TD Jakes — The Core of Transformation
Greetings, friends. I'm so glad to have this opportunity to make this presentation. I believe that there is going to be healing and direction and focus that comes through the word of Lord that we're going to share today. The message is called "The Core of Transformation". The core, not the transforming. You've been praying about the transforming, but I'm talking about getting to the core. We need to take time to seek God to answer the important questions. Some of those questions is, what is my core? Who am I stripped down from who I had to be and who people think that I am? What is my core"? Number two, what has God called me to do? And number three, what is my purpose? If you're interested in understanding the uniqueness of you, you won't want to go anywhere because the Word of God is going to unveil you at your core. Take a look at this.
How many people know you're saved? What's saved about you? Saved is a term. Salvation is past tense. It means a transaction have occurred. What is saved about you? Is your body saved? Okay. Is your mind saved? Now, all you got to do is think back a minute. You know your body is not saved. You wouldn't have to use deodorant is your body was saved. You know your body's not saved. Don't sit there and go into a praise. You don't need to understand theology, just use common sense. Look at them wrinkles, you know our body's not saved. Look at them stretch marks, you know your body's not saved. Your body's falling apart while you're using it. It's the can.
Why you walking around it? You know your body's not saved. You know your mind is not saved. You're sitting up here now thinking something crazy. You know your mind is not saved. So if you are saved at all, your spirit is saved. Your spirit is saved, born again. Born again. That's what's born again is your spirit is born again. That's what's been delivered, is your spirit. And that's the most important part of you because you are a spirit, you have a soul, you live in a body. Your spirit is saved right now. Your mind, which is your memory, your emotions, and what we often call your soul, is being saved. Your spirit is saved, your mind, your soul is being saved, and your body shall be saved. Okay?
In my spirit, I am saved. In my mind, I am being saved. In my body, I shall be saved. The redemption of my body, according to the Book of Romans, is my blessed hope. My body has not been redeemed yet. It shall be redeemed. "Mortality shall put on immortality, corruptible shall put on incorruptible. Death shall be swallowed up in life, and then shall it be declared, 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?'" That is the blessed hope of the church... the body shall be saved. It shall be saved. Planted in corruption, raised incorruption. Planted in mortality, raised in immortality. "We shall see him as he is, and we shall be like him. Changed in the moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be like him".
The redemption of our body is our blessed hope. It shall be, it will be, it's going to be, it's got to be, but it ain't yet. My spirit is saved. My spirit is saved. I am not worried about who can kill my body, my spirit is saved. All you do if you kill my body is to separate my spirit from my body. To be absent from my body is to be present with the Lord. Shoot me right now. Before my head hits the ground, I'll be with my Savior. "To be absent in the body is to be present with the Lord". Boom! While they're still hooking me up and shocking my chest, I'm there in the presence of the Lord right there.
My spirit is saved right now. Not going to be saved, is saved right now. I have right now everlasting life. Not in my body, in my spirit, I have everlasting life. I shall never die in my spirit. Stab me, and you can't kill me. Shoot me, and you can't destroy me. I have everlasting life right now. I have been been changed completely, washed in the blood, redeemed from the curse of the law. Set free from sin and death. "There is therefor now, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus". I have passed from death unto life. My life is hid in Christ with God. It is no more I that liveth, but Christ that liveth in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself a ransom for me. I am washed in the blood. Redeemed! Redeemed!
But my mind is being saved. And so how do I expedite this change in an area that has me in process? My mind is in process. Why is that important? It is with the mind we serve the Lord. That's what the Bible said, "It is with the mind that we serve the Lord". So the thing that I serve the Lord with, it will fully change it. So I serve the Lord with something that isn't fully changed yet. It's still in process. It's still going through changes. So I can serve him at 7 and serve myself at 8 because depending on what impulse is being transmitted to the soul, that's what it responds to because it is still being fed, both from the flesh and from the spirit.
And consequently, I am constantly in conflict. I'm constantly in conflict. And I bet you a silver dollar and a rabbit's foot, so are you. I know you don't look like it this morning, and I know you don't act like it, and you got your church-face on, but I bet you, somewhere up under Deacon Wilson is still Slick Willy. Fighting for equal time. And the Bible says, "You must be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye my prove," this is the goal, this is the goal, "that ye my prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God".
I want to prove what is the will of God. I want to prove what is the will of God. But I want you to understand that this transformation goes deeper than morality. Because I can live moral, which is the goal, I can live clean, which is the goal, I can live a Christ-like life, which is the goal, and abstain from everything that you say or the Bible says is wrong, which may be the goal, but if I don't fulfill my purpose... let me show you this way. Let me show you this way. I got this peeler up here, and it's clean, and it's watched and it's sharp, and it's holy. It's clean as it can be. But as long as it is clean and holy and pure and not functional, what good is it that it is clean if it is not functional?
It's shaped funny. It sure is shaped funny. And the shape suggests that whoever created it had something in mind for it when it was created. They never would have made it the way that they made it and shaped it the way that they shaped it and curved it the way they curved it if they didn't have something in mind for it. But if I've never seen one before, and I get it and I make it mine, I don't know what to do with it. So maybe, maybe I can write with it. But it doesn't write. What can I do? Maybe I can sew with it. Let me see. No, I can't sew with it. There's something about the shape of it that suggests it's supposed to do something. It sure is funny. It doesn't look like nothing else I got up here. Its shape suggests its use. I'm trying to find its purpose. I've spent a lot of time trying to find its purpose. I think I'm on to something. I can tell by how effective it is.
When I get it in the right place with the right thing, it becomes effective. It's not enough that it's clean, if it's not effective, it's still going to frustrate its purpose. But my God, look at how it's affecting external things when I find out its purpose. You may be living a long time, but if you don't find out your purpose, you will never be effective. And I can tell that you're not effective because you're not having an affect on the world around you because you are not in the place that you need to be in to prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. You can prove it when you start functioning in your purpose and you start becoming what you were created to be and start moving in the avenues that you were created. Look at how prosperous, how effective, how functional you are when you are in the place that you were created to function.
Your future is not in your peelings, your future is not in your fruit, your future is in your core. You are going to be transformed by your core. The apple becomes a tree when you get to the core. You cannot transform the peelings. You cannot transform the fruit, you can only transform when you get down to the core. At your core, who are you? At your core, who are you? So one tip is what do you care about? The second tip is what are you concerned about? What gets on your nerves? What irritates you? What upsets you? What can you not stand to see out of place or out of order? Because you are the most passionate to change the things you are the most concerned about.
But because you have been trained to think that somebody needs to do something about what you care about, and you don't realize that you are the somebody you've been waiting on, you keep waiting on somebody to fix something that you have the power to fix yourself because you have the care and the concern to be able to change it. You cannot change what you're unconcerned about. Messy people can't clean the house. Messy people can't clean the house 'cause it doesn't bother them. You come in the house, and you're going nuts. And you say, "I don't see how you can live like that". And they say, "Child, come on in, if you can get it".
You know the best people to clean the house is people who can't stand a messy house. They have the power and the energy to clean up the house. And you know why some of you can't clean the house? 'Cause you don't care nothing about it, it doesn't bother you, it doesn't concern you that it's messy. As long as it doesn't concern you, you can't change it. Anything that concerns you, you can change.You know why Peter could walk on the water when the other disciples didn't? 'Cause it concerned him that Jesus was out there on the water. And he said, "Lord, if that's you, bid me to come". He was the only one concerned about it, and he was the only one who had the power to walk out there and do it.
Who are you at your core? At your core. Not what you learned to be to survive. Not what was inflicted on you by some external person. Get down to the core. Stop allowing your past to manipulate you and control you and get down to the core, and then you are authentic, and then you find your future and your finances and your prosperity and your creativity because when you get down to your core, that's where your blessings are going to come from 'cause you're going to be effective and you're going to be at your best when you are at your core.
I was talking to a preacher the other day. Told me he was called to preach. And I said, "So what, you're called to preach. What does that mean"? As if preaching were the goal? Preaching is a method, but it's not the goal. You'll have to find the purpose, and then use the preaching as the method to accomplish the purpose. But if you don't find the purpose, you're just preaching for the sake of preaching. That's like somebody driving around in circles in the car to say they're a driver. You may be a driver, but you're not going anywhere. The car is only good when you aim it at something.
Oh, my God. You got all kinds of talent. It may not be preaching, it may be something else. But what is the purpose? You got to stop driving around in circles. You got to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The renewing of your mind is going back to the seed of who you are. Go back to your core. When in doubt, go back to your core. You're losing something? Go back to the core. You want it back? You want to rekindle it? You want to revive it? Go back to the core. In the core is the seed of what made it work in the first place. My God, thank you, Jesus. What did you first see in me? What did you first like about me? Go back to the core. The core. The power's in the core. I know the other part tastes good, but the power is in the core. "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind".
Stop allowing what happened to you to control what's left of you. One way or another, we got to get that apple back to the core. We can cut to it or we can rot to it, but we got to get to the core because the life of the apple is in the core. The trees, there are several trees in that apple, and it will never be what it was meant to be until you get it to the core. Your frustration is that you have too much in you to rot away, like you're rotting away. You have too much inside of you to rot away, like you're rotting away. You got too much inside of you. You must be transformed by the renewing.
Renew. We're transformed when we're new again. The old marriage becomes renewed when you go back to the core. The old career becomes a new career when you go back to the core. The old ministry becomes a new ministry when you go back to the core. At your essence, what are you trying to do? At your essence, what are you trying to be? At your essence, what is your inclination? What are you inclined to? Are you inclined to teach? Are you inclined to help hurting people? Are you inclined to encourage people? Then you use everything else to accomplish what you are inclined to do. Your inclination is your seed. Don't throw it away because it's small, the tree is in the seed. There's an apple tree in the seed.
We got an apple tree somewhere, put it up on the screen. There is an apple tree somewhere in your seed. There is a bigger woman, there is a bigger man, there is a bigger person, there's all kind of bountiful blessings, people can lodge there and eat there and we shaded there if you can get all of that out of your seed. All of that is shut up inside of you. No wonder you're frustrated. No wonder you're moody. No wonder you're hard to get along with. You are bound up on the inside. You have to be new again and find your seed and release what you have inside of you. I said release what you have. Release! Hallelujah. Glory to God. I feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. I'm going to pass some stuff tonight. That tongue you developed, that anger you developed, that smart-mouth you developed to cover up your sensitive heart, it's killing your potential to grow.
What you did to protect yourself is callousing your dream and stopping you from being authentic. And the reason you cannot catch anything is that you are using plastic bait. You are the most powerful at your core. Your future is in it. Your creativity is in it. Your prosperity is in your core. Who were you before that happened to you? Oh, gosh, I got to hear, I got to hear. Ooh, this is good. Is anybody getting anything out of this? Genesis 1:11 says that "God created everything with a seed inside of itself". He created a system, a cycle of renewal, in the earth. Each, the herb tree, yielding forth seed after its own kind, whose seed is inside of itself. Genesis 1:11, your seed is inside of you. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind".
You cannot get a peach out of an apple. Just because you like peach pie, doesn't mean you can make me one. If I'm an apple, I'm an apple pie. If you don't have a taste for me, leave me alone. Leave me alone. I am an apple. I have to be authentic. I have to find somebody who likes me authentically as I am. "Yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth, and it was so". And it was so. And it was so. Whatever God put inside of you, that is so. That is so. That is solid. That is sure. That's where your creativity comes from. That's where your passion comes from. And you won't have to be intimidated by other people when you learn how to be happy to be yourself and celebrate who you are. 'Cause I don't care how good you are, how fine you are, how intellectual you are, you can't be this.