TD Jakes - Keep The Peace
In other words, don't let what you're going through get to you. When Jesus was sleep on the bow of the ship, when Jesus was sleep in the bottom of the ship and the storm was raging around the ship, and Peter gets flustered and Peter lets the storm that's on the outside, get on the inside till he doubts the sleeping Jesus. The sleeping Jesus in the middle of a hurricane is a picture of the peace of God, that God can go through storms and snore, is indicative of how strong his peace is. He is not conformed to the weather. He does not react to the climate. He does not respond to external circumstances. Jesus is the only one sleep on the boat.
Peter goes down there and knocks on the door and say, "Get up, Jesus! Carest Thou not that we perish"? And Jesus gets up and rebukes the winds and the waves, wipes sleep out of his eye, and says, "O ye of little faith". What did he do wrong? His emotions conformed to his environment. I'm just not happy, I thought I'd be married by now. So, you're gonna delay your peace, waiting on marr...I'm oh, excuse me, I'm not happy because I am married. So, you're gonna let your spouse have your peace. The storm on the outside has gotten on the inside. That's what makes boats sink. Clearly, the storm had not gotten on the inside, lest Jesus would have been wet, and if Jesus would have been wet, he would have been woke.
So, we have a dry Jesus in a hurricane, asleep on a pillow. I don't care how deeply you sleep, if I turn the shower on you, you're gonna wake up. We have a sleep Jesus and a wet boat. The boat is wet on the outside, but dry enough on the inside that Jesus sleep and Peter is panicked because the storm that's on the outside has gotten in his soul. So, the sleepy Jesus wakes up and says to Peter, "O ye of little faith". He rebukes not only the winds and the waves, he rebukes Peter because Peter has let the external become internal.
Watch this. So, when we read this text, "Do not be conformed to this world," it means more than whether you listen at hip-hop or not, or whether you keep up with the latest fashions or not, or all the things that we take it to mean, it may mean that, it means more than acquiescing to the culture. It may mean that, but tonight, it also means don't let your world affect you. Mhm. "But ye be transformed," from conformed to transformed, in the Greek, "metamufu," where we get "metamorphosis". In other words, your mind must constantly be going through a metamorphosis. "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind".
So, since my mind isn't new, though my spirit is new, or he wouldn't have called me "brethren" in chapter 1, and I presented my body a living sacrifice, in chapter 1, he's not talking to sinners, he's talking to Christians who are being renewed in their mind. Tap your neighbor, say, "He's not finished with me". I am saved in my spirit. I shall be saved in my body. I am being saved in my mind. I have been delivered in my spirit. If I take you to Corinthians, I can prove it. I have been delivered in my spirit. I am being delivered in my mind. That's why I don't want no mic on my head right now, because he's not finished with me yet. I shall be delivered, when this mortality puts on immortality, I shall be delivered in my body.
So, my mind, you're catching me in the middle of a metamorphosis, you're catching me while I'm spinning. I'm in The Potter's House, yeah, but I'm also on the Potter's wheel, and it depends on which side you look, where you're catching me, where he may have shaped this part, but not that part. He could have shaped my talent and still be working on my character. He could have shaped my character and still be working on my discipline. He could have shaped my discipline and still be working on my mouth. You're catching me in a metamorphosis.
Come on, real people, real people, real people, talk to me tonight. Where my mind is being renewed, transformed, but transformed, yeah, I'm so glad I'm in my church tonight because I named the church The Potter's House, not only because the Lord said so, but because I knew that I was called to preach to people who weren't there yet. Let all the people who are strong enough to admit you're not there yet, clap your hands. I was thinking about this, and it really blew my mind, my mother used to sell Avon. She did everything. I mean, she was a school teacher. She ended up the equal employment opportunities representative for the state of West Virginia and still sold Avon. And then, she started keeping the product because they were collection items. And at first, she would say, "Someday they're gonna be valuable".
In fact, I have some of them that she collected. And she started collecting them, and collecting them, and collecting them, and collecting them, until they were in the drawers, and they were in the attic, and they were in the basement, and little by little, the house got filled with stuff and it was all beautiful, wonderful, smell-good, aromatic, collectors items, but you couldn't appreciate it because it was hoarded up in the house. Hoarding. Do you know what I mean when I say, "hoarding"? I didn't say, "whoring," I said, "hoarding". Okay. Hoarding is having so many things that you cannot manage the clutter.
Your life is cluttered until all of a sudden, there's no room for nobody to come in, 'cause people, you know, when you come in somebody's house they say, "Come on in and sit down," and you'll be looking. And you'll be looking and you think, "Where"? "Make yourself at home... come on in. If you can get in". We got all kinds of sayings to cover for it, you know, and there's all of this clutter in the house and it's called hoarding. It's because you are afraid to let anything go, so you keep it all. "So, I might need that. Well, don't throw that away, I might need that one day. I might need that one day. That's for company, when company comes. I might use that. I know that that chair is broken, but I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna fix it".
And so, we hoard it. And most in generally, where you live looks like how you think. When you go to therapy, and they take you in to therapy, the first thing they start doing is putting you on a schedule because your lack of respect of time is an indication of chaos, and they teach you to straighten up your room, make your bed, clean up your environment because it will help you with your head. Because if you can be comfortable in chaos is because it reflects what's going on. I'm messing with you. I ain't gonna mess with you. I'm gonna go over here, I'm gonna mess with them a little bit. So how do you like it? Do you like it neat? Do you like it nice? Do you not like everything in its proper place? Or are you afraid to let go of stuff because someday you're gonna fix it, and someday you're gonna use it, and someday you're gonna need it?
And you pray for peace, but you won't let go of anything. So, you keep everything. You're on your third man, still mad at your first one. Stay with me. No, no, no, no, no, no. You thought I was just gonna talk about milk cartons and McDonald's bags, and stuff like that. I didn't get up out the bed to come out here, to talk to you about a Burger King bag that you ain't got rid of and that your truck...is in the trunk of your car. Open up the trunk of your car and ask yourself, does it look like your head? How many people are still living in your head?
Some of the people that you are upset with are dead, and you can't bury them because you say, "I might need". Keep the peace. But how can you keep the peace if you keep the clutter? And you are so cluttered. And you're so cluttered, and sometimes it's not stuff, and sometimes it's not past, sometimes it's busy, because as long as you're busy, you don't have to think. So, you make up stuff to do, and if you don't have anything to do, you will get somebody else's problem, and drag them home, and try to fix them because if you fix them, you don't have to fix you.
So, you are attracted to broken people because you like to work on them, so that you don't have time to deal with you. And broken people who are attracted to broken people, they like to fix people, so they're attracted to broken people, and some people only love you broke. When you start getting better, they don't feel needed, so they lose their attraction to you as long as you was on drugs, they was loving you. "I see what he can be. I believe in him. Don't nobody else believe, I believe in what he can be". You get off drugs. She walks out, he walks out on you because you're better because you "no longer reflect the clutter I have because I like to save junk".
So, we're in this situation now that we have got to find inner peace because people who have inner peace carry it with them. They come into the room and they affect the atmosphere because they are peaceful, despite all things. My wife can walk into a room, and without saying anything at all, she can speak peace, because Serita can go to sleep standing up. She doesn't need a pillow or nothing because I know she watching, and I'm gonna deal with it when I get home. Standing straight up in a tsunami. When she get ready to go to bed, she can go to bed. And that calmness affects atmospheres. By the same token, if you're an anxious, irritated, frustrated person, when you come home from work, the kids get nervous.
Come on, anybody know what I'm talking about? When certain people come home and you glad that they came home, but you don't know who coming in the door, and they bring the tension into the room, and everybody's braced for anything, and you prepared for everything, and you don't know if they drunk, you don't know if they sober, you don't know if they gonna hug you and start crying, or whether they gonna slap you upside your head, because they changed the whole atmosphere of the room. Whatever in you affects everything around you.
So, Jesus was full of peace, so he spoke peace, and everything became what he was. For instance, he is the light of the world, so, when he stepped in the darkness, he said, "Let there be light, and there was light and it was good. And the evening and the morning was the first day". It was the third day before he created the sun. So, we got three days of unexplainable light because he said, "Let there be light".
And the reason he could say that is because he was that, and it became what he said. If you have love on the inside, you can speak love and change the whole atmosphere in the room. But if you have hate in your heart, don't expect your kids to be loving because they were raised and cradled, and nurtured, in the malice, and the anger, and the frustration, and the bitterness of who left you, and who hurt you, and who didn't pay child support, and who didn't support you, and now he's running around with that other woman and taking care of somebody else's kid. Don't think that if you start bleeding, your kids won't be stained.
And the problem today is you've got so many things pulling at your head that you can't begin to clean up your room, your car, or your head, because you keep thinking you might need it someday. "I'm gonna keep this anger, so, if he ever come back, I'll be ready for it. I'm gonna keep this anger, so, when I run into his new wife, she gonna know, 'I'm not the one, honey, I'm not the one.' Yeah, I'm gonna keep it. I'm gonna keep it. I might need it".
But you keeping the wrong stuff, baby. She's not important. He's not important. "If you ever run up on me, he gonna limp back. I tell you that I wish you would. I wish you... oh he gonna be over there. Oh, I'm strapped, I'm ready. I'm looking for him". He ain't looking for you. You made it your life's mission to tell off somebody who ain't thinking about you, to drive your new car past their house and their blinds are closed. You wanna show him you got a new car, they ain't looking out the window.
So tonight, what I'm challenging you to do is to throw out all the junk, clean up all the clutter, and simply keep the peace. So, how do we keep the peace? That's nice in theory. How do we do that? Philippians helps us with that. It tells us we have to practice pulling our mind out of the sewer of all the things that happened, or didn't happen, or should have happened, or could have happened, and with a discipline, to choose to look at things that are true, things that are lovely, things that are of good report. The Bible says, "If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things".
In other words, think yourself loose. So, mental health is important because you could be spiritually saved and mentally bound. I'm gonna say that again, you could be spiritually saved and mentally bound, and eventually backslide and say, "Church don't work". It don't work because you didn't work it. See, you gotta move from piety to practical. You have to practice this. If I describe that in Philippians, if I make that description and that don't sound like you at all, you got some practicing to do.
Put the text back up there. Put the Philippians 4:4, let's put it back up there, "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice". Go ahead. "Let your gentle spirit, your graciousness, your unselfishness," excuse me, I had something in my throat, "Mercy," mercy, mercy. You don't want mercy till it's for you. You don't give nobody mercy, but then you need mercy. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. You cannot obtain what you do not give. Tolerance. "No, she not coming back in this house because she didn't obey me, and you're not coming up in my hou..."
You don't tolerate nothing. Make you uncomfortable? Excuse me for moving your junk. And patience equates to peace. "I will get there when I'm supposed to get there. If it doesn't happen in my twenties, it'll happen in my thirties. If it didn't happen in my thirties, it'll happen in my forties. If it doesn't happen in my forties, it'll happen in my fifties. Everything that God meant for me to have, I am willing to wait on it because maybe I'm not ready for what I'm asking for, and I am willing to have patience because if I can have patience, I can have peace. If I can have patience, I can have peace. In other words, I don't need no devil. I don't need no demons. I am already doing a great job of tormenting me".
The devil don't have to send nobody to persecute you, you persecute yourself. "Look at you, you ugly. Look at you, you should have been further. How come you didn't go through school? Look at you, you getting fat. Look at you, you getting old. You old. It's over. It's finished". Why would the devil waste a demon coming to your house, when you're doing a better job than hell, itself, killing yourself? You don't like you. Look at how you talk to yourself. And you pray for peace, but there's sudden destruction, and he doesn't have to use a demon on you because you're a hoarder. You're a hoarder.