TD Jakes - Transformational Instinct - Part 2 (05/07/2017)
Many waste years chasing superficial things until they finally discover their true core, like Paul urges in Philippians 4:8 to think on whatsoever is true. Real transformation requires not just finding your seed but planting it in the dark place—painful seasons God uses to germinate potential, strip flesh, humble us, and birth new life, just as seeds grow underground and babies develop in the womb.
Finally Finding Your True Place
I got into crazy stuff figuring this out and crazy jobs and crazy careers with crazy people trying to figure out who I was. Somebody say finally brethren. I am 40 and I am just now having a finally brethren.
I am 52 and just now having a finally breath. I am 61 and finally have a finally brethren. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are core. Whatsoever things are true, your truth.
Finally brethren, I have finally started thinking and investing and working from a true place. It took me a long time to find a true place. I had to cut away a lot of stuff to find a true place. "Finally brethren," my God. "Whatsoever things are true."
What are you thinking about you? What are you thinking about your house and your life? Could it be, can you believe your attitude is defeating your altitude.
You cannot change the house and kids and husband and you are worrying yourself out trying to change things that are not your purview. Change your mind. When the prodigal son changed his mind, it changed his life. It simply changed his life.
Discovery Alone Is Not Enough
Finding the purest thing alone does not bring about the transformation. The transformation cannot totally be complete through discovery. It has to go from discovery—we found the seed—to putting the seed in the dark place.
That seed cannot germinate in the light. The only place where the seed can be transformed is if you have the faith and the courage to put it in the dark place.
The dark place. The dark place is the place where you swear you are going to die. Where your heart is broken so bad that you do not even care if you do.
I do not care how you are. Please hear this. I do not care what you drive or where you live or how talented or how gifted you might be. Sooner or later before your promotion, before your elevation, before your success, before your consecration, before your renewal, before your celebration, before your victory, you must be willing to spend time in the dark place.
The Purpose of the Dark Place
There is a place in every person's life that is so dark. You come to church and you sit here and you think nobody else in this building goes through what I go through. They do not understand because for many of us, the dark place is not about the finances or the car or the house.
It might be going on between your two ears. It is in your head. It is in your mind. Or it is in your health. Or it is in the fact you cannot get love the way you need to be loved or held the way you need to be held.
And you are successful in every other area, but in the area where you feel you need it most, you cannot find it. I am trying to tell you God always reserves a place to plant His seed. And that the seed will always germinate in the dark place.
And I know you have been praying for God to remove the dark place. But you cannot be transformed without the dark place. The dark place changes your priorities, strips away the residue of your flesh.
The dark place brings you to your knees to a place of humility where you surrender. Because of the pain of your dark place, you listen when you would not listen before. And you hear what you would not hear before.
Because the dark place is so painful that it humbles your arrogance and brings you to submission and brings you down to your knees.
Living in the Dark Place
You have been walking around in a dark place. You got dressed in a dark place. You drove to work in a dark place. You comb your hair in a dark place.
You are all dressed up, but you are in a dark place. You spray cologne on it, but you are in a dark place. You put makeup on, but you are in a dark place.
The people that work with you do not know they are working with somebody in a dark place. You lay in a bed beside somebody who is in a dark place. How you doing? I am fine. What do you want? Coffee. What did you cook? Eggs.
All of your lives are being recited from a dark place—not because you do not have something, but because you do have something. God said there is too much in you to leave you on the shelf.
I put you in the dark place so I can bless you and show you your possibilities and your potential. And you cannot grow in the light. You can only develop when I plant you in a dark place.
So I dug a hole and I threw you in it and I covered you up. Trust me, you are not going to die. You will not die in your dark place, but you will think you are going to die in your dark place.
Transformation Happens in Darkness
It is in the dark place when the seed goes through transformation. It is in the dark place where life begins to form. No life forms outside of the womb. The womb is to the baby what the ground is to the seed.
All confirmation occurs in a dark place. No lights in the wombs. Fingers formed in the dark place. Tissue comes together in the dark place. Bones begin to form. Skeletal patterns in the dark place.
Suddenly there is a kick and a move in the dark place. The baby is totally covered and completely protected because whenever God is working His work and doing His magic, He will always do it in the dark place.
That is why creation says the evening and the morning were the first day. Because God's day does not start morning to evening. It starts evening to morning.
That is why the Bible says weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. You cry in the dark place so you can dance in the daylight.
I want to tell you, I want to talk about the dark place, because the Lord assured me there would be somebody here in the dark place. I think nobody knows how bad you hurt. And I just came to tell you, I am your pastor and I do too.
Knowing the Scriptures does not stop you from having to live through them.
The Apple Demonstration
This apple, as good as it is, it will never be the highest and best expression of itself in its current form. And the reason it will not be is because there is a tree inside of this apple.
But it will never reach the highest and best expression of itself if it is not transformed. Let me see. I have got some peelings up here. And if I am going to transform the apple, what would happen if I took these peelings and maybe if I buried them. I would not get a tree out of it. Why not? There is no seed in it.
Wait a minute. I will eat this one. What about if I bury this, if I plant this? It tasted good though. This is good. I am not going to be able to do it.
If I am going to get to anything, I have got to get down. I am down to the core. I know I am down to the core. You know how I know I am down to the core? Because I see seed. I see seed.
And what we want to do is get past all of this fleshly stuff and get you down to the core so you can find your seeds. Because your future is in your seed. None of this other stuff matters.
You either cut down to it or you rot down to it. But until you get down to the core, you will never be effective.
Enlightened Understanding
Paul said I pray that the eyes of your thinking, your understanding—the eyes of your understanding be enlightened. He said, I am praying for you in your dark place that you would be enlightened in the way you understand your situation.
I am praying that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened that you may know what is the hope of His calling. What He hoped for when He planted you. What He hoped for when He exposed you to the dark place.
He said, I want you to work with me on this and in order to work with me, your understanding has to be enlightened. You have to have transformational thinking. You have to think about it differently.
You have to see where you are as an incubator. It is not a destination. It is transportation. I feel like I am talking to somebody.
Now, when you get into transformation, you get in the cognitive skills. We normally hear cognitive skills when we talk about child development and their ability to comprehend and their cognitive skills embrace how they process brain waves and perform functions and retain reasoning and galvanize information. Cognitive skills.
How do you ingest, digest, and appropriate what is going on around you into action? Cognition. Recognition. Recognizing. Processing. Using and retaining where you are.
Spiritual Cognitive Skills
I want to talk to you about your cognitive skills on a spiritual level. Are you learning what you need to be learning about life, about love, and about you?
Or are you able to see information that you do not process effectively and are you being retained from graduation because you are unable to learn what the last test was supposed to teach you?
When you go from one level to another level, it is not just the layering on of truth as you gain experiences. Watch this. This is very important. Not just truth you learn in the first grade and you learn more truth in the second grade and you learn more truth in the third grade and you learn more truth in the fourth grade.
There are some truths that cancel out old truths. It was true until I learned a higher truth.