TD Jakes - Don't Let Your Belief System Keep You Stagnant
I told a friend of mine they kept talking about how old they were. I said, «You aren’t that old.» Stop! You’re only old because you think you’re old. The president doesn’t think he’s old; the last president didn’t think he was old. Hillary doesn’t think she’s old. We’re the only ones sitting up in our sixties thinking about y’all. I got my plot; other people are going back to school, getting a degree at seventy. These belief systems cause you to experience failure in a way that is important. I was reading about this one anorexic girl whose dream was to go to college and to be a doctor. She was smart, and she was bright, but she couldn’t go to school because, on the other hand, she believed she was fat. She was so anorexic that she stopped eating until she became so weak she couldn’t go to school.
Conflicting beliefs kill dreams. Y’all can’t eat like this; this is too heavy for you. Y’all can’t think like this. Conflicting beliefs make you pray for Boaz, but you heard at the barbershop that all men are dogs. Conflicting belief systems get into your head, canceling out your progress, and stop you from reaching what you’re trying to achieve. Are you hearing what I’m saying? All of a sudden, you find it difficult to educate people past their belief system. I believe this is more than a collection of beliefs; it’s a network, an interconnection with one another. It’s a system.
We’ve been trapped in a system for years and years—a system of benevolence, a system of desperation, a system of feeling inadequate, a system of having to prove you’re human, a system of trying to validate your own presence on Earth. There’s a system at work, and systems are invisible, but they manifest themselves in tangible ways. Are you hearing what I’m saying? People penalize you when you go against the system. They lock you out: you’re not one of us. Our desperate need to belong somewhere, for fear of being isolated, makes us submit to systems that are beneath our dreams. But before I finish preaching today, I’m going to wake up somebody’s dream. I’m going to light a fire under someone today.
I’m going to bring something to your spirit that’s going to shake you loose. It’s a highly coherent but not totally consistent network where constituents' beliefs support each other logically, and largely they do not contradict one another. They hang around, build a fortress, and a family until everybody around you has a similar set of beliefs. You don’t believe it? Break into something that’s existed for ten years; get a job in an office that’s been around for ten years. There is one written in the manual, and then there’s the unspoken culture of the organization.
When you’re an outsider, until you understand the culture, it becomes very difficult to function in that environment because culture cancels out cognition. Culture had gotten into the Hebrews so deeply that even when they knew Pharaoh was dead, they danced on top of it. They knew he was dead, and when they got ready to make an image of what God looked like, they made the Egyptians' god because they had gotten out of Egypt, but Egypt hadn’t gotten out of them. That’s why just educating people and sending them to school to get degrees doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be liberated, because the first time you make them mad, they’re going to pop their necks and go back to where they came from.
If you don’t break the cultural belief system that holds you hostage, I’m talking about a complete overhaul of your belief system. Now, if keeping your friends is important to you, leave now. If everybody clapping for you in your circle is important to you, leave now. But if getting up is important to you and going on with your life, stay tuned; I have something for you. Are you with me? I want to tear down the whole system and potentially increase the level in your life, your ability to receive what God has for you. I want you to open your heart and begin to receive.
What in the world are you talking about, Bishop? What does that have to do with Luke chapter five, verse one? I’ll tell you why. Because when Jesus was preaching in Genesaret and he comes down, Simon, who is not yet called Peter, is not even a disciple; he doesn’t even know much about who Jesus is or what’s going on. Simon is just a fisherman. When Jesus encounters Simon, the Bible says that Simon was washing his nets. His belief system said it’s over. They had toiled all night and caught nothing, and his belief system taught him that if you can’t catch at night, you can’t catch at all. His limited belief system left him in a place of giving up on what he needed to make his business work.
And when Jesus came along—that’s right, he gave up. When Jesus came along, Jesus confronted fishermen who were washing their nets, which is a sign of having given up. I want to know, is there anybody in here who is washing your nets, who has decided it’s too late, I’m too old, I’m too fat, I’m too this, I’m too that, I’m too thin, I’m too short? Whatever it is that made you wash your nets, I want to challenge you today because Jesus is about bringing Simon into the awareness that his belief system is wrong. Washing your nets means you have given up hope that you can go any further, and you have settled to be on the sidelines of life rather than in the game. You made yourself comfortable with an empty boat, no fish, which means no business, and you have decided this is as far as you can go.
Some of you even justified it by saying, «If the Lord meant for me to catch fish, He would have blessed me to catch fish,» so it must not be God’s will for me to catch any fish. Well, here comes God, walking in—Jesus down to the seashore—and Simon is washing his nets. Washing your nets means deciding that nobody will ever love you. Washing your nets means deciding that you can’t go any higher or further than where you’ve gone. Washing your nets is giving up on your dream and deciding that all of your effort was for naught because it didn’t work like you thought it was going to work. He quit. He’s alive, but he quit. He’s breathing, but he quit. He’s functioning, but he quit. You’d be surprised at the people in here that are breathing and dead. They’re breathing, but they quit. They have their makeup on, but they quit. They have the dress on, but they quit. They have their suit on, but they quit. They came to church, but they quit. They quit a long time ago.
Let me tell you something: divorces don’t happen when the papers come. People can quit and still be fixing breakfast. Do you hear what I’m saying? People can quit and still be giving roses. Quitting isn’t just a removal of the body from the situation; it’s a removal of the spirit from the situation. Peter’s spirit has been broken, and he’s washing his nets when Jesus comes down there and disrupts everything Peter believes. Whenever Jesus comes—let me warn you, He will disrupt everything. I know you want a nice, neat little Jesus that fits comfortably inside your belief system, that won’t shake up anything, that won’t get you out of your comfort zone, that won’t make you have to stand for yourself.
I know you want a nice, little, neat Jesus that you can fit into a package of what you’ve been taught about Jesus. But Jesus was a rabble-rouser; Jesus was radical; Jesus was a yoke-breaker. Wherever Jesus went, He terrorized the city; He turned it upside down. If Jesus got into a city, all bets were off on how things were going to go, and everything was going according to plan until Jesus came. Somebody tell them Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming! He’s coming into your house; He’s coming into your finances; He’s coming into your business; He’s coming into your life; He’s coming into your plans; He’s coming into your future. Everything you thought you were through with, God is getting ready to do a new thing. God is getting ready to do something radical; God is ready to start it up!