Bishop T.D. Jakes’s Life Advice Will Change Your Future | MotivationArk

[Music] I never knew that the way people described you would become a prison until they did it 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 and what happens in life as we evolve as a person we cannot allow oursel to be incarcerated by anything that people would describe us with because we limit then what the Holy Spirit can do in your life I was uh raised by a dying father born in between two death 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 I believe that everything we ever become we already were in seed form I get I with you and and acorns don't look like oak trees but they're in there there the design is in the seed absolutely and so when I look back at my DNA and my propensity to lead and my procity to talk and my fascination with life my mother used to say that the world is a university and everyone in it is a teacher when you wake up in the morning be sure you go to school and I've been doing that all of my life yeah I've learned from everybody I ever met good or bad right or wrong I learned something curious aren't you oh extremely extremely I don't know anybody who ever became major in any area of life not just church any area of Life who was not propelled by the force of some level of crushing something something that could have killed you and should have killed you became the Catalyst and the urgency through which you evolved into your the highest expression of who you were meant to be and I am telling you that the greatest part of you is still somewhere down inside of you and only pressure will get it out only pressure yeah that you have not seen who you are in the pleasant moments when you smell the blossoms on the vine and feel the sun drench on your face that you were raised not to be fruitful but to be crushed the grave is one of the few fruits that is raised to be crushed look at that you know with crushing in mind Christ was born to die anything short of that would have been failure that's why when Peter tried to stop the crucifixion he called him a devil because he understood that he was raised like the great to be crushed the Bible says that Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem but he did not rest his head until it was on the cross and understanding that for this purpose came I into the world and not that you love suffering he despised the shame but for the joy that was set before him so he would beyond the crushing and he saw the wine you see and and and understanding that wine is taking that grape into its most powerful expression and it is putting it in its most Eternal form and life crushes us from time to time because nothing else will get out of you the hidden treasure that we have locked up in Earth and vessels but to be crushed you you know the the funny thing about it I think periodically wherever there is purpose and wherever there is resistance to that purpose pressure releases us from that resistance and the more that we yield to the process but the problem today is that we don't preach process we preach promises yeah so we have raised the generation of people who see God in promises not process so you go to church from Sunday and you hear about the promises of God you go home to the process and when you encounter the process you say well God is not in this and I would argue that God is more in the process than he is in the promise when you pass through the waters I'll be with you when you go through the fire I'll be there his promise is to be with you in the process and and and there are things that you cannot learn about him until you are in the process there is a revelation of his glory that only comes in the frustration and the disruption of your life he said I'm a present help in trouble if you avoid the trouble you'll avoid me I am present in trouble I am revealed in trouble I I show myself strong when men forsake me then the Lord will take me up so it was good for me that I have been Afflicted had I not been Afflicted I would have never known the glory of God so all through the Bible the Bible keeps the symbol of our faith is a crushing place a cross an emblem of suffering and shame it's not a crown it's not a throne it's a cross a cross who makes an invitation from a cross but Jesus yes you know you make an invitation you say come go to Hawaii you know you know let's go to Switzerland Jesus says come on let's go to the Cross that's a hard that's a hard invitation take up your cross and follow me come on let's die if the only way you can follow that kind of request is to know that what is on the other side is greater than anything that was before it but I want to warn the audience about invisible crushings that come from forces that you cannot see like stress and heartbreak and pain nobody has to be sick or lock you up or you don't have to come out of prison for you to be crushed by stress science teaches us that the same part of our body that reacts to physical pain the same signal goes to your brain from emotional pain it sends out the same stimuli throughout the neurological system when your heart is broken as if it would if your leg was broken so you don't necessarily have to incur physical injury to be Crush crushed by emotional stress and we're living in a time of of unseen forces bearing down on our soul on a daily basis everything is going so fast and in that fast pace that we live in there is a certain amount of invisible pressure and the strange thing about it is you feel the pain you sense the pressure and you can't see the source and God says you can you can either see see it as the wine press or you can see it as the Potter wheel but the more it spins the more he touches it and the more it changes in the spinning and if you are not prepared for disruption then you're not prepared for resurrection and and I'll be honest that somebody said that's not easy to do it's not something that you do from the place of your emotions it's something that you do from the place of your teaching I went through a period in my life that I was just being crushed my heart was broken I was worried it was one of the most distru moments in my life and I was literally crying when I told God this I said Lord I hate this I absolutely hate this but I love you and I know you would not allow me to go through this if it were not for my good and though tears are running down my face and I cannot see my way out if you suffered me to be bruised it is only to make me better and so I trust you when I can't trace you because he that have began a good work in me and whatever he ordered for me to face when it's all over it ha