TD Jakes - Transformational Instinct - Part 3 (05/07/2017)
Drawing from Ephesians 1:18, Paul prays for enlightened understanding in dark seasons to grasp God's hope and calling. True transformation requires higher truths that cancel old ones—like aerodynamics overcoming gravity or the New Covenant redefining Passover—leading to new thinking, scripting your future vision, building according to godly patterns, and investing only in what aligns with your core.
Enlightened in the Dark Place
Paul says in Ephesians 1, I prayed 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 for you 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.
Spiritual Cognitive Skills
Now when you get into transformation, you get into 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.
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?
Higher Truths Cancel Old Truths
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. It is not just layering truth where you learn truth in the first grade and learn more truth in the second grade and learn more truth in the third grade and 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.
For instance, let me give you a for instance. The law of gravity saying simply whatsoever goes up must come down. That is true. Until we learn the law of aerodynamics which overcame the law of gravity.
The law of aerodynamics says it does not necessarily have to come down if you discover a higher law. Okay. I am asking you, are you living your life on lower laws?
Maybe you are going through these experiences to learn a higher law that cancels out an antiquated truth. Can we teach an old dog new tricks? Or are you cursed to only function at an entry level of life?
The Passover Example
I am going to show you this two ways and then I will be out of your way. Are you patient with me? Are you good? I want you to understand this. What I am dropping on you is really heavy.
Jesus takes His disciples. He brings them to the table. He says it is the Passover. It is time for us to celebrate the Passover. They bring the bread and the wine to celebrate the Passover. That was true. It was time to celebrate the Passover.
But when Jesus gets in the room with them, He says something that is a higher truth. The old truth commemorated what happened in Egypt. It looked to the lamb that was sacrificed on the doorpost of the Hebrews as they forsook the oppression of the Egyptians. It looked backwards.
In the presence of new light, Jesus now says, take, eat. This is my body that is broken for you. And the truth changed as He presented it.
All of a sudden that used to commemorate the lamb of the Old Testament has taken on a new meaning when He says this is my body that is broken for you and this is the New Testament that is in my blood. When you drink this, you are drinking my blood.
And the new truth canceled out the old truth.
Outdated Self-Perception
Now I am telling you that you may be living your life off of your old truth. That the person you think you are may not be the person you are now.
That you may have built all of your life choices around who you used to be. And you may have new life on the inside but still have old thinking on the outside.
And you may not be the girl you look like you are and you may be wearing her clothes, but I wonder do you have the cognitive skills to walk in the light of present truth? Or are you still walking in the light of how you used to see yourself?
In the film business, the scripts are updated, and if the actors do not get new scripts, they will say old lines. And the old lines do not fit the new blocking.
And if the actor does not get a daily—a daily is an updated script—they will perform today's scene with yesterday's lines.
And I am saying to you that I want you to receive a daily. Give us this day our daily bread so you might be scripted for who you are now rather than who you used to be.
Some of you have not had an update in ten years and you still see yourself as if you were who you were. And you are still walking around like you are that little girl that you used to be.
But I want to have a bar mitzvah this morning and tell you that little girl is gone. Her pain is gone. Her suffering is gone. Her agony is gone. And it does not mean what it used to mean.
It may be the same bread. It may be the same wine. But it does not have the same meaning.
Transformational Thinking
Transformational thinking is changing the way you think about the same stuff you had. When are you going to find out what life is really all about? Or are you still in love with what you see on TV?
Are you still trying to be love like Ozzie and Harriet—an image and idea? Have you not had enough experience to learn what life is really all about?
Two broken people produce broken kids and they have a broken experience and a broken house. And nobody is perfect. And nobody has got it together.
And you keep drawing people away for being guilty—guilty of the same thing you are guilty of. You are angry at him for being human. You are angry at her for being human.
When are you going to process old material in new light? You are still talking about the law of gravity—jumping up and down, throwing apples in the air, watching them fall.
And everybody else is flying over your head in 747 jets because they are having transformational thinking. And you are still throwing apples up and down in the air saying this is truth. Well it is until you learn a higher truth.
Stop Investing in the Past
You are not going to invest another dollar in who you were. Not another tear in how you saw yourself. Not another day of agonizing over how you think it should have been.
You will not invest any more passion in cemeteries of old ideas. Not another thought. Not another thought.
You will strip away the grave clothes of where you used to be and find the gardener suit of where you are going. And leave the bandages of the agony behind you because you will not be dressed for how it was.
You will not invest in it. You will not build walls to protect who you used to be. You will not build walls to protect who you used to be.
You do not have to protect that little boy anymore. He is gone. Take the walls down. Talk like the man you have become.
Look people right in the eye and say what needs to be said. Deal with life as it is. You do not have to hide your heart as if it were still broken. It is healed now.
You can love again. You can live again. You can think again. It is time for you to stop building your life around your past experiences.
Homework: Write the Vision
Your homework this week is to write the vision. Write where you are going and not where you have been. Write the vision and not the victim. Write your vision and not your victimhood.
Write your story. How are you going to finish it? Write it out. You cannot run it out until you write it out.
Write out how your story is going to end and make your life conform to the script. Do you have a winning script?
I learned in my business you can get great actors, but if you do not have a great script, you cannot have a great movie. The script is good enough you can take a bad actor and have a great movie. The script is the most important thing.
Write your scripture. Write the vision. Make it plain. You cannot run the vision if you do not write the vision.
You have been writing your victimhood—writing the memoirs of your pain and agony. You are writing from your rearview window.
Build According to Pattern
Number two: you are going to build according to pattern. You are going to build according to pattern. Patterns reflect where you are trying to go and imitate them. Build according to pattern.
Stop building monuments of nothing. This is not your year for excuses. This is not your year for pity parties.
You cannot have a winning year if you have got a failing pattern. Build according to pattern.
And when you invest, you are going to invest in alignment with what is central to your core. No more investing in things that are not central to your core.
You are putting your time and money into things that are not true to you. I live in a world of investors. We talk to investors all the time, and the safest place to invest your resources is in the areas of your influence—in areas.
You are going to invest in what is true to you. Transformational thinking. I am going to write it. I am going to build it. And I am going to invest in what is investing in me.
I am going to support what is supporting me. And I am going to help what is helping me. I am going to start putting my investment in things that are true to what I am about.