Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Whenever you ask for change, you've got to be prepared
for disruption. If you plant an oak tree in the earth,
it's going to disrupt the soil. If you plant a
peachtree in the soil, it's going to disrupt the ground.
There's no way you can have growth without disruption. But
God said to me, when you say change, I send disruption.
(00:21):
But don't let the disruption become a distraction. You won't
come out of this. You're not smart enough, you're not
bright enough. You waited too late. You should have started younger.
Those are the kinds of voices that we all live with.
(00:42):
For me, our ministry was growing. We lived in a
nice house, nice house we'd ever had, driving a nice car,
living from paycheck to paycheck, with making it every night,
I lay down at night after she goes to sleep,
(01:03):
I hear the voices. Those voices are the kind of
voices that stop you from buying into your own life,
stop you from enjoying the good times and believing that
they will last. The anxiety and the pressure and the
strength that it took to get from where you were
or where you are doesn't go away, so you don't
(01:26):
really believe it's yours. You're driving it, but you don't
really believe it's yours, and you're scared to relax and
really rest in whatever it is or whoever it is.
Because everything else went away, maybe this will go away too.
(01:49):
We talk about faith for bad times, but you also
need faith in good times to actually believe the goodness
of God. It's not going anywhere to silence the voices
that keep saying you'll never make it, You're about to
lose everything. Fear gets in your heart. See, I know
(02:15):
what it's like to be poor, and I know what
it's like to be without, and I know what it's
like not to have dinner for my kids. Returning to that,
the idea that that could happen is terrifying. And the
enemy always has some sort of tool or memory or
situation that he uses to terrify you. Even though the
(02:38):
good times are here and the dream is there, the
blessing is there, and the goodness is there, but there's
always this haunting, nagging defiance that says, don't you relaxe,
You're not worth it, you don't deserve it, and it's
(03:00):
not going to last. Resting in what God has done,
it's often more difficult than receiving what God has done,
to rest in it, to believe that it will last,
to believe that you will last it, love will last,
that life will last, that good times will come, that
(03:23):
things will be better is difficult because of the voices.
Then you are what you eat, and the voices are
the food that feeds your faith or fear. So if
you want to change your diet, you can change your outcome,
but you have to stop talking to yourself the way
(03:45):
you do, because if you continue to talk to yourself
the way you do, you will always be where you've
always been. It is what you say within yourself that
heals you. The woman with Israel blood said to herself,
I can but touched to him of his garment, I'll
be made whole. There was no scripture to validate that
(04:07):
she could say. She wasn't quoting Doudeonomy or do numbers
or anything like that. It's just something she said to herself.
There was no doctrine around it. We've never seen that
happen before. But she said to herself, if I can
but touche him of his garment, I'll be made hole.
And although she was crawling, she kept saying over and
(04:29):
over again, if I can just touch it, if I
can just touch, if I can just touch, if I
can just touch him of the guard, and without Jesus' permission,
I was out the support of the disciples. She creeped
up on him and snatched a miracle, snatched it, snatch
(04:50):
it because of what she said to herself. You see
those voices that say, what you can't do, what you
can't have, what you can't be, what's not gonna last,
what's not gonna work, is how the enemy pulverizes the
promises of God in your life.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
And it takes word to combat word.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
That's why when Jesus was in the wilderness and Satan
was throwing word at him, he was throwing word back.
And what we have to do is put word on word.
I'm blessed. I'm blessed in the city. I'm blessed in
the field. I'm blessed in my uprising. I'm blessed in
my down setting. I'll be blessed in to my old age.
I'll be blessed when I'm an old man. My grandchildren
(05:32):
will be blessed. My body is blessed, my body is,
my mind is blessed, my head is blessed. I got this,
I can handle it, I can do it. Bring it
a home here. It is that kind of talk. Saying
that to yourself drives back the other voices of negativity
that we all have creep up behind us and tell
(05:54):
us that we're not capable and we're not competent, and
we're not gifted enough, and we're not good enough, or
we waited too late, or God is punishing us. To
talk back to those voices shut seeing me down. The
pressure I was going through I was causing because the
(06:18):
pressure I was going through was coming from the things
that I allowed to reverberate in my head. And I'm
wondering if there are things echoing in your head right
now that are stopping you from living your best life,
because you will out silence them by speaking back. You
shall have whatever you say, soul says the word of God.
(06:44):
You shall have whatever you say. If it's betrayal, you
shall have whatever you say. If it's a life without love,
you shall have whatever you say. It doesn't just work positively,
it also works negatively. You shall have whatever you say.
She touched him and she was made whole. And he says,
(07:08):
who touched me? Which means he's oblivious to what's going on.
This is all happening in her head. The whole thing
happened in her head. And the Lord who is on
missing and asked a question who touched me? And the disciples,
wanting to be important to answer him, said everybody touched you.
(07:28):
He said, no, no, no, no, no, no no no, that's
not what I'm talking about. Everybody around me, don't touch me.
Everybody around me, don't touch me. You've been said everybody
around me, don't touch me. Just because you're around me
don't mean you touch me. Somebody touched me. Somebody touched me,
and she came out from the crowd, Chiefess league and said,
it was me, It was me. She got a miracle. Wow,
(07:52):
Jesus wasn't looking because of what she said to herself.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
When I say excellent, you said.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Excellent, excellent, excellent.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
The problem is.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
We all said the same word, but we don't all
mean the same thing, because what you call excellent what
I call excellent may be two different things. Based on
the lives we've lived, the things we've experienced, the places
we've been exposed to, our ideas of excellent may very
(08:27):
drastically based on how we define excellence. The problem with
the English language is that it is limited to interpretation.
So how do you know when I say I love
you that I mean what you meant when you said
you loved me. So we're having a conversation and I'm
making an assumption that your love is my love, and
(08:49):
it may not be at all. Or we're planning a
banquet and I make an assumption that your excellent is
my excellent, and it may not be at all. Because
the reality about it is your definition of excellent rises
no higher than your level of exposure, whatever you've been
(09:14):
exposed to. That becomes the new paradigm of what excellent
is to you, and it shifts from day to day.
And the hardest thing in the world is to have
a conversation with somebody and all you have to use
the words because I'm not sure that you mean what
I mean when I say excellent. I'm not sure that
(09:39):
you mean what I mean when I say love. I'm
not sure you mean what I mean when I say loyal.
I'm not sure you mean what I mean when I
say hurt. Because all we have it's worse is we
(10:02):
have to make up in our minds that whatever our
definition of excellence is, it's gonna change. It's gonna get higher,
it's gonna get broader, it's gonna get better, it's gonna
be different, or it's gonna go down. And a lot
of it depends on who you hang around and what
(10:25):
you're exposed to. There are people that take you up,
there are people that bring you down. They bring you
down to their level of excellence. That's what a job
description for a hater looks like. The job description of
the hater is to bring you down to the level
that they are on, so that while they're trying to
pull you down, I'm trying to get up. And if
(10:48):
I'm going to get up, I have to know that
there's gonna be a cost in getting up. I'm gonna
have to put my back to it or it's not
gonna happen. God wants somebody to work with him and
give what it takes to make it happen. Is it
worth it? Absolutely? I do not want to die. Let
(11:11):
me explain. I was born in between two dead babies.
The baby before me died, the baby after me died.
I was raised by dying father, and I do not
want to live my life and die, and at the
last moment of my life, I ask this question, wonder
what would have happened if I'd have pushed it a
(11:32):
little harder. I don't want to get down to the
end of the road and wonder what would have happened
if I'd have pushed a little harder. I don't want
to wonder that. I want to get down to the
end of the road. Like Paul and say, I fought
a good fight, I kept the faith, I finished my course,
(11:52):
and now later for me is a crowd of rights,
iss and the heaven. I don't want to get down
to my last breath and wonder what would have happened
if I went back to school, if I took a course,
if I worked a little harder, if I changed the
way I dress, if I changed the way I talk
to people, if I forgave somebody, if I release somebody.
I don't want to wonder about nothing, because that's.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Excellence, excellence.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
It's a come out with the conclusion I have no regrets.
The dying words of the thief on the cross was
remember me. The words of Jesus at the Last Supper
is as often as you do this, you do this
in remembrance of me? What does remember me? Remember, re
(12:50):
put back together again? Remember me. When we remember what
God has done, that becomes the foundation on which we
build our lives. Now, a house is not a foundation,
and nobody can live in a foundation. But it has
(13:10):
to have a foundation in order to be a house.
And I'm not suggesting that your life begins, ends and
all through the middle is nothing but Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Because you got to take out the trash, you gotta
brush your teeth, you got to comb your hair, you
gotta get your nails done, you got to get your
feet done, or you're gonna cut your blankets when you
land in the bed at night. All of that happens.
(13:31):
But I am saying that God is the foundation. When
God delivered the children of Vidua out of Egypt, he
did it as a foundation for them to remember. And
all through the whole Testament he says over and over again,
am I not the God who brought you out from
the Red sea? Am I not the God who brought
you out by my own hand and my strong arm.
(13:52):
It becomes a point of reference through which you face
the future, remembering what He did in the past. Remembering it,
putting it back together again again and again, and recreating
it as a point of reference to fight from, to stand,
to drive from, to to preach from, to teach from.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
What do you have to remember?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
It's important that you have something to remember, something on
God's resume that you know that you know that, you
know that He did for you, and it tells you
that if God would do that, he can do this.
If he can drive back the Red Sea and bring
me across on dry land, then he can fight you off.
He can deal with their Aleekites and the Hittites and
the Jefishites and the Garashites. God does certain things so
(14:38):
you will have something to remember, a point of reference
to what you build your life upon. And you stand
on it and you say, I'm not sure about this,
and I'm not sure about that, but this one thing
I do know. You have to know this. You have
to know this, and your know it. You have to
know this when your girlfriend doesn't know it, when your
prayer warriors don't know it, when your children don't know it,
(15:00):
when your mama doesn't know it. Something that you know
that you know that you know becomes the catalysts against
the trials, against the traumas, against the sleepless nights, against
the virus, against the crisis, against the times that.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
We're living in.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
We have been living in the most perilous times that
we have seen in one hundred years. We are living
in a time where nearly seven hundred thousand people are
now dead from something we can't even see. We are
fighting an invisible enemy, and that enemy has friends. That
has created trauma and distress until we are overwhelmed. Even
(15:38):
when nothing else is going wrong, just the feeling that
other people are going wrong gives us a certain degree
of stress and trauma. How do we stand up against
this unseen foe we fight right now? Of course, we
need to do everything we can to protect ourselves from
the virus. But I'm not just talking about the virus.
I'm talking about your mind. I'm talking about your emotions,
(15:59):
your spirit, your fight, your drive, your tenacity, your sense
of normalcy, your courage to get out of the house,
your courage to get out of the bed, the courage
to continue when there's a threat. Requires that there's something
about God that you have to remember. For the children
(16:22):
of Israel, it was the blood of the Lamb that
was painted on the doorposts, and death angel passed by
and said, when I see the blood, I will pass
over you. It was walking out to the Red Sea
and hearing six hundred chosen chariots coming, with failure of
chasing them down, saying I'm going to get you back.
He was going to get them back. But let me
(16:43):
tell you a secret. He was also trying to get
back the wealth they take it for the wealth of
the unjust had been laid up for the just, and
they had borrowed all the gold and all the silver,
and they had broken the GDP of Egypt. It wasn't
just the slaves he wanted. He wanted the money. He
wanted the jewels. He wanted the gold, he wanted the silver,
He wanted the things that the tabernacle would actually end
(17:05):
up being built by. He was trying to get it
all back. He could have got some more slaves anywhere.
He was trying to get what they had borrowed. They
had borrowed. The whole economy of Egypt was running through
the Red Sea. For the wealth of the unjustice laid
up for the jess. And when God brings you out,
he brings out enough for your children. The Bible says
(17:26):
that God put so much wealth on them that their
children had to carry on their backs the wealth that
God placed on them. I want the kind of blessing
that affects my children and my children's children and my
children's children's children. I want my grandchildren to blow kisses
at my picture when I'm deady gone. I want them
to be able to say, if it hadn't been for
(17:47):
that whole man, I'd have never been able to go
to college. I'd have never been able to get a job.
I'd have never been able to work for Google. I'd
have never been able to work for Xerox. I'd have
never been able to preach the gospel. I would have
never been able to do it. I want that for them.
So I have to have something to remember that I
can count on that won't break. And I wanna ask you,
(18:11):
what do you remember when life get hard, when things
get tough, when friends get few? There are how to
be something in your life that you remember God brought
you through, or brought you from, or brought you out of,
that feeds you, That is the foundation that makes you
(18:34):
to rise above the crushing and turns crape juice into
absolute mind the Bible says that we are a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood or holy nation of peculiar people. That
we didn't just wander in to him. We were chosen.
(18:57):
He said, you have not chosen me. I have chosen you.
I picked you out, I chose you. We are chosen.
We know this from a biblical theological perspective that the
reason that we are here is because He drew us.
No man can come unto the Father save the son
draw him. He drew us to him. But we don't
(19:19):
think about this, that we as a generation are chosen
to go through a challenge that this country or the
world has not seen in a hundred years. Of all
the generations. My mother missed it, my father missed it,
(19:41):
my grandmother missed it, My great grandmother missed it. They
had trials, they had tasks. They didn't have COVID, they
didn't have masks all over their face. They didn't have
people arguing and fighting about this, that and the other.
They didn't have George Floyd. They didn't have racial like
it is right now. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's so
(20:06):
crazy that there is enough stress in the world to
take your sleep and then when you add to it
the stress of your own life, what's going on with
you and the people in your house, and the people
you're related to, the people you love. And you take
that stress and you put it on national stress, and
(20:27):
then you add global stress.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
It's too much stress. Too much stress.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Coming at us from all directions leaves us with unsuppressed trauma.
Suppressed trauma, trauma that has no way to escape that
comes out in rage and self medication and over indulgences
and excesses and tempers and flaring and people up and
(21:00):
on stewardess and flight attendants and road rage and shooting
people over parking spaces.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Has too much stress.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
I've got good news, Jesus said, My peace give I
unto thee. Not the peace of the world, but the
peace which passive all understanding. This is the peace that
you stand under. You heard me, Yeah, this is the
(21:34):
peace that you stand under. You stand under a peace
that defies logic, crazy peace, ridiculous peace, the kind of
peace that other people will call you a fool for.
But you just got a peace in your spirit and
in your heart that he that has begun a good
work and you shall perform it until the Day of
(21:55):
Jesus Christ, You've got the peace to understand that even
though we are living through a crushing season as a planet,
with global warming and everything else going on, and people
shooting and people fighting on planes and all kinds of
sickness and people dying on respirators, you've got to know
(22:17):
in the midst of all of this that God is
not taken by surprise that he chose us to go
through this, and He wouldn't have chosen us to go
through this if we didn't have what it takes to
go through this. You have not chosen me, but I
have chosen you, and I have chosen what to try
(22:38):
you with, and I have chosen what to crush you with.
And if I thought you couldn't take it, I wouldn't
expose you to it. I'd put you in the middle
of it for you to stand up to it. And
so today it is very important that as we embrace
our faith, we do it with a new tenacity.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
We do it with a.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
New tenacity, because we have an enemy that is ubiquitous,
absolutely everywhere, and yet invisible, absolutely intangible, and we can't
touch him anywhere, we can't see him, and we don't
know who's next. But we have to know in whom
(23:23):
we have believed, and that he that has began a
good work in us shall perform it until the day
of Jesus Christ. And we have to know the difference
between being crushed by the Lord and being crushed by life.
(23:43):
I will not let life crush me. God, you can
do whatever you want, You can take me through whatever
you will order my steps in your word, dear Lord,
I am chosen for this generation. I was called to
(24:03):
preach during a global pandemic, with people dying and getting sick,
and people in the hallways of hospitals and more expact
up in funerals delayed for two weeks. I was called
I was chosen for such a time as if that
(24:24):
means that God has given me something that's stronger than
the times I'm in because we have been chosen, and
so have you, and you and.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
You and you and you.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
And even you, and God would not have chosen you
if this were going to destroy you. I'm always fascinated
by leaders I read about leadership, corporate leadership, church leadership,
spiritual leadership, family leadership. Everything I and find about leadership
(25:01):
because I am a leader, and the more proficient. I
am at being a leader, the more impactful my life
it comes. Just because you're upfront doesn't make you a
leader if the cars aren't moving. Leaders are determined by
how much you move something from one place to another.
Are you quantifiable? You ought to have some metrics to
(25:25):
which not a title. It's not a title, it's a metric.
You're a leader when we move. When we move to
the degree that you move me, that's a degree that
you led me. And so I'm fascinated about leadership. I'm
fascinated that God says to Abraham before he puts him
to sleep. He says, your descendants shall be in Egypt
(25:50):
for four hundred years, but afterwards they she'll come out
with great substance.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
And Abraham dies.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Believing a promise that he never got to see. And
God says, when he looks at the children of Israel
and how they were being crushed in Egypt, the Bible
says that God remembered his promise to Abraham. God should
excite me because Abraham was dead. And if God kept
(26:25):
his word to a dead man, this, surely God will
keep his word to a man that's a lie to
a woman that's alive, Abraham went to sleep, trusting God's
character to honor his word. Now we have gone four
hundred and thirty years, which is ten generations, almost eleven,
(26:50):
and Abraham has been dead, and God speaks to Moses.
And God says to Moses, I want you to go
down there and tell Pharaoh to let my people go.
But before he tells him what he wants him to do,
he describes to him who he is. I am the
God of Abraham, Isaac.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And Jacob. That's who I am.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I
am the god of three of your ancestors that are dead.
I am their God. And today I have become your God.
(27:35):
So take off your shoes sign of covenant. Take off
your shoes, for the ground you stand on is holy ground,
because this day I call you into covenant. How do
you know it was covenant? Because he calls his name twice, Moses, Moses.
And whenever God calls your name twice, it's covenant. God
will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Once has he spoken it? Twice? Have I heard it?
(27:58):
Power belongs to God. So whether they're saying Moses, Moses
or Abraham, Abraham, or Verily, verily, I say to you
this day, shalt thou be with me in Paradise. This
is a bilateral covenant that God has made to Moses
to get them out of Egypt. God to the day
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had a stop watch of when they would go in
and when they would get out. He knows exactly when
it's going to be over. He told Abraham that his
descendants would be their four hundred years as slaves. The
reason they were there four hundred and thirty years is
because the first thirty years they were not slaves because
(28:43):
Joseph was alive. But then after Joseph died, a pharaoh
rose who did not regard Joseph or his God, and
they begin to afflict them, and the more they afflicted them,
the more they grew. And all of a sudden they
have been in captivity four hundred years. And Moses's mama
(29:04):
gets pregnant on the three hundred and ninety ninth year
and burst a boy named Moses. And there's a hit
list to destroy him, but God protected him, not because
Moses was Moses, but because Moses had purpose. And all
things work together for the good of them who love
(29:25):
the Lord who are the called according to his So
when you know you got a purpose, no matter who
set out a decree, they can't kill you. So when
he could no longer be hidden, they brought him out
and near Pharaoh is raising in his house the very
one he is trying to kill, and he does it.
(29:47):
He raises Moses on Pharaoh's money. He educates Moses in
Pharaoh's school. He diversified Moses to the point that Moses
is genetically connected to the Hebrews, but experientially connected to
the Egyptians, which gave him the courage to be able
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to come back after he had been in Jethro's house
for forty years, and face Pharrah and speak his language.
And he was not afraid of him because he was
raised in the palace and not in the slave quarters.
When you are chosen, God will take everything that you
(30:30):
went through and make it work for your good. We
got to see normal disappear right in front of our face.
It is not normal to preach in an empty church.
It is not normal to be afraid of somebody when
(30:51):
they call. It is not normal to be reluctant to
shake a hand. And we have seen the memorial of normal,
which leaves us without a compass to understand how do
we get back and what do we get back to
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and what does normal look like in this current environment.
And I hate to say this to you, and it
might really upset you, but once the grape's been crushed,
you can never get the juice back in the grape.
So from that moment forward, that traumatic experience of having
(31:34):
the pulp shatter, the skin lacerate, and the juicy merge,
it signifies that that great will never be the same again.
And I suggest to you, my brothers and sisters, that
there will be no normal to go back to. There
may be a new normal, but the normal that we
(31:57):
grew up with will never be quite the same again.
It has changed the way we eat, It has changed
the way we shop. It has changed the way we travel.
It has changed how we receive packages. It has changed
the way we do business. It has changed every aspect
of our life. It has changed the way we educate
our children. It has changed the way we go to
(32:18):
the mall or don't go. It has changed the way
we get Christmas gifts or don't get them. It has
changed everything. And that's what happens when you're making wine,
it changes everything. All hopes of being a grape is gone.
(32:42):
If you're gonna be wine, If you're gonna be wine,
you gotta be willing to give up being a great
And the challenge for a lot of it is we
have a difficult time accepting change because we are so
in love with what was that we're not willing to
explore what it is. And so there we are in
a situation where God has allowed something to come and
(33:05):
crush our normal and get us out of our normal,
and all of a sudden we are afraid, never realizing
that what's in front of you is always better than
what's behind you, That it's better to be wine than
to be grapes. When you are wine and not grapes,
you don't have to worry about insects. You don't have
(33:25):
to worry about weather conditions. You don't have to worry
about locusts. You don't have to worry about disease, you
don't have to worry about fungus, you don't have to
worry about problems. That whenever God disrupts you, it's only
because He's got something better for you. In the height
of the disruption, he said something to me that I
(33:45):
thought was very important. He said, when you pray for change,
I always answer with disruption, because you cannot have change
without disruption. You can't have a baby without disruption. And
whenever you ask for change, you've got to be prepared
(34:06):
for disruption. If you plant an oak tree in the earth,
it's going to disrupt the soil. If you plant a
peach tree in the soil, it's going to disrupt the ground.
There's no way you can have growth without disruption. But
God said to me, when you say change, I send disruption.
But don't let the disruption become a distraction, because if
(34:31):
you're not careful, you will try to solve the disruption
as if that were the victory, when that is not
the victory at all. I did not call you to
solve the disruption. I sent the disruption in answer to
your requests for change.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Come on, go with me. We're going somewhere.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
I sent the disruption, so don't change goals and make
it a distraction. In other words, neh Mayah, you're doing
a great work. Don't come down to Sambalad and Tobiah
and make changing their mind your victory, because changing their
mind won't build your wall, so that disruption is a distraction.
(35:14):
So the Lord says to me, and I'll say this
in rap, He says, when you pray for change, I
answer with disruption. The challenge of your faith is not
to allow the disruption to become a distraction. Because in
every disruption there will always be an opportunity. So rather
(35:37):
than wrestling with the disruption, look for their opportunity. And
in the midst of this disruption, the people who are
going forward are people who see opportunity where we see distraction.
What do we need that we didn't need before. How
do we serve that need in a way that we
didn't serve before. How do we get out of the
(35:59):
box in the way we thinking, how we function and
how we deal with it. What should we take in school?
How should we aim our children? What should we point
them at? Seeing as the world has changed, and every
time you go into a grocery store and you check
out your grocery storeself through those machines, and you go
and get a plane ticket, and you go through it
and just flash your phone over it and going in
(36:20):
every machine standing, there is a job that's gone. So
don't fail to prepare for what's next, because you're trying
to get what was. When the grape comes through the crushing,
(36:41):
it knows it will never be a grape again, but
it will be wine. It will ge cabinet, it will be.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Wine. And the challenge of our lives is to turn
our crushing into wine.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
And you can't turn it into wine. If the goal
of your life becomes to build back your grape, let
the grape go and find the wine.