The Master Negotiator! – Bishop T.D. Jakes

God is saying to you today:
“Everything is going to work out. I will give you strength when you can’t go on. Don’t let the enemy convince you to go back to the things that I have already brought you out of. Don’t give up.”
———-

Even though he was imprisoned, Paul still exercised his authority. His condition didn’t change his destiny. He penned a letter to his wealthy friend Philemon with a very peculiar request. He wanted Philemon to forgive Onesimus, one of his runaway slaves, and welcome him back as a member of the family! As you know, it can be very difficult to reimagine someone after you’ve categorized them, but disruptive thinking allows you to make allies from enemies! If you can change your mind, you can change your circumstances. You can change your destiny. You can even change the world!

Well over and over again in diverse ways and methods.
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You can eat your own chicken. Listen, you better do it. Time is running out.
I have been talking to the Lord and better still.
The Lord has been talking to me and oh, what a time we had.
I’m in the first chapter of Philemon chapter one, verse eight through 17.
And there you will find my assignment for this morning.
As per usual, I will set the stage before I address the text when you have it.
Say man, therefore, although in Christ, I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do yet.
I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.
It is as none other than Paul, an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ, Jesus, don’t miss that.
A prisoner. He’s old and a prisoner and he’s still a boss.
He’s still giving orders in jail, gray beard and back bent over and he still knows who he is.
He does not allow his conditions to define his position.
He said I could order you with chains on, with chains on and a grotto which is a cave in prison by bars.
He’s still running things and he said I could order you but I’m appealing to you on the basis of love that I appeal to you for my son.
It’s not for me but for my son on.
Yeah, who became my son while I was in chains.
Oh God, I still birthing souls in the kingdom from prison bars. Formerly he was useless to you.
But now pay attention to that formally, he was useless. He uses that word for reason to you.
But now he has become useful both to you and to me, I am sending him who is my very heart back to you.
I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your, so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel.
But I did not want to do anything without your consent.
So that any favor you do would not seem forced but would be voluntary.
Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever no longer as a slave.
Oh, the plot thickens onus was Lehman’s property no longer as a slave, but better than a slave as a dear brother.
He is very dear to me, but even dearer to you both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.
So the dearness is predicated on how you receive him.
He could be dear to you as a brother than he was as a slave.
If if you can disrupt the way you think about it, your latter day could be better than your former day.
So if you consider me a partner, if you consider me, Paul says a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me when he walks in the door, act like he’s me.
Oh, there’s a boss text right here. Lord at mercy. Who? Jesus?
I’m shouting that I ain’t said nothing yet.
Look at somebody and say the master negotiator, the master negotiator spirit of the living God.
Let us saturate this text permeated with truth and profundity that’s relevant for this present moment.
This ancient writ, this holy grail that you have allowed us to eavesdrop on the negotiation that happens through a negotiator with chains around his ankles and around his feet.
Yet he is not impotent of his ability to be able to negotiate a transformative thought.
If those who hear him are open in the same way, let us be open to what you have for us with clarity and nimbleness of thought.
I thank you for what you’re going to do in Jesus name at the top of your long shouting man.
You may be seated.
I want to take you back in time.
Let me see about 40 years ago, Jerry curl, hanging down my back.
I know that’s hard to imagine.
Strain yourself, strain yourself. I need to disrupt your thinking. Meta tassels on my shoes.
Meta tails are the kinds of shoes that you work when you work around, the possibility of heavy things dropping on you and a hard hat on my head.
Walking across a gravel parking lot with tears running down my face.
It was the day I found out that the Lindy Division of Union Carbide where I had been employed for five years though, I was a preacher.
I was also working, was closing and I remember it so well, I had it.
I was crying, I was scared.
I was married with two Children, Michael in.
I depended on my paycheck, not my preaching to make sure that I could feed them and the paycheck was gone.
And foolishly, I wondered, how am I gonna make it?
How do I go home and tell Serita that you married me with a job, making decent good money.
Really new car bills fade, go out to eat if we want to do what we wanna do.
And all of that has been jeopardized.
I experienced it personally because I had not yet learned to step back and experience it as a transitional moment in history.
See, some things are only real when they happen to you.
I wasn’t raised in an environment that taught me to watch trends.
So I didn’t notice that all around the country, industries were shutting down, that Pittsburgh steel had gone out of business that the coal mines were shutting down, that Monsanto was shutting down, that John Amos was shutting down and finally was the substratum of economic empowerment in Charleston at the time.
Also, shut down to me. It was about me and the Children and how can I feed my kids?
I hadn’t been watching the news because I felt like all of those kering stuff going across the, the tape about what’s going on, uh, in New York and what’s going on on Wall Street had nothing to do with the price of chicken legs at row.
It didn’t become real to me until it happened to me.
And after it happened to me, I experienced it individually and figured it out individually.
And it was years later, even down to when I first came here and started preaching that in retrospect, I realized that I had lived through a paradigm shift from industry to technology and that it wasn’t just personally experienced, it was u universally and nationally experienced and not just my state or my city, but me personally, but it wasn’t real till it hit me.
I was teaching later as I had studied and begin to understand that one of the causes and effects of slavery was the agricultural age and it did not just provoke slavery, but it also provoked a different kind of family from what we have today.
When my grandmother and grandfather went to church, they had 15 siblings behind Children behind them.
And that was not unusual.
Some people had 22 other people had 12 and 10 Children was a small family because we designed our family around the financial climate of the era so that they could work in the fields and make harvest.
And these were not slaves. This was after slavery, but still the agricultural age.
All of these decisions were built around money.
Hm So if money was the precipice to which slavery became attractive enough to send boats to Africa.
And if money was strong enough that even after slavery families were designed around the times, then perhaps we must learn not to look at our incidents through individual lenses, but stand back off the issue and understand what is going on in our era.
So that we experience it from a perspective that is not so narcissistic that it is designed for you to focus on personal pain rather than global trends.
Because because I’ll be honest, I didn’t pay any attention until it happened to me.
You, you don’t, you don’t pay attention uh to people wearing pink for breast cancer month until they find a lump in your breast.
And when they find a lump in your breast, all of a sudden it becomes personal, it becomes real and then you have to back research and you back.
Oh, that’s what that was about.
I just wore pink because it was nice and the church was wearing pink that day.
But it didn’t really affect me personally until it happened to, to, to me.
Uh one of the areas that I give to is Alzheimer’s because Alzheimer’s became real when mama got it.
Not even when her sister had it, but when mama got it, I still hate it as if it broke in my house and stabbed my mother in the neck.
I hate it today because I experienced it personally.
But perhaps if we look at trends and understand the times we could think differently and we could understand how to deal with change.
And if we can understand how to deal with change, we will change our mind before the trend zooms in on us and we won’t have to experience loss to get revelation.
So listen to this because this is, this is, this is a profound thought.
Very few people do anything that does not affect them personally.
They don’t make choices until it’s too late.
They don’t make moves until it comes to their doorstep.
They don’t prepare in advance most news releases by the time they announce it, it’s happened, why are we always showing up late at dance?
The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the last one hired the first one fired because we react individually to everything.
Take everything personally rather than practically and we don’t notice trends so that we can be proactive.
We live in a reactive society that responds to things too late.
George Bernard Shaw says something that I thought was, was worth bringing to your attention.
And then in a moment, I’ll address the text, but I want you to pay close attention to what he says because I think it is quite profound.
He says progress is impossible without change. Yeah, this is worth writing down. That’s right. Get it down.
Progress is impossible without change. You cannot stay doing the same thing and expect things to change.
It is impossible to have progress without change and those who cannot change, their minds cannot change anything.
Now, now the profundity of that statement put it up there again, the profundity of their statement is I I is quite profound because the reverse is also true.
If those who cannot change their mind cannot change anything, those who can change their mind can change everything.
So then, then then the profundity of the thought is sending around the thought.
I I have spent too much energy dexter trying to change other people’s minds, trying to convince them of my motives and my thought and that how they thought about me was wrong.
I didn’t realize that their decision didn’t alter my destiny that, that you don’t have to like me, for me to be blessed you.
You don’t have to like me in order for me to be successful.
You don’t have to agree with me in order for me to succeed, why have I spended more energy in changing their mind when I should have spent energy changing my mind for as a man thinking, yeah, you don’t hear what I’m saying as a man thinketh in his heart.
So is he not as society thinketh as a man? Thinketh in his heart.
So is he, I did not realize that the power was in my own mind.
I did not pay attention to the verses that it in the scriptures where he said it is with the mind that we serve the Lord.
I didn’t recognize that the weapons of our warfare are carnal, are not carnal but mighty through God.
For the pulling down of strong holds, casting down imaginations and every hot thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bring us every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
I, I, I didn’t realize that my mind is the battleground that, that I got a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other and that they’re fighting to, to control my mind and that my mind is the battleground because it is the fertile ground from which creativity is incubated.
That I need thought time that I need quiet time that I need, leave me alone time that I need to shut off my phone and shut off my TV, set and not answer my phone and sit down in a hot tub of water and lay back with a rag over in my face and think myself clear that I can think myself well, that I can think myself heal that I have the power within myself to change things around me by changing things within me.
No. Are you hear what I’m saying to you?
Oh I couldn’t wait for y’all to go to church. Y’all late.
I couldn’t wait for y’all to get here because I was so excited.
The more God began to talk to me about this, the more excited I became about what was in me because the, the propensity we all have is to think that somebody is coming to save us and we think we’re gonna meet somebody that’s gonna change our lives.
And, and so we, we, we, we drop our little hanky down out of our window in the castle waiting on Prince Charming to ride by on a horse and pick up our handkerchief rather than going down the steps and pick up your own handkerchief and going about your business.
And if Prince Charming come, he gotta make an appointment because I’m doing some stuff, y’all hear what I’m saying.
So you got your whole life on hold waiting for some other confused person to meet your confused self.
So you can have some confused kids and become a confused family rather than clearing your head.
So you know what you want. So you know where you’re going.
So you know what you think that you are aware of what is going on in the world and how you fit in the shit and the changing of the current of society require some quiet time, shut up, leave me alone.
Don’t call me. I’ll call you later.
I need to catch up on what’s going on and how do I need to be proactive so that I can change my thinking?
Because if I change my thinking, I change my life. Not if I change my job, I change my life.
Not if I change my city, I changed my life. Not if I change my husband, I changed my life.
Not if I change my wife, I changed my life. I got the power within myself.
I got the thermostat that controls the heat in the whole room and it’s right in between my own two ears.
No wonder the devil is after my mind, distracting me, worrying me the death, confusing me, tormenting me or like Delilah did afflicting my mind.
Anything he can put on my mind to keep my mind from being clear because my mind is the thermostat that changes the heat in the whole house.
I refuse to give you my thermostat. That’s too much power to give to any one person.
I won’t let you control how I proceed in my life because it is impossible. Bernard had it right?
It’s impossible to have change or progress with our thought.
So, yo, man, what you thinking, dude, because what you’re thinking determines how you live in what you think in terms, how you feeling, what you’re thinking determines how you roll in.
You are no better than your next thought.
I’m gonna get off in a minute.
You, you, you’re one thought away from the greatest breakthrough you ever had in your life.
You’re one thought away from the greatest discovery you could ever have in your life.
You’re one thought away from your next next, assuming you had your last million dollars, you’re one thought away from a cure from cancer.
You’re one thought away from finding your divine purpose and living your life out with that rest in peace and joy.
Just one thought away. And when you can’t change the weather, you got to change your clothes, you got to change the way you think, you got to change the way you function, you got to change your attitude.
The reason I wore this suit this morning and I was gonna wear another suit.
But when I saw how cold it was outside, I switched up on it.
I couldn’t change the weather but I could change my suit.
You trying to change the wrong thing.
You’re trying to change things that are not within your control.
You can’t stop the trend, but you can ship your ticket.
I’m convinced that going to church alone will not change the world.
We still, it may not change our own world. Oh, get quiet. Stay with me.
We’re living in a crucial time in history.
And I want you to notice if we’re living in a crucial time in history, I just spoke for a big thought convention and, and I dropped this.
It felt like a bomb. We’re living in a crucial time in history where truth is being cannibalized by opinion.
See, science is supposed to be based on facts.
Math is based on facts. I don’t care what color you are. I don’t care what class you are.
Two plus two will always be for.
I don’t land in South Africa and wonder if it’s still for facts.
But we are so drunk with feelings that everybody’s talking about.
How you feel about a thing, how you feel don’t chase the facts.
Two plus two is still gonna be for whether you believe it or not, whether you like it or not, whether you look at it or not, whether you embrace it or not, it’s still the reality.
The truth of the matter is the more opinion becomes pervasive, the more chaotic the world becomes and the more chaotic the world becomes.
Now my theologian had is on, we are setting ourselves up for the anti Christ because we are creating problems that we cannot solve because we are creating mechanical beings that are smarter than their makers.
See, God never created anything that he couldn’t control.
He, he made the winds and the waves, but they still had to obey him.
He he made man. But when he put him out the garden, he had to go.
We are creating things with no mechanisms to control the things that we are creating and foolishly thinking that one day they won’t outsmart what?
So the kinds of problems that we’re having will eventually exceed our imagination and creativity, which makes the anti Christ so, so, so profound because now we’re going to need somebody to save us from ourselves.
We’ve already done enough damage to the world that the world has gone into labor.
I used to read Romans eight and couldn’t understand it that the whole creation travail in pain until now creation, not just people but the earth is groaning and travail.
The earth has gone into labor. The earth has gone into earthquakes. The earth has gone into tornadoes.
The earth has gone into hurricanes. The earth has gone into unpredictable weather where we can’t control the climate.
The earth has gone into melting glaciers until the glaciers are melting so fast that I went on a tour to Alaska and saw glaciers.
And when I went back, two years later, the glaciers were gone, they were all gone and it affected the whole trip and we’re creating a circumstance because we’ve outsmarted ourselves.
Now, the whole creation is prevailing in pain and it is set a perfect stage for utter chaos.
And we’re living in a world where you’re so focused on what’s going on in your head that you don’t see what’s going on in your world.
You don’t see what’s going on in your life. You don’t see what’s going on in your community.
You don’t see what’s going on in your world.
Because if it don’t come in your house, you don’t think it’s gonna affect your hood. Good baby.
It’s only a matter of time until what you read in the paper comes to your house, comes to your door, snatches your daughter, kills your son, kills your daughter.
I used to not understand the text.
Mothers will be against daughters and fathers will be against sons. And because I couldn’t imagine it is an ordinance.
It’s not natural, it’s not, it, it didn’t make any sense at the time because I grew up in an era where family was still family and connection was still connection.
I know it’s old fashioned, forgive me. But I do have gray hair.
I’m like Paul and I’m an old man talking to the next generation.
I grew up around Sunday dinner tables where the family sat around the dinner table and actually had discussions and talked.
I grew around up in a little house where we watched Mama make dinner in the kitchen and had conversation.
I grew up in a house where we were the dishwasher. We didn’t own a dishwasher.
She birthed a dishwasher and I grew up in an environment where the family nucleus was intact.
But I live long enough to listen to women to live in a society where most women have given up on men all together.
Ain’t no good men left is what they’re telling me.
I don’t know what they’re telling you. But they’re telling me ain’t no good.
And the men conversely are saying they don’t make good women like they used to listen to that.
The, these are the progenitors of the family.
If the progenitors of the family don’t like each other, then how can the Children have self esteem? No.
No. Let me drop it on you again.
If daddy don’t like mama and mama don’t like daddy and I’m birthed in an atmosphere of hatred and malice and frustration.
How can I feel good about me when I am the product of your fight? No.
Sit right there. I’m coming right where you are. You ain’t even gonna have to come up here.
You ain’t got to run up here.
I’m gonna run down there where you are and look you right in the face and tell you you don’t have to wait to go to hell when you live in hell.
Now many angry white people are blaming immigrants.
Blacks and Jews. Jews will not destroy us. Jews will not replace us. It’s the immigrants. That’s a problem.
It’s a lazy black folks that’s causing the problem. That’s what’s whispered in private circles in our private circles.
Black folks are blaming white folks. It’s a white folks. They fired me because I’m white.
It wasn’t that I was late 12 times. It wasn’t that I missed work.
It wasn’t that I didn’t get the assignment done. It was a racial issue. Everybody’s mad at everybody.
Everybody’s at war against anybody. The millennials are at war with the boomers.
The boomers are at war with the Gen X. I lived long enough that I remember when the millennials were young and they said it was us now.
They got kids looking at them saying no, it’s you and every generation is rising against generation.
Each one thinking that they’re smarter than the other one. The church is not left out of this.
It was never left out of it. It was complicit in every area and not always in a good way.
Let’s go further. The church is angry with the culture. Listen at you in the pool pit. Hallelujah.
Talking about woke, woke. Ain’t in the Bible. How did this get into our language?
How did this get into our theology? How did this get into our doctrine? You preach against Jezebel.
But then we marry politicians and become a hoes to the system. Come on, stay with me.
I’m coming on where you are.
The church is blaming the culture.
The culture is blaming the church. The poor folks are hating on rich folk.
It’s the top 3% that’s causing all the problems. You work for the top 3%.
The rich people on the converse. Don’t wanna give the poor people health care, don’t wanna raise minimum wage.
Don’t wanna make sure that you have the living that they have the, the health care that they enjoy.
They’re not working on either side. To make sure that you have the same benefit. It used to be.
You could pick a side. Now I can’t pick. Now you gotta pick a crazy.
Which kind of crazy do you wanna have? Which kind of crazy will you vote for?
When you go to the polls? You’re just trying to pick between bad and worse.
Oh Y’all can put this on Instagram because it’s gonna be hot in here.
It’s gonna be hot in here today.
The lesser two evils, half the time the person you vote for isn’t who you voted for is who you voted against.
And the only people who, the only thing that most of the people who represent us are worried about is our own power.
The stock market is fluctuating. It’s all over the place.
You don’t know if you’re gonna have social security. You don’t know if your 401k is coming through.
You’re not sure about your R R A. Everything’s fluctuate depending on your age, whether you invest what you expect.
Some of us got in too late to withstand the volatility of what’s coming up later.
If you’re young, you don’t have these kind of problems because sooner or later it’s gonna swing in your favor.
But if you get my age, I don’t have time to wait 10 years for things to get better.
My, where I put my money now it’s got to get ripe in the next three years. Hallelujah.
I don’t want to be rich and don’t know it.
The Bitcoin is unstable.
The stock market is fluctuating the value of the dollar is declining. While we’re shouting, inflation is increasing.
While the dollar is going down, our marriages are collapsing. Our Children are being raised by machines.
We don’t even talk to them.
All they do is sit up and play games all the time and then we wonder why they’re running around with guns shooting at people.
Of course, they shoot at people.
They don’t have nobody for a mama and a daddy but a robot and that’s all.
They got nothing else to talk to.
Nothing else to hold them, nobody else to touch them and love them and laugh with them and teach them relational skills and how to forgive and how to get over stuff.
So they grow up as adults uncertain thinking that people act like laptops ought to be able to push this button and get this picture.
But relationships aren’t like that. But they wouldn’t know about relationships because they never saw one act out in the home.
They never saw anybody have a disagreement and still have dinner.
They never saw nobody get on their nerves and still sit up and bake you a cake.
They never saw what we saw in the house. So they can’t figure out how to make marriage work.
So while we’re married 30 40 50 years, they’re married 3 to 5. Stay with me.
You can’t shout over top of this, but this is what’s happening all around.
We are protecting the right to bear arms over our own Children.
We don’t care how many kids die as long as we protect our right to be able to shoot more guns haven’t made things better.
They’re making them worse. We got more guns and we got people, we got more guns than any other country in the globe.
We have a higher murder rate than any other country in the world.
According to the CDC suicides are increasing while the dollar is falling.
According to the Barner report, the church attendance is declining but the murder rate is steady going up and nobody seems to be able to figure out how to respond as if none of this stuff is connected.
We got more murders happening in America. 7.8 people being murdered per 100,000 in the country right now.
We got more murder than we got cakes. We got more ways to kill than we got hands.
We got more guns than we got people to shoot them.
And when we asked for an answer, they say we just need more guns.
And if it’s a full disclosure, I got some too, I ain’t solved nothing but in case one of y’all getting ready to run up on a but I don’t need AM K 47 to be able to get you off of my front porch and I can pass a psych test.
I might be some dumb, but I’m not plumb dumb and there’s nothing worse than putting power in the hands of a fool and then wondering how they do chaotic things.
And I don’t have a child. I want to give up to a fool with a gun.
Maybe you do all respect and honor to Ben Crump.
He’s a friend of mine, but it’s my worst nightmare to end up sitting beside Ben Crump.
Don’t sit by Nick because by the time Ben comes, it’s too late and it’s all.
Everything’s all right till the, till the rabbit gets the gun, it’s alright till it’s your kid.
It’s all right till it’s your house. It’s all right till it little me, me. It’s alright. It’s alright.
Take any position, I’m not trying to mess with you, take any position you want to take.
But when it comes to your house, it becomes real.
When they’re lowering your 11 year old into the grave, it becomes really real.
When it’s your grandchild in the box, it becomes another level of serious. Y’all don’t hear what I’m saying.
And because you don’t shout off of stuff like that, that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in because we only want to talk about Ezekiel and Daniel and Jeremiah and talk about the victories of dead people.
We don’t have no victories in our life right now.
And that’s why church isn’t working for us because we only get excited post Mortem with victory.
But I need some living leaders with some living power with some living authority that rebukes the devil and stops my Children from falling in the fire and falling in the flood.
I don’t just wanna read about history.
I want somebody who can have some power right now in this present world and until you learn how to open your mouth, they’re always gonna walk over top of you, whether you’re old or white or brown or black or five years old.
There’s a reason the first thing kids learn how to do is talk, slap your neighbor and say, speak up, the power is in your mouth.
There won’t be any peace until it gets in your mouth.
There won’t be any victory until it gets in your mouth.
There won’t be any deliverance until it gets in your mouth.
Your husband is gonna keep on walking over top of you.
Your wife gonna talk to you any kind of way until you learn how to open your mouth.
The devil’s got your mouth closed because the power of life and death is in your tongue, open up your mouth and say something.
I’m about to preach up a fit in this.
I feel the holy ghost is about to take over this roof this morning.
I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired enough is enough.
Somebody’s got to say something for the next 30 seconds. Take this roof off.
I know some of you are praying for Republicans to get in office and others of you are praying for Democrats to get in office.
But you know what I’m praying for. I want common sense to get in office.
I want common sense. I don’t care what you call yourself.
If there’s anybody listening at me out there, if you got some common sense and you can win, I will vote for you.
I don’t care what you call yourself. I’m tired of crazy folk making decisions that I have to live with.
I need somebody who can negotiate peace in the Middle East.
I need somebody who can stand in between Ukraine and Russia and say there’s been enough bloodshed.
I need somebody who can go into Africa and stop the chaos that’s going on in foreign countries.
I need somebody who can compete with China for the access and interest into the African nations and see them as equals and not as idiots.
That’s what I want. Just some common sense.
I’m glad for all your degrees and all your education, but I will vote for common sense with a G E P.
We’re about to fall off the edge.
We’re about to go off the cliffs.
We about to go into a zone where we can’t get it back if ever was a time that we needed somebody who could preach some sense, teach some sense, talk some sense, make some sensible decisions.
That’s right now. There is absolutely no reason for black people in the hood to be mad at white people in the rural areas.
We both broke and neither one of us got no health care.
Nobody in the office making any decisions to make things any better for either one of us.
What are we mad at each other about? This is absolutely nonsense.
If I have a car wreck.
I don’t care if the paramedic is white, black, green, purple stripe. I don’t care how they identify themselves.
I don’t care if they floating in a tutu.
If I’m in a car wreck, please get me off the side of the road.
We can worry about all that other stuff once I’m safe right now, give me some oxygen, give me some blood transfusion.
Give me a pain tranquilizer. Somebody’s gotta understand priorities of a process. Come on with me.
Is there anybody sane left in the kingdom?
I don’t mind us debating about social issues but not at the expense of clean air, not at the expense of water, not at the expense of survival for humanity.
I don’t want to debate social issues while my children’s blood is running down the sidewalk because frankly, my dear, I’m gonna give you a chance to get over the shock and then I got some more for you and I’m just old enough that it don’t make no difference, sir.
You don’t have to do this kind of preaching to you. Don’t have to do this kind of preaching.
You got too far to go.
But I’m close enough to the end of the road that I can say whatever I wanna say and keep it rolling.
I’m enjoying the freedom to tell it like a T I N I’m tired of people using theology as a cover up for hatred and racism and genders and pride and arrogance just because you got a scripture for it.
Don’t make it right. The text I use is about slavery but it doesn’t make it right.
Whenever there is division and chaos and confusion, they call for a negotiator.
Whenever there is a standoff, whenever there are people held hostage and the police understand that the amount of their artillery will endanger other citizens.
They call for a negotiator. The power of a negotiator is that he is not involved with either side.
The neutrality of his position has uniquely placed him in a parameter that allows him to accomplish the objective without taking the narrative of either party.
Are you hearing what I’m saying to you?
I wanna have debate classes for our young people in the young adult church and I want them to debate issues from both perspectives just so that they’ll have greater thought capacity because I’m gonna disrupt your thinking so that you have a 3 60 mind and not a 1 80.
Because when you have a 1 80 mind, if the blessings are not falling on the parameters of the 1 80 you miss a blessing.
But if you think in 3 60 you’re learning how to see things from the perspective of the person you didn’t agree with, you become out.
You come out a better person.
My tax is selected because it is in the middle of chaos.
It lives on the air of injustice.
It brings to mind that even in the days of the scripture, there was classism and abuse of power and turmoil and confusion.
And the very fact that the Apostle is in prison is a sign that there’s something wrong with the criminal justice system because Paul has murdered no one.
In fact, he has raised the dead.
How can the people who take life, walk around free while the person who raises the dead ends up incarcerated?
So Paul’s text tells me that criminal justice is neither an American problem nor a contemporary problem.
Whenever man is left to judge himself, the wrong guy always gets arrested.
So in my text today, it is not lost on me that there are only three characters in the parameters of the text who is the disciple of Christ, who is also a convert of the apostle, Paul, an onus who has become a disciple of Christ, but wasn’t always and though is saved now, he has to live with the mistakes of his past.
And though is such a Christian living in that my research informs me that it is likely that the colosseum church started in the house of and then becomes central to the theology and the understanding of the New Testament Church living in close.
He becomes a vital component to the strategy of the Apostle Paul to deliver ministry unto into a multi, multi ethnic society.
And the book is small.
The problem is huge and though it only has three characters, it is quite complicated.
It is about injustice. It is about classism, It is about forgiveness. It is about mercy.
It is about destiny. But most of all, it is about disruptive thinking.
When I told you that the Apostle Paul was in jail, I negated to tell you that it was his body that was in jail.
You see they locked up his body but they couldn’t lock up his mind.
Apostle the Apostle Paul, even in prison is the great negotiator.
And he understands the power of negotiating settlement against contestants, rivals and uprisings.
Had he been a contemporary of my day.
He would have been like Charles Schwab who said, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.
So crying because you deserve better.
Will not get you better. If you’re ever going to have better, it must be negotiated.
It is not lost on me that the negotiator is an inmate himself, negotiating freedom for a slave while yet bound.
And there he is in chains and cuffs speaking a settlement between rivals who are free and he cannot reach them, neither, neither onus or the Apostle Paul are connected physically.
They remind me of what I learned in junior high about all things, primarily being composed of molecules and molecules, being composed of atoms and the molecule, the atoms that make up the molecules exist.
From the perspective of understanding that there is a distance between the atoms, a space between them through which all material exists.
That space between the atoms is imperative to how the molecule reacts.
There is a space between Onus Leman and Paul that I choose to call the grace space.
It is the place where God intervenes in spite of the distance.
In other words, I don’t have to be near to you to change you.
I don’t have to look like you to help you.
I don’t have to be born in your generation or operate in your gender to be able to bring you out of chaos because like the Adams, I am operating in a space of grace.
The Apostle Paul in my text is operating in a place of grace.
He is a progenitor, the writer, the author, the curator of the majority of New Testament Theology and even tied with his hands behind his back and shackles around his feet.
Even with his body locked up in a tomb, they could not hold his mind.
It is my desire as your father that you keep everything that you were born with.
But if I had to choose any one thing that you never gave up is never give up your mind.
Your mind is the first computer that was ever designed with hard drive and software and the ability to process and to think for yourself and give somebody your car if you want to give somebody your house, if you please, but never give anybody your mind.
Love him with your heart, but keep your mind to yourself.
Because Paul, even though he was old, how even though he was old and gray and locked up and in change, the problem that made him so potent is that he still had his mind.
And so he negotiates freedom from a place of bondage because he has with his mind influence.
And he says to my next character, I could have ordered you to do it.
How excuse me, how do you order somebody in jail?
So they took away his freedom but they couldn’t take away his authority because authority has nothing to do with proximity.
I am who I am. I never had to fight you to be myself because as long as I know who I am, I am, who I am.
And he said I chose not to command you, but rather to convince you, he is the master negotiator, negotiating with Lehman about somebody is upset with is powerful.
Paul is in Rome. Lehman isn’t and I don’t know where is because you see Onus is a runaway slave.
He is a runaway slave following our Children.
He is a runaway slave who bumped into Paul on the run and had a Damascus experience with the Apostle Paul as a runaway slave that led to his conversion.
Now Onus is converted, the runaway slave is converted. He is converted to believe.
Now, do not allow your American mind nor your African American mind to get so hung up in slavery that you think slavery started in 16 19 because slavery has existed amongst many cultures down through history.
And it is only mentioned in the Bible because it existed in the Bible though it is not Condoned by the Bible, it is mentioned in the Bible as a reality to pronounce the fact that he that came to set you free, operated in the midst of an enslaved society.
Onus ears, a runaway slave who has a conversion experience that is so pronounced and so powerful that when Paul writes to lemon, he said he is my heart.
I love him.
Not only do I love him, but I would have kept him in your place.
So the one you enslaved is just as gifted as you this room, but you couldn’t see his gifting because you think of him as a slave, you never considered the possibility that he could be useful.
So when Paul uses the term useful to describe Philemon, he only brings it up because to describe onus, he only brings it up because Onus means useful, beneficial, helpful the worst things happen to the most useful people.
Some of the great tragedies of life are targeted and helpful people and people who seek to make a difference.
And now he who is named helpful is on the run for his life and is angry and rightfully so because allegedly onus not only ran away but stole some stuff as he went.
And even if the allegation is not true, he himself is property.
His absence depreciated the net worth of Lehman and Van Le is functioning at a deficit because some of your net worth is equated to not only what you own but who?
So even if he had not stolen his property, he himself was property and the runaway onus is not just a person or a race, it is a runaway dollar ahead and has suffered such loss that that Paul has to negotiate with somebody who is function functioning at a deficit because of a decision made by subordinate.
It is not a soul that finally, I feel like preaching.
Now y’all, this is a problem.
It is not as though Van Leman has not survived. He has established a church.
He has maintained a presence. He is the focal point of influence. He is the progenitor.
According to historians of the Colossians church, he has survived.
He is valuable, he is potent, he is powerful, he is influential, but there is something missing, there’s something missing out of his net worth and there’s something missing out of his ego because to be publicly humiliated by a runaway slave has in some way diminished his influence in his community.
Because if you can’t keep what’s in your own house, people always throw it up in your face.
Let the church say amen. Can I ever?
Oh my gosh, I just, I just looked at the clock, just give me 10 minutes and I’ll wrap it now, Paul has to negotiate without going.
Do you know how hard it is to negotiate from a distance?
I mean, out of Adam’s bombs were made but they have to reach a target in order to detonate.
Now, Paul must explode at a distance and reverberate to the heart of and on.
So in a letter, he negotiates a settlement between two rivals without being present for the debate.
And he says to that I believe that onus is more valuable to you as a brother than he ever would have been as a slave.
He is so beneficial.
He is so beneficial to me that I wanted to keep him for myself.
But because I am neither narcissistic nor selfish, if you have the dexterity of thought and the nimbleness of mind to be disruptive in your thinking.
If, if, if let me break it down, if you have the ability to see him as a brother, once you have seen him as a slave, see it is hard to reimagine people once you categorize people, once you decide because I hurt you.
I am an enemy. Other people licking me only gets on your nerves.
And, and disruptive thinking is the ability to form an alliance with somebody who is not normally an ally.
Disruptive thinking requires that you are willing to shatter how you saw me to see me in a new light.
And I chose this little passage and I chose this little seldom preach text and I chose this complicated scenario, this Desonate saga to the intent that we might learn something that God wants us to understand that how you experience me at one stage should not limit you from the ability and the capacity to disrupt how you saw me and open your mind to the possibility that the relationship that we have now could be greater than the relationship that we had been.
And I preached this message so that every ex wife and ex husband would stop being angry over an experience that happened 10 years ago and not recognize that even if I’m not helpful to you, I might be helpful to your Children and to your grandchildren.
And I might be able to help you in the hospital when your daughter has a disease because I know something about my family history that you might need to know.
But if you are too petty to be able to disrupt your thinking, then you will incarcerate the opportunity for me to bring you out of bondage and you have to have the flexibility to let people go, that you held hostage in your mind and to let the resentment and the anger and the hostility go because he whom the son has set free is free.
Indeed. Can I go a little bit deeper? See, disruptive thinking is what the Bible calls repentance.
Yes, I believe that in order to have revival, we must repent from sin.
But in the Bible days when it talks about repentance, the inference of the word was bigger than being sorry for sin.
The inference for the Greek word was stronger than that. It went much deeper than that.
It was more compre comprehensive than that. The word is Melaton and what it really means.
It doesn’t matter how much you cry at the altar, it doesn’t matter how much you weep.
It doesn’t matter how much you lay at the altar and feel bad about what you did.
The word meta Toia means to change your mind.
I’m gonna close because I think I’m supposed to, I’m not gonna close because I finish.
But I’m gonna close so you can go eat.
But without explaining your reasons, without justifying your decision, without feeling bad about disappointing anybody without feeling bad about letting them go and what they had in mind for you touch three people and say I changed my mind.
I simply change my mind because if I can change my mind, I can change my destiny.
If I can change my mind. I can change my circumstances.
If I can change my mind, I can change my reality.
If I can change my mind, I can change my family.
If I can change my mind, I can change the world.
And I came here to tell you, you don’t need an angel to change your world.
You don’t need another Doctor King to change your world. You don’t need a Nelson Mandela to change your world.
You don’t even need a T D Jakes to change your world.
You don’t need AJ F K to change your world. You don’t need a Helen teller to change your world.
You don’t need a Fannie Lou Hamer to change your world. You don’t need an emancipator to change your world.
We don’t need Ronald Reagan to change our world. We don’t need Abraham Lincoln to change our world.
We don’t need Michael to change our world. We don’t need Gabriel to change our world.
We don’t need another God to change our world.
All you need to change your world is to change your mind and I get ready to close.
I want to put a witness on the witness stand. I don’t know his name, your honor.
We call him the prodigal son. I know he had gone broke. I know his family, relationships had fallen apart.
I know he was alienated by his own culture.
I know he was down in the and about to eat like a homeless man out of a trough and just when he was on the verge of eating with the pigs, the cursed pigs, the pigs, he was raised not to eat the pigs.
He wouldn’t even touch just when he was about to do something crazy.
Uh It wasn’t that the stock market went up. It wasn’t that the economy went up.
It wasn’t that Caesar died. It wasn’t that a new power came.
It wasn’t that the Jews accepted Christ as the Messiah, I have said with mud in between his toes and pouring a husk in his hair and that’s flying around his head.
It simply says he came to himself and burying the hog.
He got a deliverance that came into his life that made him say I will arise.
The reason I’m here to preach this gospel is so that you might come to yourself, whether you’re sitting on the couch or whether you’re in your living room, whether you’re sitting at your dining room table, I came to tell you if you come to yourself, there ain’t a witch out there, there ain’t a heck out there, there ain’t a spread out there.
He is not a demon that can hold you down once you change your mind, who am I preaching to?
I feel the anointing of the holy ghost in this face, flip around in a circle and tell the devil I change my mind.
You almost killed me, but I change my, you almost took me out that back, ah, back to die.
But I tell you, Gala, I change the only thing I could change.
I put my quote back up and I’ll close here.
It is my first quote. My first quote, progress is impossible without change.
And those who cannot change their minds cannot change.
Buy all the Gucci bags you want wear is Saint Saint Laurent underwear.
Tom Ford.
Draws, spray yourself down till you smell like a French somebody.
But until you change, cuss out whoever you want hold grudges if you please stop speaking if you want to, but they don’t have your thermostat.
You have to do the hard work. It ain’t easy.
The difficult work of changing the way you think this is not a plug.
It’s a purpose. I don’t need to write another book. I’ve already written 42.
I wrote Disruptive Thinking because disruption of thought is not easy, but it is essential.
And I wrote disruptive thought because if we don’t disrupt the way we’re thinking, we will not avoid the trajectory of destruction.
I see coming our way.
I say it’s the most important book I’ve ever written because it hits to the heart of a last ditch effort to warn you.
We are headed for a cliff that we cannot control.
You cannot legislate our banks over flooding.
Congress cannot pass a law that stops California from burning.
They cannot make an amendment that stops earthquakes from swallowing up masses of people all over the world that can’t even get our American people out of Sudan.
It took them over a year to get one woman out of Russia.
What in the heck makes you think that they will rescue you?
Do you know how much pressure it took to get one woman who had a substance that many of our states have legalized out of Russia.
You think they’re coming to get you and you think you really think they come to you.
Do you know how many people are in jail right now awaiting trial?
You think you’re innocent until proven guilty?
Do you know how many people are in jail right now? Who haven’t been formally sentenced?
Do you know how many people have adopted prison as a way of life?
And they have still not had a trial and you feel safe?
Yeah. If you don’t stop playing with fire, you hear me because I’m talking right to you.
If you don’t stop playing with fire, it’s gonna burn you up is gonna burn you and I warn you because God loves you and God needs you and he has a plan for your life.
But because of your pain, you will not change your mind.
And I want to negotiate a settlement right here and right now you are not the people you’re running with.
You are really not one of them. The hand of the Lord is upon you.
You cannot run the, you cannot escape, you cannot get away.
But if you keep playing with fire, you’re going to get burned.
So here I am just a negotiator. Paul is a master negotiator.
I’m just, just a negotiator trying to negotiate a settlement in my own prison.
I believe you are useful.
I believe you are valuable.
I believe that if people would see you differently, they would not shoot you that you could walk up on a porch.
I believe that if people would see you not as a threat, they would hire you quicker.
I believe that if we would speak up and show them that we are not a monolith, the world could change.
And if it doesn’t, I believe that if we get together ourselves and hire ourselves and equip ourselves that we could change the world, I still believe it.
I started preaching because I thought I could change the world.
And I still believe, I still believe that’s changing you is changing the world.
It is my purpose. It is my purpose. It is the reason that I breathe.
I have outlived my father’s, I have outlived both my grandfathers.
Neither one of them got to be as old as me.
And when Paul says he was old and still writing that I came not to preach, I came to negotiate a settlement where you stop being petty, where you stop being childish, where you stop being resentful over stuff that don’t even matter anymore where you grow up and realize you are running out of time and you are too old to be this childish.
You are too old. You are somebody’s mama. You gotta get over it for your children’s sake.
I came to disrupt your thinking. I welcome your creativity.
But some of that stuff you’re doing don’t work and I would die warning you.
It’s gonna blow up in your face like an atomic bomb.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
You cannot have your leisure and be lazy.
I’m telling you, it’s not just a generational thing back through the ages.
It has never worked if this message don’t get through, that’s all I got.