The Power To Change Your Mind! | Bishop T.D. Jakes | Elevation Church

Hey friends, before we jump into the message today, we've got some big news. Elevation Nights is hitting the road again and we're coming to a city near you. From October 21st through the 30th, we're going to be in St. Paul, Omaha, St. Louis, Louisville, Duluth, Tampa, Miami, Orlando.

You don't want to miss these nights. I'm telling you, these gatherings are so powerful. We worship together. We rattle. We praise. We get to hear a life-giving message from Pastor Stephen. If you've ever been to one, you already know. If you haven't, this is your chance. Visit elevations.com to find your city and get your tickets.

We can't wait to worship with you and we'll see you this fall. Praise the Lord, everybody. It's so good to see you. Holly, come up for a moment. Holly wants to tell you how much she missed you. ((applause)) We missed you all so much. It is so good to be in the house of the Lord worshiping with you this morning.

You sound amazing. You look good. Thank you. The real reason I had you come up is so I could catch my breath from the jumping. Are you out of shape? You're not out of shape. You've been exercising. No, I I have more of an anorobic strength. More like bench pressing.

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. ((music playing)) ((applause)) 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 the strength to stand there and if you have the strength and the breath to praise God, you ought to do it. Give them a great shout right now. ((applause)) I want to welcome our entire efam 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 we've got YTHX still hanging over in the room. I I feel it, man. But wasn't it amazing? Turn me up in the monitors a 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 popups all summer long. Chad, we've got another popup 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 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. Um I kind of wanted Well, what I thought would be cool is can I just come to church and hear 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 um the text was from Bishop TD Jake. Now, so this guy said to me the other day, he said, "Are you back in the pulpit preaching this week?" I said, "I'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 Jake Jakes is going to preach for me instead?" So here's what happened. Yes, we would. Yeah, we all would. I think you all know that he is not only my preaching hero, but uh 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, uh, he said, "I'm going to 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 for them to hear from you as we celebrate this 20th 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 Sundays 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 Jake, after over 30 years of pastoring the Potter's House in Dallas, uh, transitioned the church to the leadership of his daughter and his son-in-law, Pastor Ter 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 Jake, 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 Jake, 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 oursel the official vacation church of the greatest preacher of our time, the one, the only, the incomparable, Bishop TDJ. ((applause)) ((music playing)) ((applause)) ((music playing)) ((applause)) ((music playing)) 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.

I love you! 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 here? Make some noise if you're happy to be here. Now, I want you to do something for me. Now that we have praised the Lord and given Him glory and clapped, you know.

I always have to change my clap because you all 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 poor popcorn because God said, "Make a joyful 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, like that. Yeah, like that. Until the angels get jealous. Until the demons start to tremble. Until the pressure begins to flee.

Let everything that have breath praise ye the Lord. That's what I'm talking about. Now that you've clapped your hands and you've praised the Lord and you sound like popcorn. Your hair's all over your head, you got a little bit of sweat breaking out on you. Turn around and hug somebody.

Get that, uh, anointed sweat on 'em. Let the presence of God overshadow them. You may be seated. Pastor Steven and Holly, I love you. I'm grateful to God for this great church. I love you! Isn't it wonderful... I love you back. Isn't it wonderful to be in 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, like, grief or anything. It's contagious. You see somebody cry, you start crying even though you don't know the person that they're crying about, you just start crying 'cause they're crying. And then you cry, and 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 says, "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 come in here, it's contagious. You'll find yourself, you know... So it's good. The problem is we can't stay here. We can't live here. Like the priest who went into the Holies of Holies and found the sanctuary of God, the presence of God, the Shekinah glory fallen 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, uh...

Some of you all were doing the Watusi or something. You all make up a dance. I love you all. You all don't have to have nothing, just... You know. And God loves it. God just spins around on the throne 'cause you're just giving Him the... 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 today, I'm so 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 about it. At a time that everybody's getting all in our refrigerator and WiFi, controls it, stuff that it doesn't need to... I mean, my iron really doesn't need WiFi. But some kind of way, my iron has WiFi so that when I'm ironing 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 Romans 12:1-12. It's very easy, it's very simple, but I want to share it with you today.

And I wrote it down 'cause I'm old and I can't remember stuff like I used to. Yeah, I'm a free man. Woo! You know, I loved it but I'm glad for my daughter and my son-in-law who have grabbed the reins and allowed me to get out and see you all on a Sunday morning.

Isn't that cool? I feel like a giraffe let out of the cage or something, you know. Romans 12:1-12, stand for me for the reading of the Word, would you? Just for a minute? And I, I'm... 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 Elizabethan type language that makes the scripture sound so prose and poetic and powerful. And you can almost hear God 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 any more blatant than it is in this text Romans 12:1, 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, been a terrorist against the Kingdom of God, has had a Damascus road experience by 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 five-fold 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 should all sleep and we should all be changed." This dude is bad. Okay? This dude's bad. This dude... 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 Hebrews. They didn't write nearly as much as the Apostle Paul, because 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 know God because he has had an experience, an invisible experience, invisible, invisible that left him blind.

And he learned to walk by faith and not by sight. And he wasn't there when the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of His garment and got healed. He didn't get to see Lazarus come out the grave. He didn't get to see all the good stuff.

He missed it. All he had was a great light hit him. 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 Him talking to us. And He has come from His lofty clouds of intellectualism down to the low places of saying, "I beseech you therefore brethren," which means I beg you. The great man begs, "I beg you therefore 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 transformed by the renewing of your mind. Be transformed. Don't just take on a form, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Don't fake the funk. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Don't just jump 'cause I'm jumping. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Have the kind of faith that lasts past Sunday morning. Be transformed 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... Yeah, I can change that? You mean it's possible that I can lose the impostor 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 rocked 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 could be transformed by the renewing of my mind? Now, you're talking about something amazing. He said, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you 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 jubilance 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 the 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… 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 renewing of your mind."

Sweet 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. Amen. I thank You because You're 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 that project an image of You, a form of godliness, denying the power thereof.

And strip us down to who We really are. For when you called Adam, You called Adam. Where art thou? I don't want your imposter. I don't want 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 holler at your children, shout amen at the top of your lungs. I knew I liked you. I knew I liked you 'cause when you get on your nerves every now and then, you tell them, "Sit down!"

And you don't quote no scriptures and you don't sing no song. You tell them, "Just sit down." "Be seated." "Let's go to work." Everywhere I go. This travels everywhere I go. We, we... The place where we struggle is not so much conversion, it's transformation. Yes. 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 clap. Am I doing it right? Okay. 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 without transformation. Now, he begs us by the mercies of God that we present our bodies a living sacrifice. And when our Western mind hears this Eastern phrase, we don't know what a sacrifice is. But a sacrifice is not a pretty sight.

It's where an animal is stretched east and west and north and south, and tied to the altar, and slayed with a knife to catch the 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.

Yes. I don't know about anybody in here that wants to be burned. Whether you're Republican or 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. Yes. I don't see anybody saying, you know, "Send me to hell.

Yeah, I'll go. I, I need a suntan anyway." He has asked me to present my body, which is never done in the Old Testament. You never see a lamb kill himself. Wow. Wow. Wow. You never see a goat commit suicide. All the sacrifices that have been offered up to God in the past did not come of their own accord.

They were dragged to the slaughter. 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, not crucifixion. To be nailed to a bloody cross, stripped naked in front of everybody you've been teaching for three years is a little troubling. I'm glad my pants are held up.

Right. 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 think you of me in that condition? Wow. I love these pants.

They cover my body, and this shirt, it paints this 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 spirit is 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 our self.

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 nerves. And try to act like they don't get on our nerves.

But they're getting on our nerves. And we have to have personality. And it's hard to have personality when you have idiosyncrasies. You don't, you... 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 bedbug." "Don't buy the fact that I'm cute and that I got nice eyes, 'cause my eyes roll up in my head, and I turn into the Cookie Monster." "I am scared of people, and I don't like to be in crowds.

I don't like to talk when I... And except 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 gonna be hell up in this house." Amen. "It's gonna be absolute war up in this house. It's gonna be trouble up in this house because it's not Sunday."

No, "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 living 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. My God. 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 therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable 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.

Just stop scrolling a minute. Don't be conformed to the world and the way it should be. Stop, stop all your AI. Don't be conformed to the 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 work.

Don't be conformed to the news and the media and the people and the personalities and the poli- Don't be conformed. Don't be conformed to this world. Don't be a... We do the very thing he said not to do. We are conformed to this world. To this world. Have you ever...

I turn off the news sometimes just 'cause I'm tired of hearing bad stuff. It gives me nightmares, makes me scared to sleep at night. I hear about all that stuff. I pray about it, but I gotta learn how to release it because I'm not designed to carry that much pain on the inside.

We, 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. Talking 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 peoples' opinion to the point we can't hear what's going on, because so much noise is coming from the outside that we cannot find a peaceful place to work on who we really are to become what He created us to be.

No wonder He 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 just so He could see what He looked like. He created it 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 they turned 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. That's right. Thank you, Lord. To really reflect the personality of God on Earth and that's why Hell hates you. That's right. 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 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 the head 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 hasn't hit you yet that you can stop the sun in the middle of the air and say, "Be still while I fight." It hasn'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 forming and able to be shaped like clay in the hand of whoever touched it.

And who, 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. Oh, come on. Come on, guys. 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. They 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, I drive smack dab into my history.

And my history contaminates, my history contaminates my destiny. Like Kool-Aid changes water. Like wine changes when fermented. My destiny, my old stuff, comes creeping up into my new stuff. Yes, sir. And I wrestle with my old self and my new self. And they are opposed one to the other.

And when I would do good, evil is present. That which I would do, I do not. Oh, wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I'm a great deacon, but 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. Right, right. See, when you dated him, he was perfect. That's right. And you dated her, she told you if you needed anything, she'd take care of you at 3:00 in the morning. And everything was wonderful. And you married their representative. You said, 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 done till you done what you do and you did it. And you done what you did when you do what you done with 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. Their indifference. Their missing dad syndrome. Their critical mother syndrome. And quote all the scriptures you will, you cannot get that out of their personality. Personality is not spirituality. Amen. 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.

My God. Your personality, and now I am struggling trying to figure out what's going on. You know, I... Can I take a minute? Okay. I took my son to Spain, 'cause he came at a time that I had to go overseas anyway, and I took my son to Spain.

And I was so glad to take him places that my father only read about in books and had never been in them self. 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 and valleys 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, 1,400 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, I act 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 or not. All I know is that the air gets thin when you get high in the air, and 1,400 feet in the air and you fat. No, you skinny people don't laugh.

You don't understand what I'm talking about. You have to weigh over 200 pounds to understand what 1,400 feet in the air does to your nostrils. It shrinks them down into baby nostrils. And you got little baby nostrils down on the inside, 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 than 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. Not our congress, not our legislature, not our people passing law. Most of them don't even have a passport. We make decisions about countries we have never been to.

Right. 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. No. Uh-uh. They are, they're caricatures on our TV screens and in our pockets and, and in our apps. And then we get on our app, we, 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 'cause it's happening so much. It's happening everywhere. Everybody's drowning or burning or dying or being bombed or being nuked and going through all kinds of trouble, and while they're going through all that trouble, it's not like you're not having your own trouble.

You're having your own trouble. Your daughter just cussed you out and slammed the door and said 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 putting out fires and waters and planes, and stop planes from crashing and deal with...

You weren't made to deal with all of that. Because by then you have developed your own brand of crazy. Not Kraft mayonnaise, 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 honk at me the wrong way, it takes everything I got to say, "God loves you." "Yes, He does, boo-boo.

He loves you. Yes, yes, yes, I'll meet you on the other side in heaven. And I'm gonna cut you when we get there, when we go-" It's all I can do to get him to shut his mouth because he reacts and he... Because he has built up a system of hiding himself and handling himself, and dealing with himself.

And it may not be the right system, and it may not work, and it may not have anything to do with church. Yeah, right. But I have developed a pathology that enables me to live with me. Yeah, it is. And I can't figure out why you can't develop a pathology to live with me. 'Cause I've worked on this for 30 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 or like I'm a crazy woman or something. I'm not crazy, and I have feelings and I can have feelings about what... I'm going through everything all by myself. 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 1500s, nation after nations have fought in that place. The Moors have fought in that place and on that place, and hollowed 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 here, 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 to 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 francs there so that I could buy something while I was there 'cause I'm gonna buy something while I'm there. I'm gonna buy something.

Part of my ministry is to buy something. I am called to buy something. I am anointed 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 ashy knees in West Virginia, with Vaseline for lotion on his kneecaps.

And if I go all the way to Spain, I am 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 area 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 francs. 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 European Kingdom, and they use pounds.

And I didn't bring no pounds. They didn't tell me that you could have one little patch of ground out of all of a 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 site 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 up, from that point. It's a high place where I... That's where in the Bible, the Old Testament, you always hear that God wants to move your high places, because the high places...

And the high places are the places of strategic advantage. It is hard to kill 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 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 'cause I act like I'm crippled, so she'll take care of me for 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 gotta 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 go deeper? That my cannons go off, that, that's what, that's what you get after you marry me. You married your girlfriend. You went home with your wife.

Oh, yeah. 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 on so much cologne, 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 breath 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 them all by, 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, I'm right on the edge. I'm right on the edge. I'm gonna stay on the edge.

I'm gonna stay on the edge, because the Bible just told me that I have to deal with things from the Rock of 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 incarcerates me.

And now I am protected, but I am also isolated. And you can't hurt me. Say whatever you want to say. Roll your eyes. Text about me right now. Tweet it for me, uh, if you want to. Take a picture and put it on Facebook right now, because I have developed a system.

You will not get me. I ain't thinking about you. I don't even know you. You could be sleeping up under a 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 cut 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 she... 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 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. Amen. Amen. And sometimes we build up ways to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. I've been studying this for weeks. Our brain is designed to deliver enzymes and hormones that secrete fluids in us that helps with us deal 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, a doctor that 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 score. 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, wait a minute.

I was at the Rock of Gibraltar. I gotta finish that. I was at the Rock of Gibraltar. I went all the way through the Rock of Gibraltar and went on the outside 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. There were all these monkeys up there. There were monkeys jumping, 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 were leaving little white spots on everything and they weren't quite as cute as I thought they were.

They were on everything. But it really was so, so nice. It was so wonderful. You felt so like you were in another country, all those monkeys. And I had the monkeys everywhere and the monkeys were everywhere and the monkeys were everywhere and I started noticing there was something weird about these monkeys.

And see, I watch too much TV. I watched these movies where the monkeys start talking to each other. You ever watch them movies where the monkeys start driving cars and the monkeys start mediating with each other and they start calling one another, they come through the trees and everything?

And I know there was a whole lot gathered around my car. There was a whole lot of 'em around my car. I'd have fought one or two of 'em, but it was a whole lot of 'em around my car. And they were all around my car, and it was all of these monkeys.

And you know what was weird about 'em? They didn't have no tails. They didn't have no tails. And my guide told me when the monkeys first came to the Rock of Gibraltar, they were born with tails. Monkey tails, you know. Monkey tails. They had monkey tails, but the tail is so small, just a little bit of gristle and meat.

The tail is so small, and the weather 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, they had tails too, and they froze their tail off.

You're gonna leave out of here and tell everybody I preached about monkey tails, aren't you? Don't you tell nobody I said that about freezing their tails off. Don't you do 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, have 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 and... 'Cause they're all in on that, that, that, they, they froze their tails off. And you know what? By the third generation, they were born without tails.

Wow. They stopped being born with tails so they wouldn't freeze 'em off. And suddenly, I understood something. I never understood why Jesus said, "If your hand offends you, cut it off." 'Cause 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's gonna happen later. I'm gonna jump. I'm gonna jump right now. I'm gonna jump. That first time I went to Africa, there was a big crowd of people and they were so excited and they were praying and they all wanted deliverance. I just dived, you know, like they're doing.

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, they, they take prayer so seriously. They take prayer so seriously. They take prayer so seriously. My son and I are on the top of the Rock of Gibraltar and the monkeys have stopped growing what they didn't need to!

What are you growing 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 some place 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?

That's what I learned at the Rock of Gibraltar. And suddenly I understood what Christ meant, cut your hand off, if your hand offends you, cut it off. He means, if there's anything you know about you that's messing you up, fix it. Just change your mind about it. Just fix it.

Just fix it. Don't just dance and skip and jump and hoop and holler 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 the Lord. Let's just dance and leave the inside unfixed. My God. Let's not take on the big fight of change. Do you know when the prodigal son was in the mud? I'm almost finished. He was in the mud and everything, and covered with mud and everything, and he didn't have anything to eat except what the swine did eat.

And he was sitting in the hog pen, and he came to himself. That's some weird scripture. He came to himself. Came means a journey, means a distance, means a 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 could 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 and 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 joy unspeakable, full of truth and glory. You can have joy when you go home and 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 joy 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 am 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 tearing 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 don't care if I win the battle at work, and win the battle at the car, and fix the pipes and the freezers and do all of that, and cut the grass and trim the hedges 'til they're straight.

If I don't fix the hell that's in my head, I will never be free and I will never be whole. 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 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 neighbors' nerves 'cause 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. Oh, my God. If I let go of my tail, if I am willing to cut 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 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 who you are.

The best part of you as a wife is that broken, crazy, idiosyncrasies that you have. 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 hog pen, and he has no money and he has nothing to eat, and he spent all his father's stuff and riotous living, and all the prostitutes have left him, and all the friends have left him, and he's in the hog pen.

And you can tell you're in the hog pen when something that don't even 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 swine, much less what the swine did eat.

And with flies all around his hair, and gnats in his face and slop on his clothes. And something happened to him right there, not in the sanctuary, not in the church, not in the choir, not in the praise team, not in the balcony, not sitting in the back, not sitting up front, not leaving them 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 is killing me. It's 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 hired servant.'" And he practiced what he was going to say all the way home. He hadn't even got 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 68 years old. Let me tell you something. It takes something to make me run now. At 28, I would run over anything. But if you see me running at 68, you better run, too, 'cause someone's 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 kill the fatted 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 gnats 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... 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 I 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 I'll be finished. I've heard this scripture all my life. "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me." But people always use it when they come up against a task or an obstacle. "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me."

Uh, "Greater is He that's in me than he that's 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 that...

When Paul said, "I can do all things through Christ," in Philippines, "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 in one 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. You have to learn how to do this. I, I don't know... There's 100 people I'm speaking to in here. If I'm talking to you, make some noise in this place.

Come on, make some noise in this place. This is what I'm gonna learn this Sunday morning. This is what I'm gonna learn this Sunday morning. I'm going to 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 going to enter into a new dimension and become a new person. I'm gonna shock my kids. They're not even gonna 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 throw 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 mind. I need 100 people in this room that will change their mind. That will change their mind. That will change their mind. That will 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 pour you out a blessing that you don't have room enough to receive. For the next 60 seconds, I want you to praise God 'til you feel a change coming, 'til you feel a change in your spirit, 'til you feel a change in your attitude, 'til you stop belittling yourself, 'til you stop talking down to yourself, 'til you forgive your father, until you let go of your mother, until you let go of your pain.

I want you to cut 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 have joy. It's up to you. No devil can take it.

No demon 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 will 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 you. The devil is afraid.

The devil is afraid. The devil is afraid. The devil is afraid. If you would really do it, if you let go of your church self and get down to your real self and let God do it, amazing things would happen. If you would just do it, if you would just do it and not wait on nobody to forgive you, and not wait on anybody to come back, and not 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 right in the middle of that aisle. 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 overshadow you right now, right where you are, standing right there, the Anointing will do a change in your life.

I will break every curse over your house, over your children, over your finances, over your body, right there. If you'll open your mouth to God, God will fix that thing once and for all. Your daddy 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 pew. They'll get off of your row. If you change your mind, God will do amazing things in your life.

I got to go, I got to go, but somebody in this room is gonna change their mind. They're gonna cut off some stuff. Let me hear you open your mouth and give glory to God. Let me hear you give glory to God. Let me hear you give glory to God.

Let me hear you give glory to God. Give glory to God. Give glory to Him. Give glory all the way in the balcony, all the way on the top row. That's right, give Him glory. God's getting ready to fix something in you. Your body's getting healed. Your mind's getting healed.

Your spirit's getting healed. Your circumstances are getting healed. There's a 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 fatted calf. If you praise Him, He will kill your fatted calf. I wish I had some real praisers.

I need 100 praisers. I need 100 praisers. Just 100 praisers. I could make it with 99. If I get 99 praisers in this room, God's gonna do something in your belly, out of your belly shall flow like rivers 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 and, and break that curse. Break that curse. Break that curse right now. Hey, thank you for watching the Elevation Church YouTube. I want you to subscribe. That way you can know when we go live and post new content.

Make sure to leave me a comment. Let me know what spoke to you today, where you're watching from, and what we can pray for you about. And if you'd like to support the ministry financially, you can click the give button now, and help us continue reaching people around the world for Jesus Christ.

Thanks again. I'll see you next time.