Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick.

I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast.

I wanted to thank you for joining us today.

Hope this inspires you.

Hope it builds your faith.

Hope it gives your.

Perspective to see God is moving in your life.

Enjoy the message.

Raise the Lord, everybody.

It's so good to see you.

Holly come up for a moment.

Holly wants to tell you how much she miss you.

I missed you all so much.

It is so good to be in the House of the Lord worshiping with you this morning.

Sound amazing, you look good.

Thank you.

The real reason I had you come up is suck could catch my breath from the jumping.

Are you out of shape?

You're not out of shape.

You've been exercise.

I have more of an anaerobic strength, more like bench preston.

You've been exercising and drinking your powders and stuff.

But no cardio.

Everybody, give the Lord a praise today.

If you're glad that he woke you up.

I'll tell you what.

Let us never take for granted the privilege that it is to meet together like this.

Just want to remind you that there's somebody that would love to be standing where you're standing today.

And if you have to strength to stand there, and if you have to strengthen the breath to praise God, you ought to do it.

Give him a great shout right now.

I want to welcome our entire EPHAM around the world.

I want to welcome every location.

This is going to be an amazing, amazing second half of the summer.

We've got Love Week coming up the last week of July.

We're going to serve our communities.

We've got youth X still hanging over in the room.

I feel it, man, But wasn't it amazing?

Turn me up in the monitors little bit.

Wasn't it amazing?

Wasn't it incredible?

Didn't God move kids getting saved, set free, delivered, healed, called up higher.

Thank you for your ministry to the next generation.

Thank you for our ministry that's going forth with our pop ups all summer long.

Chad, We've got another pop up coming to Charleston, South Carolina.

I think next week it's going to be two weeks.

It's going to be a very busy summer.

I planned to preach my first sermon this week because we've had amazing guest preachers, haven't We had some amazing guests and some of our in house preachers.

And I thought, well, I'll preach to the youth Wednesday night, which I did, and then I'll come back and preach.

But something happened.

I kind of wanted, well, what I thought would be cool is can I just come to church and here a guest preacher?

But I didn't have one lined up.

And I was thinking about that and praying about that.

And Saturday, as I was thinking and praying about that, last Saturday, that is, I got a text and the text was from Bishop td Jakes.

Now, so this guy said.

To me the other day, he said, are you back in the pulpit preaching this week?

I said'm back in the pulpit, but I'm not preaching.

He looked disappointed.

That made me feel good.

You always want people to be a little disappointed when you say you're not coming back.

But then I said, but would you be interested if I told you that Bishop td Jakes is going to preach for me instead?

So here's what happened.

Yeah, we all would.

I think you all know that he is not only my preaching hero, but he has been one of the closest friends that I could ask for.

How many times have I frantically sent him a text message on Saturday night to ask him if my theology was incorrect on a sermon I was about to preach to you, or did he have a better title for it or could he just come preach it for me?

Well, last Saturday he said, I'm gonna be in Charlotte if you want to have dinner Sunday night.

And I said, Sunday night, So what are you doing Sunday morning?

I started doing the math.

I figured he might be open, and I said, would you be willing to come.

And preach to our people?

I would love for them to hear from you as we celebrate this twentieth year of ministry.

There's no voice we'd rather hear than yours.

And here's what's cool, before he comes, Before he comes and just absolutely blesses us like only he can.

Yeah, don't skip Sunday's at Elevation Church.

You never know what God will do for you.

That's the moral of the story.

You better log on, you know.

Just last Sunday, Bishop Jakes, after over thirty years of pastoring the Potter's House in Dallas, transitioned the church to the leadership of his daughter and his son in law, Pastor Teray and Sarah Roberts.

So I told him this is his first Sunday as a free agent, and I wanted to take the moment right now on video to officially extend the offer that Bishop Jakes, we know you're still going to be very busy changing the world and completely redeveloping economies and feeding entire villages and changing the trajectory of our nation's political structure, and preaching and teaching and doing all the things that you do.

We know that you've got so much more to do.

But Bishop Jakes, I know you're back there listening to me.

If you're looking for a vacation church, a place where you can come and preach anytime and the people will just absolutely love to have you, a church where you don't have to manage the staff or pay the bills, but you can just come preach.

We want you to know Elevation.

Church considers ourself the official vacation church of the greatest preacher of our time, the one, the only, the incomparable, Bishop feed Job.

These are my friends.

They're not just my brother and my sister you don't get to pick your brother and sister.

They're also my friends.

And I love you right back.

Aren't you glad you're in here today?

Aren't you happy to be here?

How many people are happy to be Make some noise?

If you're happy to be here, I want you to do something now that we have praised the Lord and given him glory and clapped.

You know, I always have to change my clap because you will clap on the beat, and we clap in between the beat, and so if I don't change my beat, we sound like popcorn.

But we have a great time sounding like fork popcorn because God said, make a joy for noise unto the Lord, and it can be syncopated, it can be together, it doesn't matter.

He just loves for us to make noise.

Come on, let's just make some noise.

Yeah yeah, like that?

Yeah like that, until the angel looks get jealous, until the demons start to tremble, until the person begins to flee.

Let everything that have breadth age me the Lord.

Yeah, that's what.

I'm talking about.

Now that you craped your hands and you praise the Lord and you sound like popcin.

Your hair's all over your head, You got a little bit of sweat and breaking out on you.

Turn around and hug somebody.

Yeah, yeah, get that anointed sweat on her.

Yeah.

Let the presence of God over shaper them.

You may be seeing Pessor Steven Holly, I love you.

I'm grateful to God for this great church and the wonderful I love you.

Go back.

Isn't it wonderful?

The being here just to sing and be with other believers and people who love the Lord like you do.

And there's an excitement that's contagious.

You know, it's contagious, like grief or anything.

It's contagious.

You see somebody crying, you start crying, even though you don't know the person that they're crying about.

You just start crying because they're crying.

And then you're crying.

Then you say, why am I crying?

You don't know why you're crying, but you're crying because it's contagious.

And when we laugh, we start laughing together.

Sometimes we didn't even see what happened.

But if everybody starts laughing in the room, we start laughing.

And so the joy of the Lord is contagious.

The Bible said, rejoice with them that do rejoice and so it's contagious.

You can come in here and not even be one of us, not even be a Christian.

But if you're come in here, it's contagious.

You'll find yourself, you know, you know, So it's good.

The problem is we can't stay here, we can't live here.

Like the priests who went into the holies of Holies and found the sanctuary of God, the presence of God of Glory falling in the middle of the desert, they could only go in there a day.

They had to spend the rest of the days in the outer court, because that's where.

The work is done.

And so what I want to talk to you today about is where the work is done, not where the joy is felt or the dance goes forth or the people do some of y'all was doing the watusi or something.

Y'all make up a dance.

I love y'all.

Y'all don't have no dan, just you know, and God loves it.

God just spends around on the throne because you're just giving him to go.

All of that is good, But I want to get beyond all of that and beneath all of that, and I want to peel that back like it's an onion, and I want to get down to the part of you that the Holy Spirit wants to do something in.

So tonight today I used to preaching at night.

I said, today, I want to talk to you about the power to change your mind.

The power to change your mind.

At a time they're trying to put chips in our heads, and at a time they're trying to put things into our hands so that we can go to the grocery store and buy stuff we don't need.

So the hand can be so fat it can't read the chip.

You'll get it later, don't worry better.

At a time that everybody's getting all in our refrigerator and Wi Fi controls it stuff that it doesn't need to.

I mean, my iron really doesn't need Wi Fi.

But some kind of way, my iron has Wi Fi, so that when I'm earning my shirt, somebody knows it and it's stored in the cloud.

All the wrinkles are stored in the cloud.

At a time like that, I've got to do the work of understanding what God wants from me.

Go with me quickly to the Book of Roman, chapter twelve, verse one through twelve.

Is very easy.

It's very simple.

But I want to share with you today.

And I wrote it down because I'm old and I can't remember stuff like I used to.

Yeah, I'm a free man.

You know.

I loved it.

But I'm glad for my daughter and my son in law who has grabbed the reins and allowed me to get out and see y'all on a Sunday morning.

Isn't that cool?

I feel like a giraffe let out of cage or something.

You know.

Roman's twelve first one through twelve, and stand for me for the reading of the world, would you just for a minute.

And I read King James.

Not that it's holy or anything, but I read it because it's old like me, okay, And I like old stuff sometimes.

So I like the Eliza Beetham Elizabeefing type language that makes the scripture sounds so prose and poetic and powerful.

And you can almost hear God's speaking to you by the way it talks by him.

Therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise the power of it.

It just sounds nice.

And nowhere is it anymore blatant than it is.

And this text Romans twelve and one, when the apostle Paul, who is revered by all the thinkers of his age, who speaks in a multiplicity of languages, who is accepted in the courts of the wisest men of his era, who has traveled by sea and by land to reach and to touch various parts of the world with the influence that he has, who has at one time been a Christian killer and terror is been a terrorist against the Kingdom of God, has had a Damascus Road experienced, which he has to be willing to forsake some of the admiration, to be into the will of God.

That Paul, who is of the tribe of Benjamin, that Paul who is a Pharisee of Pharisees, that Paul who is responsible for most of the New Testament.

That without the Apostle Paul, we wouldn't We wouldn't have the fivefold Ministry.

We wouldn't have the nine fruits of the Spirit.

We wouldn't have the nine gifts of the Spirit.

We wouldn't have so many the mystery of Godliness.

We wouldn't know that.

Behold, I show you a mystery.

We shall all sleep, and we shall all be changed.

This dude is bad, Okay, this dude's bag If you take Paul out of the New Testament, it becomes a comic book.

That's how small it's left.

All the other books.

I don't know whether they got tired of writing, or their fingers hurt, or they didn't afford any ink, but they didn't write nearly as much except for He, they didn't write nearly as much as Apostle.

Paul gives us most of our understanding of what we are supposed to be in this age and this era, and we get to hear what he is saying, as he has had an encounter with God like us, not like Luke or Mark or Matthew, where they actually got to walk with Jesus.

He has had an experience with God that has made him no God, because he has had an experience, and invisible experience, invisible, invisible that left him blind, and he learned to walk by faith and not by sight.

And he wasn't there with any woman with his sher blood touching him of his garment got here.

He didn't get to see Lazar come out the grave.

He didn't get to see all the good stuff he misses.

All he had was a great light hitting and the light was so strong that it mesmerized and gave him the ability to change his life and to be willing to forsake how people think about him.

It takes courage to be willing to change the way people think about you and not be bothered by it, not to seek their approval or their validation, in order to be able to stand.

That's who's talking to us.

And he has come from his lofty clouds of intellectualism down to the low places of saying, I beseech you there for brethren, which means I beg you, the great Man begs I beg you there, for brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

And be not conformed to this world.

But be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Be you transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Be Ye transformed.

Don't just take on a form, but be ye transform by the renewing of your mind.

Don't fake the fun.

Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Don't just jump because I'm jumping.

Be Ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Have the kind of faith that lasts past Sunday morning, be ye transformer, by the renewing of your mind.

You mean I can have a new mind.

You mean I can literally be responsible for changing my mind, the place that holds my past and my doubts and my fears and my trauma and my insecurity and my rejection and my adversity and my self loathing and my uncertainty about I can change that.

You mean it's possible that I can lose the imposture syndrome and be as happy on Monday as I act.

Like I am on Sunday.

You mean it's possible.

You mean it's possible I can walk through my house and be singing out of tune, and me and God can be having a good time, and I can really be happy and not just be happy for you and happy around you and happy because you're looking at me.

You mean it's actually possible that I can lay down and rest at night and feel like the angels have ropped me to sleep.

You mean it's possible that I can live without fear and terror and the feeling that something bad is about to happen at any moment in my life.

You mean it's possible for me not to hate my nose, or dislike my lips, or hate the way my eyes are made.

You mean it's possible that I can be transformed by the renewing of my mind.

Now you're talking about some amazing he says, be Ye, transform by the renewal of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Because you can never prove the value of Christianity as long as you give me a facade of jubilants and go home to be a person.

Because when I see your facade, I cannot connect with you, because I cannot relate to you.

I can only relate to you when I see you go through hard stuff and painful stuff, and you get mad and stuff gets on your nerves and you're afraid of heights and a spider comes out and you jump on top of the couch.

I can only relate to you when you do Clark Kent kind of stuff.

I can't relate to your superman Come on, somebody, your superman self.

I want to meet you.

I want to meet you where you're at.

I want to go where you are.

Be Ye transformed by the re your mind.

Swee Holy Spirit, come come into this place.

And do what you want to do.

Throw your weight around and show the devil who's boss.

I thank you because of God, all by yourself, and you.

Can do anything but fail.

Take over this building and take over this place, and rip away all the ugly facades that we put on the projector and image of you, a form of gunment that's denying the power thereof and strip us down to who we really are.

For when you called Adam, you call Adam, where art thou.

I don't want your impostor.

I don't want you who you pretend to be.

I want who you are.

Come out here where I can see you.

Stop hiding in between the leaves and the trees of religion, and come out where we can have a conversation.

You mean, oh God, do it for us in the name of Jesus.

We pray somebody who's got a loud mouth, and you let your children shout a man at the probably way.

Yeah, yeah, I knew I locked you.

I knew I locked you because what they ain't get on your nerves every now and then you tell us sit down, and you don't quote those scriptures that you don't sing no song, You tell them just sit down.

He seated.

Let's go to what everywhere I go, there's travels everywhere I go.

The place where we struggle is not so much conversion, it's transformation.

We have the conversion down, pat We know how to lead you to Jesus.

We know how to skip, and we know how to dance, and we know how to my daughter right.

We know how to do this real good.

We know how to have conversion.

But we go home to wrestle with the inability to have transformation.

And it takes so much energy to have conversion with out transformation.

Now he begs us, by the mercies of God, that we present our bodies a living sacrifice.

And when our Western when our Western mind, here is this Eastern phrase.

We don't know what a sacrifice is.

But a sacrifice is not a pretty sight.

It's where an animal stretched east and west and north and south and tied to the altar and slaved with a knife to catch some blood in a trough and set on fire.

He says, I want you to do that to you.

No wonder he's begging, because I don't know anybody in here who's running up here trying to take the knife.

I don't know about anybody in here that wants to be burned.

Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, or black or white, or gray or green, or in between, or you don't care, it doesn't make any difference.

None of us want to be burned.

I don't see anybody saying, you know, send me to Hell.

Yeah, I go.

I need a son tan anyway, he has asked me to present my body, which is never done in the Old Testament.

You never see a lamb kill himself.

You never see a goat commit suicide.

All the sacrifices that have been offered up to God in the past did not come up their own accord.

That were drug to the slough.

They were grabbed and tied by the hands.

They were nailed down, and they were squirming, and they died blading and bleeding.

And it's an ugly.

Business, because freedom is always an ugly business.

The truth of the matter is Christianity is not pretty.

Anything that represents itself through the icon of a cross a place of execution.

It was execution to the Romans, non crucifixion.

To be nailed to a bloody cross, striped neked in front of everybody.

You've been teaching for three years is a little troubling.

I'm glad my pants are held up.

I pulled my belt real tight before I came out here because of all the things I have to worry about in my life, I do not want to have to worry about my pants falling down.

And what thank you of me in that condition?

I love these pants.

They cover my shit, they cover my body, and this shirt it paints body and you really don't get to see me, but you see what I'm wearing.

But the problem is God doesn't like fig leaves, and he doesn't like to be covered.

He wants to be brought open.

And we have this thing about us.

Now we get saved, our instantly born again, born of the spirit.

When we accept Christ as our savior, we're instantly born again changed.

Right then we have an amazing experience with God that changes a lot of habits and stuff about us that needs to be changed, and maybe stopped us from committing suicide and hurting ourselves.

It's great stuff.

But then we have to go home and live it out.

We have to in our living room with bills and stuff and laid off a job and broken in our heart and living with somebody who gets.

On our nurves.

And try to act like they don't get on our nerves, but they're getting on our neirs.

And we have to have personality, and it's hard to have personality when you have idiosyncrasies.

I wish we came with warning labels.

I would love for God to put warning labels on our forehead.

Hello, my name is Mary.

I'm crazy as a drunk bed bug.

Don't buy the fact that I'm cute and that I got nice eyes, because my eyes roll up in my head and I turn into the cooking monster.

I am scared of people, and I don't like to be in crowds.

I don't like to talk to when and accept when I want to talk, and I'll tell you when I want to talk.

And then when I talk, I want to talk about stuff that doesn't make any difference.

And I want you to listen and think it's important and respond the way I like to have you respond, because if you don't respond the way I like you to respond, it's going to be hell up in this house.

It's gonna be absolute war up in this house.

It's going to be trouble up in this house.

Because it's not Sunday.

It's Wednesday.

It's Wednesday, and you make me sick.

That's where Christ wants to go into our personality and figuring out how to get down past all the other stuff.

He says, present your body a living sacrifice.

And how do I tie myself?

How do.

How do I tie myself down?

A little sacrifice?

And the truth of the matter is there are hundreds of people in this room in one way or other who is trying desperately to tie up themselves.

But how can I tie this hand and then have another hand loose to tie this hand?

And don't get me started talking about these feet I got.

This is not gonna be easy.

I beseech you there for brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body a living sacrifice, holy unacceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

And be not conformed.

Don't you be conformed to the world and go the way that they're going to stop scrolling them in it.

Don't be conformed to the world and the way it's if you stop here, stop all year.

AYI don't be conformed to world and the way the world is going and bragging about how many gigabytes and how much power and how much this and how their algorithms were.

Don't be conformed to the news and the media and the people and the personalities and the politics.

Don't be conformed.

Don't be conformed to this world.

Don't mean we do the very thing he said not to do.

We are conformed to this world.

To this world.

Have you ever I turned off the news sometimes just because I'm tired of hearing bad stuff against me.

Nightmares makes me scared to sleep at night.

I hear about all that stuff.

I pray about it, but I got to learn how to release it, because I am not designed to carry that much pain on the inside.

We popular Contrary to popular belief, we were not created with apple phones in our pocket.

God did not mean for millions of people to walk around in your pocket about what's wrong with their life and what they don't like about you, and how you should fix your hair and you would look better if you were blonde.

God did not design us to be inundated with other people's opinion to the point we care to hear what's going on because so much noise is coming from the outside that we cannot find the peaceful place to work on who we really are to become what he created us to be no wonder.

He's looking for us, no wonder.

The eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the earth to show himself strong, trying to find somebody that he can use.

No wonder.

God is searching in the cool of the morning, looking for Adam in the garden, and he can't find him because when he created him, he created him to look like God.

He created him to be his mirror.

He created him to be his reflection.

He created it so he could see what he looked like.

He created himself so there would be unity between heaven and earth, between holy and holy, between divine and divine, between spotless and spotless.

He created him without a sin.

He created him without a lustful thought or a hateful idea, or a person he wanted to choke till late turn blue.

He did not create him like that.

He created him to be a reflection of his love and his compassion and his grace, and for him to literally reflect the personality of God in the earth.

And that's what he wants.

For you.

To really reflect the personality of God in earth.

And that's why Hell hates you.

That's why Hell attacks you early in your life to make sure that your personality is not the personality of God.

He knows what God wants to do in your life, and he has to.

Start the the plot early.

See, it hasn't hit you yet that you're a world changer, that you're a giant killer, that you're a mountain mover, that you were meant to walk on water, that you are ahead and not the tail above and not.

Beneath an overcomer.

It hasn't hit you yet that you can command oceans and mountains and seas and waves.

It hadn't hit you yet that you can stop the sun in the middle of there and say be still while I fight.

It hadn't hit you yet that the power of life and death is in your tongue, and that whatsoever you say, you can have it.

He wants to catch you early where you are fragile and frail and not sure of yourself and not stabilized in your formative years, when your brain is still pliable and falling and able to be shaped like clay in the hand of whoever touched him.

Who touched me.

Wasn't always God who touched me.

Wasn't always God who made me the mad, angry woman I am was not God, who made me the distant aloof cold man.

I am was not God.

God is not the problem.

God is cool.

I'm down for God.

I'm down for Jesus.

It's all the people who touched me before he did.

It is not my destiny that I'm worried about.

It is the contamination of my history.

And to be transformed.

To be transformed is to take away the effects of my history.

So I come to church to hear about my destiny.

And my destiny sounds so wonderful, and he's good, and he's wonderful, and he's good all the time, and everything's wonderful, and bless the name of the Lord, and come into his house with thanksgiving.

It's wonderful.

And they tell me about my destiny.

I'm a mountain mover, I'm an overcomer.

I've got the power of God in me.

To tell me about my destiny.

They tell me that my mouth can speak and things can change.

They tell me about my destiny.

But when I leave the parking lot and drives smack dab into my history right, and my history contaminates.

My history contaminates me.

My destiny that kool aid changes water like wine changes when fermented it my destiny.

My whole stuff comes creeping up into my new stuff, and I wrestle with my whole stuff and my new stuff, and they are posed one to the other.

And when I would do good evil as present that which I would do, I do not old wretched man that I am, who should deliver me from the body of the dead.

I'm a great digon that, I'm a wretched man.

I'm a great believer.

But you'd have to marry me to find out.

I'm a broken man.

See when you dated him, he was perfect, and you dated her.

She told you if you needed anything, she'd take care of you at three o'clock in the morning, and everything was wonderful.

And you married their representative, and you said you walked up there like a dummy and said, I do to somebody you haven't met yet.

And before you know you've done it.

You've done it.

You do what you've done until you've done what you do, and you did it, and you've done what you did.

When you do what you're done, when somebody you don't even know.

For the first three years, little by little you peel the onion down and get past the superficial and find out their quirkiness, their craziness, their procrastination, they're indifference, they're missing dad syndrome, their critical mother syndrome.

And quote all the scriptures you will.

You cannot get that out of their person now.

Their personality.

Personality is not spiritual reality.

I didn't marry your spirit.

Your spirit is holy and perfect and complete before God.

I didn't marry your spirit.

I married you your personality.

And now I am trying to be trying to figure out what's going on?

You know?

Can I take them innute?

D I took my son to Spain cause he came at a time that I had to go overseas anyway, and I took my son's strain, and I was so glad to take him places that my father only read about him books and g had never been in themselves.

I took him to Spain.

It was amazing.

We had a great time in Spain.

I had never taken him to Spain before.

And then they told me we were close to the Rock of Gibraltar.

Now, I will be honest, I didn't exactly know what the Rock of Gibraltar was.

I had heard of it, I read about it in school.

I passed the test but I didn't go to bed every night thinking about the Rock of Gibraltar.

It was not my life's dream to see the Rock of Gibraltar.

I was born in West Virginia, in the mountains.

I have seen enough rocks and mountains and hills, had violence and shoveled enough snow that I didn't go all the way to Spain to see a rock.

If I'm going to Spain, let me go to the museums, and let me go to Barcelona, and let me go to Madrid, and let me go down on the cobblestone streets of a city that is thousands of years old.

And now they're telling me to go to the Rock of Gibraltar.

And there I am going to the Rock of Gibraltar, fourteen hundred feet in the air.

And it's not a straight path.

It's around winding roads and grinding here and there and everywhere.

And I went there to the Rock of Gibraltar with my son, and because I'm his dad, like I know what I'm doing.

Neither one of us know where we're going or what we're doing, or how to get there, or whether it matters.

And our hole I know is that the air gets thinned when you get high in the air and fourteen hundred feet in the air and you fat, you skinny.

People don't laugh if you don't understand what I'm talking about.

You have to weigh over two hundred pounds to understand what fourteen hundred feet in the air does to your nostrils.

It shrinks him down into baby nostrils, and you get you the baby nostrils down on the ENDSI and I'm trying to breathe and act like I'm okay.

And I'm starting to see colors in front of my hair.

I'm seeing colors and more colors that are in a rainbow.

I'm seeing them everywhere.

But I'm taking my son to the Rock of Gibraltar.

Do you know how much history was at the Rock of Gibraltar?

I didn't.

Did you know?

I didn't.

I didn't know at all.

I didn't know.

I didn't know.

I didn't know.

I didn't know.

You know how we are in America.

The world ends and begins between New York and la We don't know about no place else, And not our Congress, not our legislator, not our people passing law.

Most of them don't even have a passport.

We made decisions about countries we have never been to, and we feel sorry and we send our thoughts and prayers when they die, but we don't really think they're real people like us.

They are their caricatures on our TV screens and in our pockets and in our apps.

And then we get on our app and let's see, we scroll through them, and we look at them.

We pray for them sometimes, sometimes we pray for them.

Sometimes we just keep scrolling because it's happening so much.

It's happening everywhere.

Everybody's drowning or burning or dying or being bombed or being newt and going through all kinds of trouble.

And while they're going through all that trouble is not like you not having your own trouble.

You're having your own trouble.

Your daughter just cuts you out and slamming the door and says she didn't want to ever see you again in life.

And you were the worst mother in the world.

And you got to deal with that.

You can't be put not fires and waters and planes and stop planes from crashing and deal with all You weren't made to deal with all of that, because by then you have developed your own brand of crazy, not craft mannaise, no, nothing like that.

It hadn't been branded by anybody else.

You have your own brand of crazy, your own devil.

To fight the stuff you're afraid of, the stuff you have to deal with, the stuff you have to suppress, is enough to keep you up all night.

It takes all of my energy to get Thomas not to say what he wants to say, because he has got a mouth on him that Grandma's soap will not wash off.

And it takes all I can do.

If you catch me in traffic and you haunt me the wrong way, it takes everything I got to say.

God loves you, Yes he does, he loves you, Yes, yes, Yes, I'll meet you on the other side in heaven, and I won't cut you when we get there.

It's all I can do to get him to shut his mouth because he reacts, and because he has built up a system of hiding himself and handling himself and dealing with hisself.

And it may not be the right system, and it may not work, and it may not have anything to do with Church.

But I have developed a pathology that enables me to live with me, and I can't figure out why you can't develop a pathology to live with me because I've worked on this for thirty years and I figured out how.

To like me.

And now that I have finally figured out how to like me, you act like you don't understand me, like I'm crazy.

I'm not crazy.

I have feeling.

I have feeling about going through it up.

I'm going through everything off by myself, and I don't know.

And I carried my son to the Rock of Gibraltar and found out that's where all the fighting was since the early fifteen hundreds, Nation after nations had fought in that place.

The Moores have fought in that place and on that place and hallowed out the inside of the mountain.

It's hollow.

You can go in there, and you can go up the ramp, and there are all kinds of cannons there, and you can shoot out of the Rock of Gibraltar.

You can shoot at people and they can't hit you back easy.

And so nation the nation fought to have control of that space.

And since I was in Spain, I thought I would go to the Rock of Gibraltar.

And I got to the Rock of Gibraltar and I brought my franks there so that I could buy something while I was there, because I'm gonna buy something there and buy something.

Part of my ministry is to buy something.

I am called to buy something.

I am annoying to buy something.

I don't care what it is.

I'm going to buy something.

I was born in West Virginia, a little black boy with ashenees in West Virginia, with basoline for lotion on his kneecaps.

And if I go all the way to Spain, I'm going to buy something.

I'm going to buy something.

And I drive in there to buy something, and I'm getting ready to go into the air where the Rock of Gibraltar was, And you know what, I had to show my passport to get in and pay a fee to get where they wanted me to go and do all of that.

And they told me that they didn't take Franks.

And I'm in Spain, and what do you mean that what was valuable over here is not valuable over there?

That this one patch of ground that you call the Rock of Gibraltar is controlled by the Euros being kingdom.

And they used and I didn't bring no bounds.

They didn't tell me that you could have one little patch of ground out of all over country that belonged to somebody else.

They didn't tell me that they fought for it, and died for it, and bled for it to control it.

Because it is a sight where you can see nations.

You can stand on one nation and see the other nation.

You can see the northern tip of Africa, you can see Morocco.

You can see all kinds of stuff from that point.

It's a high place.

Why.

That's why in the Bible and the Old Testament you always hear that God wants to move your hot places because of high places.

And the high places are the places of strategic advantage.

It is hard to kiss your enemy if your enemy is over you.

That's why they never put your brain in your foot.

Because I can drag my foot, even as old as as I am.

I can get my foot up close enough that I can work on it if I have to.

Don't tell my wife because like I'm crippled, so should take care of it from me.

But I can actually, if I need to, I can do that.

But God did not put my brain in my foot.

He put it in my head.

Because I got a deal with the high places.

That's where I shoot from.

That's where my cannons go off from That's where my cannons go off, whether they're pointed out or in.

Can I deep?

Can I go deeper that my cannons go off?

That's what That's what you get out till.

You marry me.

You married your girlfriend, you went home with your wife, You married your boyfriend, and you go home with your husband.

You married the person who showered and got ready and got dressed and put on cologne, extra cologne.

In fact, I couldn't breathe, and you put up from us clock and you came out and you were ready for me.

And it was occasionally.

I didn't know I was gonna have to wake up to you every day with bad breadth and hair all over your head and find out that you leave your drawers in the middle of the floor, and that you don't keep it up to yourself, and you use the bathroom and don't wash your hands.

And now I got to deal with all of that.

And I didn't know that was possible.

Is it?

Okay?

Did I go too far?

Okay?

I'm right on the edge.

I'm right on here, and I'm stay on the edge.

I'm stay on their edge.

I'm gonna stay on the edge, because the Bible just told me that I have to deal with things from the rock at Gibraltar.

I need a post that I can shoot out.

I need an area that protects me, and the area that I build to protect me also incarceraates me.

And now I am protected, but I am also isolated, and you can't hurt me.

Say whatever you want to say, row your eyes, texting about me right now, tweet if me, if you want to take a picture and put it on Facebook right now.

Because I have developed a system, you will not getting me.

I ain't thinking about you.

I don't even know you.

You can be sleeping up under the bridge somewhere.

I don't care whether you like my hair or not.

I'm not gonna give you that much power over me.

I have developed a system to handle all of that, even if it's cutting off.

Do you know my wife has two phones and don't answer neither one of them.

Honest to God, I'm telling the truth.

I do not understand why she needs two phones.

She got two different phone numbers, two different phones all together, and she never can find either one of them.

Sometimes she's looking at it while it's ringing, and it does not bother her.

That the phone is ringing.

She walks past the phone ringing and keeps on singing what she's singing, And she's refusing to let that mas many people get in her life and get in her head, and get in her mind and get into her spirit.

She has to be transformed by the renewing of her mind.

And sometimes we build up ways to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

I've been studying this for a week.

Our brain is designed to deliver enzymes and hormones that secrete fluids in us that helps with us steal with what's on our mind.

And we got a lot on our mind.

And I've been reading a book, an old book written by an old author or doctors, who said, the body keeps score.

You read it, the body keeps score.

So everything I didn't say, and everything I held in, and everything I suppressed, and everything I wouldn't get out, the body kept score.

The body kept scoring.

And so I survived.

Heroes, I survived, heroes, I survived.

I survived.

But just because I survived doesn't mean I succeeded.

Can I teach this?

And now the Bible has said to me that I can be transformed by the renewing of my mind.

Oh no, wait, wait a minute, i'mosad to the rock and Gibraltar.

I got a finish say that I was at the rocky Gibraltar.

And I went all the way through the rocky Gibraltars and went on the house side of Rock of Gibraltar, and my son is with me, and I got to the top of the rock and there's all of these monkeys.

Yeah, I gotta tell you about the monkeys.

And all these monkeys are there.

There were monkeys up.

There were monkeys on my car.

There were monkeys on the window.

There were monkeys on the back window.

And they were talking about how cute the monkeys were.

And the monkeys was leaving little white spots on everything.

And they weren't quite execute as I thought they were.

They were all everything, but it was so so nice, It was so wonderful.

You felt so likely you were in another country.

Always monkeys, and I had the monkeys everywhere, and the monkeys were everywhere, and the monkeys were everywhere, and I started noticing they were something weird about these monkeys.

And see, I.

Watched too much TV.

I watched these movies where the monkeys start talking to each other.

You ever watched the monkeys?

Where do the monkeys start driving cars?

And the monkeys started mediating with each other, and they start calling one another, and they come through the trees and everything.

And I know that there was a whole lot of gathering around my car, a whole lot of them around my car.

I had fought one of two of them, but it was a whole lot of them around my car.

And they were all around my car.

And it was all of these monkeys.

And you know what was weird about them.

They didn't have no tails.

They didn't have no tails.

And my gud told me when the monkeys first came to the Rock and Gibraltar, they were born with tails.

Monkey tales, you know monkey tales.

They have monkey tales.

But the tail is so small, just a little bit of gristle and meat.

The tail is so small.

And the winter changes in Gibraltar, and it gets cold in Gibraltar, and in the winter, you know what happened, don't stop me.

You know what happened.

They froze their tail off.

They actually froze their tail off.

And you know what else.

The next time, the next generation, when they had babies, they had tails too, and they froze their tail off.

You're gonna leave.

Out here and tell everybody I appreciate about monkey tales, aren't you?

Don't you tell her about I said that about freezing their tails off?

Don't you do that that?

That doesn't sound real preachery, So don't do that.

They might take it out of context and put it on Instagram.

Lord at Mercy, I forgot.

It's gonna probably be on Instagram now, and that's gonna be one more thing I'm gonna have to scroll past and ignore them because they're all in on that that that they froze their tails off.

And you know what, by the third generation, they were born without tails.

Wow, they stop being born with tails so they wouldn't freeze them off.

And suddenly I understood something I never understood why Jesus said, if your hand offends, you.

Cut it off.

Because I'm a literalist.

When you tell me something, I take you seriously.

So if you tell me to jump on him, I'm gonna jump on him.

We figure out what happen later.

I'm jumping.

I'm gonna jump right now.

I'm gonna jump That first time I went to Africa, the big crowd of people, and they were so excited and they were praying, and they all wanted delivering.

I just dived, you know, like they're doing it.

I just dived out in the crowd.

They almost killed me.

They almost killed me.

They took my ring, they was pulling on my clothes.

They take prayers so seriously, they take prayers, soul seriously, they take prayer so seriously.

My son and I on the top of the rockets Gibraltar, and the monkeys have stopped growing what they didn't need.

What are you growing?

Yeah, that you don't need.

What are you growing from?

Where you used to live?

And you don't live there anymore, But you still got your tail as if you were someplace else.

And now God has called you to the mountains and you're in a better place and you're a better person, and you're higher than you've ever been, and you got the opportunity of a lifetime, and you still got your tail.

And that's what I learned in did rocors bro To and somedenly I understood what Christ meant, cut your hand off.

If your hand to fens, you cut it off.

He mean, if there's anything you know about you that's messing you up.

Fix it, Just change your mind, right it?

Just fix it.

Just fix it.

Don't just dance and skip and jump and hoop and hollar and make all kind of noise and go home and make excuses for yourself and give yourself a license to be dysfunctional.

Just fix it.

If it's you don't know how to apologize and you don't know how to say I'm sorry, or you don't know how to work with somebody who didn't say I'm sorry to you, or if it's that you doubt your own masculinity and you don't trust your own femininity, and now you don't even know what either one of them is because I'm so confused.

I don't know a duck from a pigeon, I don't know anything, and you're trying to figure out all of that, whatever it is that you are dealing with.

Just fix it.

Easier said than done, real hard work.

Let's just praise so lord.

Let's just dance and leave the inside unfixed.

Let's not take on the big fight of change.

Do you know when the prodigal Sun was in the mud.

He was in the mud.

Yeah, I got even, okay, I got it.

He was in the mud and everything in cover with mud and everything.

And he didn't have anything to eat except for what the swine did eat.

And he was sitting in the hall pen and he came to himself.

That's a weird scripture.

He came to himself.

He came to himself.

Came means a journey, means a distance, means that travel.

It means it took me some time to come to myself.

He came to himself.

That is the baddest scripture.

I dare you.

I can preach on that all night.

He came to himself.

Not he came to Georgia, he came to Memphis, he came to California.

No, he came to himself.

It takes you a long time to come to yourself.

And you can lose a lot of people while you come to yourself.

And you can damage a lot of people while you come to yourself, and you can lose opportunity after opportunity that God has for you.

Because you won't come to yourself.

You will not confront yourself, You will not be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

You will not let somebody borrow your body.

A new personality come inside of your body and walk around in your clothes, in in your shoes.

The nicer you, the better you, the stronger you, the more intense you, the more loving you, the more communicative you, the more kind you wants to take over your body until a new personality lives in your body and you have joy on more than Sunday, more than Sunday.

You can have joy on more than Sunday, more than Sunday.

You can have joy.

You can have Joey unspeakable, full of truth and glory.

You can have joy when you go home.

You have joy in your car.

You can have joy in your house and in your life and in your spirit.

You can have joy in a trailer.

You can have joy in a park.

You can have Joe anywhere.

You can have joy in your spirit right now, right now, right now.

You can decide in your mind right now, I am through being who I was.

I'm tired of that.

I don't like her.

I don't like him.

He's messing me up.

He's canceling out my chances.

He's killing my future, he's destroying my career.

He's tearing up my marriage, he's turning up my relationship.

And I am going to get rid of him.

I'm going to be transformed by the renewing of my mind.

My mind, my.

Mind is my rock of Gibraltar.

My mind is my rock of Gibraltar.

That's where I shoot from.

That's where I preach from.

That's where I fight from.

That's where I teach from.

Out of my head.

Out of my head.

I gotta get it right in my head.

That's where the war is between the devil and God.

Is in my head.

It's in my mind, it's in my thoughts, it's in my thinking, it's in my ways.

And I I don't care if I win the battle at work, and win the battle with the car and fix the pipes in the freeze and do all of that, and cut the crass and trim the hedges to their stree, if I don't fix the hell that's in my head, I will never be free and I will never behold man.

I will never be what God wants me to be.

And I want to be free.

I want to be free.

I want to be free in my mind.

I want to be free in my spirit.

I want to be free.

I want to be free.

I want to be free.

I don't want to die and haven't been free.

I want to be free.

I want to be free so much that I sing in the shower.

I want to be so free that I can sing on the back porch.

I want to be so free that I get on my neighbour's nerves because I sing out of tune.

I want to be so free that I have peace and power on the inside.

And I can't understand why I can't let go of my tail.

If I let go on my tail, if I am willing to off that hand because it offends me, if I am willing to cut out that tongue because it offends me, offends me, only means that's the only thing standing in between you and what God wants to give you.

If you cut that one thing off, that one thing, do you hear me this morning?

That one thing, If you cut that one thing off, if you stop being so insistent that you gotta be who you you used to be.

If you cut that one thing off, you shall eat of the fat of the land.

God will put you in goodly houses.

He will open doors for you.

He will make ways for you.

He will strengthen you, he will bless you.

He will overshadow you, he will overcome you.

He will make you smarter.

He'll make you brighter.

He'll make you a better mother, a better father, a better friend, a better person.

If you'll cut off that one thing, If you'll cut off that one thing, why are you loyal to something you don't need anymore?

It's freezing you.

You're freezing your tail off.

You're freezing your career, You're freezing your marriage, You're freezing your home life.

You're freezing your ministry.

You're freezing the best part of your ministry.

The best part of your ministry is in your tears and in your brokenness and in your fears, and you just keeping it real and just being to who you are.

The best part of you as a wife is that broken, crazy you secrecies that you have.

If that's what's cute about you, If you just freeze it all, if you just freeze off the thing that's stopping you from being all you can be, you could change your life and be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.

So the prodigal son is in the hat pin and he has no money, and he has nothing to eat, and he's spent all his father's stuff in riots he's living, and all the prostitutes have left him, and all the friends have left him, and he's in the hall pen, and you can tell you're in the hat pin with something that don't even to appeal to you, suddenly starts to appeal to you.

And all of a sudden he wants to eat what the swine did eat.

He's a jew boy.

He doesn't even eat eat swine, much less what the swine did he eat.

And with flies all around his hair, and that's in his face and slump on his clothes, something happened to him right there, not in the sanctuary, not in the church, not in the choir, not in the praise him, not in the balcony, not sitting in the bank, not sitting up front, not leaving up down in there, he was in the hog pen.

And he came to himself.

And when he came to himself, he said, I'm gonna cut my tail off.

Being stubborn.

He's killing me, is killing my opportunity.

I will arise and go to my father's house.

I'll swallow my pride and go to my father's house and say I am no more worthy to be thy son.

Make me as one of your heart servants.

And he practiced, this is what he was going to say.

All the way home.

He hadn't even gotten to his father yet.

He was just practicing what he was going to say.

And while he was practicing it and getting in his head what he was going to say, while he was yet a great ways off, his father looked down the road and saw him coming.

And the Bible says, the old man ran out to meet him.

I'm sixty eight years old.

Let me tell you something.

It takes something to make me run.

Now, at twenty eight, I would run over anything.

But if you see me running at sixty eight, you better run too, because some chasing me.

The father ran.

The father ran to meet him.

He ran to meet him, and he was wrong, because he was practicing for a father he had in his mind who would accuse him.

He wasn't practicing for the father that would run out to meet him and cover him up and put him in a good place and set a party together and killed the fatid calf and open up the door.

He didn't even know that he.

Had that kind of father, because all those years he had kept his tail, and his tail had stopped him from seeing who his father really was.

But while he was still funky and smelly and NAT's all around.

The Father wrapped a robe around him and sent the servants out to get ready for him, and put a ring on his finger, and brought him in all of a sudden.

The only thing he changed.

He didn't change his hair, he didn't change his clothes.

He didn't change his car.

He didn't change his goat, he didn't change his lamb.

He didn't change his speech, he didn't change how he looked.

He didn't change anything else.

The only thing he.

Changed was he changed his mind.

And when he changed his mind, he experienced the Father in a way that he never experienced the Father before.

I want you to stand up on.

Your feet, and y'all want you to make up in your mind.

I got some changing to do.

I'm going to be transformed by the renewing of my mind.

I'm going to be transformed by the renewing of my mind.

I got one more thing to say to you, and how to be finished.

I have heard the scripture all my life.

I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me, and people always use it when they come up against a task or an obstacle.

I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.

Greater is in me that he is in the world.

I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.

And it sounds so good, and it sounds so wonderful, and we use it all the time, except we use it out of context.

When God said, when Paul said, I can do all things through Christ, and Philippians, who strengthens me, he said it after saying this, I have learned how to be abased, and I have learned how to be abound.

I have learned both how to be and warn.

And I have learned how to have plenty.

That means you don't come here knowing how to fix your mind.

You have to learn how to do this.

To learn how to do this, I don't know.

There's a hundred people I'm speaking to in here.

If I'm talking to you, make some noise in this play.

Come on, make some noise in this play.

This is what I'm gonna learn this Sunday morning.

This is what I'm gonna learn this Sunday morning.

I'm gonna learn to change my mind.

I'm gonna learn not to say everything.

I'm gonna learn till I get a new habit.

I'm going to freeze my tail off I'm gonna enter into a new dimension and become a new person.

I'm gonna shock my kids or not, I'm gonna even know who I am.

Because I refuse to live and die and never lose my tail, and never lose my hand, and never lose my temper and never lose my mouth and cry because I drove people off.

I refuse not to change.

The only thing that needs to change is not your shoes.

It's not your jeans, it's not your shirt, it's your I need one hundred people in this room that would change their mind.

Come on, that would change their mind.

Come on, that would change their mind, that would change their mind.

There's something on the other side of that change that only God can give you.

It will if you.

Change your mind, God will open up the windows of heaven and pull you out of blessing that you don't have room enough to receive.

For the next sixty seconds, I want you to praise God till you feel a change coming, till you feel a change in your spirit, till you feel a change in your attitude, till you stop be littling yourself, till you stop talking down to yourself, till you forgive your father until you let go of your mother, until you let go of your pain.

I want you to that thing off that's been stopping you from being who you could be.

I can't hear you.

I can't hear you.

I want you to cut it off.

I want you to cut it off.

I want you to get rid of it.

I want you to shut it down.

I want you to stop it.

I want you to wear it out.

I want you to move it out of your way.

I want you to.

You gotta hear it.

You gotta hear it, because this is your Sunday.

This is your Sunday.

This is your Sunday for change.

This is what you've been praying about, this is what you've been asking for, this is what you've been talking to God about.

He sent me here to answer your question.

You can have a better life.

You can have peace, you can to have joy.

It's up for you.

No devil can take it, no deepon can take it, no witch can take it, no warlock can take it.

It's yours if you want it.

It's yours if you want it.

And you think you've been praising God, if you praise God with a new mind, the spirit of God, and come in the balcony.

It'll come in the front row.

It'll meet you in the aisle.

It'll be waiting on you in the car.

It'll heal your body.

It'll change your blood pressure, it'll change your temperature.

Open your mouth.

I can't hear you.

I can't hear you.

I can't hear The devil is the thread.

The devil is the thread.

The devil is a fread.

The devil is a fread.

If you would really do it, if you let go on your church self and get down to your real self and let God do it, amazing things but happen, if you would just do it, If you would just do it, and now wait on nobody to forgive you, and now wait on anybody to come back, and I wait on anybody to say I'm sorry.

If you would just let it go, you could stop medicating yourself, stop treating yourself, stop making excuses for yourself.

If you let it go, God will do something amazing.

He'll do amazing things.

He'll do a miracle in the middle of that hour.

The Holy Ghost will do a miracle.

He'll do a miracle for you.

Right now, with your hands up in the air.

The spirit of the Living God will I'm gonna shudder you right now, right where you are standing, right there.

The annointing will do a change in your life.

I will break him and curse over your house, over your children, over your financer, over your body.

Great fare.

If you'll open your mouth to God, gona fix that thing once set for you.

All your deadic can't stop it, your granddaddy can't stop it.

Your great granddaddy can't stop it.

You've got the power right now in your mind.

Nobody can stop you.

If you change your mind, demons will run from you.

They'll run from you, they'll run off of your few, they'll get off of your room.

If you change your mind, God will do amazing things in your life.

And for come on, I got to go.

I got to go.

But somebody in this room is gonna change their mind.

They're gonna they're gonna cut off some stuff.

Let me hear you open your mouth and give glory to God.

Let me hear you get glory to God.

Let me hear you dear glory to God.

Let me hear you get.

Flurry of God.

Give glory to God, Give glory to Him.

Give glory all the way in the balcony, all the way on the top.

Roll.

Let give that's right, give it glory.

God's get ready to fix something in you.

Your body's getting to heal, your mind's getting to heal, your spirits getting to heal.

Your circumstances are getting to heal.

Then the change coming, A new you is coming.

God's gonna throw you a party.

He's gonna throw you a bath.

He's gonna kill your fatic cab if you praise.

It, he will kill your betty can.

I wish y'all had some real praisers.

I need a hunting craiser.

I need a hunting praiser, just a hunt the praiser.

I could make it with done and nine.

If I get ninety nine praises in this room, God's gonna do something in your billy.

Out of your billy, shall call the lirids of living water.

Rivers are coming out of you, Rivers are coming out of your spirit.

Rivers are coming out of your life.

Open your mouth and praise your God at break that curse.

Break that curse.

Break that curse right now.

Thank you for joining us.

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Is because of you that this ministry is possible.

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Thanks again for listening.

God bless you.