TD Jakes - Shatter Your Truth
Everything wonderful that ever exploded in my life came in a place of not knowing. I was willing to be scared. I was willing to have my heart beating in my chest. I was willing to walk into rooms where I didn't know what to say. I was willing to stand up in front of people that we're not just church people. I was willing to go where other people had not gone before and do things that other people had not done before. I was willing to walk by faith and not by sight. As long as you keep going back to what's safe, you will never grow. Until you are willing to be led out of your routine, outside of your understanding of yourself, you will never run into your miracle until you embrace the art of not knowing.
The period of not knowing is very important, and yet it is very painful. The period of not knowing is what separates the men from the boys. Your ability to manage uncertainty, to deal with the unknown, to withstand the pressure of not knowing rather than to create an illusive idea to comfort yourself with something that's not true. How you manage this instability will determine the next ten years of your life, how you handle not knowing, how you handle not knowing.
I moved to Dallas and I looked at a house in a particular neighborhood over on White Rock Lake, and a friend of mine told me, this was 23 years ago, he said, "You can't buy a house over there. They don't sell houses to us over there". And I bought it, 'cause I didn't know. See, he had processed some information to be factual that really wasn't factual. My benefit was I didn't know. You can do more sometimes when you don't know than you can when you're dealing with people... I didn't know I couldn't do it, so I did it. I didn't know that I couldn't rent the World Congress Center, the Philips Arena, and the Georgia Dome, and throw a party for Christians and have it packed to the gill. I didn't know I couldn't do it, so I could do it.
See, sometimes your enemy is that you know too much. You know too much. You know too much. You know too much. You've bought into too many false ideas because the brain has rushed to a conclusion that God has not taken you to yet, and sometimes, your knowing so much limits you from seeing into the depth of the possibilities of what can be done in your life if you understood the art of not knowing.
Touch somebody and say, "I don't know". Not knowing as much like a computer, buffering almost painfully, desperately attempting to connect with truth... have you ever had your phone trying to pick up a signal and the little wheel is turning, and it's just buffering and it's buffering, and it's neither here nor there, and you can't do anything with it because it's trying to make a connection that it hasn't made? That's what the brain goes through trying to figure out something. It doesn't like the instability. Psychologists call it "intellectual closure": we are so desperate to know that if we don't know, we'll come up with a conclusion and call it a fact. Oh my god, I'm going somewhere.
The other day, my phone was so desperate to connect to Wi-Fi, and it wasn't picking up a signal, that it picked up the Wi-Fi on my air conditioning system. It picked up the Wi-Fi on my air conditioning system, but the problem is the Wi-Fi on my air conditioning system wasn't strong enough to handle the load that I was gonna put on the phone. In the absence of not knowing, it was desperate to grab anything, but when you're gonna do great things, just anything will not do. You have to withstand not knowing till you get to something that can hold what you're trying to build.
Touch three people and tell them, "I'm gonna wait on a good signal". Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, I'm gonna wait, yeah-yeah, I'm gonna wait on a good signal. I don't know how long it's gonna take, I don't know how long I'll have to buffer, I don't know how long I'll have to be uncertain, but I'd rather be uncertain than to tie into an air conditioning Wi-Fi and not be able to fulfill my mission. The art of not knowing, the art of not knowing, the art of not knowing, "The Art of Not Knowing," the lack of this message has killed marriages. It has destroyed marriages because you think you know what your spouse needs, because you don't wanna admit that you don't know. You are giving them what they used to need.
Somebody else who doesn't know that he doesn't do that comes along and exposes him, and all of a sudden, you can't figure out what's going on. It was your rule book about them: you knew too much about them, you stopped being curious. "Yeah, I already know him. He eats at two o'clock, goes to bed at eight o'clock". "I already know her. She doesn't wear makeup till the weekend". That's what's wrong, you know too much. When you were curious and you didn't know, you were exciting, you were searching, you were investigative, you were assertive, you were engaged, but now that you know, he almost wants somebody who don't know, "Search me".
I know you can't say nothing, 'cause you sitting there beside each other and I'm hitting a little too close to home, but if you can't say "amen," wiggle your toe. Before you knew your wife, you searched your wife, you chased your wife, you dated your wife. But now that you feel like you know her, you're not curious anymore and the marriage withers because of this false information your brain has embraced to supply the feeling of satiety because you don't like not knowing. It's gonna get tough in here in a minute. You need to close, you need to know, you need to know.
The reason you don't like that new coworker that has come to work, and they can do things more progressively even though you've been there 20 years longer, they know how to do the technology in a way that you don't. The reason you have become a hater and you expel them out of the organization, and you manipulate them until they get pushed out of the organization is because you are not comfortable with not knowing. If you were to become more comfortable with not knowing, you could keep growing. You see, it's only he that hungers and thirsts.
Is there anybody left that's still hungry? I'm trying to challenge you to be a fool again, to come to the text with more questions than answers, to walk into your business and stare at it and say, "I don't know how to do this and maybe there's a better way that I haven't thought of, and maybe there's a better move I can make, and maybe there's a better location I could be in, and maybe I've got the wrong people up front, and maybe there's a new woman in the woman I got, and maybe there's a new man and the man that I got, and maybe my rules are not true. Maybe my rules"... Oh no, I'm gonna mess with you a little bit, I'm gonna mess with you a little bit, I'm gonna mess with you a little bit because, before it's over, I'm gonna challenge you to shatter your truth. "The people in this city, they just don't wanna do nothing. They're just not progressive".
Look at how your mind got tired a buffering and decided that you've capped out, and somebody else could take them people and build a cathedral, and somebody else could take that business and open it up in multiple locations, and somebody else could take that man and turn him into Superman, and somebody else could take that woman and turn her into something you didn't even recognize. Your problem is you know too much, and until you shatter what you know, you can't open your mind to the possibility that all things are possible. Good God.
Slap three people and say, "All things are possible". They don't believe you, find somebody that believes all things are possible. All things are possible. What you told yourself is true is not true. All things are possible. You can do it anywhere. You can build it everywhere. You can turn it completely around. Jesus said no-no-no-no-no, come out of everything that you used to do, everything that you used to do, everything that was normal to you. God is getting ready to change the game for somebody in this room.
This is Mark 8:22 through 26, you ready for this? This is a brief story that I want you to get somebody out of, the art of not knowing. "They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him". They begged Jesus to touch him. "He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, 'Do you see anything?' He looked up and said, 'I see people; they look like trees walking around.' Once more Jesus putting his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home, saying, 'Don't even go into the village.'"
"What's your point"? I'm glad you asked. My point is not, "All you need is a second touch, oh-ho-ho, there, there's gonna be a second touch tonight that's gonna change your life completely. Oh-ho-oh, he will pick you up and turn you around". That's not my point. My point is, Jesus came to Bethsaida. They brought to him a blind man. Jesus took him out of Bethsaida. Now, you have to understand, blind people survive by knowing their environment. There are blind people in this city that live alone, unattended, and do fine, and they can do fine and they can take care of themselves and they can cook and they can manage their house because they know, "I'm ten steps to the refrigerator, three steps to the stove, five steps to the table".
And as long as you don't move anything, I can survive off of what I know. The only problem is, I cannot get outside. See, some of you are trapped in what you know, and as long as we keep you in the prison that you have measured out, you can survive just fine 'cause you've already counted out. "First Sunday, everybody wears white; third Sunday is men's Sunday; fifth Sunday is youth Sunday; Wednesday night, we do Bible Class; Watch Night, we get out at 12:30". You've already marked off the steps. Nobody knows you're blind, 'cause you don't need a vision when you have a tradition.
Who am I messing with today? So when they brought the blind man to Jesus, Jesus took him by the hand and led him out of his tradition. Touch seven people, say, "I gotta get outta here, I gotta get out of here". There's no expectation here, there's no excitement here, there's no creativity here, there is no release here, there's no power here. I need about 100 people who are ready to go somewhere fresh. If you came to this conference because you're ready to take it to the next level, make some noise in this place.
Tell your neighbor on your left and your right, "I'm getting ready to leave, I'm getting ready to leave". When you have lunch with your staff, tell them, "We're getting ready to leave, we're getting ready to leave". We have been in Bethsaida long enough, we stayed in Bethsaida long enough, we drank in Bethsaida long enough, we did business in Bethsaida long enough. I'm tired of knowing the same people, talking to the same people on the phone, same people coming over my house. I'm getting out of Bethsaida. Holler at your boy.
Where are we, Jesus? Where are we, Jesus? You carried me where I'm not familiar. You carried me out of my comfort zone. I'm buffering, trying to find something that's familiar. Jesus said no-no-no-no-no, come out of everything that you used to do, everything that you used to do, everything that was normal to you. God is getting ready to change the game for somebody in this room. I don't know who this is for. I don't know why he called me to preach it, but if it's you, for the next 30 seconds, give him a crazy praise.
So they took him, Bethsaida, they took him by the hand. They led the blind man out. Can you imagine being blind in a new place? "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm scared, wait a minute, I'm scared, I tripped, I fell. Wait, I didn't know that rock was there, I fell". Jesus led him out of Bethsaida and then spat in his eye. He spat in his eye and touched him, and said, "What do you see"? I see something. Some of you, my God, some of you, some of you are starting, some of you are starting to see something, a little bit of light, a little bit light is breaking through the darkness. You're starting to see, "Maybe I can do something. Maybe I can build something. I don't see it clearly, I don't have all the answers, I don't have it all worked out yet, but I see something".
How many people see something? "I'm not where I ought to be, but I sure ain't where I used to be". Jesus brings him out to give him a miracle that he could have never gotten in Bethsaida. There are no miracles in the familiar. Wait-wait-wait, I ain't through with you yet, I ain't through with you yet. There are no miracles in safe places. If you ain't scared, you ain't living. If you ain't tripping over new stuff, you ain't doing anything. If you're not going someplace you've never been before, meeting people you never met before, reaching after stuff you haven't reached after before, that's why God brought you here, to lead you, to lead you out of Bethsaida. Your problem is not your eyes. It's your environment. Nothing is going to happen in your familiar. God is waiting for you in your scary place.
I wanna pray for people who suspect that there's more in you than what you have received, and you've been praying, asking God, "When, Lord? How, Lord? Why"? Those are the people I want, and I want you to come right now. I'm not gonna beg, I'm not going to plead, I'm not gonna sing a song, I'm not gonna climb a hill, I'm not gonna coach you. I want you to come 'cause you want out of Bethsaida. You only do business with people who are like you. What's wrong with other folks' money? Your services are so predictable that your children act out your church service.
In a moment, I'm gonna ask you to lift your hands... not yet. When you lift your hands, I want you to lift your hands as a sign of "I'm surrendering what I told myself so that I can possess what God has for me". If you're ready to surrender it, lift your hands. "Here it is, Lord. I give up my way of thinking, my way of leading, my way of talking to people, my way of handling situations. I'm willing to relinquish all of that. I do not want to die in Bethsaida, blind".
I come against every voice that has been planted inside of you to limit your growth, to stop your creativity. I come against every voice. Some of them were planted all the way back in your childhood to terminate the possibilities of what God could do in your life. I break every curse that's ever been on your life, every bondage, every word that's ever been spoken over you. I break that feeling of unworthiness. I break that feeling of self-sabotaging. I break that feeling that I'm not supposed to be up here. I break that feeling of you not feeling like you deserve anything better than what you have. I break that feeling that makes you think that some folks have it and some folks don't, and you're not one of them. I break it right now, in the name of Jesus. Lift your hands and open your mouth, glory is about to break out in your life. Glory is about to break out, come on with me, glory is about to break out in your life.