TD Jakes — Instinct
Greetings brothers and sisters, in the name of Jesus Christ our King. I'm so excited about this new book I released "Instinct" and feedback I'm getting. Lives been changed. Careers being changed. People going back to school. Opening up businesses. Changing careers. Marriages. As people understand their core values and what they were created to do. Living your life by God's design and what he created you to do will really change the result and impact and how fulfilled you are in life.
I want to continue this discussion, the materials in the book are too comprehensive to put on television, too in depth indeed but I want to share thoughts along the line of instincts to help you locate the God given influence in your life. You're more fruitful in a crowd or more fruitful in private or more effective when you do this or that where you're inclined to music or not inclined to it. All these are little clues God put in your DNA to guide you into your purpose and destiny. All up in everybody else's face but you really need to be looking at you and finding out how you are wired and functioning in that, moving in it.
Investing in the area that you are instinctively created will make you so much more effective and profitable and let's look at thoughts I believe tailor to your situation will make you far more perspective and a whole lot less frustrated. You get to the in between place and you have to kind of reinvent yourself. You're not trying to reinvent yourself again into what somebody else wants you to be. We've been there done that. This time we want to reinvent ourselves into the highest and best expression of who we were created to be and we have finally stopped being manipulated by who everybody else wanted us to be and we're finally ready to tap into our core and essence and as my generation said do my own thing. Be me. Break it down who I really am.
It's taken a while to find out what God's given you, you are confused by what everybody else has given you. So many people attached to you their need and you have moved yourself to their needs and circumstances that it might take you a while to figure out. Once you get all the stickers you place on me and buttons you place on me and guilt trips you placed on me and all the assignments you placed on me. Once I finally strip down out of all of that, who am I apart from your applause and approvals on the second half I'll do me. If there's a person in the church who understands what I'm talking about, make some noise.
So what I'm trying to do then is get a new dream, new vision, a new fire based on the experiences good and bad of my past and ability to tap into my God and myself, I'm trying to get a new dream for myself and get that dream to come alive and get the strength to birth again. Somebody say, "The strength to birth again". You need the strength to birth again. You need the strength to build again. You need the strength to search forward again. You need the strength to go forward in such a way you're no longer tapped into the past.
That's good. But you want that second surge so you can benefit from all you went through the first half of your life so you can build again. Touch somebody and say, you can do it again. You don't have to spend 20 years of your life accomplishing something and spend the next 40 years talking about the good old days. I'm going to say that again. You don't have to spend the first 40 year of your life accomplishing something you have to spend the next 40 years bragging about. The good old days are coming around again. I don't care if you believe it or don't believe it or like it or don't like it. I said the good old days are coming back around again. They're in front of you.
I want to rebuke that spirit. I'm teaching but I got to go into my spiritual mode a minute. I want to rebuke the old death spirit hanging over your head that makes you think your life is over, good times are over and you're just sitting on awaiting line waiting for the hurst to come get you. The devil is a liar. The good old days are in front of you. I don't care if you lost a home. Buy another one. They still make them. Go out there and buy another one. Don't spend the next ten years crying about something that got over your head. God gave you new life. Don't rehearse old ideas. It's time to go shopping.
Look at another one. Figure out what you should have learned the first time armed with the information, get back up. Say I kind of like that one right there. Do you have it with the bigger patio in the back? Do it again. Do it again. Nudge somebody, say do it again. When I get ready to do it again armed with the information I have now I'm more keen in my instincts. I'm sharper in my intuitions. My intuitiveness is more refined because it's been cultivated in the furnace of affliction through the things I learned on the first half I'm nor adapt knowing what matters and what doesn't matter and I'm getting ready to do it again.
I'm going to live my life with robust tenacity and excitement and enthusiasm. Since God did allow me to be in the hospital on a respirator sucking air trying to get air in my lungs, since I am relatively healthy and relatively strong and since I got out of bed this morning and didn't wake up dead, I'm going to live my life even if it isn't six more hours, I'm going to get good out of these next six... You can't be fruitful if you haven't found your seed. The teaching is designed to get you to take an intrinsic look at you and how fearfully and marvelously made you are. You're not an accident or mistake. The only reason your life feels like a mistake you've been abused or trying to fit into a place you're not designed to be. Instincts is my way, my word I use to get you to look in at how God has wired you and celebrate that. And invest in that. And educate that. And inform that.
So you can be the highest and best expression of what God created you to be. So when I have an instinctive idea it will die in the crib if I don't bring a team around it that has similar instincts to increase but diverse perspectives of influence and contribution. Your ideas will die in the crib. If you don't build a team around it who has the similar instinct to increase even though they have diverse perspectives. Crib death. Crib death because I had the wrong nannies. I had the wrong nannies. I had the wrong midwives. Surrounding myself with people who do not have the instincts to collaborate on your new surge of life.
So, what I'm saying to you is when you have an instinct to do whatever it is you're going to do, you need to build a team around you who has similar instincts but different talents. Most people encircle themselves with a team of people who are just like them. All the preachers run together, all the doctors run together, all the lawyers run together. All the accountants run together. When we're going to build, I want you to write this down, a team for the task. You want to build a team for the task. Wherever your instincts are about to take you, you need some midwives around you. To birth that new dimension of where you're going who can contribute different talents to what you instinctive license the second half of your life or the second half of your career or the second moment in your life needs to look like. You get the idea in your instincts and you protect the idea by the team you put around you.
I've been, my whole book is based on animalistic behaviors and instincts they have and comparing to instincts humans have and in the process I started looking at seals. And what the seals do, the mother births the eggs. So amazing. This is funny to me. The mother births the eggs but the males keep them. Pink ones and the males keep the eggs. I saw that. I almost cut it off right then. I thought if men had to keep the eggs, there would be a whole lot less children in the world. Yeah.
And so I was watching these penguins and the males were sitting on the eggs hatching while the woman goes away to eat and brings back food and for two three months the male doesn't use at all. He uses his body heat to keep the eggs warm and what they do, they take turns facing the cold parameters and move into the center and stay warm and rotate all through the winter, back and forth. My turn to be cold. Your turn to be warm and hundreds and hundreds of them packed together and they put the weakest ones in the middle. Whenever you're trying to protect an idea, concept, business, early relationship whatever it is, it's only protected if it is insulated. And the reason I'm teaching you a team for a task is that you insulate what your instincts have intuitively chosen by the team you put around you. They insulate what is about to happen next in your life.
The reason your ideas keep dying it may not mean they're not good. It may be you have the wrong midwives. When I think about midwives I think about Moses and when you think about Moses, you think about the interesting thing, there was a point Moses had no name. He was just the baby. If you think about it, think about his life for a minute. Moses didn't have a name until another woman got him. The mother that birthed him didn't name him. Look at Exodus two. Ya'll with me this morning? Yeah, yeah. There went a man from the house of Levi and took a wife from the daughter of Levi verse two. And the woman conceived. We have a man and a woman. They know where they come from. We don't have a name. And the woman conceived and bear a son. When she saw him he was a goodly child she hid him three months. We don't have a name.
He has no influence, and he has no inspirational purpose. He has no name. He has no identity, no influence and no inspiration. He just exists. Can that be you? You just exist. No inspiration. No influence. In leadership. Leadership is influence. Influence is leadership. In control of nothing. Got no inspiration and I got no idea tee. Identity. You have to realize that Moses lives for three months hidden in the house.
And when I thought about it, the Lord sent me to ask you, what is hidden in your house. Instincts are babies hidden in your house that don't have names yet. Inclinations drawings, pullings, wooings, half-born concepts hidden in your house that you haven't formalized that you haven't empowered. You haven't given a name yet. Isn't it funny how you have an idea or an instinct for something it will take somebody else to name? You have the creativity to birth it. But you may not have the insight to name it. Empower it and nurture it. Take you to the next level.
Everything you start doesn't mean you finish. But how will it ever be named or funded or discovered if it's not exposed? You may be, I'm telling you, you're hiding your own deliverer. Moses' mother was hiding her own deliverer. She was hiding the very one she had been praying for. She had been praying, God send a deliverer to set me free. And hiding the deliverer God had sent. I'm wondering, what are you sitting on? What are you holding? What is inside of you that you've been praying? Lord, Lord I need some resources. I need you to open up a door. I'm backed up in a corner. I'm shoved against the wall. I'm wondering if you're hiding your answer in your house. Because most of the time people pray for things, God didn't send outside things, he just exposed what was already in the house. That's so good. He exposed a handful of meal that was already in the house.
Samson ready, said use the jawbone of an ass right by your feet. Understand what I'm talking about? One woman is ready to sell her son she's in so much debt. Use the pot of oil in your house. Instincts is rediscovering what's in you. You spend all your life appreciating other people, looking at other people. So wonderful. Look what he's got. Look what she's got. Help other people birth they're dreams but you'll never enjoy what Christ came to give you until you discover what's in your house. What do you have? I'm tired of being a cheerleader for everyone else's accomplishment while you fail to value and appreciate what God's put in your house.
O my God. I don't know who I'm talking to but I feel I'm talking to somebody. Touch three people, say it's in the house. Sometimes you have things inside of you and they are in the house and they are hidden from view and how do you expect people to empower what you will not expose? If you got the instinct. If you got the inclination how do you expect somebody to value it enough, get behind it enough if you don't expose what you got. To expose what you got you have to believe what he put down inside of you. I'm talking to somebody , it's in your house.
Touch your neighbor, say do you have the instinct? Do you have the instinct? We have the proclivity to rely on our brilliance than solicit our instincts. In other words don't over think it. What you really need to do sometimes is when you have an instinct don't try to understand it and rationalize it. Just flow with it. The hardest thing in the world to get people to do is just flow in their instincts.
Talking about Moses I'll say something more about Moses' name means drawn out. That's what Moses means. Moses' name means drawn out. He didn't get his name until Pharaoh's daughter is bathing down at the river bank and looks in and see baby Moses floating in a bamboo ark made to float him down the Nile. Because when his mother got him out of the house she put him in an ark and floated him down the river and Pharaoh's daughter was bathing in the river and saw the ark and said bring him to me and they drew him out of the water and she said I'll call his name Moses because he's drawn out.
I think it's such a play on terms. Moses' name means drawn out. But he was drawn out of the womb. And then drawn out of the water. And then drawn out of the palace. And then drawn out of the wilderness. And I began to realize that life is a series of being drawn out. Being drawn out. I don't know if this makes any sense to you or not but God said life is calling you out. Calling you out of hiding. Calling you out of fear. Calling you out of insecurity and calling you out of small mindedness. And calling you out of your take mitt tee and safe places and God's saying I'm calling you out of those places because your destiny is never in your shelter.
That's a good one right their. There. Your destiny is never in your shelter. A shelter is always for a season. Whether it's a shelter from the storm or shelter of a womb or shelter of a cocoon. It's only for a season until you can be drawn out into something bigger than you were protected in the first place. You hear what I'm saying? Moses was protected in the womb until he was drawn out into something bigger the house. He was protected in the house for three months then taken from the smaller thing into the bigger thing. He was drawn from the house into the river. Then he was drawn from the river into the palace.
Ya'll don't hear what I'm saying. He's drawn from the palace into the wilderness and I'm telling you, in between every struggle, every torturous, barbaric thing you've been through, God is not trying to kill you. He's trying to draw out what he placed inside of you. Hey, I've got more to share with you. I know some of you are saying to yourself, I'm too old. I'm too late. I'm too deeply entrenched in my circumstance. No, no, no, no, no. Abraham was discovering himself into his senior year. You're never too late to connect your navigation and move into your purpose and destiny.