There are few things more powerful in our lives than the stories we tell ourselves about reality. If we have lived through a difficult past or are living through a difficult present then it can be easy to live under a sense of limitation or fear. In today's message it's time to hear from the amazing T.D. Jakes as he shows us that all that we have lived through is not the end of our story but might just be the beginning.

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Hey guys, Jonathan Doyle with you.

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We're going to jump into today's quote.

It is from the inimitable.

TD Jakes, big personality, big voice, big influence.

Let's jump into this.

Quite tried from teenage hikes.

Don't allow your past or present condition to control you.

It's just a process that you're going through to get you to the next.

All right friends.

How many of us had absolutely perfect childhoods?

How many of us never got a broken heart?

How many of us never got embarrassed or felt self-conscious?

How many of us right now feel truly stuck?

You feel stuck where you are in life.

You're not enjoying the particular relationships, the stress

and difficulty everywhere.

Well, we.

Many of us have been through really difficult times.

What happens is when we get stuck, what happens is when you're looking

back at your childhood and you're creating an equation, you see a

homeschooling, one of my kids, and we're doing a lot of work on equations on

algebra, on prime factorization tree.

It is proof that there is a heaven because my gosh, hell is going

to be a big room full of having to do prime factorization trees.

But anyway, we're doing these equations and it's like, you know, teaching her that

this happens in, this happens in this.

For some of this, we run negative equations on our

lives, especially on our past.

We're like, well, this happened to me.

And therefore I can never ex because right.

It's like, self-destructive mind algebra.

It's like, well, my father was never there.

So my mother was never there.

So this happened, or my parents divorced, or I saw this and this person

was an alcoholic and this happened, I don't deny the reality of suffering.

Right.

Most of us have been through some kind of pretty hard things at

some time, or maybe your equation is you're running it right now.

You're like, well, I'm stuck in this job.

And the job is a, and this is B and I'm never going to get

to where I want to be with TD.

Jakes is telling us today that is if you want your past or your present

are just the process by which you're going to, where you need to be.

It's raw material it's input.

So we have to learn to think differently about our pasts.

We have to learn to think differently about our present, you know, for me

with COVID, uh, and all the shutdowns, a huge part of my career change.

And I did go through a season, like many of you where you're

just like, what do I do?

What does this mean?

And now I'm like, well, I felt that I lost a couple of years.

But I'm starting to tell myself a better story, which is like, you know

what, I don't ever want to have that experience of being nonproductive again.

So maybe that experience, this equation is this happened and it's happened

because I want to try and create something different going forward.

So I just want to encourage you today that no matter what you're facing on a

matter of what you've come from, you can restructure what it means you can, if.

Find an empowering meaning and what you've come from or what you're

living through at the moment.

The most difficult times will either break you and make you cynical and

critical and broken, or they'll make you stronger if you learned to

think about them in empowering ways.

So can you do that?

Can you look into your past and go?

Yeah, I remember when this happened, you know, look at a

lot of what I went through is.

And a lot of things that I can look back at and say were really negative.

They were not pleasant, but now as a father and my kids are coming into their

teens and it's really cool because I find myself endlessly in conversations,

particularly with my oldest daughter, just mapping out for her, the dumb stuff

that I did thought believed or said.

And coaching her as she goes through similar challenges.

So can you see her no matter what you've come through can be useful that

your suffering and difficulties can actually help you to become a productive,

contributing member of our world.

So don't waste it.

Do not waste it.

Look back.

Find a bit of meaning and use it.

Okay.

Do not allow the story to tell you your stock do not allow the story of your

past or the story of your present to limit where you're heading to easy to

say, but it is possible to live it.

All right, friends, make sure you've subscribed.

I love doing this.

I've got a really cool message for you tomorrow.

So make sure you tune in my name's Jonathan Doyle.