TD Jakes - Model Homes 2: The Power of Agreement
Bishop TD Jakes: My walk with God is my walk with God. That really is not up for your commentary or assessment. You can be a witness by your walk with God, but you can't... And we don't get in each other's walk with God. If I walk in a room and she's praying, and I often do walk in the room and she's in there praying, tears are running down her face, and she and God are having a moment, I generally back out. Because I don't know what she's talkin' to God about, I don't need to know what she's talking to God about, she might be talking to him about me. Whatever it is, her walk with God is her walk with God. How she relates to the Holy Spirit versus how I relate to the Holy Spirit is as different as the difference in the way we're dressed. Just because we got married doesn't mean we merge our spirituality to the degree that I must be you in order to be validated as a Christian. You have to understand that I have my own walk with God.
Serita Jakes: Absolutely.
Bishop TD Jakes: So when we started talking about agreement, we're not talkin' about, and this is the problem with our country, in my view. We think that agreement, in order for us to have unity, we must have sameness. So we end up in all of these battles tryin' to make each other, each group, like the other group. You can have unity around core values and still have distinctions.
Serita Jakes: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Bishop TD Jakes: If that's not true, then we should give up on marriage. Because we are not same.
Serita Jakes: No.
Bishop TD Jakes: We are not same, we're not homo, we are same we are hetero, which means we are different.
Serita Jakes: Yes.
Bishop TD Jakes: But we can have unity and become one flesh. And they shall become one flesh. But that still doesn't mean that she doesn't get to be an individual with her own walk with God, and her own personality, and her own dreams, and her own goals. Some women in this room are scared to get married right now because they don't want their goals to be swallowed up. But a man who knows who he is is not afraid to let the woman be who she is.
Serita Jakes: That's good, good, good!
Bishop TD Jakes: Isn't that right?
Serita Jakes: That's so true.
Bishop TD Jakes: And you have to understand that. And what I was explaining to another couple, because whenever they do anything the problem is, whatever he's in charge of she's running it, and whenever she's in charge of something he's got his mouth. And the first thing I told him is, that's women's stuff. What are you doing in there? I don't get into no girls' stuff. Y'all can have a disagreement, a cat fight, she thinks she's cute fight, I just listen and grunt. I don't get into that, because you understand things about each other that we don't understand about each other, and so I'm not getting into that. By the same token, I don't want you in my stuff choosing who my friends are, where I go, how I express myself, what I do, 'cause I had a female like that, but that was my mama. And even though I might call you Mama sometime, I really don't mean it like that. And you might call me Daddy sometime, but you really don't mean it like, come on. What I'm trying to get you to see is just because you're a professional and an intellectual doesn't mean that you have to marry an intellectual, just because you're a fashion model doesn't mean your spouse has to be a fashion model, just because you're an athlete doesn't mean that you have to marry an athlete. You can have distinctions and still have unity if you have a mission, what is your mission? Woe be unto the couple who has no idea of a mission, of a goal, of where you're trying to go with your life. And God help the children who are born into the house of a family that doesn't have a brand because that means that if me and her don't figure out who we are, then we birth children who don't know who they are. And all of us are sharing the same space and we have nothing to agree on because we don't have a mission, that nobody has any submission, which leaves us with division.
Serita Jakes: Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes.
Bishop Jakes: Every person in this room, daughter, son, husband, wife, single person, divorced person, you need a mission.
Serita Jakes: Amen.
Bishop Jakes: You need a mission, I think you age more quickly without a mission.
Serita Jakes: 'Cause you just rambling around, just aimlessly.
Bishop Jakes: Aimlessly.
Serita Jakes: No target, just beating the air and wasting all of your effort doing nothing.
Bishop Jakes: Absolutely.
Serita Jakes: I mean your mind is just full of nothingness. When we were in college, we used to say that, "Excuses are the tools of incompetence, they build monuments of nothing, and those that are accustomed to use them rarely do anything else but make excuses".
Bishop Jakes: Say that again. Excuses are tools of incompetence, they build monuments of nothing and those that specialize in using them are seldom good for anything else, excuses.
Bishop Jakes: Mhmm, wow. So what you need to do is to move away from the excuses and get down to the mission. I don't care if your mission is to go to the cancer ward once a week and hand out cookies, you need to have some mission, something to care about, something to work on, something to fuss about, something to be upset about, something that drives you to get you out the bed in the morning. "Well I don't have a mission, I don't know what my mission should be", I'm going to help you find your mission. Your mission should be built around the things that when you think about them or do them you get energized.
Serita Jakes: Yes.
Bishop Jakes: Your mission should not drain you, your purpose should not drain you, you get tired but it shouldn't drain you to do it, it should invigorate you. If you're getting ideas and creativity and you get energized, that thing that gives you the most energy and the most power is your mission.
Serita Jakes: My!
Bishop Jakes: Now we're not taught we have, we all have, a great commission...
Serita Jakes: True.
Bishop Jakes: To win souls for the kingdom, but the reason they call it the great commission because it's not the only mission. And if you're not careful, whether you use words like retire, or maybe you don't have a job right now and you're going through a period where you just got out of school and you don't have a job, you still need a mission. If you start waking up in the middle of the day and you have no reason to get dressed and you have no reason to go out, it weakens you, it dumbs you down, you stop being hungry, you stop being alive, you stop being effective. Somebody shout, "Lord, give me a mission".
Serita Jakes: Lord, give me a mission.
Bishop Jakes: Because if you're going to have agreement, I think you have to have agreement around the mission.
Serita Jakes: Absolutely.
Bishop Jakes: And it's not just where the woman is submitted to the mission, the man also has to submit to the mission and the children have to submit to the mission, or the family doesn't go forward. Now once you get out on your own, you can develop your own mission statement, but as long as you sit down up in here and put your feet up under my table, this is, yeah, this who we are, this is what we do, this is what we're about, these are the core. Now you can express yourself uniquely in some other way, but when it comes down to what we are about, You cannot have agreement if you cannot agree around, or coalesce around, certain goals that we have in common. Still being unique.
Serita Jakes: Yes.
Bishop Jakes: Still having my me time, still being my own person with my own personality, but when it when it comes to these core values we have agreement.
Serita Jakes: That's why every year I ask you, and maybe sometimes twice a year, I ask you, "What do you need from me now? Who do you need me to be now"? Because our relationship has grown from when I was your armor bearer and I drove you everywhere, and I helped you change your wet clothes and we were driving, and the boys were in the back. And then we came out of that phase and you got started moving quickly and I was at home having babies, and so, when you introduced me back to the stage, I had been gone for so long that I could scarcely...
Bishop Jakes: Let me show what they did, they put that picture up right there, you remember that?
Serita Jakes: Yeah.
Bishop Jakes: That's in Smithers and we had just bought this church in Smithers and we had no money, and it was a rat hole, it was raggedy, it was nothing. It was a condemned building and I was all excited. See how I'm grinning? I had just gotten off work 'cause I worked every day, and I had gotten off work, we jumped in the car, drove an hour and something up the road to go paint, and she's up on the ladder.
Serita Jakes: Yes, 'cause I can paint.
Bishop Jakes: Whatever I was after, she was supportive of it, she was supportive. If it was rolling a paintbrush or bringing hot bologna, she was in my corner; let me go further. What ever she is after, what ever she is after.
Serita Jakes: Whoever.
Bishop Jakes: I am support... wait a minute, what that mean? Hold up there, you went too far. No, no, I am also asking her, "What do you need from me? Do I need to be there? Do do you need help financially to do that? Can I make a phone call to help you"? Because we are in agreement, we are in agreement. We are in agreement, okay? The power, say that with me, "The power of agreement". "If any two of you agree as touching anything on earth, it shall be done unto you". If there were anything the devil did not want us to have is agreement because when we touch and agree, we are better together than we are apart. That means, stand behind me, I got your back, I got your back, up or down, weak or strong, right or wrong, everybody runs away, I got your back. I may be fussing but I got your back, I may think you're crazy but I got your back. The power of agreement releases a level of anointing that you cannot get any other way. If you don't have a spouse, have a friend, have a sister, have a son, have a daughter, anytime two people come into agreement, God inhabits what you agree on. The reason the devil is at war against your home is not that he doesn't like you, he doesn't like agreement, so he uses petty things, hurt feelings, attitudes, feeling unloved to break the agreement, because if you touch and agree, you can release the power of God like something you have never seen in your life.
Bishop Jakes: So our relationship, and the reason I brought him up here is I want to talk about all dimensions of relationship, our relationship is also updating too.
Serita Jakes: True, true, very true. Downloads, updates, downloads, updates, I get a download from God, I get an update, I get an update that affects how I download to him, which updates him as to what is required for where you are right now, talk to me.
Thomas Jakes: We both function better as a result of it.
Bishop Jakes: Absolutely.
Thomas Jakes: As a result of the agreement that we have between each other.
Bishop Jakes: Absolutely.
Thomas Jakes: Yeah.
Bishop Jakes: How do you, at what point in your life did you really see the agreement, and what matters and what doesn't matter, and the substratum of what connects us as parents to you?
Thomas Jakes: I think it was easy to put you all on a pedestal at first because of who you are, not just as my parents but in society, but as you start to see the humanity of a person it starts to change your perspective. So you all were once in my shoes, 20 year-olds trying to make something out of nothing, but now we can have that conversation on how to bridge the gap and do it in a mature manner, it's appropriate now.
Bishop Jakes: It's appropriate now, it's appropriate now, exactly, everything in it's own season. Let me say this to you, are you getting something out of this? Okay, I have been a voyeur of not only my own life and raising five children and now having grandchildren and all of that, but I've also been a voyeur of other people's lives because I get an opportunity to meet all kinds of people, counsel all kinds of people; from the very top of life, from the White House to the crack house, I have been there and done that and got the t-shirt. And let me tell you something, the people who do the best, and best is not about money necessarily, I'm talking about happy, fulfilled, gratified in life, are the people who learn how to function in unstable environments. We've been through everything, as soon as we got here, her mother died. We hadn't even learned our way around, her mother got sick, two weeks later, she was dead, she had never been sick, nothing, she died. Her best friend, the person who would keep the kids, that you could really trust, the person who was a confidant, the person who was with you ride-or-die, and I was one of the people who happened to love their mother-in-law. My mother-in-law stayed in our house half the time that I was glad, so I didn't have any kind of mother-in-laws stories to tell you, now we're in an unstable city in a new place meeting new people in a new church, have bet the farm on this word from God, and part of the stability changes, her mother dies. And you're in an unstable environment and the art of life is to survive the instability. Well, we survived it as much as you survive losing somebody that you love, because everybody who's ever done that know that you always miss those people in a way that you can't even articulate, but before we could get to some semblance of normalcy my mother got sick and died. In a new place, in a new environment, with adolescent children, and life moving, and changes, in the public eye. You cannot wait for life to stabilize to grow. Please, please stay with me 'cause I'm gonna need you in a minute, I need to come down here for a minute. Please understand, it is never going to stabilize, everything's never going to be right, everything's never gonna be perfect. Whatever you're going to do and be and grow into, you got to be able to do it in an unstable environment. What are they doing? You're trying to go? Okay, go ahead, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's his way of escaping being on stage, I'm gonna kill him later. Yeah, but do you understand what I'm saying? It's never going to be ideal, the people who do the best in their lives are people who function effectively in instability, how much have you had to change over the years as our world change and as we walked through, I don't mean progress, but through the storms? How, as a woman, how did you make it through the storms?
Serita Jakes: You know, babe, it's kind of hard to articulate because the storms kept right on coming, and so at one point I felt like someone was walking, I was walking around and there was a water balloon over my head and I didn't know who had the pin, and I had gotten so used to, from Mother passing to surgery after surgery after surgery, and everything was shaking, but I held onto my faith, I held onto my faith. And I'm not being super spiritual because sometimes it wasn't easy.
Bishop Jakes: Right.
Serita Jakes: To hold on, sometimes I thought it would be easier to just, you know, count it all joy and be done with it, you know? So I had to hold onto my faith and then I had to learn how to have private problems in public places.
Bishop Jakes: You've gotta be able to ride the wave and balance yourself, balance, that's a big word.
Serita Jakes: Balance.
Bishop Jakes: That's a huge word right there.
Serita Jakes: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bishop Jakes: Balance, what does that mean to you?
Serita Jakes: To me it means, when you're riding a bicycle the main thing you have to do is hold your balance. No matter what the terrain is like, no matter what the weather is like, if you maintain your balance you can keep the bike moving. But as soon as you lose your balance, the bike's gonna go one way and you're gonna go the other way, and you're gonna get scarred and marred and beat up. But if you can hold your balance...
Bishop Jakes: Woo, that's a preacher right there, "If you can hold your balance", how many people are going through some rough terrain right now? Do you understand that God is telling you to hold your balance? You can't control the terrain but you can control your balance, and if you control your balance you're gonna ride through this and you're gonna ride through that.
Serita Jakes: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bishop Jakes: And you're gonna ride through the other.
Serita Jakes: Yes, yes, yes.
Bishop Jakes: And if you just keep on riding, you're gonna ride it all away through to the end. For somebody that ought to be a moment of praise and thanksgiving to God.
Serita Jakes: Yes sir, steady yourself.
Bishop Jakes: Steady yourself.
Serita Jakes: Steady yourself.
Bishop Jakes: Steady yourself. To me balance means get out of the fire when you can. If you're going through a season of distress and you get a chance to laugh, take that exit, go right off that exit ramp.
Serita Jakes: Ah, yes sir.
Bishop Jakes: Go, "Hahahahaha, hahaha, ha, haha-haha". If you get a chance to be happy 30 minutes, if you get a chance to have a three-day furlough out of prison.
Serita Jakes: Yes, Lord.
Bishop Jakes: If you get a 24-hour pass for just a little while, I know it's going to be there when you get back, I know you're gonna have to put on the whole armor and jump back in the fight again. "But he giveth his beloved rest", and if God gives you a chance to rest from what you're going through, I don't know, I feel like I'm talking to somebody, I don't even know who it is. Since it is not going to change.
Serita Jakes: It's not gonna change. "If the storms don't cease..".
Bishop Jakes: If the storms don't cease.
Serita Jakes: "And the wind keeps blowing, thy soul has got to be anchored".
Bishop Jakes: Yes, glory, my soul is anchored.
Serita Jakes: My soul has got to be anchored.
Bishop Jakes: My soul is anchored, my soul is anchored, my job might not be anchored, my friends might not be anchored but my soul is anchored. My circumstances aren't anchored, my house isn't anchored but my soul.
Serita Jakes: Yes God, Yes God.
Bishop Jakes: Hallelujah, I feel the Spirit of God in this place right now, somebody give him 30 seconds of praise in this place.
Serita Jakes: Yep, yep, yep.
Bishop Jakes: High five somebody and say, "I'm going to make it through this".
Serita Jakes: I'm gonna make it.
Bishop Jakes: I'm going to make it through this. I gotta balance myself.