TD Jakes - Transformational Instinct - Part 1 (05/07/2017)
Transformation happens by renewing the mind, which steers your destiny—like coming into the world head first. Using the apple metaphor and Romans 12:2, the preacher stresses changing from the core, discovering what truly turns you on, following instincts over urges like the prodigal son, and challenging perceptions to unlock God's perfect will and creativity.
The Mind Directs Your Destiny
If you think of your mind as the steering wheel, okay, that determines the direction of your destiny in life, then we are transforming our lives by the way we turn our mind. Throw your mind at it. It is no accident that you came into this world head first.
You quit drinking. You are going to do it in your head before you do it in your body. If you decide I will not be promiscuous, it starts in your head, not your body. If you say I am going to go back to church and change my career, it starts in your head, not your body.
If you decide I am getting out of debt, it hits your head before your wallet. If you decide you will lose weight, you get skinny in your head before you get skinny in your body. Look at somebody and say, I got a skinny head.
It may not have hit my body yet. Bless God. But in my head I am a very thin, set, vivacious, outgoing, and might I add, good-looking individual. Is that not weird? If it does not start in your head, it almost does not matter what is in your body.
You can lose weight in your body, but if you have a different image in your head, you can become anorexic in your head and never be satisfied with the changes in your body. Whatever is going on in here, that becomes your reality.
Self-Image Shapes Reality
You can be as pretty as a picture, but if you see yourself as ugly, you will never embrace yourself. It is a head thing. So when you start changing, the apostle in Romans is teaching that you transform your life by the renewing of your mind.
And we are simply using the apple as a metaphor to say you cannot change the peelings. You have to change the core. Because the goal is to take the apple and bring it to a place it is transformed into a tree.
And there is no life in the peelings and there is no life in the apple. There is only life in the core. And that is true of you. Change your clothes. Change your hair. Change your name. Change your title.
Change everything else you want to, but if you do not change from the core, there is no change at all. So if transformation is going to start by identifying your core, you are only going to be transformed to the degree you were created.
Only to Your Created Potential
You cannot take an apple seed and transform it into a tomato. It is not going to happen. No matter how much you like tomatoes, need tomatoes, if you get down to the seed, if the seed is an apple seed, all you can do is transform it into the highest, best expression of itself.
It can turn into an apple plant. It can turn into an apple blossom. It can turn into an apple tree, but it cannot turn into chicken salad. So there are some things you may be able to turn into that is not central to who you are in your core, who you were created to be.
And you will frustrate yourself trying to be something opposed and adverse to what you were created to be. God says I want you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may be able to prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
He said, I want your life to prove what God had in mind, perfect will of God when He made you. I want you to shine at what you were created to be.
What Turns You On?
I was teaching worship and I asked them something kind of shocking for a preacher to ask, but I asked them—I can be shocking at times—separate yourself. I asked them, what turns you on?
And they acted just like you did. Phony. I said what? Do not answer out loud. Too much information. But I am scared if you cannot answer. It is scary to me if you lived this long and you have not figured you out.
I know there are people in this room that cannot answer that question on any level. Not personally. Not professionally. The same way you ought to be able to answer that question in the most interesting connotations, you ought to be able to answer that question professionally.
So you do not apply for things that do not turn you on or enter into relationships that do not turn you on and spend the next ten years trying to change somebody into something they are not. You need to understand what works for you.
Focus on Your Core
You only put your efforts in the areas that are central to your core and who you are. The problem with most people is that you are so busy trying to know everybody else that you have not known yourself.
And the reason you are having problems with your relationships with other people is you do not have a healthy relationship with yourself. So you do not know what to draw to you. You do not know what you need.
When you do not know what you need, you are picking people by the peelings. You are not going to talk to me. You are picking people by the peelings and you never get down to the core.
And if the peelings look good, you snatch something that is not central to your core because you do not know who you are. And if you do not know who you are, you do not know who to pick, where to work, what business to go in.
You keep going into business chasing money, but you ought to chase purpose because if you find your purpose, you will find your prosperity. Spent the first 20, 30 years of your life in peeling positions. Peeling people. Peeling jobs. Peeling positions.
Going after things that appeal aesthetically does not mean it is essential to your core. Because if you do it from your core, you are going to be comfortable. If you do it from your core, you are going to be comfortable.
Comfortable Yet Challenged
You are going to be challenged, but you will be comfortable. It will be within the realm of your DNA to do what is expected of you that is central to your brand. If we were a business and had a brand, a brand is a promise to a consumer what to expect when they go to that facility.
K.F.C. says we do chicken right. That means if you want turkey, do not come up in here. They are clear about what they do right. Could it be possible that you have spent most of your Christian life focusing on what you do wrong rather than developing what you do right?
All of your energy, all of your prayer life, all of your focus is inciting what is wrong in you rather than focusing on what is right in you.
Urges vs. Instincts
I wanted to find the difference between urges and instinct. It was an urge that made him want to leave home. A flesh urge. A craving for control and recognition. We all have urges.
And the urge led him out of the Father's house. Out of God's will. Out of his purpose. Away from his core values. Away from his brand. Urges always deplete you.
Temporary impulses cause you to make permanent changes that disrupt the most valuable things in your life. Urges make withdrawals. Instincts make deposits.
He comes all the way down to the hog pen following his urges. There are people in this room you have been spiraling down, down, down. And praying all the way down and cannot figure out why you are praying right but you are being led by your urges and not by your instincts.
You sowed a special seed. But then you went to work and flipped out on your boss because you have your mother's temper and your urge to get the last word is destroying your economic opportunities.
And even though you pay your tithes, you are going down because you are being led by urges and not by instincts. You can be praying one thing with your mouth and being led by something else in your life and trying to figure out why prayer is not working.
Prayer is not working because urges are driving the car.
The Prodigal's Downward Spiral
And on an urge, the prodigal son got a wild hair in him. Give me a portion of goods that fall unto me. Divided unto him his living and he began to spend his substance in riotous living. Spend, spend.
Urges make you spend. Spend your energies, time, charisma. You are spending more and gaining less. Urges will always make withdrawals. They will not make deposits.
Until finally he bankrupted the hog pen and got down to the hog pen and had come down to absolutely nothing. And he could tell his urges were driving him down by who he was comfortable to be with.
If you do not have the courage to assess your own account and see where you are in terms of depletion, look who you are comfortable to be with and it will tell you who you are.
If you have gone from the Father's house to fellowship with the hogs in the hog pen, look at your buddies because your buddies are a picture.
Your Circle Reveals You
You look uncomfortable. I am telling you right now. I can tell you everything I need to know about you if you let me have your cell phone. Who do you spend your time talking to? Is it building you? Is it depleting you?
I will get off that. Just urges. I do not want to make you any more uncomfortable than you already are. How much time do you spend with them? What are you talking about? It will show me something about your values.
Between your cell phone and your credit card, I do not even have to meet you. Because where you spend your time and where you spend your money tells me what is valuable and what is your priority in life.
You are where you are today the way you handle your money and handle your time. If you handle your money and handle your time in alignment to your urges rather than investing in your instincts, then that is why you are where you are right now.
Successful people invest their time instinctively rather than following their urges. When you get down to that seed gut level of this is who I am, that is what you can build on.
Change Begins in the Mind
Nothing changed around him. His feet are still in the mud. The hogs are all around him. Snorting and slop is everywhere. Nothing changed around him. He was still in a far country.
He was still separated from his Father. Nothing changed around him. Still had on the same clothes. Still smelled like slop. Had gnats and flies around his head.
But the turning point was not when the flies left and the gnats left and the clothes changed and when he left the hog pen. He did not have to change his geographical location. All he had to do to have a new year was change his mind.
I want to know what is on the other side of your fear. You will never know. You will live and get old and die and miss the life that Jesus came to give you simply because you were not willing to break the role.
If I am talking to somebody, say something to me.
Challenge Your Perception
Now let us model creativity once again. Our model says you need to challenge your perception. And here comes her escort to take her where she has never been before. And it all begins when you challenge your perception.
Your perception can block in your creativity. We get used to observing things in a particular way based on our interest, ways, biases, values, and past learning.
People with strong perceptual sets are prone to quick decisions and conclusions rather than looking for alternatives. You do not look for alternatives because you think the only way you perceive it is the only way it is.
If there was one thing that destroyed more marriages than anything else, it would be that point right there. To think your perspective is the only way to look at it—it is what limits you from seeking other perceptions of your situation.
Yeah. To perceive that you know how your child is stops you from looking any deeper to see them in light of a different perspective.
Shift Your Perspective
I am saying to you that you need a different perspective on your situation. Because when you get a different perspective on your situation, you get a different perception of how to deal with that situation. Perspective, perception.
It depends on my perspective. My perception. The room looks this way if I look over here. But if I get over here and change my perspective, I look at the same room and get a different perception.
I wonder if your narrow-minded perspective is affecting your perception of your situation. Look at it again. Look at the budget again. Go back and stare at it. Lay it all out in front of you and look at it again.
Look at your situation. Write it all down. Look at it again. There is something else to be seen by what you see. I am challenging your perceptions.
If I can get the idol of your opinion to fall off the throne, you can have a new life in your old house. If you will dethrone your opinion, you can have a new life in your own house.
I wonder if your perception of your job is making you miserable. Because if I remember correctly, there was a time you were singing about it. Happy about it. Shouting about it.
You are at the same location with the same people. Some of you have even gotten a couple of raises, but because your perception has changed, your perspective of what used to be a blessing now...
Did you ever see people who did not appreciate you until somebody else wanted you? Keep going. Sit there. Sit there. I will teach you until you get it.
All of a sudden when somebody else comes along and pays you some attention, they get a whole different... You know, I once was blind, but now I see. Just something to think about. Just something to think about.
The Optical Illusion
I have a diagram I want you to look at. And just look at that and tell me. That centerpiece, somebody said a vase. Somebody said a face. Two faces.
You sure it is not a vase? How many see a vase? How many see two faces? How many of you as you continue to stare at it, you see both?
If you continue to stare at your life, what else would you see in it?