What kind of music does Bishop TD Jakes listen to besides gospel?

You know, Bishop Jakes has pretty eclectic tastes—he's into Luther Vandross and Anita Baker for that smooth R&B vibe, and he digs Kiko Matsui's Japanese jazz piano stuff, which he says is out of this world. He even listens to classical, some country, and of course gospel, but skips rock. He mentioned cranking up Kiko before events to get that international flavor going. It's all about what chills him out or pumps him up outside church.

What was TD Jakes' experience with Jheri curls in his youth?

Back in the day, Jakes was all about trying to rock a big afro like Jimi Hendrix, even getting women to braid his hair super tight. Then came the Jheri curl phase—he'd wear it preaching, with a towel around his neck to catch the juice flying off when he got excited. He'd joke that it was so powerful, it'd slay folks in the spirit. Those were wild times, full of trial and error with hair trends that didn't always work out.

What inspired TD Jakes to write 'Soar: Build Your Vision from the Ground Up'?

Jakes wrote 'Soar' because he saw how the job market's changed—no more guaranteed gigs after college, just debt and dead-end jobs. He wanted to talk about becoming your own boss, especially for folks from tough backgrounds or with past mistakes. It's about timing in America's shift to info age, where red states and inner cities both lack opportunities, so why not hire yourself and build something real?

How to distinguish comfort zone from personal capacity according to TD Jakes?

Jakes says your comfort zone is that safe spot you stick to out of habit, but capacity is what God invested in you—like the talents parable, where you're judged on doubling what you got, not comparing to others. Push beyond comfort without overreaching your true gifts; compare yourself wisely, know your starting point, and grow from there without forcing what ain't you.

How can I discover my God-given talents like TD Jakes teaches?

Start by dating yourself—explore who you are, like Jakes did. Look for seeds early, maybe from family spotting your problem-solving skills, like his grandbaby grabbing a flashlight instead of posing for pics. Get exposed to bigger things; drop the plow like Elijah when something greater calls. Dormant seeds bloom in the right spot, so pay attention to instincts and drop lesser stuff.

What does being 'on the grind' really mean to Bishop TD Jakes?

To Jakes, 'grind' ain't just lounging with cereal saying you're hustling—it's that killer work ethic from his dad, outworking everyone even at 60. He learned from folks like Oprah and Steve Harvey; it's devouring prey young like a wolf, building for later spoils. Lazy's the worst disease; grind hard now so you got something to divide when old, not blinging early.

What are some things TD Jakes stumbled into successfully in his career?

Jakes didn't plan films; started with gospel plays, lost money in Atlanta, then teamed with broke Tyler Perry on 'Woman Thou Art Loosed.' It hit big, led to movies with folks like Oprah investing. From pastoring 50 in West Virginia to Potter's House, it was honoring small starts that opened doors. Even his book was transcribed tapes turned self-published hit after rejections.

Why is rhythm important in life and business per TD Jakes?

Rhythm's everything to Jakes—like a heartbeat, it's life's pulse; hesitate and you break it, letting Satan sabotage. Do things in God's timing, like Christ in fullness of time. Missing rhythm has consequences, like old folks having kids via meds messing up coverage for the child. Catch the beat, repent if off, move when opportunity passes or you'll crawl to catch up like the bleeding woman.

What did TD Jakes sacrifice to achieve his level of success?

Success cost Jakes everything, darling—like normalcy, privacy; vicious articles hurt his family, made him almost quit preaching. Kids suffered rumors, wife cried, he preached faith but felt fear. Fame's attacks toughened him, freezing off sensitivity like monkeys losing tails. It's for the people helped, like the woman whose life his words saved; resilience over meanness to survive distractions.

How to build a vision from the ground up as in TD Jakes' book?

Start like Wright Brothers in a bike shop—big dreams, little resources; plan with pencil, build with steel. Stare at what you got, imagine like God making trees not tables. Leave behind what pulls you down, break gravity with aerodynamics force. Solve problems, catch right wind trends; be solution-oriented, tailor life to goals, drop irrelevants for focus.

Advice from TD Jakes for young people on entrepreneurship?

Young folks, devour now while strong—throw yourself at something, attack like killing prey; youth flees fast. If it flops, it's the thing leading to the thing. Grind for real, not couch talk; build multiple incomes, don't wait for bosses. Freeze off sensitivity for costs, pick associates wisely, catch rhythm or miss turns. Don't disappoint your future self; move when frustrated on runway.

Steven Furtick - How To Build Your Vision From The Ground Up (10/29/2018)

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TOPICS: Vision

In this heartfelt onstage conversation at Elevation Church, Bishop T.D. Jakes opens up with Pastor Steven Furtick about his new book 'Soar,' sharing how real success comes from spotting your God-given seeds, grinding hard while young, and building vision from whatever raw materials you've got—like turning trees into tables instead of waiting for ready-made furniture. Through stories of stumbling into movies, books, and massive ministry, he stresses taking responsibility for your destiny, catching life's rhythm without hesitation, and paying the heavy personal cost of soaring high. The big takeaway: don't just pray for miracles—stare at what's left in your hand, imagine big, drop what's holding you back, and move now before the beat passes you by.

Steven Furtick: 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 sentences, but he said something, that I would love to say about Bishop Jake's before he comes. And he said: in your dreams as a young guy you imagined 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 Brooks as 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 TD Jakes. So many Would you put your hands together Elevation Church and welcome to the stage? Bishop TD Jakes!

TD Jakes: I don't know how we're supposed to do this, but I want to tell you right off the bat. This is my Steven Furtick cool science fired you you inspired me.

Steven Furtick: Can we call it even now for all of the stuff I've ripped off from you over the years?

TD Jakes: The only problem is my thighs can't breathe.

Steven Furtick: So if we see you leaning over...

TD Jakes: Yeah, I need a he of G for my knees, but I'm good. You can't dance with these things man, you can't, you just gotta jump up and down...

Steven Furtick: Can you soar?

TD Jakes: I can soar in them.

Steven Furtick: How would you like to hear Bishop TD Jakes and Pastor Steven Furtick sing "I believe I can fly" by R. Kelly? Just something you might be interested in. All the millenials are like our what? Maybe we'll do that at the end?

TD Jakes: No, let's not.

Steven Furtick: Do you like that song?

TD Jakes: I like the song.

Steven Furtick: What are some songs that you like to listen to Bishop Jake's that don't get played in church.

TD Jakes: They don't get played at church cut the cameras...

Steven Furtick: O,h you guys can be seated for hanging out now. They're so excited.

TD Jakes: I like Luther Vandross. I like Anita Baker. You know I Like lesser-known, but but extremely talented is Kiko Matsui. Kiko Matsui is a Japanese jazz pianist said it's absolutely out of this world. And I listened to her this evening before I came over here, so I'd had my international flavor yeah. So I'd like all kinds of music kind of like classical music I like Gospel music of course. I like just about every kind of every drug even some country. I'll go country on you now the...

Steven Furtick: Greatest rock and roll band of all time.

TD Jakes: Oh, God, now I'm in trouble. I don't go rock the road. Yeah well It's funny. I grew up in the Jimi Hendrix error, so you know you know anybody got you Jimmy hippies. Yeah, big poster on the wall my life's ambition was to have his afro. I Had women's braiding my hair to my eyeballs were up like this trying to get my hair to where it never happens. I didn't get here to the Jheri Curl. That was wrong about the Jhery...

Steven Furtick: Yes, sir, I do. I mean not for personal experience. I've seen pictures.

TD Jakes: Do you think pictures ever? Well when I used to freeze years ago. I wore during curling I had a towel around my neck and when I got the really pretty Yeah. And the Jheri Curl juice with fly across the front, and everybody slain in the spirit. Those were the days with the power of God was fallen.

Steven Furtick: Is it the secret?

TD Jakes: It is a secret you gotta get a curl...

Steven Furtick: I'm in trouble... So excited about this new books or excited to talk to you about it tonight. 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 fifty six thousand results. And then I put in leadership over two hundred and fifty seven thousand results. 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?

TD Jakes: 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 face to 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, you get a good education, you're gonna come out you're gonna get a great job, and that was true when I was coming up, but that's not true today. Today you can... Yeah, 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 get you here? I have to be careful brother like me get sued on regular. The question then becomes: how do we with our Education and our disappointment living in our mother's house sleeping on the couch even cereal at noon. We tool ourselves, so that we can be functional in the 21st century. I Listen at the argument that our country is 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 gonna happen. And we need solutions and this goes beyond, we'd like to talk in terms of, we have nice terms for bus really black and white you know herb and then red bell spaces and black so swipes awesome. 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 make mistakes when they were young. Did some criminal justice issues, and 25 years later, they can't get a job or a place to stay. 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 about being a job, about hiring yourself, about the opportunities that exists to create your own reality, your own business, your own company, to be the CEO of you. The CEO you.

Steven Furtick: I think it surprises a lot of people to hear you talk like that who are only familiar with you as a preacher. 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 as trying to figure out what I want to say in my introductory remarks to honor him because of what he has meant to me as I Do on my message. 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. I called you the Slasher. I called you that. I called him that because no matter what title someone would put with the name TD Jakes, they would have to put a slash after it. So you're a pastor, author, New York times bestselling multiple, 1793 weeks.

TD Jakes: Author.

Steven Furtick: Producer, record label, executive, philanthropist, father, husband. I call him Slasher. Probably the first time you've ever been called that.

TD Jakes: That got me an FBI investigation. Thank you very much.

Steven Furtick: 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?

TD Jakes: 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. You know? 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 of 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 would end up nailed to a tree. And what happens in life as we evolve as a person? We cannot allow ourself 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 here and 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 grand reading 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 reserve section. And Jesus, when you get ready to leave, put your finger up your mouth. You know, these accrued that attach itself to religion often block our view from revelation. Yeah, 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 die, think for myself. I will move in my own direction. You can say whatever you want to say about it, but I'm gonna be me. You see what I'm saying? 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 talk and I'll talk.

Steven Furtick: No, it's great. I want to dig deeper into that because the arc of your teaching and one of the most influential messages 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. 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?

TD Jakes: 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 10. But at least give me two. The man who had two talents came back with four. The man with five talents came back with 10. The man with two talents came back with four. The man with five came back with 10. Those are the same things. That's a hundredfold. 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.

Steven Furtick: Let me ask this. What if I'm not clear about what I started with? Because I've heard you do this thing before, too.

TD Jakes: Okay?

Steven Furtick: 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.

TD Jakes: I'm scared of paper, by the way. I'm scared to death the upper hand.

Steven Furtick: But you do this thing. I saw him do this thing at a preacher's conference once. He said, I won't imitate your voice. He has this really intense, intense mode. There's a wide open Bishop Jake's, and then there's a very intense. It's many gears, but it's equal intensity. It's terrifying. It was a pretty big moment. You say, there's nothing I have that you don't have. I have one mouth. You have one mouth.

TD Jakes: I have two ears.

Steven Furtick: You have two ears. Do you know how descriptive he is? He went all the way to the toenails. 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, 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.

TD Jakes: Steve, 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 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 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 who are looking for seeds. I'm gonna give you my grandbaby story. You asked for it. You're gonna get it. You're just gonna 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 I can't find the light. And, you know, the lights are complicated, and I can't figure out how to turn all this stuff on. And so we're trying to get some pictures. And so my grandbaby ran, and she says, wait a minute, Paul, I'm gonna get a flashlight. She went up under the pew where we have hidden flashlights, snatched down a flashlight and brought it over and said, now take. And so I said to her, I said, baby, don't you want to be. Kenzie, 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 the seed right there. So we came back to the house, and I was getting ready to take a picture, and I'm trying to keep up with you millennials, you know, it's so hard. And I was trying to take a selfie, and I was trying to. I got a timer, you know, where you. You can back up, you know? 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 said. 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 in the 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, 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 Elisha. He was fulfilling his parents 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. Sometimes we get stuck in what people expect. We never find out who we are because we're living somebody else's dream. There he is, plowing in the field, doing what his daddy wanted and going around and saying, I guess this is all life has for me. He's going around and around in circles like many people 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 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? 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. It is about. 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.

Steven Furtick: Let me ask you this because.

TD Jakes: You'Re scared of what I'm getting ready to say.

Steven Furtick: I just think that's a very tweetable moment. They don't like you, BishopJakes. It's 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 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. What do you think about that, Bishop? 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.

TD Jakes: 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.

Steven Furtick: That's what it means.

TD Jakes: 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.

Steven Furtick: Pretty nice place.

TD Jakes: Instead of burning my plow, when I came home, I started to burn down my house. Okay. I said, I'll set it a 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 the 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.

Steven Furtick: Where does that come from?

TD Jakes: My father. My father, Absolutely. My father is rigged. 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 mic 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 Igbos from Nigeria. And Igbos 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 whose name I can't even call. So what we're talking about is culture, okay? And 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.

Steven Furtick: Gotcha.

TD Jakes: Take your hands out 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 it was.

Steven Furtick: The worst thing you could be.

TD Jakes: It was the worst thing you could be, you know. 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 let you figure out all the mail you get. Two things to this day I cannot stand is a stinking woman and a lazy man.

Steven Furtick: They like that. They like that.

TD Jakes: Folks that agree with me, I think a sister got to take a bath. Praise God. A sister got to, she 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 sons. He's laying in the bed, he's dying and he set up. The Bible said Israel strengthened himself. Notice that Israel strengthened himself, set up in the bed and he said Benjamin shall 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. Yep. In the morning you devour the prey while you're young.

Steven Furtick: That's the intensity thing I was talking about. You see that? Imagine when he has a steak knife across the table.

TD Jakes: One lady jumped back three rows, just said, hey, in the morning I see.

Steven Furtick: A lady really scared out right here.

TD Jakes: My mother was a schoolteacher. She was dramatic. In the morning you should devour the pray. In the evening you shall divide the spoils. If you don't devour when you're young, you'll have nothing to divide when you're old.

Steven Furtick: It's incredible.

TD Jakes: I am scared to death of people who are young and saying I just can't figure it out. I haven't made up my mind yet. I tried that. I didn't like. I don't know. Maybe I'll do this. I think you better hurry. Right?

Steven Furtick: Right.

TD Jakes: You better shoot something right now. Cuz youth goes quick, right? I mean like he goes like a runaway slave. He youth is an underground railroad with Harry Tubman. It gets away.

Steven Furtick: Okay, so these are things I, I, I would not say.

TD Jakes: So you just sit there. No, just a good nod. Sit there, nod.

Steven Furtick: Am.

TD Jakes: I am. 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. 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 it. Devour it. Attack it. Attack it like you gonna 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. Yeah, I will make your name great. There is a. There's an old person down inside of you that's dependent on you to be smart. It's a 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. 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. It is the message you tell yourself, I'm tired. I can't do that. I don't feel like 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 it. It's 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. If 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 the dining room table with me. He said, but suppose I'm not. 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.

Steven Furtick: Okay, let's go into that. What's been in your life many 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.

TD Jakes: Absolutely.

Steven Furtick: So give us 1, 10, 20 examples of those in your life, things that you accidentally succeeded at.

TD Jakes: Everything in my life, I stumbled into.

Steven Furtick: Is that right?

TD Jakes: I stumbled into. I never thought I would be producing films. My wife and I started out doing gospel plays and going on tour during gospel plays. We had no intention that we were going to ever do movies. We were trying to do plays and trying to figure out how to do that right. And losing and losing money. Went to Atlanta and just lost our shirts, put up 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. Yeah.

Steven Furtick: I heard about him somewhere.

TD Jakes: Yeah, yeah. 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 did a play called Woman Thou Art Loose. And we toured the country during Woman Thou Art Loose. And then we went to LA 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 the 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. I didn't have Bear Mind. I didn't have no movie money. Movie and money both start with an M for a reason. When you have one, you 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 definitive 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 some 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 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 may not have your theology, okay, But God may use them to bless you. You know, the ravens didn't go to church, but they fed Elijah. So anyway, so we put the money together. We put the money together and we did this little low budget film, Woman Art Loose, 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 scream. 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 6 foot 2 man start whimpering and lips start crumbling. Got you cry. I had no idea when I was pastoring in Smithers. 40 people and 50 people.

Steven Furtick: Smithers, West Virginia.

TD Jakes: West Virginia. On Easter. On Easter. On Easter.

Steven Furtick: 40 on Easter.

TD Jakes: 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 dignified 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. If you don't do your best with the 40 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 attention.

Steven Furtick: Yeah, I like that.

TD Jakes: To be present in the moment.

Steven Furtick: I like that.

TD Jakes: 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 calendar is right now. I'm waiting on a. I got plans.

Steven Furtick: 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.

TD Jakes: Shut up, dude. He curse at me.

Steven Furtick: I thought there was this force of nature. Bishop. TD Jakes was a force of nature. Some little things that I've seen, some little things that I've noticed. I thought I would use a prop. This is from the book. Thanks, Jonathan. See, he didn't want to come all the way up. He just stopped short. He won't get blessed like that, will he, Bishop? You have to come all the way. All of sin. I love the quote in the book. You. You compare our vision to architecture. You talk about how if you plant it with a pencil, you can weld it with steel. 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 have stumbled into it from one perspective, but from another perspective, it was strategic stumbling. At least you were trying to do something.

TD Jakes: Let me interrupt you. You stumble into it. God gives you an opportunity, and what you do with that opportunity is your gift to him. 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, you know God. God never made not one table.

Steven Furtick: Yeah, I love this. Do this. This is really.

TD Jakes: 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. When God hands you a tree, imagine a table, a chair. Imagine a. 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 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 they shouting stuff? Little bit. I didn't know that I was out.

Steven Furtick: What did you think we did over here? This is Elevation Church.

TD Jakes: We love you.

Steven Furtick: Just see him at university. City. Look at University City.

TD Jakes: What's up, University City? Hello. So I'm in South Africa and I'm on a safari. And 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 that's moving around. The elephant is strong and he's big and he's tough, and his power's in his weight. And he threw his weight around. He throws his weight around. What can you do with him? Cause he's so big. God made him big as a defense. The lion roars. When he roars, everybody is almost paralyzed in fear. Cause 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, he 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 his defense. And I'm walking around in the jungle and I said, well, Lord, I can't fly like the eagle. I can't run 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 didn't make chairs. He only brings it halfway and then lets 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 is going to bring it 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. 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 got this song, you know, 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, I ain't gonna show you. I gotta come. Couple of moves I ain't going to show you. But they go to twerk. And 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, 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 myself 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. You understand? That's not going to help me. That's none of my business. God bless you, I. If 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 meal, that's all you need. If you're down to two fish and five loaves of bread, that's all you need. 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. Might only be a pot of oil, but if it's left, the miracle's always in what's left. So what can you imagine with that? That woman, that pot of oil would have never done anything if you didn't pour, 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.

Steven Furtick: Talk about that.

TD Jakes: You see, if I packed to go on this trip, based on where I was going, I checked 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 Channel 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 CEOs 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. He said, all of us CEOs 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 CEOs 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 was. I had both thumbs. I very seldom used both thumbs. I had both thumbs. I was just a pecking at a. Pecking at a peck is what are you willing to leave behind if you're going to soar. If you're going to soar, you have to 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 health care. They want to open up a 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. 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. 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 it, 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. You know, Everybody has something that's trying to pull you back to where you came from. Yeah. And so when the Wright brothers built the. The plane in the book is built around the Wright brothers. When the Wright brothers built the plane, they built it in Dayton, Ohio. And they built it in a. Dayton. Dayton. Dayton. There's three old ladies over in the corner there from Dayton. They're so happy. I'm teasing. I can't even see you. But 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 biking. 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. Okay. I didn't really write the book to big time entrepreneurs because all of those books you're 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 and dated, 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, you know, carbs and fat grams, and all of a sudden I'm a vegetarian. You know, all of this stuff we're reading of 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 customers 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 have 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 a room giving problems, it is the most unsexy thing you can ever do in the world. 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 eyes starts twitching. I got a little pain going on right here. It's driving me absolutely crazy. And I just don't know what in the world I'm going to do because I got a thumbnail going over here. That's why I didn't wear the shoes I want to wear with this. Get out of here. Get out of it.

Steven Furtick: Bring solutions.

TD Jakes: Bring solutions.

Steven Furtick: Bring solutions.

TD Jakes: Bring solutions. Bring solutions as a person. Bring solutions as a business. Bring solutions as a ministry, and you will always soar.

Steven Furtick: When's the first time you saw yourself as a solution?

TD Jakes: I wrote Woman Hour at Loose, and I didn't even know how to write a book. Really? No. I didn't know nothing about writing a book. I didn't know a thing about writing a book.

Steven Furtick: How old were you?

TD Jakes: In my twenties. In my twenties. Somewhere in my twenties, late twenties. 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 Frazier who. We were just getting into computers and stuff. Us old guys, we was getting 28 old guys. We were just getting into it. And he said, why did you write all of this in a 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. When I heard their cry, I thought that there were biblical solutions to sociological and emotional issues. I started trying to get an answer out. When I started teaching it, 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. I mean, my church is packed out. It's got like, maybe 150 people. 150 people meant some people were outside. That's my bicycle shop. Never laugh at my bicycle shop. Despise not the day of small beginnings. Bridge. Great things come out of small places, Woman Art Loose came out of that bicycle shop. Okay, So I told Archie about It. Archie said, you should bring it to. You should bring it to Pittsburgh. You know, he had this big, rich voice. Archie Dennis used to sing for Billy Graham and Morris Sorello and all those people. And so he announced that I was gonna bring it to Pittsburgh. No, no. He said, I'm gonna have you in Pittsburgh. And he says, what is 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 Art Loose. That's what the Bible said. I call it Woman Art Loose. He said, okay. So he announced that I was going to teach woman the heart loose like that. And so many women came, they had to move it out of the church into the hotel. So I took the CDs from the. The Sunday school class and put it with the. They were cassettes at the time. And put it with the cassettes. Yeah, that's how old I am. 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. What women ought to. That was not my spirit. So out of desperation to protect the integrity of my spirit, I started pecking and pecking and pecking and pecking, and nobody would publish what I was picking. So I told my wife, see, I'm talking about things that would stop you. Okay, Nobody wants to publish it. The first person who did it did it wrong. And now I've got all of this stuff crammed in this PC study Bible. And 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 to. $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. I was trying to get us a house. Syretta. I said, I want to publish this book. 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. So watch this. I didn't go out and buy me 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 5 million copies, Be trans 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 I know that happen in my own life. I never let not having enough stop me from getting up.

Steven Furtick: 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?

TD Jakes: It reminds me of a statement that somebody asked Kathryn Kuhlman. Do you all know who Kathryn Kuhlman is? Kathryn Kuhlman 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 four Gospel Businessmen Association. She was dramatic. Oh, my God, look at him walking. Young man, he's walking anyway. Okay, so come on. It's the dramatic side of me. I do movies. So, you know. What are you sweating? So they asked her, how much did it cost to be who she was? And 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. Yeah, Just thought of it. But then Charlotte is just here. When you live in West Virginia, if you wanted to go to heaven, you either had to go through Pittsburgh or Charlotte. I was in Charlotte airport, and this old bishop walked up to me and he looked at me and he said. He said, oh. He said, you've lost something. And I thought, whatever. 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 would say the most hideous things about you. That your children would suffer from the things they wrote about you, trying to get their points up in 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. Said, God, where have you taken me? I'mma tell you this. I'm telling you this. This is what caution and I'm throwing in free tonight. Tonight. Now I'm going to tell y'. All, Nobody else can hear this, just us. Y' all gonna 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. So there I was. And when you first knew, 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. I didn't know that then. And I was young, upstarting. You have to understand that. You look at a 60 year old man, but you're talking about something that's happening to a guy in his late 20s with little kids. 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 a little bit of this and a little bit of that. They piece it all together and you don't get the same thing back. So I decided I don't want this. I was preaching for Pastor Bishop Donnie Mears and nobody knew it. Because preachers can override their feelings and function. I preached the places on fire, but inside I want to quit. I told God, I'm through with this. I'm not going through this. I don't need this. I don't 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 throw me 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. Okay. Okay. So I thought, 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 that happened in my life. He put me on stage. I didn't ask you. And when I saw how much it cost, I thought, you can have that right back here. You have that right back up in here. I don't need it. So I was mad inside and I was hurt. And 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 a lady downstairs waiting to see you. The service was over and the fellowship was over, and the pastor. I was trying to outwait 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 willery bit of a woman. And she said, bishop Jakes, she said, I've been in the hospital. She said, 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 text you, I was up in Baltimore, in D.C. and I was doing a book signing. And this woman came up to the table to buy sore. She said, you don't remember me, do you? I said, no, she didn't even look like the same person. She's all dressed up, gained weight she felt like she wanted to see. 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. When you talk about what it costs. I'm going to 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 gain 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.

Steven Furtick: What's the difference?

TD Jakes: Mean is when you lash back. Because in a fight like that, if God would turn me loose, I felt something right there. If God would turn me loose I could hold my own, I could hold my own In a street fight I could. I oh glory to God. Hallelujah. I gotta save myself sometimes I beg him I said please let me get them, please let me get em. Just one time, just one time. Just one time. Sometimes I type it, I have to delete it. Cause I swear I can put of paint off the wall if you turn me loose.

Steven Furtick: You should release a book. Things I almost tweeted.

TD Jakes: Yeah, it would be good. It'd be a bestseller. It would be a bestseller 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 are satanic destruction distractions to move you away from where God has placed you. And you can't be. When I do a pastor's conference and I do Q and A because I like to do Q and A because I like to talk to you and they start asking me questions and stuff. Generally somewhere along the night, somebody's going to come up, tell me about church split or somebody who's saying something about somebody who hurt them like that. But when I'm talking to CEOs, incredibly successful people, when I'm talking to presidents and kings from around the world, I have sat across from and talked to. When I get a chance to be in a room with executives and corporate executives and stars who name if I would listen 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?

Steven Furtick: I'm saying just say a lot of more things.

TD Jakes: 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, 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 outposts where you could defend the southernmost tip of Spain before you face the northern tip of Africa. And there, as we went up, 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 the 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.

Steven Furtick: It's amazing.

TD Jakes: Tweet that everybody say, oh, I got blessed and sore. I froze my tail off. But if you. To those of you, however you define soaring and success, success for 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 fund with 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 a 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 come teach your Sunday school. Yeah. Let you have the problems I teach. That's a great deal. You can decide what you're gonna pay me as an employer to an employee, but you can't decide how much I'm gonna make. We have turned our income over into. Into the hands of somebody who has no vision for our need. You can pay me whatever you think I'm, 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.

Steven Furtick: Right?

TD Jakes: Because if I have an opportunity, 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.

Steven Furtick: You know, 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.

TD Jakes: Absolutely.

Steven Furtick: It's a different mindset.

TD Jakes: Absolutely. You know what's funny about this conversation is this is exactly how we talk on the phone. Most of the time it's texts. And he will text something that makes me get carpal tunneled 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 in this. And so you just over. You're just. Just eavesdropping tonight on a conversation we would have whether you were there or not. Do you like it? They liked it. This is how we do it. This is how we do it. I'm back. It's about taking control of outcomes. It's about not allowing your destiny to be controlled by your circumstance or your situation. Is it about getting a vision for where you want to be in your life with your family, with your children, and setting a goal and dropping off things that are not relevant to where you are 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. You want to die. This is not about diamonds and gold and Rolls Royces, unless that's what your vision is. This is about choosing where you want to go. If 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. That's what this is about. Whenever preachers start talking about anything other than preaching, religious people, just.

Steven Furtick: What do they do?

TD Jakes: 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 middle of sea. We can start praying about things that would 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 can 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 Soar it's time to soar.

Steven Furtick: I believe I can touch.

TD Jakes: The sky oh, singing Think about it every night and day.

Steven Furtick: Spread my wings and fly away Come on, help us out.

TD Jakes: We're going to get in trouble.

Steven Furtick: I believe I can.

TD Jakes: Come on through the open door. Door? You going to run to the open door?

Steven Furtick: I'm in a run.

TD Jakes: Do you really make some noise if you really believe it?

Steven Furtick: Come on. You see? Make some noise.

TD Jakes: I'll say this, and I know it's time to go.

Steven Furtick: I was going to say, I don't know what your schedule is. I don't want you to become an entrepreneur by accident by staying too late, missing work, and then needing to start your own company. I feel like one thing I really wanted to make sure you talked about is the cost of hesitation. This is a very tactical book. Oh, you're staying. We won't be much longer. And I want to thank again everybody who's online and want to encourage everybody to get the book, because I think you'd be surprised how Bishop Jakes is a ninja. And so it's from laughing about Oreos. I even brought some Oreos.

TD Jakes: Yeah.

Steven Furtick: Because there's.

TD Jakes: All the way. Come on, jj. Spread your wings.

Steven Furtick: Spread your wings. But, you know, 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.

TD Jakes: Whatever. That's so good.

Steven Furtick: You just say stuff like that. 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. Then get into some things that will really help you to do it in real life. And not just.

TD Jakes: 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.

Steven Furtick: It's all in here.

TD Jakes: It's in there because. Because. Because this is something that we do in church that I think is dangerous. We inspire people right every Sunday morning.

Steven Furtick: Try to.

TD Jakes: We inspire them every Sunday. 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 thought. I never thought I was going to be a preacher. I was going to be a musician. I started playing the piano.

Steven Furtick: It's hard for us to believe that you never thought you'd be a preacher.

TD Jakes: I didn't.

Steven Furtick: And then one time you said that you didn't. Ever felt like you were a good preacher when you started?

TD Jakes: No, Lord, no. That's why I preached so hard, because I didn't think I was very good. I. Well, at least be hard.

Steven Furtick: That made me cry when I heard you say that, by the way.

TD Jakes: I couldn't believe. People who are gifted cannot see it. See, I can see him. 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 can walk off a stage and want to slit your wrist 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 reflect. They become a mirror. And if the person around you has an agenda, they'll distort the image of who you are. But anyway, you understand what I'm saying. So I was thinking, you know, this watch I got on is turning around and around for time. It's imitating the solar system. Because everything, 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 rabbis 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 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 is a rhythm is 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 to come. 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 the rhythm. Harden not your heart. Because there is no guarantee that you can do later what you can do today. You gotta do it in a rhythm. You gotta 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 it 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 of this fancy stuff, people controlled childbirth by rhythms and cycles and systems. And that's why the woman is so akin to. 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 he spoke when God said, let there be everything, start beating and beating and beating in a rhythm. And 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 who 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, 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 has blessed you. The only way he can sabotage you is to get you to. Break the rhythm. When. 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 miss 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 thee not lay down again. He lays down again, Samuel, Eli, did he call him? The third time Eli perceived that the Lord has called him. He has missed the rhythm three times, he says, but 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 are some things that should have happened five years, 10 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 called 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 doubt or my shame. If you just call me again. Give me one more chance this time. Lord, There is a timing factor on everything. And every time we break a rhythm, it has consequences. Can I show you one thing? This is 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 2 year old son. Now you might have a lot of fun, but in breaking the rhythm, the. 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 dependent on the beat. Everything around you is affected by the beat. 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. 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. If I can just catch the beat, if I can just. I'm weak, but if I can just. If I can just catch the beat, it's gonna take all of my strength to get there. But I gotta catch him. Cause 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 so she had to crawl. And the Bible says she pressed her way. And the way she did it 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 blind. Bartimaeus was sitting by the highway side begging, let me stop, I'mma stop it. There is one thing. I know we're running out of time, but I. I want. They said, no, no, I was. I was on a flight that got stuck on the Runway. And I tell you, we sat on the Runway so long that it took all the scriptures 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 gonna sit anyway. And I said, when you. If the plane were to take off, you'd still be sitting. And when you landed, you'd go get in the car so you could sit. And you get in the car and sit in the car. So you 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 a hesitation, but the word that leaped in my spirit that I wanted 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 said, I ought to be thankful for what I have. Like me, you're trying to use rationale to put up with a situation that you're not called to. 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 and wondering, what in the world is wrong? And you ring the bell and say, what? Excuse me, We've been sitting. We are of peanuts. They don't have no more Diet Coke. And the potato chips are still, 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, they can't go beyond it 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 what I'm saying, don't you? Get. 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. And I want it to write, you know, 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. I thought 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'll learn, 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 have a dream. You have 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're going to 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 can 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 because he missed his turn. Touch everybody you can reach and tell them, do not miss your turn.

Steven Furtick: Bishop, T.D. Jakes, everybody.

TD Jakes: Would y' all do me one favor? 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.

Reflection & Discussion Questions

Steven Furtick - How To Build Your Vision From The Ground Up (10/29/2018)

1. What kind of music does Bishop TD Jakes listen to besides gospel?

2. What was TD Jakes' experience with Jheri curls in his youth?

3. What inspired TD Jakes to write 'Soar: Build Your Vision from the Ground Up'?

4. How to distinguish comfort zone from personal capacity according to TD Jakes?

5. How can I discover my God-given talents like TD Jakes teaches?

6. What does being 'on the grind' really mean to Bishop TD Jakes?

7. What are some things TD Jakes stumbled into successfully in his career?

8. Why is rhythm important in life and business per TD Jakes?

9. What did TD Jakes sacrifice to achieve his level of success?

10. How to build a vision from the ground up as in TD Jakes' book?

11. Advice from TD Jakes for young people on entrepreneurship?