you want to be ... Kensie, don't you want to

be in the picture?" She said, "No, I don't want to be in the picture, I want to hold the light." That's the seed right there. That's a seed right there. So, we came back to the house and I was getting ready to take her picture, and I'm trying to keep up with you millennials, it's so hard. And I was trying to take a selfie, and I've got a timer where you can back up and ... you know. If you follow me on Instagram, you know this is true. And so, I couldn't get my phone to

sit up, and she went and got some books and propped it up. And I told my daughter, I said, "Put her in leadership classes. Put her in management classes. She's a problem solver." That starts early, early, early. Her instinct in a situation is to solve the problem. She says, "I don't want to be picture, I want to hold the light." Those are seeds, directing that child toward an area where you can cultivate what God has planted down inside of them, is important. It's very, very important. There are people in this room that have dormant seeds

laying inside of them, that if they get in the right atmosphere, they're going to turn into things you have never seen before. They didn't always have the benefit of parents who could see it or had time to see it or knew how to see it, but even as adults, there are still seeds down in you that have not been touched yet. That's what happened to Elijah. He was fulfilling his parent's vision, plowing in the field. That boy wasn't no farmer. Just because you can run a plow doesn't mean you're a farmer. But, sometimes we get

stuck in what people expect. Right. And we never found out who we are, because we're living somebody else's dream. And so there he is plowing in the field, doing what his daddy wanted. Going around and said, "I guess this is all life has for me." And he's going around and around in circles, like many people who are listening to me right now. You go to work, go to church, go home. Go to work, go to church, go home. Go to work, go to church, go home. You're plowing around, around in a circle. Until Elijah passed

by him, and then he was exposed to something. The moment he was exposed to something greater, he dropped something lesser. You understand what I'm saying? Got it. That's why conversations like this are important. Because, really, I'm not throwing seeds, I'm throwing fertilizer. And if it hits a seed, it's going to give birth to companies and businesses and books and artistry and drama, and all kinds of stuff that's in this room that people never have given themselves permission to burn their plow. That's what this book is all about, Pastor. I'm not against people working a job,

but we have entrepreneurs in a job, and you're frustrating the company and you. Nobody likes you. They don't like you. Let me ask you this, because ... Because you're scared of what I'm getting ready to say. I just think that's a very Tweet-able moment. 'They don't like you.' @Bishop Jakes. So true. They don't like you. Touch your neighbor and say, "They don't like you." No, I just want to clarify, because it seems like entrepreneurism, entrepreneur is a trendy title these days, you hear it more and more. It's not a weird thing anymore. It's kind of

sexy to post 'on my grind' and ... What do you think about that, Bishop, because I would imagine that generationally, I know enough about how you grew up, maybe people would like to hear a little bit about what it means to you. What's the essence of entrepreneurship to you, your value system, versus how you see it being portrayed culturally now, especially in a younger generation? Uh, oh. Well, most of the time today, when people say they're on their grind, they overslept, they're laying on the couch and they're eating cereal. That's what it means? Yeah, that's

what it means today. That is not what it meant in my day, and that is not what makes people successful. I have had, I have to be careful about even going down this road, I have been so blessed to get in the room with some of the most incredible people on the planet. I had lunch the other day with the CEO of AT&T, and we sat for hours and hours talking and interacting with each other and became friends. Last Sunday I was invited to Oprah's house as she launched her book, and I've seen her behind

the scenes and seen how she operates, who she is and what she does. Pretty nice place? Instead of burning my plow when I came home, I started to burn down my house. I said, "I'll set it on fire, the insurance will pay for it." I've seen people who were on their grind. I've seen Steve Harvey's on his grind. I've seen people on their grind. What on the grind really is, is a work ethic that would blow your mind. It would blow your mind. I'm 60 years old, and everybody who works for me is younger than

me, and they'll tell you I'll work you up under the table. I'll work you up under the table. Where does that come from? My father. My father. Absolutely. My father is real ... Let me tell you, this chair is about to break. My father's sitting here and my mother is sitting here, and they're fighting for the mike from moment to moment. My grandmother talks to you every now and then. All of my ancestors are sitting on this table, all the way back to Nigeria. All of them. My ancestors were Igbo's from Nigeria. And Igbo's are

called black Jews, that they're industrious, that they go after things, that they're hard working people. So all the way back in my DNA we were self-sufficient. And all of them are sitting here. Folks who's name I can't even call. So, what we're talking about is culture. Not racial culture, family culture, where the demonstration of what ... My father decided what grinding was. You weren't grinding till daddy said you were grinding. Got you. "Take your hands out of your pocket, boy, like you got a million dollars in your pocket." They trained us not to be lazy.

They talked about lazy like it was a disease. I mean, like- The worst thing you could be. It was the worst thing you could be. And two things to this day ... I shouldn't say that in your church, I can say this in my church, so I'm going to say it in your church, and I'm going to let you figure out all ... Two things, to this day, I cannot stand is a stinking woman and a lazy man. They like that. There's some folks that are agreeing with me out there. A sister got to take

a bath, praise God. A sister got to throw some water here and there, I ain't talking about baptism. I'll give a brother a pass on the smelling good if he works hard. But don't tell me you're on the grind and you're not really on the grind. Here's the problem, the Bible said Benjamin ... Jacob was dying, laying in the bed, talking about fathers to son. He's laying in the bed and he's dying, and he sat up. The Bible said Israel strengthened himself, noticed that Israel strengthened himself, sat up in the bed and he said, "Benjamin,

show raven as a wolf. In the morning, he shall devour the prey. And in the evening, he shall divide the spoils." Notice the time clock there. In the morning, you devour the prey, while you're young. Argh. See there. That's the intensity thing I was talking about. Imagine when he has a steak knife across the table. One lady jumped back three rows. In the morning- I see a lady really scared out right here. My mother was a school teacher, she was dramatic. In the morning, you should devour the prey. In the evening, you should divide the

spoils. If you don't devour when you're wrong, you'll have nothing to divide when you're old. It's incredible. I am scared to death of people who are young and say, "I just can't figure it out. I haven't made up my mind yet. I tried that, I didn't like it. I don't know." I think you better hurry. You better shoot something right now, because youth goes quick. I mean, like it goes like a runaway slave. It goes ... Youth is an underground railroad with Harriet Tubman, it gets away. Okay? These are things I would not say. You

can't say, so you just sit there and nod, and have the white man's liability of turning red. See, we get embarrassed and you can't tell it, but when you're embarrassed you turn red. God bless you. It's going to be rough tonight. It's going to be rough tonight. It's going to be rough tonight. In the morning, hear me people, in the morning, devour something. Throw your whole self at something. You'll never know what you can do and what you can be until you throw your whole self at it. Devour it. I mean, devour it. Don't try

to devour it, attack it. Attack it like you're going to kill it. Devour the prey. And in the evening, you divide the spoils. We have it backwards today. We want to divide the spoils in the morning. So we're blinging when we ought to be devouring. See, don't worry about whose name you wear when you're young. Worry about your name. God told Abraham, "I will make your name great." I will make your name great. There is an old person down inside of you that's depending on you to be smart. It's the person you're going to be

30, 40 years from now. Do not disappoint that person by being foolish through the strongest years of your life. And then when your back is out and your knees are swollen and you can't move around, now you're out there going to get your grind on now? Here is the message you tell yourself. "I'm tired, I can't do that. I don't feel it." We become what we say to ourselves. You will never win the Olympics talking about, "Oh, no, I don't feel like working out today. I don't know, I'll do it when I feel like it.

But I don't feel like it, I don't do this, because I'm not into working out. I want to get the trophy. I want the trophy but I don't want to go through what it takes to get it." You devour in the morning. You divide in the evening. And if you try something and it doesn't work, it's okay. Try something else. My son said to me, he said, "Daddy," he said, my baby boy he said, "Daddy, I'm going to school." He's finishing up a four year degree in musical engineering. He said, "I think it's the thing

I want to do." But, he sat at dining room table with me, he said, "But suppose I'm not, and suppose it's not. Suppose I throw everything at it and it's really not the thing?" And I leaned back over the table and I said, "Don't worry about it, son. If it is not the thing, it will be the thing that leads to the thing." Okay, let's go into that. What been, in your life ministry or business, what's been a thing that led to a thing. I love the part in the book about Viagra, by the way.

It's in the book, you have to get the book, it's just an example. You're talking about Coca-Cola and other products that were discovered by accident. It's the idea that sometimes in doing something that fails, you lead to something that you didn't even know, that was really the whole purpose all along. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, give us one, ten, twenty examples of those in your life, things that you accidentally succeeded at. Everything in my life I stumbled into. Is that right? I stumbled into. I never thought I would be producing films. My wife and I started out

doing gospel plays and going on tours doing gospel plays. We had no intention that we were ever going to do movies. We were trying to do plays and trying to figure out how to do that right. And losing, and losing money. We went to Atlanta and just lost our shirts for the first play. And in the process of stumbling around, we finally figured out how to get the play kind of going good, and then I met this dude that I said, "Let's collaborate and do it together." And the dude was ... what was his name?

Tyler Perry. Oh, yeah, right. I heard about him somewhere. Tyler Perry was fresh out of sleeping in his car, and I was fresh out of money. And so, we got together and collaborated. And then a play called Woman Thou Art Loosed, and we toured the country doing Woman Thou Art Loosed. And then we went to L.A. and did it, and a guy named Reuben Cannon was in the audience, you never know who's in your audience. Footnote to preachers, speakers, singers, anybody on a stage, never adjust your performance to the crowd, because you never know who's

in the crowd. You never know. Always respect your audience with your best performance. I don't care if it's three people. One of those people might change the trajectory of your life. So, Reuben Cannon was in the crowd and he saw the play, and he said, "I want to make it a movie." He said, "I want to make it a movie." Nevermind, I didn't have any movie money. Movie and money both start with an M for a reason. When you have one, you've got to have the other. But he said something to me that becomes the

way business people think. They don't fail to do something because they don't have the money. He says, "We'll raise the money. Let's do the movie." Listen to the difference in attitude. "I can't do it because I don't have the money." He doesn't see money as an issue. If you see it as an issue, it'll be a stop sign. He says, "We'll raise the money." So, Cedric the Entertainer and I can't remember who all. Oprah put some money in it and different people put some money in it, because he knew them. Relationships are your greatest resource.

People who don't like money, don't like resources. Because everything that's ever going to come to you is going to come through a person. That's why you've got to be careful how you treat people, because it's not guaranteed that it'll be somebody you like, your friend, they won't necessarily be your color, and they might not have your theology. But God may use them to bless you. You know, the ravens didn't go to church, but they fed Elijah. So, we put the money together. We put the money together and we did this little low-budget film, Woman Thou

Art Loosed, and just on a whim submitted it to the Santa Barbara Film Festival and won the festival. And all of a sudden the movie that we were going to put on TV went to screen. You see how you're stumbling into it. It's not always that you planned it, but if you honor where you are with your best effort, even if it is not 'it,' it will lead to it. So as you walk along, you stumble into it. I was telling my church Sunday, if you go to my stream and stream our service Sunday, you

get to see a big, ugly six foot two man that starts whimpering and lips start trembling about to cry. I had no idea when I pastoring in Smithers, 40 people, 50 people- Smithers, West Virginia. West Virginia. On Easter. On Easter. On Easter. 40 on Easter. On Easter, bro. On Easter. On Easter. That's counting pregnant folks and dead members. We had about 50 people. I had no idea that the Potter's House was in me. You stumble into it. But, until you dignify the 40, you don't get the 40,000. The problem today is that people are so

busy going after the 40,000 that they don't respect the 40. And if you don't do your best with the 40, you won't get to the 40,000. So, all of my life, I stumbled into relationships and situations and circumstances that I had no idea were going to happen in my life. But, as you dignify the present with your intention- Yeah, I like that. To be present in the moment- I like that. That is so important. And sometimes I have to make myself do it, because I'm such a planner, I'm so strategic. I'm really 10 years ahead

of where the cavalry is right now, I'm waiting on them to catch up. I have plans. You are so strategic. That's what blew my mind about you. I thought you were just a cyborg before I met you. Do you know what I mean, though? I thought you were just- Look that up. Did he curse at me? I thought there was this force of nature, Bishop T.D. Jakes was a force of nature. And some little things that I've seen, some little things that I've noticed, there's ... I thought I would use a prop, bring me that

... yeah, that one, that one. This is from the book. I saw ... Thanks, Jonathan. See, he didn't want to come all the way up. He just stopped short. You won't get blessed like that, will he, Bishop? You've got to come all the way. He fell short of the glory Fell short of the glory. … all of sin. But, I love the quote in the book, you compare our vision to architecture, and you talk about how if you plan it with a pencil, you can weld it with steel. And that's what surprised me about you,

because you're so gifted, there's no denying that. When I saw the systems, the structures, the thought process that goes behind who you are, it almost made me depressed, because I realized, "Oh, this isn't magic." You may stumbled into it from one perspective, but from another perspective, it was strategic stumbling. At least you were trying to do something. I- Let me interrupt you. Please. You stumble into it. God gives you an opportunity, and what you do with that opportunity is your gift to him. Got it. You understand? When God gives you an opportunity, instead of just

jumping on the opportunity, you're supposed to see what it can be. I tell them all the time, God never made not one table- Yeah, I love this. Do this. This is really ... God never made a chair, in all of his years of being God, He's never made a chair, He's never made a table, he just made a tree. And the rest of it was up to us. Right. When God hands you a tree, imagine a table, a chair. Imagine a wall in a room, imagine a log cabin, imagine what it can be. Imagine what

it can be. Imagine what it can be. God of mercy. If he hands you a child, imagine what it can be. If he hands you a spouse, imagine what he can be. Oh, God, I feel his power. I feel his presence. I was out ... your church is rowdy, they shout and stuff. A little bit. I didn't know that. I was out- What did you think we did over here? This is Elevation Church. We love you. Just see them at University City. Look at University City. What's up University City? So, I'm in South Africa and

I'm on a safari. I'm really like tripping off of this safari and I'm out here with all of these big animals and stuff. And I notice the elephant is moving around. The elephant is strong and he's big and he's tough. And his power and his weight, he threw is weight around. And he throws his weight around. What can you do with him, because he's so big? God made him big as a defense. The lion roars. When he roars everybody's almost paralyzed in fear, because God gave him his roar as his defense. The cheetah says, "I

can't roar like that, but I can run like the wind." The cheetah, woosh, it goes running through the woods, because God made him able to run because that's his defense. The eagle spreads his wings and soars into the air and says, "I can't run, but I can fly." God let the eagle be able to fly, because it was its defense. And I'm walking around in the jungle and I said, "Well, Lord, I can't fly like the eagle. I can't fun like the cheetah. I can't roar like the lion and I can't throw my weight around

like the elephant. What did you give man as his defense? In the whole ecosystem of human, of life force, what did you give me?" He said, "I gave you a brain." Your brain is your defense. That's why God doesn't make chairs. He only brings it halfway, and then let's you imagine Collaboration. Develop. You understand what I'm saying? The problem with church people is that we are taught that God makes furniture. So we pray and pray and pray and pray and pray and pray and pray and pray and pray and pray, "Oh, I need a table.

I need a table. God, give me a table. Give me a table, Jesus. Just one table, Lord. If you give me a table, I'll praise you. If you give me a table, I'll serve you." And God says, "I don't do that. I make trees." I want you to look around your life for trees, not tables. God's going to bring within the reach of your mind and your creativity is going to take it the rest of the way, and it's going to turn into apps and it's going to turn into Apple phones, and it's going to

turn into computers, it's going to turn into satellite systems in the heavens. Look at what all we were able to do. No other creature, no other species has sent satellites up into the air, created smart phones. Look at what we did with our head. Why are we in church not using our head? I don't understand it. You know, in my neighborhood they've got this song that the young people used to sing, it's dated now, but they say shake your money maker. Yeah. And they go to twerking, you know. Yeah. I ain't go to show you.

I've got a couple of show you, but they go to twerking. I told my church, "The next time you hear that song, play your money maker, don't shake nothing down here, shake this up here." As a man thinketh, so is he. When you start talking about the type of strategic that I am, God gives me raw elements and I stare at them. I stare at what I've been given, like I stare at a text. I preach the way I do not because of what I know about the text, how long I stare at the text.

I just stare at it. I stare at it. I stare at it. I look at my life. I look at my wife. I look at my kids. I look at my age. I look at my stage. I look at my influence. And I stare at it. And imagine what it could be. And I build my strategy from my stare. I don't have time to be gazing at what you're doing. Understand? Because that's not going to help me, that's none of my business. God bless you, if I can help you, you know I will. But, I'm

not over in your business. I'm never going to be over in your business, because every time you turn around, I'm staring at mine. For this season, for this stage, for this age in my life, what could I do with what I have left? Your miracle is never in what you lost, it is always in what you have left. If you're down to a handful of mill, that's all you need. If you're down to two fish and five loaves of bread, that's all you need. And so, when you start looking at what you have left, stop

grieving over what you lost. Because if you needed it, you wouldn't have lost it. It might only be a pot of oil, but if its left, the miracle's always in what's left. So what can you imagine with that woman, that pot of oil would have never done anything if you didn't pour it. It would pour as long as there was capacity to receive. So when you start talking about being strategic, and this is going to help you a whole lot, for me, once I envision where I'm going, then I can tell what I don't need.

Talk about that. You see, if I packed to go on this trip, based on where I was going, I'd check the weather, I looked at the places I was going to speak, and everything that I thought I would need for where I was going, I put in the bag. And anything ... I didn't pack no swimming trunks, because I figured I wasn't going to need them. Why do I load down my bag with things I don't need. I want to circumspectly, with great precision, tailor my life down to the things that are necessary to get

me where I'm trying to go. Stephen Mansfield, who is the CEO of Southern Methodist Hospitals, this chain of hospitals throughout Texas, a multibillion dollar corporation. Healthcare is a business. He also was the former President of the Dallas Regional Chamber of Commerce, and as he moved out of office, I was there. Incidentally, I am the first clergy to ever be on the executive board of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce. And there I am on the executive board, they control all the wealth that comes in and out of our city, and all the planning and all the

preparations, to be able to move the city of Dallas forward. And there I am in a room full of CEO's and executives, and I'm listening at them talk, and I'm staring. I'm staring. I can tell a great preacher sitting in a crowd by how he stares while I'm preaching. It's all in the stare, brother. I'm staring, and Stephen says something. He says, "All of us CEO's know it is not where we're trying to go that is the problem, you can get great consensus from all of your staff on the goal. And we spend all of

our time talking about the goal of where we're trying to go." He said, "But, all of you CEO's know that's not the problem. It is not where we're trying to go that is the problem, it is what are you willing to leave behind to get there?" When he said that, I ripped out my phone like I had to call somebody. And I had both phones. I very seldom use both phones. I had both of them. I was just a pecking and a pecking and a pecking. He said, "What are you willing to leave behind?" If

you're going to soar, if you're going to soar, you have the break a law to soar. The law is the Law of Gravity. The Wright Brothers had to figure this out, that every time they tried to go up, Isaac Newton was right, something kept pulling them down. There are people in this room, that every time they go after their dream, something keeps pulling them down. They want to open up a not for profit, they want to open up a healthcare, they want to open up a home for unwed mothers. There's some lovely, good things. It's

not about being rich, it's about purpose that they're trying to do. But every time they try to do it, something keeps pulling them down. There is a law that always wants to pull you down to where you came from. Yeah. You came from the dirt. And where you came from will always call you back. You have to escape the gravitational pull of where you came from, and in order to do that you have to break through into a higher law. The higher law is the Law of Aerodynamics. But you have to break into it. And

what I need the force for, the reason I need the runway to get my engines ramped up, is because when I come up against it ... and this is where young people make a mistake ... they underestimate the pull to fall backwards. They saw planes take off and they said, "I can do that." But, they underestimate how much force it takes to break through the gravitational pull that brings you back down. So when they fall back down, they give up on themselves and they stop believing in themselves. Whereas if you would just go faster at

it and go harder at it, you would break through the Law of Gravity. Oh, hallelujah. Wow. Everybody has something that's trying to pull you back to where you came from. And so, when the Wright Brothers built the plane ... and the book is built around the Wright Brothers ... so when the Wright Brothers built the plane, they built it and didn't know how. And they built it in a … There's three old ladies over in the corner, they're from Dayton. They're so happy. I'm teasing. I can't even see. They were in Dayton, Ohio, and they

figured out ... they built the first plane in a bicycle shop. They couldn't say to themselves, "Well, when I get what I need I'm going to build a plane. We don't have a manufacturer, we don't have any backing, we don't have any money, and by the way we don't even have a degree." But, none of that stopped them from building. I wrote this book to people who don't have what they need. I didn't really write the book to big time entrepreneurs. Because all of those books you were talking about? They got them. I wrote this

book to people with big dreams and little resources. I wanted you to build your plane from a bicycle shop. And then they got it all built up in Dayton, and then they figured out something. And I can cite ... I do in the book ... I cite examples of things that I did that succeeded or failed off of this next thing. They said, "We have to move to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina." There were two reasons. One, if it came back down, it would fall in the brush and the landing would be better. And the second

reason was, the wind was right. There are times you can do the right thing in the wrong wind. Okay. Some of the things I tried didn't work because I didn't study the trend, I studied the plane but I didn't study the trend and the wind that's necessary. Success has a lot to do with wind. If Colonel Sanders came along today and started KFC today, he'd go broke. Because today we're all worried about carbs and fat grams and all this stuff. I'm a vegetarian, you know, all of this stuff. We're reading the labels and all of

that stuff. But he started his business at a time that women had just gone to work and families were used to home cooked meals. His business solved a problem. The stats say that people who go into business because they want money are apt to go out of business 80% of the time. People who go into business who are successful don't go into business based on their need, they go into business based on their customer's need. If your business or church or ministry solves a problem, it requires less marketing. You don't have to talk me into

wanting something I need, but when I don't need it you got to spend a whole lot of money talking me into something. So, you want your business to be a solution. In fact, you want your life to be a solution. Nobody sends for a problem, they only send for an answer. If you're feeling lonely and you're feeling rejected, figure out how you can be an answer to somebody's problem and they'll always invite you. Because people invite answers, they repel problems. So when you come in the room giving problems, it is the most unsexy thing you

can ever do in the world. It's true. Somebody far less cute can get much further than you, because they don't moan and groan and complain. Really when people ask you how you're doing, they don't really want an answer. We're not serious. Don't sit down there, "Well, I'm doing fairly well, but my knee is hurting and my back has been hurting from time to time. And when it rains, my eye starts twitching. I got a little pain going on right here, it's driving me absolutely crazy. And I just don't what in the world I'm going to

do, because I've got a thumbnail growing on me here. That's why I didn't wear the shoes I wanted to wear with this dress, because ..." Ah, get out of here! Bring solutions. Bring solutions. Bring solutions. Bring solutions as a person. Bring solutions as a business. Bring solutions as a ministry, and you will always soar. When's the first time you saw yourself as a solution? I wrote Woman Thou Art Loosed and I didn't even know how to write a play. Really? No, I didn't know nothing about writing a book. I didn't know a thing about writing

a book. How old were you? In my 20's. Somewhere in my 20's. Late 20's. I wrote the book in a PC study Bible notepad, because I didn't know what a word processor was. So there was a friend of mine named Pastor Clifford Frasier, who we were just getting into computers and stuff, us old guys, we was getting to 28, old guys. We were just getting into and he said, "Why did you write all of this in the notepad?" He said, "It'd be so much better if you wrote it in a word processor." I said, "What's

that?" I had written almost the whole book in the notepad of a PC study Bible. So it wasn't that I was proficient. It was that I had heard the cry of women who were hurting, sexually and emotionally abused, who were hidden in our churches at that time, and the church was ran by men who were deaf to the cry of the women. And when I heard their cry, I thought that there were Biblical solutions to sociological and emotional issues. And so I started trying to get an answer out. And when I started teaching, it was

a Sunday school class. And more and more women came. And more and more women came. I didn't know it was going to be a movement. I didn't know it was going to be a book. I did it first as a Sunday school class. And then I called Archie Dennis, and I told Archie, "I'm teaching this class, and people are going crazy over it. My church is packed, I just got like maybe 150 people." 150 people meant some people were outside. That's my bicycle shop. Never laugh at my bicycle shop. … small beginnings. Great things come

out of small places. Woman Thou Art Loosed came out of that bicycle shop. So I told Archie about it, Archie said, "You should bring it to Pittsburgh." He had this big rich voice. Archie … used to sing for Billy Graham and … and all those people. This big melodious voice, "Bring it to Pittsburgh." And so he announced that I was going to bring it to Pittsburgh. No, he said, "I'm going to have you in Pittsburgh." And he said, "What do you call it?" And I thought, "I don't know." I'm on the phone with him. This

is exactly the way it happened. I said, "I don't know. I guess I'll call it Woman Thou Art Loosed, that's what the Bible said. I'll call it Woman Thou Art Loosed." He said, "Okay." So he announced that I was going to teach Woman Thou Art Loosed. Like that. And so many women came, they had to move it out of the church into the hotel. So, I took the CD's from the Sunday school class and put it with the, they were cassettes at the time, and put it with the cassettes and all that, and put it

with the cassettes from Pittsburgh and I had a two tape series. This is the truth. This is how it happened. And when I got ready to do the book, I couldn't find a publisher that would do it. I finally found a publisher that would take my tapes and transcribe it into a book. But, when I saw what they did with my answer, I got mad. Because it wasn't in my spirit. They were saying, "What women ought to do is such and such. And what women ..." that was not my spirit. So out of desperation to

protect the integrity of my spirit, I started pecking and pecking and pecking. And nobody would publish what I was pecking. So I told my wife ... see, I'm talking about things that would stop you. Nobody wants to publish it. The first version would did it, did it wrong. Now, I've got all of this stuff crammed into this PC study Bible. Now, I'm trying to pull it out and put it in a word machine. And I told my wife, I said, "Nobody wants to publish it. And if I publish it myself, they want $15,000." $15,000 was

all the money I had in the world. We were saving that money to get our first house. We didn't even own our house and I was trying to get us a house. And I said, Serita, I want to publish this book and it's going to mean that I have to drain our savings to do it." She said, "That's okay." And so she agreed and we took the $15,000 and we published the book. And we got 5,000 copies. And I sold out in two weeks. I didn't go out and buy me a suit, though I needed

one. The lining had come out of my suit, because she was washing it in the washing machine, because we couldn't afford to go to the cleaners. So, I didn't buy me a suit with it. I took the money and put it back in the business and published another 5,000. I had no idea that that book would end up selling over five million copies. Be translated into 10 different languages. Be known to this day around the world in places I have never been. And it all started in my little bicycle shop. So, when I talk to

you about the Wright Brothers soaring and catching the right wind, I'm talking to you about things that I know that happened in my own life. I never let not having enough stop me from getting up. When you mentioned it's not where you want to go, it's what you give up to get there, what have you given up to get where you are, that people in the room might be surprised to know? It reminds me of a statement that somebody asked Catherine Cooman. Do you all know who Catherine Cooman is? Catherine Cooman was a woman preacher

when women preachers weren't cool. And she was preaching in California and to some people, they're still not cool. And she was preaching in California and preaching for …, she was dramatic, "Oh, my God, look at him walking. The amazing ..." anyway, okay. It's the dramatic side of me, I do movies so what do you say? They asked her how much did it cost to be who she was. And then she laughed, she said, "Simply everything, darling. Simply everything." That was so true. When you start talking about ... I was walking through the airport when my

ministry first started to explode. I was so distracted by the explosion that I didn't see the damage. An old preacher was coming through the airport in Charlotte … .When you live in West Virginia, if you wanted to go heaven you either had to go through Pittsburgh or Charlotte. And I was in the Charlotte airport and this old Bishop walked up to me and he looked at me and he shook his head. And he said, "Oh, you've lost something." And I thought, "What did I lose?" He said, "You've lost something that you'll never be able to

regain." I said, "What is that?" He said, "Normalcy." It took me about five years to unpack that simple conversation, that you become a target by people who have never met you. That they will say the most hideous things about you, that your children will suffer from the things that they wrote about you trying to get their points up there, their Nielsen ratings up, that they would eat you for dinner, and save the story until sweeps month. And drop it because you had a big audience, so that they could get big ratings, and that my kids

would have to grow up in the middle of all of that. I was distracted by the explosion. But I would come to see the damage. I would see it in the tears of my children. The pregnancy of my daughter. The pains of my son. Holding my wife in tears. And I would hold her in tears and preach faith, and go home and lay down in a bed of fear. I said, "God, where have you taken me." I'm going to tell you this, it won't cost you nothing, I'm going to throw it in free tonight, …

. I'm going to tell you all. Nobody else can hear this, just us. Y'all going to keep it? I almost quit. I'm a country boy. I'm from West Virginia. I don't know nothing about this big time stuff. I never even asked to be big. I wanted to be effective, not famous. Famous is the consequences of being effective. I didn't know nothing about being famous and I didn't like it. And so there I was, and when you're first new, everybody attacks you first and figures you out later. Because, though we say you're innocent until proven guilty,

the reality is you're really guilty until proven innocent. But I didn't know that then, and I was a young upstart. And you have to understand that you're looking at a 60 year old man, but you're talking about something that's happening to a guy in his late 20's with little kids. And the first time I was in the Washington Post, the article was so vicious it made me nauseous. I was so shocked that you could say that stuff about somebody you didn't even know, based on assumptions and little bit of this and a little bit of

that, they piece it all together. And you don't get to say anything back. So I decided I didn't want this. I was preaching for Pastor Bishop Donny Mears and nobody knew it, because preachers can override their feelings and function. I'd preached to places on fire, but inside I wanted to quit. I told God that I'm through with this, I'm not going through this, I don't need this. See, I don't need that. I'm a guy who likes to go get his own chicken wings. I don't have to have all of that stuff to be happy, because

I wasn't raised with it. I can make it. You can throw me in an apartment and give me just a little skillet, a cast iron skillet. You know what I'm talking about? And some seasoned salt and stuff and a couple of wings. I will run you out of here. I will run you out. So, I said I'm not doing this no more, I'm not doing it, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this because I don't need this and I didn't ask for this. I'm only doing this because of what happened in my life, of

the circumstances of what happened in my life. He put me on stage, I didn't ask for it. And when I saw how much it cost, I thought, "You can have that right back here. You can have that right back up in here. I don't need it." So, I was mad inside and I was hurt. I stayed up in the fellowship with the pastors because I didn't want to go back to my room and sulk in my own sorrows. And they said there's this lady downstairs waiting to see you. The service was over and the fellowship

was over, and the pastors were starting to leave. I was trying to out wait her. I thought she'd give up and leave. And when I finally came down the steps, she was there. And she was just a willowy bit of a woman. And she said, "Bishop Jakes, I've been in the hospital. I was pregnant in my Fallopian tubes, and the baby died in my tubes, and I was carrying around a dead baby, and the toxicity from the baby almost killed me." And she said, "The only thing that kept me alive was hearing you preach." She

said, "If you hadn't been preaching to me every day, I swear I would have died." And then she looked at me and she said, "It's for us. It's not for them. It's for us." It hit me so hard. I didn't even get her name. I got in the car and cried all the way back to my room, because she reminded me why I was there. I just left, last week when I texted you, I was up in Baltimore and D.C., and I was doing a book signing, and this woman came up to the table to

buy 'Soar.' She said, "You don't remember me, do you?" I said, "No." She didn't even look like the same person. She was all dressed up, had gained weight, she filled out. She said, "I met you in the bottom of Donny Mears church years ago. And I burst into tears. I lost it. I stopped the signing and I jumped up and hugged her. If it were not for that woman ... When you talk about what it cost? I'm going to go into my Southern stuff now, "Child, simply everything." What being a public figure does to you,

everybody has an opinion about everything. What you wear, whether you shave your head or not, what you look like, you gained weight, you're fat. I mean, they say anything to you. And what has to happen to survive it, you have to get tougher. Not meaner- Tougher. Tougher. What's the difference? Mean is when you lash back, because in a fight like that if God when turn me loose ... If God would turn me loose, I could hold my own. I could hold my own in a street fight. Oh, holy God. Hallelujah, I got to settle myself.

Sometimes I … , I said, "Please let me get them. Please let me get them." Just one time. Just one time, Lord, just one time. Sometimes I'll type and I have to delete it, because I swear, I pull a little bit of paint off the wall if you turn me loose. You should release a book, Things I Almost Tweeted. Yeah, it would be good. It would be a best seller. It would be a best seller, for sure. But, when I say tougher, your resilience and your resistance to the irrelevance of things that have nothing to

do with your destiny. Our Satanic distractions to move you away from where God has placed you. When I do a pastor's conference and we do Q&A, because I like to do Q&A because I like to talk to you. And then they start asking me questions and stuff, generally somewhere along the night somebody's going to come and tell me about or somebody who said something about somebody who hurt them like that. But when I'm talking to CEO's, incredible successful people, when I'm talking to President's and kings from around the world, I've set across them, talked to.

When I get a chance to be in the room with executives and corporate executives, and stars whose names if I would list in here everybody would know them, they're never talking about what people said. Because they have developed the toughness that is necessary to survive. Can I say one more thing real quick? Just say a lot of more things. I took my son up to the Rock of Gibraltar. My baby boy was with me. And his mom and I took him to the Rock of Gibraltar because we were on our way to Africa and we

stopped over in Spain and went to the Rock of Gibraltar. And the guide took us up to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar where all the battles were fought, and all of the enclaves are filled with the outposts where you could defend the southern most tip of Spain before you faced the northern tip of Africa. And there, as we went spiraling up to the top of the mountain, the higher you went there were monkeys, and they were jumping all over the cars and everything. And the guide said to us, he said, "You know, in

certain seasons, it gets so cold up here that when monkeys first migrated up here in the winter, their tails would freeze off. That's how cold it was." He said, "But eventually, when they started birthing their babies, they were born without tails, because they had adapted to their environment." That's what I mean about toughness. If you are exposed to it long enough, you'll freeze your tail off. It's amazing. Tweet that everybody. Say I got blessed at Soar, I froze my tail off. To those of you, however you define soaring and success, success to you might be

raising two great kids. Success for you might be opening up a spa. Success for you might be opening up a home for unwed mothers, or it might be a corporate office on Wall Street. If you don't freeze your tail off, you won't be able to withstand what success costs. You have to freeze your tail off. And I can tell that a lot of people are not ready. See, when I first started writing this book, I thought I was writing that entrepreneurship was about a business and a company and an address and a location, and getting

a building or facility or starting an e-corp from your laptop or something like that. But, when I got to writing it, while I was writing it, not when I started, while I was writing, I realized it was a mindset. It's a mindset. It's the way you think about things. It's taking control of your destiny. See, if I come to work for you, and I would, if I come and work for you- You would? Oh, yeah, I would. I'd come and teach your Sunday school class. Yeah, let you have the problems, I'll teach the class. Yeah,

it's a great deal. You can decide what you're going to pay me as an employer to an employee. But, you can't decide how much I'm going to make. We have turned our income over into the hands of somebody who has no vision for our needs. Right. You can pay me whatever you think the job is worth. But, you can't pay me what I'm worth, you can't afford me. So, I can have all of these multiple streams of income to subsidize your limitations. Right. Because, if I have an entrepreneurial spirit, I am not limited like an

eaglet to waiting for the mother bird to drop food in my mouth. Being an entrepreneur means that I have lifted up into the air and found my own wings. I'm so glad you said that, because I don't think you're talking about claiming our rights as much as taking responsibility for our own lives- Absolutely, that's what I'm talking about. It's a different mindset. Absolutely. Do you know what's funny, you know what's funny about this conversation here? This is exactly how we talk on the phone. Most of the time it's text. And he will text something that

makes me get carpal tunnel trying to text back to him, because it'll be this long exhausting book that I've got to send back to this answer, because he thinks so deep. You can tell how deep a person thinks by how they talk. He thinks so deep, and so you're just eavesdropping tonight on a conversation we would have whether you were there or not. Do you like it? They like it. This is how we do it. This is how we do it. Whoo, I'm back. It's about taking control of outcomes. It's about not allowing your destiny

to be controlled by your circumstances or your situation. It's about getting a vision for where you want to be in your life with your family, with children, and setting a goal and dropping off things that are not relevant to where you're trying to go. So that you can focus on what is necessary, so that you can have some spoils to divide, so that you can send your kids to a college, so that you can figure out where you want to live when you're old and how you want to die. This is not about diamonds and

gold and Rolls Royce's, unless that's what your vision is. This is about choosing where you want to go, whether it's a cottage in the hills of West Virginia, in a log cabin, and you want to die with chickens in your backyard, that's your business. It's your life, it's your business, it's your business, it's your thing. Do what you want to do. Do what you want to do. That's what this is about. Whenever preachers start talking about anything other than preaching, religious people just ... What do they do? … That's what they do. They do. But

let me tell you something, the reason I must do this. Because I serve a people who have a prayer list full of things that God doesn't do. Half of the things they're asking God to do is tables and chairs and He does trees. If they could catch what I'm talking about, we could go to praying about stuff that really matters. About the kingdoms of this world becoming the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. We can start praying about North Korea and what's going on over there in the … . We can start praying

about things that will change the world, about cleaning up the air and cleaning up the water, and leaving this planet better than we found it. We could start praying about things that would change the world, the way we interact with people. We could start praying about things that brought crack out of people's arms and delivered them and set them free, and set them on the street called straight. I'm tired of praying about rent and house payments and car payments and school bills and college tuition. God doesn't do that. You do that. Let's soar. Let's soar.

Spread your wings, it's time to soar. It's time to soar. I believe I can touch the sky. Think about it every night and day. Spread my wings and fly away. Come on, help us out, we're going to get in trouble. I believe I can ... Come on through the open door. You going to run through the open door? I'm going to run. Do you really? Make some noise if you really believe it. Come UC make some noise. I'll say this and I know it's time to go. I was going to say, I don't know what

your schedule is. Like I don't want you to become an entrepreneur by accident, by staying too late and missing work, and then needing to start your own company. But, I feel like one thing I really wanted to make sure that you talked about is the cost of hesitation. This is a very tactical book. Oh, you're … . We won't be much longer. I want to thank, again, everybody who's online and want to encourage everybody to get the book, because I think you'll be surprised how Bishop Jakes is a Ninja, so it's from laughing about Oreos

and ... I even brought some Oreos. Did you? Yeah, because ... All the way. Spread your wings. But, there's the example of innovation, you talk about ... I love this line. "Innovation isn't just changing the flavor, it's changing the form."Whatever. That's so good. You just say stuff like that. Like that would take me 30 more years to think of that line and it's just in your book. But, what I wanted to mention is, these are so many tools. It's very tactical on one level, very inspirational, a lot of great inspiring prose. And then get into

some things that will really help you to do it in real life and not just say it in a book. Yeah. I wanted to get into business plans, I wanted to get into grants and foundations and concepts, and real meaty stuff that I don't get to get into on Sunday morning. It's all in here. It's in the book. Yeah. It's in there. Because, this is something that we do in church that I think is dangerous. We inspire people. Right. Every Sunday morning. Try to. We inspire them. Oh, I see you do it. Don't try to

wiggle out of it. But if we inspire people and we don't inform them for Monday, then they'll just come on Sunday to get high. And I thought I need a way to get beyond preaching everything's going to be all right, it's going to be all right. Every Sunday, it's going to be all right, it's going to be all right. And show you how to make it all right. Show you how to make it all right. You talked about the cost of hesitation. You can't understand hesitation if you don't understand rhythm. I never thought I was

going to be a preacher. I was going to be a musician. I started playing piano when … It's hard for us to believe that you never thought you'd be a preacher. I didn't, no. And then one time, you said that you never felt like you were a good preacher when you started. Lord, no. That's why I preached so hard, because I didn't think I was very good. I said, "Well, I'll at least be hard." That made me cry when I heard you say that, by the way. People who are gifted cannot see it. See, I

can see him and I can see you, I can see the lights, I can see the carpet, I can see the table, I can see the roof. The only thing I cannot see in the room is me. And when you are gifted, when you are truly gifted, you are blind to yourself. So it makes you ask questions like, "Who do men say that I am?" You're vulnerable to the voices around you and you have to be careful who you have around you. Because you could walk off a stage and you want to slit your wrists

because you can't see whether you had any effect at all. That's the truth. And be careful who you have around you, because they become a mirror. And if the person around has an agenda, they'll distort the image of who you are. You understand what I'm saying? So I was thinking, this watch I've got on is turning around and around for time, it's imitating the solar system, because everything is turning. We don't feel it, but the earth is turning. It's moving around. The sun is moving. Everything's moving. Everything is moving. When I went to the Wailing

Wall in Jerusalem, the Rabbi stood at the Wailing Wall, and they were rocking back and forth, because they understood that in order to reach God, it's a symbol of understanding movement, that blood is moving through my body while I'm sitting here. It's moving. It's moving. It's moving. If I have an emergency, they feel my pulse. A pulse is a rhythm, a rhythm , a rhythm. Everything is a beat. There's a rhythm and the rhythm determines days and evenings and seasons and suns. It's a rhythm, it's a rhythm, it's a rhythm. Everything is a rhythm. And

when Christ came, he came in rhythm. In the fullness of time. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. In the fullness of time, he comes, in a rhythm. Everything's done in a rhythm. So, God says, "The day you hear my voice, do it in a rhythm. Harden out your heart. Because, there's no guarantee that you can do later what you can do today. You've got to do it in a rhythm. You've got to do it in a rhythm. When you hesitate, you break the rhythm. It's the same thing that a nurse is feeling for when

she grabs your wrist. She's checking the rhythm. The rhythm is a sign of your health. If the rhythm is off, the heart is off. If the heart is off beat bad enough, they have to do something to it to get it back to its rhythm. Because being out of rhythm affects everything else in the body. If we didn't have our children when we had our children, at the time we had our children, we would have broke the rhythm. Everything has to be done in a rhythm. Business has to be done in a rhythm. A woman's

body operates in a rhythm. Before we had all this fancy stuff, people controlled child birth by rhythms and cycles and systems, and that's why the woman is so akin to the heart of God, because she has cycles. And cycles are systems, and cycles reflect the universe, and God is a God of rhythm and everything's full. When God said, "Let there be ..." everything started beating and beating and beating in a rhythm. And boom God is a God of rhythm, and if you're going to walk with God, you have to catch his rhythm, and when you

hesitate you break the rhythm. You understand what I'm saying? There is nothing worse than dancing with somebody that don't have rhythm. There's nothing worse. It makes you want to back off the stage. My wife says, "It looks like they're dancing to the words, not the beat." The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. The beat. Don't hesitate. You break the rhythm, and what would have flowed is now off. The enemy comes to break the

rhythm. So, when you talk about hesitation, you're really talking about Satan, because he's a rhythm breaker. He can't stop God from gifting you, calling you, blessing you. He cannot even curse you, because God had blessed you. The only way he can sabotage you is to get you to break the rhythm. When you do break the rhythm you have to repent. You have to repent. Not just because of sin. You have to repent because you missed the rhythm to do the right thing. I'll show it to you this way. Samuel lays down on the bed, and

he says, and he hears a voice say, "Samuel?" And he gets up and runs to Eli, he said, "Did you call me?" Eli says, "I called you, don't lay down again." He lays down again, "Samuel?" He goes, "Eli, did you call?" No. The third time, Eli perceives that the Lord has called him. He has missed the rhythm three times. But he says this time when you lay down say to him, "God, if you call me again, I'm ready." Somebody in here, you've missed the rhythm. There's a thing that should have happened five years, ten years,

three years, six months ago. Do you hear what I'm saying to you? But all hope is not lost. Go back and lay down again. And say, "If you call me again. If you just give me one more chance. I won't go to flesh, I won't go to Eli, I won't go to humanity. I won't go to my fear or my doubts or my shame, if you just call me again, give me one more chance. This time, Lord." Whoo. There is a timing factor on everything. And every time we break a rhythm it has consequences. Can

I show you one thing? It's kind of shocking, but I'm going to throw it out here. God did not intend for us to reproduce in our old age. Children. Because he wanted us to be here long enough to take care of them. So, when God gets ready to shut down the factory, he's shutting down the factory so that the child will not be uncovered. Now, through medicine, we have jimmied the lock and broke the rhythm, so that you can be an 80 year old man and have a two year old son. Now, you might have

a lot of fun, but in breaking the rhythm, the son pays the consequence. Because, by the time he figures out what to ask you... That's the problem with rhythm, it's not just about you. Everything else is depending on the beat. Everything around you is affected by the beat. And even though you can create things that will break the rhythm for your own pleasure, in so doing you run the risk of creating someone else's calamity. Because the rhythm was developed so that everything starts at a certain time, everything goes down at a certain time. Because God

is not just looking at you. It's for us. It's for us. When God gives you your next opportunity, move. Move. If the woman with the issue of blood had hesitated, she would have bled to death, because Jesus was not coming to her, he was passing by. Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. And she says, "If I can just catch the beat. If I can just catch the beat. It's going to all of my strength to get there, but I got to catch him, because he's not breaking his rhythm. He's not breaking his rhythm, he's still moving.

I got to catch his rhythm." So, she had to crawl to catch his rhythm. She said, but if I can just catch his rhythm, the miracle is in the rhythm. And the Bible said she pressed her way. And the way she did and got up to speed is that she kept encouraging herself. If I can just touch, if I can just touch, if I can just touch. If I can just catch his rhythm, I'll be made whole. … was sitting by the highway side begging, let me stop. I'm going to stop here. There is one

thing, I know we're running out of time. They said no, no. I was on a flight that got stuck on the runway. And I tell you, we sat on the runway too long, that it took all the scriptures that I could think of. Now, I tried to talk to myself. I said you were sitting at the house, and then you got in the car and you were sitting in the car. And they drove you to the airport, and you were sitting in the airport. And now you're sitting on the plane. Why are you so irritated.

You're going to sit anyway. And I said if the plane were to take off you'd still be sitting. When you land, you'll go get in a car so you can sit. And you get in the car and sit in the car so you can go to the hotel and sit. So what are you mad about? I think my frustration was, I was sitting in a place of movement. The agony of life is to sit in a place of movement. You spoke of hesitation, but the word that leaped in my spirit that I want to leave

with you is frustration. I think that there are people in this room who are frustrated. And you try to make yourself feel content, and you feel guilty that you're not content, and you say I ought to be thankful for what I have. And like me, you're trying to use rational to put up with a situation that you're not called to. And what keeps needling you is I belong up there, and yet I'm stuck right here. And there you are in a place of movement watching other people take off, wondering what in the world is wrong.

And you ring the bell, "Excuse me." We've been sitting. We're out of peanuts. They don't have no more Diet Coke, the potato chips are stale. Can we go? That frustration is God nudging you. That he has placed you in a position of movement. And if you are not moving, something is broken. And I want you to understand this, there are people who stay on the ground and they're happy to be there, because they never imagined themselves in the air. But you are not one of them. You are not one of them. You go to the

airport with people who love you, but when you get to the checkout point, because if you don't have a ticket, you can't go beyond that point. Some folks you have to leave behind that you love, because they have not paid the price to go into the next dimension. You understand? Don't you get on the runway now and get stuck on the runway and tell yourself it's all right. It's not all right. Because you belong in the air. Whatever that air is. I wanted to write ... when you get about my age, you get all nostalgic

and stuff and you want to leave something behind that matters. I didn't want to be one of those people who flew and never taught flight. Most of the people I've seen who ever did anything never told anybody how they did it. And since I got here by God's grace, I promised him everything you teach me, I'll teach it. Everything you show me, I'll show it. Everything I've learned I'll pass on to somebody else. There's somebody watching on the campus or streaming or sitting in the balcony or sitting out here in front of me right now,

you've got a dream. You've got a vision. I won't lie to you, it's going to cost you everything. You're going to hurt in places you didn't know you could hurt. And you'll have a thousand chances to give up, but don't do it. Keep on moving. I tried to leave some tips about who you need around you, so that you could pick your associates more carefully, because it does have something to do with your success. I tried to speak to your need to have a rhythm, so that you cannot lounge around here and let this moment

pass you by. You are not as young as you think you are. You don't have as long as you think you have. It takes longer to settle something big than you think. You're thinking in days, I'm talking in decades. You don't have many. If you don't do it now, you'll never do it. Because you may not ever see that cycle come back again. The only reason Saul wanted to kill David is that he was mad he missed his turn. Touch everybody you can reach and tell them, "Do not miss your turn." Bishop T.D. Jakes everybody.

When you go to work or you go home or you go in the mall or you go someplace and you run into somebody who heard this or read the book or followed the study guide ... incidentally it's out in Spanish as well ... and you run into another Eagle somewhere at the checkout counter, just look at them and go ... They'll know what you mean. Thank you man.