TD Jakes - The Master Builder
I take this seriously. I have ministered through my first book to women: Woman, Thou Art Loosed. I’ve ministered to thousands—millions, no doubt—of women around the world, but also to millions of men. Though I love the opportunity to do either, I think there has never been a more needed time to speak to men than right now. It is hard to insulate yourself from the changing world we live in: the change in ideologies around us, the change in definitions surrounding us, the changing realities we face, and the shifting economics we encounter.
Pastor Dobbins said something that resonated: if you’re a man and you know you’re a man today, what does that mean? What does that mean today? Our grandfathers defined it one way, our grandmothers defined it another, and our parents defined it in yet another way. What does it mean to be a real man? The world’s definition of a real man has changed, is changing, and is evolving. It’s affecting everything from sexuality to economics, from standards of attractiveness to value and worth, and even roles in the home. Who argues that you are a real man? What does that mean? How do you define that? We want to bring clarity to some of these issues today and touch on areas that I believe are very important for us to discuss.
I was speaking with someone who called you. «Hey, man, someone wants to see you!» I was praying about how to talk about men of destiny. Everybody in here has a destiny and a purpose to fulfill, and the Bible talks about that. The thoughts of God are good, as I said, and we might have an expected end. We are to become what He meant for us to be, that when everything is said and done, we would evolve into the men He wants us to be. That’s a long journey; it’s a lifelong journey. You don’t complete that in a weekend. You don’t do that because someone laid hands on you; you don’t achieve that because you said the sinner’s prayer. You don’t do that because you got a wife or a job. A car won’t make you that, and money won’t make you that. In fact, money will only amplify who you were before; it won’t change who you are on the inside.
So most of the things we pursue in life will not achieve that either. The church sometimes adds to the damage because we put destiny on sale and make it seem easily attainable. We talk to you about destiny as if it has no drama. We make you shout about it, dance about it, get happy about it, and pursue it. We talk about destiny as if it has no drama. So when we run into drama, we abort destiny. We show you our stars, not our scars—all of us show our stars, not our scars. We don’t post any ugly pictures on Instagram; if the picture doesn’t look right, we don’t post it, even if we have to touch it up.
We are living in a world of false realities, and with false realities comes a certain sense of shame because the other picture wasn’t lying either. Our need to present ourselves in a certain way, and we all have it, I mean, I don’t want to look just any kind of way. Our need to present ourselves must also be coupled with that feeling of, «I don’t want you to see the other me because you might not like that me.» There’s a lot of pressure between image and reality. Sometimes we spend so much energy on our image that we never work on our reality. If we never work on our reality, the image gets larger than the reality, and we become impostors.
The pressure that comes with being an impostor is stressful because you have to fake it every day. You’re waiting for me to preach; I’m about ready to preach! You have to fake it every day, in a world where we are inclined to evaluate our masculinity by our accomplishments. We hide ourselves because we don’t want you to see us. Like men in a locker room turning to the corner, we worry if we measure up. If we don’t measure up, we’ll find something to help us measure up. Don’t look at this; look at that. Don’t look at that; look at the other. Look at the car, look at the house, look at the job, look at the degrees I have. But when you lay down at night, you don’t sleep with a degree; you don’t sleep with a paycheck, and you can’t get the car out of the garage into the bins. Sooner or later, you’re left with your realities, and I want to talk to you about your realities today.
I’m going to talk about it from a context where I borrow the words of the Apostle Paul, and I love this text in 1 Corinthians 3:10–15. I’m just going to read it for context: «According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another builds thereon. But let every man take heed how he builds thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, and precious stones, wood, hay, or stubble, notice that gold, silver, precious stones, and then it declines to wood, hay, or stubble. Every man’s work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.»
Normally, I would use this text from an eschatological perspective, focusing on the end of an era, and ultimately landing us at the judgment seat of Christ. However, I just want to extract morsels of truth from the text. I don’t want to exegete the text or preach it in the traditional sense, to be honest with you. I’ve primarily focused on one word in the text: «master builder.» So, I’ve entitled this presentation, and it’s going to be interactive because I’ll need you to participate: «Master Builder.» For rehearsal’s sake, I’ll say, «I am a master builder.» Now, if you understand that you’re a master builder, a builder comes prepared to build his dream; he doesn’t wait for the dream to happen. Now, there’s a significant shift in thinking there because we have a tendency, particularly in faith, to believe that if we pray enough, the dream will happen. However, the Bible, upon close scrutiny, does not support that notion. The truth is, Paul says that he is a master builder.
So we can come and discuss theology regarding destiny, and we can get excited about words like that, but what does that really mean? And what are you prepared to build? Paul states, «No greater foundation has any man laid than that which was laid by Christ Jesus.» So Christ says, «I’ve got the foundation; I’ve covered you.» I dug out the footer. Here in West Virginia, we dig our footers; you all do pier and beam construction down here. In West Virginia, we dug our footers, built basements, and then built a house on top of it. I dug out the footers, or I put in the pier and the beam. He said, «I laid the foundation, but I left the building up to you.»
Paul lets us know that we have options regarding the materials we can work with—wood, hay, or stubble—and we can legitimately build a house. I grew up in a wood house; you can build a house out of wood, hay, or stubble. I was in Africa, and a woman had built a house out of cow dung, which is the norm there. It hardens like concrete, and they use it in the bush to build houses. You can build a house out of dung. So if success is simply defined by just building the house, whether it is built from dung or diamonds, it’s still a house. Wood, hay, and stubble are preceded by gold, silver, or precious stones because gold, silver, or precious stones can withstand the trial of fire.
True enough, if you get it hot enough, gold will melt; silver will melt if it gets hot enough. However, even when melted, it’s still what it was. Fire can never change that. If a diamond goes through the fire, it may be burned, but it is still a diamond. However, wood, if it goes through the fire, will be transformed, and the fire will change its reality. This text suggests that the fire determines the construction. We already know we have two things to look at: First, what am I building on my foundation? Is it something that will withstand the fire? Is it solid, true, real, stable, and steady?
The second thing we must realize is that no matter what I built, I’m going to get burned. If I am a fire dodger, I will never be a builder because this text suggests that the fire comes to reveal the material you’ve been working with. There is not a man—whether he comprises wood, stubble, hay, gold, silver, or precious stones—who won’t get burned. The oddest thing about men is that when we go through fire, we often say nothing. Can you imagine if the room caught fire right now and we burned up? I would be quite verbal. I’m the kind of person who wouldn’t just take it for the team, holding on to some vague masculine dignity. I would scream like a little girl! But I would go down without dignity. If I had to do that to be your pastor, I would resign right now. I would go out yelling like a five-year-old girl because I hate fire!
So if we would react that way in the natural, and this text refers to the spiritual, why is it that when we go through the fire in our lives, we often say nothing? I suggest to you, my brothers and sisters, that many of us scream inside. We scream silently. We scream while driving to work. We scream in the shower; we scream in prayer. We scream in praise. We scream into liquor bottles. There are all kinds of things that are screaming. I ask you, brother, are you screaming? I may not hear you say anything, and I’m sure you don’t do it around men, but when life gets crazy, how do you scream? Do you scream in how you treat others? Do you scream by collecting more and more women like trophies? The truth is all of this is inside us. All of our fallacies have been shattered. There are different ways of screaming. We even argue amongst the screamers over which scream is better.
But how do you scream? Are you screaming in a way that you’ve told yourself is fun, but it’s really just a scream? Because if we don’t get down to what makes you scream, then we can’t build what makes you dream. You cannot get through this world without fire, and fire at different ages and stages means different things to a man. What burns you up at twenty means nothing at fifty. But when you reach fifty, there’s another kind of fire that burns you—a fire that might not have mattered when you were thirty. What burned you up at thirty is now running out of time; am I enough? If you haven’t answered that question by sixty, you just stop asking it and make peace with the fact that you may not ever be enough.
I’ve come to accept my height. My son is now two inches taller than me, and I’ve had to accept that he’s reached the height I wanted to maintain. I cannot spend the rest of my life trying to grow taller; that season of growth is over for me. He’s going to be taller than me, and I have to be okay with that. We preach the same message to all people as if we are all going to rise to the same height. But in a great house, there are vessels of honor and dishonor. You can’t have a house full of children where all will be the same age, gender, or height. We talk to you generically, which sometimes increases the shame of whether or not we measure up. We may say, «Don’t look at me! I don’t want you to see the changes in me, » because I’m comparing myself to you. But wait a minute—are you my destiny?
Paul says when you compare yourself to one another, you are not wise because you can’t compare yourself to me. You don’t have the same materials; you don’t have the same level of gift. So it comes down to… to every man, find out what you have to work with because you can either complain about what you don’t have for the rest of your life—my father didn’t raise me, my mother left me—but I will tell everyone I did something when I was 16. Somehow I got in here, buddy. We could spend the rest of our lives talking about what we don’t have, or you can assess what you do have and start building. But what I want you to see is that you must build it; it is not going to happen arbitrarily, automatically, or spiritually. You must be the master builder; you are the architect of your future, and if you don’t build it, it won’t happen.
Let me break it down this way because I want to be scripturally sound. In order to be scripturally sound, I should say that God is the architect, but you’re the carpenter, okay? Prove that: The Bible says, «They that build the house labor in vain if the Lord does not build the house.» They that labor labor in vain if God does not build the house. I thought, «Wait a minute, if God built the house, why do we have anyone laboring?» I realized that God built it by design. When God finished drawing up the plans, He was done building the house. God is the architect—that is the design, that is the purpose. He is through with the construction when He submits the drawings.
Here are the drawings for what you can be in your life, but you can’t move into a blueprint. You cannot bathe in a blueprint, you cannot drive a blueprint, you cannot sleep in a blueprint; you cannot invite people into a blueprint. It is just a blueprint. The Bible is a blueprint; accept it. Now, they that labor labor in vain: If you’re trying to build something that God didn’t design for you, you are wasting your time, and the worst thing in the world to waste is time. I’d rather you waste money than waste time. I hate to waste money, and I hate for you to waste time because conceivably, I could get more money, but I cannot get more time. Do not waste time trying to build things that are not on your blueprint.
To maximize this time with me today, we must be willing to dismiss all the things we are trying to build that are not on our blueprint. We need to have a conversation with the architect: «What are the specs on me? For someone with the intelligence I have, the abilities I possess, and the talents you’ve given me, what am I accountable for?» Because I’m only accountable for what you gave me. If you only gave me one talent, I’m not accountable like the guy who’s got five. If you only gave me three talents, why am I comparing myself with the guy that’s got five? For what you gave me, what am I building with?
Touch your brother and say, «I’m a master builder.» In order to be a master builder, I have to understand the materials I have been given. I must understand where God stops, and I begin. Because if I don’t understand where God stops and I begin, I will blame God for my laziness. I will blame God for my failures. I will blame God and say I tried Him, and He didn’t work. «I paid my tithes, and it didn’t work. I came to church, and it didn’t work. I gave my life to Jesus.» «Yes, » you did, but He stopped at the foundation.
I just drove a preacher through a neighborhood that I developed—not the church, but the property where I built 40 houses. What I didn’t tell him is that I entered into a joint venture with a land developer. I bought the land; he put in the infrastructure—drainage and water—and then we sold to a general contractor to build the houses. So the general contractor is my customer. Understand? Then he sells to the customer who bought the house, and he gets his money, but I got the contractor’s money. He gets the customer’s money, and that’s how the deal works.
So when the land was developed, I got paid before the houses were built because you have to understand what the deal is. The day you get involved, if you don’t understand the deal, you can’t do the deal. I’m spitting out truth; if you don’t understand the deal, you can’t do the deal. Most of us don’t understand the deal, and we’re trying to do a deal we don’t understand. We don’t understand what we’re doing or how to do what we’re doing because we don’t understand the deal.
So we’re going to clear up some things today; I’m glad you came. We’re going to clarify what the deal is and how it works. God says He gave you the same time, as it says in James 1:5, «If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally.» He gave us the same foundation when He gave us life. «All souls are mine, » He says. We come here, and we all leave here the same. Rich people leave here just like poor people; rich folks and poor folks are born just the same. You can’t get rich enough that you don’t have to labor.
So we come the same and die the same, and the only thing we’re responsible for is the middle. Because the beginning of the book and the end of the book have already been written. A date has been set for you to be born; a date has been set for you to die, and all of that is finished and settled. All you’re responsible for is what happens in the middle. Then if you’re born again from the time you accept Christ as your foundation, there is no greater foundation than that which is laid by Christ Jesus. Upon that foundation, some men will build.
What are you building? Some men are not building at all; they’re still at ground level zero. They’re still there with the drainage pipes in and water and electricity for the house but there’s no house there because they’re waiting on the Lord. In fact, you’re waiting on the Lord, and He’s waiting on you. Don’t turn into an angry, bitter old man because you wasted your youth building what stumbles.
And don’t become a hater of me because some men built. Some men built. I might say, «Some men built.» It’s fair; it’s fair. The only thing fair is birth and death; it’s absolutely fair. White folks, black folks, brown folks, rich folks, poor folks—it doesn’t matter what kind of person you are. We all come the same, and we all go the same. We know that the beginning and the end are fair because God does it. Everything in between is debatable.
Some men built. Some men built. If you’re going to build something that’s going to last, are you strong enough to withstand the men who resent what you built? Are you tough enough to withstand the inevitable criticism that comes because some men built, or is winning their approval more important to you than building something that is solid? Maybe you have daddy issues, and any form of criticism or rejection reinforces the rejection you already had, so you make the goal of changing the mind of someone who doesn’t matter.
Let’s talk a minute about daddy issues because the thing that got me on this trail was, over and over again in the scriptures, when God hands out plans. I told you God is an architect; He handed plans for Aaron’s garment. He didn’t sew. He handed plans to Moses for the tabernacle, and plans to David for building the temple that he passed on to Solomon. He handed plans, and over and over again we hear the phrase in the King James Version, «Build according to pattern.»
If you miss this, you’ve missed the whole thing, okay? Build according to pattern. Say that with me: «Build according to pattern.» Say it again. Now, I was sitting, looking at this text and thinking about building according to pattern. Moses built; Noah built the ark according to pattern. God designed that and told him how many cubits it was to be. All Noah had to do was build according to pattern. But if he didn’t build according to pattern, his whole house would be lost and his kids would drown because his kids were living in their father’s ability to build according to pattern.
It’s not just that I’m building for me; I’m building for my kids too. Because my kids will live or die based on my ability to build according to pattern. If I resent authority and don’t like following instructions, my kids might be in a jam because I’m building without a pattern and wondering why my family’s drowning. Build according to pattern. Say it again.
Okay, I’m going in. Are you ready? I’m going in deep. What got me started was when I began thinking about the word pattern; I started thinking about fathers. The reason I thought about fathers is because of the Greek word «pattern, » which means «father.» You say «my paternal grandparents, » which means it’s my father’s mother or father; it is my paternal path from the word pattern, meaning father.
Then I went back and did word research and found out that there is an association between the word «pattern» and the word «father.» A lot of times, since I can’t see God—now I know some of you may think you can see God, but I have these glasses on and still cannot see God—but I can see my father. So I build according to patterns. My mother had a degree in home economics and science, and one thing I understand about a pattern is that there are no sleeves in the pattern. There will be no sleeves in the dress if there are no pleats in the pattern; there will be no pleats in the skirt.
That’s why fatherhood is important. It is crucial because having a father—and a good one—becomes important. The pattern is the pattern, and in the absence of a pattern, what do I build? I’m going to talk about this too; I’m going to include everyone. We’re building according to the pattern; we cannot help what our fathers did or didn’t do, but we can stop it from happening again. Your son and your daughter will be affected by your pattern, not your preaching.
I can only hear what you do; I cannot hear what you say. As a son, I can only hear what you do. So we build according to pattern, and some of you have done really well even though you don’t think that you did. You have done commendably well because you built it without a pattern. You got to where you are with no pattern at all; just hitting it. This is a real old hit-or-miss approach, and I know the gray hair doesn’t know what that means. You just hit, trying to figure it out, and you thought a window would fit right here. It would be nice to have a window right here; I don’t know how big it will be, so let me see.
You just cut it at two-and-a-half, and then you built, framed it all in, and found that there wasn’t a window that size, so you had to take it all out. Now you’re behind on your delivery date because you never had a pattern, and you’ve spent all your life trying to figure out how this works. So forgive yourself for being behind; you’ve done well for not having a pattern. See? I did good for not having a pattern.
I’ve been in my head; I’m going through this thing because everybody’s talking about mentoring. «He’s not my mentor; she’s my mentor; I need a mentor; I want you to be my mentor.» You know, I’m sick of this age because we just do whatever everybody says. Everybody wants you to be their mentor. Mentoring is nice; it’s nice. Modeling is better. Are you hearing me?
I can learn certain things from you through mentoring, but I am more likely to become what you model in front of me. So, let’s work on this for a minute. Talking about some guys who were raised by women, we all had the same emotions, but we learned to express our emotions according to the patterns in front of us. So, when Mama laughs, she feels a certain way. Now, the boy is running around, having the same feelings that all of us have, but how he expresses those feelings does not confuse behavior with sexuality because that has nothing to do with being homosexual. You can be masculine and still be homosexual. Come on, just keep sitting there; I’m going to get to you in a minute.
See, we haven’t even arrived at the six pieces yet. What we’re discussing is how to express the feelings we’re experiencing. I express them according to the pattern I learned. If Daddy got mad, when he was frustrated after having a bad day at work, he came home and slapped Mama. That means when I come home feeling frustrated, I have the same feelings, but I look at the pattern to guide how to express that rage. I could easily, as a man, end up behaving the way I hated. Maybe he didn’t hit her; he just didn’t talk, and I hated that he never talked to me. I hated that he never validated me and never told me that he loved me. You hate it when he never communicated with you, and now you’re a young man—a twenty-year-old, a twenty-five-year-old, a thirty-year-old—married to someone who says, «You just don’t communicate.»
You think you just hold it in. You don’t know how to express your feelings because you were built according to a flawed pattern. Y’all still with me? Are we doing good? I want to get this down because I realized in my own life this whole dynamic of modeling versus mentoring. I realized my father never mentored me; he just modeled behaviors in front of me. I defined masculinity by what he did, and what he mostly did was work. None of my siblings or I would avoid work because that was modeled in front of us. As soon as I hit puberty and my voice dropped an octave—along with all the other changes—you know what I mean. When everything like that started happening, my cousin in Mississippi would say, «Everything like that.»
I stepped into the model and demonstrated the pattern I learned. Some of you have a flawed pattern, and some of you have no pattern at all. Then Christ comes and says, «Let’s start this over. Verily, verily, I say unto you, you must be born again.» He said, «Let’s start over because the first time you learned the pattern, there were some flaws in it. This time, you must get it right. I’m going to lay the foundation for you so you won’t spend the rest of your life blaming your father. I’m going to become your father, and I’ll provide the specifications so you can become the man I created you to be and find the joy, peace, and fulfillment that only comes when you fulfill the design.»
I’m telling you that we are going to start over. We’re going to wipe the slate clean; we’re going to remove all the debris. We’re going to cancel out all the mistakes, the craziness, the foolishness, the drama, the hysteria, the anger, the frustration, and everything that has been messing you up. We’re going to clean it all up. And don’t bother me, because I’m already late. I’m already off schedule; I’m twenty years behind, thirty years behind, thirty-five years behind. I can’t afford to waste time with you. Am I talking to you? You do not have time to repeat the same mistakes you made before. You have a second chance now, and you need to get it right because Jesus says, «I’m going to be your pattern. I’m going to lay your foundation. I’m going to help you get started. Now you be accountable for what you build.»
You have to build it again. If you want a happy home, you have to build it. If you want a successful marriage, you have to build it. If you want your children to admire you, you have to build it. If you want to be economically stable, you have to build it. Everybody, are you willing? Nobody is going to give it to you; if it’s going to happen, you’re going to have to work for it!
Slap your brother and say, «I’m a master builder!» until the praise breaks out in this place. I’m a master builder! I’m a master builder! I’m a master builder! I’m a master builder! I’m a master builder! I’m a master builder! Whatever you have been praying about, whatever you have been asking for, whatever your vision is, whatever your dream is—whatever God has placed in your sphere—understand your responsibilities. He designed it, but you must do the construction. So get your hard hat and toolbox and gather your supplies because you’ve got some building to do. If you do not build it, you cannot live in it. I swear, I promise—cross my heart and hope to die—nobody is going to build your house for you. You must build your own house. What you must understand as men is that we are called to be builders, not just dreamers, not just wishers, not just hopeless, not just players—builders.
And what you feel depends on what age and stage you’re at, but from the youngest boy in this room to the oldest man in this room, every last one of you is called to be builders. Every last one of you is called to be builders. Never stop building. Never stop building. Never stop building. Never stop building. Never stop feeling sad again. Sad again. Say it again. Say it again. You build houses. You build hearts. You build homes. You build people. Well, wherever you are, you were put there to build. So stop crying about what’s not there and don’t give it as a no. And I didn’t get there. Shut up and build it. Never stop building. Slapping ignorance ain’t never stopped building.
My uncles who lived to be in their 80s and my uncles who lived to be in their 90s. I like to hang around old people because they become a barometer of what’s next in my life. And they told me the biggest mistake they ever made was when they retired. And I walked to, when I tried to think about what they were saying, they said it’s horrible to wake up in the morning and have nothing to do. You can only vacation for so long. Now, the point wasn’t you can’t retire from a job, but if you retire from a job and stop building, you have little purpose. As soon as you lose purpose, you lose passion, you lose power, you lose strength, you lose brainpower, you lose creativity.
Never stop building. When you get to where you can’t do it anymore, build your sons. Build your grandsons. Build your grandchildren. When you get to where you’re sitting up in a wheelchair, roll your chair in the road and build up the next generation. «But I can’t do it anymore.» Build up the next generation, and I’ll do it vicariously through them. When I can’t run a touchdown anymore, I’ll teach the next one how to make the touchdown, and I’ll clap while you make the touchdown because I will never stop. I will never stop. You, I will never stop you. It’s not going to happen. If you don’t like builders, don’t be around me. Don’t marry me. Don’t hang around me. Don’t befriend me. You can’t run with me because wherever I am, I’m going to build something.
If you hand me something, I’m going to turn it into something else. I got to build something all the time. I came in the other day, and out of the blue, I made a sweet plate of cobbler just out of the blue. I don’t know why I made it. I just made it to see if I could make it. I put it on Instagram after I made it. I didn’t hardly even eat any of it. It wasn’t about eating it; it was about building it. I’m such a builder that I just got to keep building something. And if you don’t give me something, I said, «What do we have in the house?»
See, a builder is a baker, and a baker is a builder, and both of them are working with whatever is. What do you have in the house? Am I talking to the right man? There ought to be every man in the room that ought to be building something. How can you be a gift to me if you’re not building me? How can you be an asset if you don’t make an addition? When you walk in the room, the dynamic is changed. When you walk in the room, that dynamic changed. The only number that doesn’t add to another number is zero. And if you are not zero, the numbers are going to change every time you walk in the room. When I see you coming, I see addition coming. Multiplication just walked in the room. You just added something to the atmosphere. Never join anything and add nothing.
So maybe there are several things I want you to get out of this. Some of it is what was wrong with my pattern because I got to fix a pattern in some cases, okay? Because I am as much a product of my environment as I am of my DNA. Both of them produced me. That’s why all the smart people who sit in smart rooms and smart places can’t decide whether it’s nurture or nature because it’s both. That’s why I love exposure because the world as you know it is not the world. It’s just as you know it.
My brother and I went to Los Angeles. He went ahead of me. He went in a different way than me. He went out at different stages in his life than me, and he stayed with relatives, and didn’t have any money. He ended up living in Watts, had horrible experiences, and he hates L.A. today because of what happened years ago when he was there. The way he describes L.A. is totally different from how I describe L.A. because I came much later in my life, stayed in Beverly Hills in a penthouse suite, and was brought into L.A. around a whole different circle of people. We’re both talking about the same place.
Some of you have never been to Dallas, though you live in Dallas. You’ve really only lived in a part of Dallas, so your ideas about Dallas are based on what you know. You haven’t even fully discovered where God put you. You only see it as you know it, and that’s why the biggest word I know in the English language is exposure. Because I could take you to some places, and even though you have lived here all your life, you lived in a community, not a city. And I could show you another part of Dallas that you never even knew existed because you have not been exposed to it. And if you cannot see it, you cannot be. What are we not seeing? What are my blind spots? What am I not seeing in my own house? What am I so busy that I’m not seeing in my own son? What am I not seeing in my own wife? What am I not seeing in my own life? Because it can’t be it if I don’t see it.
Probably anybody who’s been divorced will tell you things that they see now that they didn’t see when they were in it. Talk to anybody who’s lost their spouse or lost a loved one, and they’ll tell you things that they see in retrospect that they didn’t see in real-time. What are your blind spots? And are you talking out of your pain? Are you talking about something you really don’t know about? Because my brother swears he knows Los Angeles, and I swear I know Los Angeles, and our planes both landed in the same city, but we had two totally different experiences based on what we were exposed to. Neither one of us is lying. He is telling his truth, and I am telling mine. We’re talking about the same place.
If he drove me into another neighborhood, I would understand why he feels the way he feels, and that’s the problem with having people make decisions about areas they have never been. There was a comment made some months ago, a very uncomplimentary comment made about Nigeria, and then they were interviewing all of these senators about this statement made about Nigeria and the other countries in Africa, and everybody who had an opinion had never been there. How can you know if you don’t go? You have to sit where I sit to understand why I think the way I think. Until you sit where I sit, until you see what I see, you won’t understand my reality. So exposure goes both ways, okay?
So now y’all got me fired up. Don’t do that because if you add me on, I’ll keep going because I’m a builder. I’m a master builder. I see you as materials. I see us as materials. I see you as ingredients. I see you as possibilities. And I see you as problems. I see who has potential. I want to know what’s in the house. What can I make with that? Master Builder, you can’t be around me long, and I’ll build. If you go to lunch with me, I’m going to build you. If you come to my house, I’m going to build you. If you start texting me, I’m going to build you. I’m a master builder. If you give me an idea, don’t give me an idea you don’t want me to touch because if you give me an idea, I’m going to build something to it. I’m going to add a wing to it. I’m going to put a skylight in it. I’m going to do something to it. I’m a master builder. I get amazing people who go to surgeons for physicals.
Don’t go to a surgeon for physical because a surgeon is going to find something he can operate on. He’s a surgeon. He’ll cut you somewhere; that’s what they do. I’m a master builder. If you want to stay like you are, leave now because you got a master builder. If you stay in this room, if you stay in this room, if you stay in this room, I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care if you rolled into this room. I don’t care if you’re 12 years old. If you spend a few, test me and tell them I’m getting ready to build something, okay? I’m going to dump the rest of it. Sit down. I’m going to dump the rest of it, then I’ll open it up for questions and conversations and stuff like that. I make it hard to sit down good. I want to get you so fired up. I’m going to get you so dang fired up.
I want to open up your head for so many possibilities. I want to teach you in prison. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and complaining about your wife and complaining about your life. I want to build you up to my sexual power. Slap some shade. Never stop building. Do you want to get a woman? Do you want to get a good woman? Do you want to get one real fast? If you want to get one, stop dealing. Start building something. Start building something. You start building some. How can I be a helpmate? How can I be a helpmate if you ain’t a builder? I can’t be an assistant to a plumber if you ain’t a problem. How can I assist you when your goal is to keep it like it was? You’re so boring the parlor because God called me to follow you, and you parked.
I’m not leaving you because I don’t like you. I’m leaving you because you’re not moving. And I’ll leave you for somebody uglier than you. I know you’re as sexy as you, but I’m used to you being sexy. Now sexy is normal. I could give up on some of that sexiness to see some building because cute is on the kill list. Come on, come on, come on, come on. You know how when you first get a new house, you walk in, and you just sit there looking at it? You look at God. Look at God. Bored life. You go over to the other side of the room. You look back at the other side. Look at God. My grandma can see me now. Look at God. That’s about two months after while you walk in the house, you just walked in the house and throw your stuff down, and go about your business because what was exciting became normal. Because it’s not changing, it’s not growing.
I sent you in the garden, Adam, to build it, to dress it, to tend to it, to develop it. You’re a builder. What happened to you that you stopped building? What hurt you so bad that success became stabilizing? The first thing Jesus says when he comes to Mary and Martha and they’re having a fit because he missed the funeral, he comes on here and says to me right now just like that: «Show me where you laid him down! Show me where this stopped building!» Now let me just dump this. I can’t even try not to elaborate because I don’t want to take my spat. There’s an outline in my head to share with you, and it’s been with me for over a year and a half, and it was write this down: graybeards, pink slips, and blue pills.
Graybeards, pink slips, and blue pills. Graybeards, pink slips, and blue pills. Graybeards, pink slips, and blue pills. Under «graybeards» is the conversation we need to have about aging because if the only vision you have of yourself is a 20-year-old, then 40 is depressing. You’ll get to 40, and you’ll try to be 20 because you have no vision for 40. Or you’ll get to 60 and get depressed to the point of being suicidal because God is trying to wean you from what you understood a man to be based on the ideas of a 40-year-old, and you have no vision for 60. So what you build depends on what age and stage you’re at, but you can’t build what you ought to be building at this stage if you’re still in love with the stage that just went by.
So when he told me that I said now I see why 80% of the suicides in this country are committed by men in their 40s and 50s. No wonder they’re committing suicide because they only had visions for 20 and 30, and when they run into the complexities of 40s and 50s and the equipment changes, they can’t scream outside. Oh, I’m going to tie it all up. They can’t scream outside, so they scream, «Oh, why?» Then I talk to the psychologist, and psychology says that depression is anger turned inward. I thought depression was being sad. Depression is not about being sad; depression is about being mad. Depression is about being mad on the inside. So that is the fire that’s burning up all the fake materials you defined as a man.
So the reason I want to talk about great beers is to begin to understand that you must have a vision for every stage of your life. I learned that you can’t have a new vision until you let go of the old one. If you can’t let go of the past, you’ll spend the time that you ought to devote to a new vision mourning the death of the old one. What I’m doing right now is explaining why you feel the way you feel. You feel this way because the fire is burning away all the wood and stubbly ideas that you thought were truths, and those ideas were seasonal. Do you hear what I’m saying to you?
Oh my God, I get excited! Where are my 20- and 30-year-olds? Stand up! Everything you feel right now—everything that’s going on inside you—in your head, in your body, in your emotions, in your sex drive—everything that you call normal, everything that you think is life and will always be the same, will not remain the same. It will all change. This is not reality; it is a season. It is a season. It is a season of your life. Do not make permanent decisions based on temporary circumstances. Whatever is happening—right or wrong, good or bad, up or down—it will pass in a minute. While you are in one season, you must be building for the next one, because you won’t have anywhere for your masculinity to live if you blow your 20s and 30s complaining about what happened to you when you were 12. Everything good about your age, everything good about your stage, and everything bad about where you are will change.
It’s temporary. All your questions are: «Do I have it? Can I really do it?» I’m trying to project all these ideas. If none of it is working, maybe I do everything you said I had a difficult childhood. Everything—shut up, it will all change! If you miss now crying about then, you won’t be ready for what’s next. Time will not wait for you to get your head together; time is merciless. It’s coming, ready or not. You have to understand that where you are right now is a moment—it’s a moment in time. It’s an opportunity, a gift and a curse, a blessing and a burden. It gives you advantages and it’s limiting; it’s both. Every stage has its assets and its liabilities; and if you don’t learn how to manage your assets and your liabilities in your 20s and 30s, God help you in your 40s and 50s!
I’m talking about principles, not problems. You are praying about problems; I am telling you about principles. God gave you the problem, truly you can learn the principle. The problem doesn’t matter. It’s not about your problem. God is trying to teach you how to progress under pressure because every stage in your life will have blessings and burdens; it will have problems and it will have power. You have got to learn how to swim in troubled waters. Do you hear what I’m telling you? It’s gonna pass. The arguments you have with your wife are gonna pass. Because what’s important to you at 20 and 30 will not be nearly as important to you at 50 and 60. You may not really see the beauty in her until you get to the next stage because all your evaluations and all your calculations are only based on the stage you’re in. Keep building! You just got the first floor up.
Keep building! Stop walking away from every project and giving up on every dream because you don’t understand that problems come with promises. You are sitting in God’s promise; this very place is God’s promise to me. But if you think the promise has no problems, you are fooling yourself. If you are looking for promise without a problem, you got to get it because you are looking for heaven. I am talking to you about life. I am telling you what I would tell you if I were your father. It is what it is and you either groan and bellyache about it, wish you could change it, and waste your time in the wishing well of life, or you pull your pants up and stand on your own two feet and go ahead with your life. You are a master at all it takes. You may be sitting here at 56, saying, «Oh Lord, have mercy, ain’t this a change?»
Hey, I’ve left my ponies; I’ll come back to you in a minute. In your 50s and 60s, ain’t this a change? Ain’t this a change that makes you redefine happiness? There’s a change where you have to rediscover a part of yourself you’ve never encountered before, a change where you reassess your values and redefine your priorities and refocus on who you are and where you’re going because you are too young to be an old man and you are too old to be a young man. You are in this nebulous, indescript space between two worlds, but you have lived long enough to know how the story ends. The ticking of the clock is pressure, and if you only define success by your 20- and 30-year-old self, then your 50- and 60-year-old self is depressed because you don’t think you’re any good.
What you call good is based on a 20- and 30-year-old evaluation and you’re depressed. You can’t talk, you’re depressed, and you can’t tell anyone—who would you tell? You are so private that you don’t even want her to know, and you surely don’t want the other men to know. You try to do what you did at 20 and 30, but when you get out on the basketball court, you pull a hamstring. Now I’m being nice and could have gone to another kind of illustration, but I’m saving that for the blue pills; I’ll just stay in the gray hair zone. Am I talking to you? You are old enough to realize that your grown kids aren’t as grown as you thought they would be. You’re old enough to have the kind of problems in your house that make you wonder at night if it was really your fault. You’re old enough to wonder if you have time to fix it; you’ve reached the stage where some of the issues in your life are so baked in that even when you try to be your better self, all they bring up is your old self.
And you’re a little bit pissed off because by the time you figured out what life was all about, you’re wondering if you have the energy and strength to do anything about it. Well, welcome to your 50s and 60s. This is where you have to accept, «I’m 62 and I’m not gonna be 64.» This is where you come into acceptance about where you are. If you don’t pass the bar of acceptance, you’re gonna medicate your pain with self-destruction. You have to accept where you are and find a new definition of happy because your previous definition of happy was so small you could fit it in a matchbox. The things that made you happy don’t work anymore. If you don’t rediscover and rebuild a new understanding of life and be happy with what you’ve built in this stage, then you start thinking things like «My life is over; my best days are behind me.»
And you’ll talk yourself into the grave, and sickness will start to break out in your body because the sickness is a manifestation of what’s going on in your head. You will bring yourself down to the grave because you have not learned to build in the stage you’re in. Am I talking to you? I respect you too much to bring you out here without anything to say. You’re in that stage of life where it is complicated—where you have grown kids, sometimes from different mothers, who have issues with you that you cannot go back and undo. And now they’re old enough to get in your face and blame you for things that they are going mad about, and they won’t hear you.
This is the age where, if you’re not careful, you will lose your voice in your own life, and I want you to get your voice back. I want you to get your happy back. I want you to redefine yourself in the stage that you’re in, and I want you to live your life in such a way that you make the younger man jealous. I want you to get your swag back, get your groove back, and stop nursing your secret grief with bitterness, frustration, and hidden rage that has turned into depression. I know I’m standing on sensitive ground, but I came to talk to you because I’m tired of burying you. You think you’re old? The president is 70, and the only thing they’re fighting about is who will run again, while you’re picking out burial plots.
Have you stopped living? You stopped living because your experience with life was based on the eyes of a 20-year-old and a 30-year-old. You need a vision for where you are now. Revise your strategy and find something to be excited about. Am I talking to you? Sit down, 40-year-olds; I got you. Come on, you’re right in the middle of it! You’re at halftime. The odd thing about being 40 now, compared to when I was 40, is that you’ve played longer than we did. You woke up late, and by the time you realized that you had to build your own house and that it wasn’t going to come to you through osmosis, you were already at halftime. When we were at 30, you woke up realizing this really counts and this is serious.
You need to have something to show for it and to get yourself together. You were at halftime with the pressure of being late all over you, and that either will make you focus or lose your fight and settle at a stage where you should still be building. Am I talking to you, 40-year-olds? The kids are old enough to talk back. It’s not about car seats and baby bottles; it’s about car keys. You are fighting your genes in another form, and you are at a stage in your life where you and her are together, but it hasn’t gelled yet. I don’t mean you’re not there; you’re there, but the concrete hasn’t set yet. You’ve had to do some restarts more than once, and you should be right at the stage where you were waiting.
Now you’re waiting, but you wonder if you woke up too late and if you can still make a difference. You wish you had better equipment and more tools, and you wish you had done more with your youth than you did. Now you’re trying to build a mansion but you’re looking at your materials and not sure if you have enough to build it. And if you can build it, can you do it in time? You’re in the adolescence of adulthood, and your testosterone levels are just starting to drop. You have to work harder for half the results, and belly fat is building up. As your belly fat is building up, guess what? Your emotions are coming up. Emotions that you didn’t have to deal with in your 20s and 30s.
If you’re married, you trained her in your 20s and 30s not to be affectionate, to be sexual, but not affectionate. But now in your 40s, you need affection, and now she buys what you thought was a product of your testosterone mask. But now the curtain is coming down and you don’t feel appreciated. You don’t feel appreciated for all you do, for all you give, for everything you go through, and for all you suffer. You don’t think that anybody really gets it, and when they do appreciate you, they don’t appreciate you in the language that you need. Nobody has given you what you need, and you don’t even realize that you have never told them what you need. And when you do tell them, you are mad and can’t receive the fact that you trained them for the guy you used to be.
You’re right in the middle of it, and somewhat like in your 50s and 60s, you’re in that nebulous in-between space where your whole closet is still full of 20- and 30-year-old clothes, but your body is 40. Everything that you used to do is based on your 20s and 30s, and your whole life is designed around who you used to be. You don’t know that you need to rebuild for where you are right now. You’re still trying to cram yourself back into who you used to be. As soon as you give up on going backwards, you can go forward. Keep it moving!
Touch your brother and say, «Keep it moving!» Am I talking to you? You’re young men. You’re still young men, but you won’t know that until you’re older. By your definition, you’re old men because you’re the oldest you’ve ever been, and because you’re the oldest you’ve ever been, you think you’re old. But you’re still young yet, and you won’t know that you’re young men until you’re in your 50s and 60s. You’ll wish for your 40s, and the men I just sat down in their 50s and 60s, who are wishing for their 40s, are wondering why you’re wasting your 40s. You are wasting what they are wishing for because you don’t see the beauty of where you are!
Back at you, saying, «Yeah, I wish I was 40.» I will show you what to do before I reach 40. Right now, I’m not 40, but I’ll take 40, not 840. Anyway, could it be that where you are is a treasure you have not yet unearthed? Could it be that you are cursing something you ought to be celebrating? What do we know about you that you don’t see about yourself? You need to talk to us to find out because if you would talk to us, it would change how you see yourself. You can’t talk to someone 28 or 30 about 40s because, like a gravitational pull, they will draw you into a zone you can’t inhabit. You can still attract a 20-year-old girl, Big Daddy; oh yes, you can, Big Daddy! And that would really be good because you see things; you are after her body, but you’re really a vampire after her youth. This immense meanness, y’all, man!
Can we talk? This may be the toughest hump you ever get over. It’s worse than adolescence; it’s just like adolescence, but it’s worse because you’re in the middle of the year. You’re in that nebulous, indescribable middle place again. You don’t have great fraternity and fellowship with anyone because you’re in the middle. You don’t quite fit anywhere, not even in your own house because sometimes, in your 40s, you haven’t fully bought into this life. So you keep your heart out, and your body comes home every night, but you know if your heart is in the garage. You’re at the stage where you circle the house a couple of times before you go in. How many men know what I’m talking about? You circle it two or three times like a plane circling a runway.
You know you’re going to land; there’s no question you are coming home, but you are circling around; you haven’t landed yet because you have to talk yourself into going into your own life. You haven’t fully bought into it yet because you don’t feel safe— not safe enough to give up your whole heart, not safe enough to throw all your chips on the table, not safe enough to let your girlfriend go, not safe enough— not safe enough— his eyes shut as if he can’t believe you said that. I’m talking to you! Safe enough to put all your cards on the table, not safe enough to be fully engaged, not safe enough to build a future for your old age. You’re still trying to decide whether this is going to work, measuring it by a yardstick from your past. You don’t understand that the wife you’re going to need is not the wife you used to meet because you haven’t embraced where you are; you don’t always know where you are.
So sometimes we build encasements around ourselves to cocoon our uncertainty. So if you have a job, you’re there, but you’re not always fully there; and if you have a church, you’re a pastor, but you’re not sure you’re going to stay. And you’re not sure you’re keeping the house or this or that, and you’re just not sure. You’re supposed to be sure because you’re a man and a leader in charge, and rather than tell anybody you’re not sure, you don’t say anything. But you protect yourself from further pain by not being fully engaged anywhere. The consequence is the feeling of being homeless.
So you circle the house, and just like you circle the house, you’ve been circling your life. Why do you think other people are going to buy into you until you do? How many are getting something out of this? And you know what’s really a trip about the 40s? What’s really a trip is that you’re young enough that your parents are living, but now you have the weight of being sandwiched between aging parents and growing children, and you don’t know what to do with either. You’ve got kids you don’t even recognize, and you’ve got parents who have turned into someone you don’t know, and both of them are calling you, needing something from you, and you’re not sure you have enough to give anybody because everyone’s making withdrawals and nobody’s making deposits.
Okay, I’m going to stop. I want to talk to the young men in the group that you’re mentoring. Stand up, young man! Wake up! Stand up and wake up! I want to talk to you; you are the future! You are the future with a crazy past, and you’ve seen stuff you shouldn’t have seen and experienced things you shouldn’t have. You are kids with grown-folk problems! You are the future, but you’re weighed down by all the stuff and situations the grown folks should have kept you from but that you had to go through. You’re so busy trying to overcome grown folks' problems processing that you’re missing the joy of being a kid. We may not take you seriously; the opportunity to be in this room may not feel like it matters, and you may not be smart enough to realize I’m talking to you even while addressing them.
I’m giving you a glimpse of what’s next and you might not really know that it’s a gift to be an issue. I will tell you one thing right now: I am who I am today because of the choices I made back in your day—right at your age, right at that stage. The courses you take, the classes you attend, the people you hang around, and the individuals that speak into your life are shaping the pattern of your future. Don’t take the pattern of a fool! Don’t take the pattern of a fool! What does that mean, Bishop?
Choose who you admire, and make sure the reasons you admire them are worth your life because you are betting your life on who you admire. You will only be what you see, so focus your gaze on somebody who did something that, when you reach their age, you will be proud you did. And don’t focus your gaze on someone who isn’t going to live to be nice! And if you think I’m not talking to you, you’re mistaken! I am betting on you! I am betting that letting you overhear this conversation will shift you. You might not have money, you might not have friends, you might have been molested, you might have been abused, but I don’t care about that. You still have a chance. Run, Forrest, run! Do you hear me? Run!
Read everything you can read, write everything you can write, see everything you can see! Every smart, positive, powerful thing you can achieve while acknowledging where you came from—you’ve got to run! If you don’t run, it’s not going to happen. Your future is up to you! It’s not up to who touched you; it is up to you! Clap your hands, everybody! Now, this is what I’m going to do. In order to conserve time, I’m not going to do pink slips and blue pills. You’ll have to invite me back to do that!
Okay, let me tell you what pink slips are аbout: pink slips are about how you handle money. Pink slips are about how you handle finances; it has a lot to do with your self-esteem and how you see yourself. It affects your prayer life. I want you to get your finances in order; you should not have to be talking to God about money! I want to redefine what you call a miracle—money is not a miracle! It’s just money, and if you manage it right, it won’t manage you. I want to talk to you about how you handle your resources, and I’m categorizing it as pink slips like layoff notices to discuss what we’re going to do with a generation of men whose women are starting to make more money than they do.
What does that do to family dynamics, and what are you doing about it? If you invite me back, I’ll talk about that. Then, we’re going to discuss blue pills. Blue pills is just an overall heading about the floating ages and stages of sexuality. What I want you to do now is this: I’ve talked to you, and I want you to talk to each other for about 15 minutes about what you think about what I said. You don’t have to agree with it; you can contradict it, do whatever you want. I might not have captured all of you in my description, and this is a disclaimer. There are a lot of you in here, but how many of you did I reach?