 Well I'm going to speak to you about something again. I wish someone had explained to me in my younger years, especially in ministry and especially in ministry in a charismatic, Pentecostal kind of church. Your church and our church would fall into that tribe most days. We're happy to be in that tribe some days, not so much. Some of our times are Pentecostal, charismatic tradition has not served as well and I think in this area too especially. When this came to me from, the idea to speak to people about this came to me from recently, I was invited to speak at a corporate event in London at a wealth management company in London and I do speak at corporate events too and so they asked me to speak on the title was Life Without Limits and it was the picture that the media they had for the event was the picture of a man planting a flag on the top of Mount Everest. Life Without Limits sounds cool, sounds trendy, sounds exciting, sounds look good on a t-shirt, life without limits. Only problem is there's no such thing as life without limits so the news I had to break to them was well I can come and I'll speak at your event but if I speak on that title I'm going to have to redefine it. I'm going to have to explain to the people at the conference that there is no such thing but explain why I think we believe that's true but why it is impossible to be true and I'll reframe it and speak about that if you like and I said I love your, I love your media the man planting a flag on top of Everest but if you take a pygmy and put him on top of Everest he's no taller. It's just a small person on top of a big thing and I have realized building church all my life that you should never put small people in charge of big things. I've got into a lot of trouble doing that and small people are people usually that are emotionally expensive. Just look straight at me right now all of you so maybe like he's talking about you are you here? So I'm going to so I'm going to speak to you about my reframing of the idea and my version of that is going to be called the gift of limitation the gift of limitation I try to work hard on my titles a good title is one that you remember years later like like a song or a book or a movie a good title is one that when you remember the title the content of the message instantly comes back to your recall a bad title is one that doesn't do that to you like faith what are you teaching on pastor faith okay and people open in the meeting they say what did he speak about what did she speak about faith okay what about faith I don't know but it was great and in my communication master class which Donovan mentioned one of the things I teach is that your freshness as a communicator the freshness of what we say is never in the topic it's never in the subject because there's nothing new to say really unless you dig for it about David and Goliath it's always going to be David it's always going to be Goliath it's always going to be Moses that crossed the red seat it's always the same players so if we're going to teach you from these same scriptures that we've taught for hundreds of years we better find an angle the freshness is in the angle not in the topic but in the angle you find within the topic so this is an angle within the idea of limitation and I believe limitation is a gift and I want you to leave tonight with three takeaways to go home with first of all I want to reframe your thinking about limitation as I just said and see it as a gift because accepting the limitations that you can't change and we all have them limits you if you like or frees you or pushes you towards the limitations that you can change secondly I want you to know the difference between limitations of design and limitations of default the limitation of design is why laptops don't make toast but we don't send the laptop back as useless because we know it was never created to make toast some of you were never created to make toast I'm using it as a metaphor now because some of you really can't make toast can you and it's a big issue in your relationship but I didn't mean that so stay with me it's a metaphor and then I want you to finally understand if we have time what I think is the greatest secret limitation of all that nobody tells about most people don't know about but we should if we want to understand the nature of limitation the first time I became aware I suppose institutionally of the curse and tyranny of limitation I suppose in the way that it was put to me was at school at 15 when I went to see the careers advisor and he said to me and I went to a school where you know the thick stupid kids went is how it that was the feel I failed my exams at 11 we all had exams in our country at 11 years of age on the basis of the results that day you're following six years of education went one of three ways grammar school for the kids that passed the test the smart kids technical school for the kids that kind of did average in the test those that failed went to secondary school comprehensive schools they became known as eventually well that's what I went so when the careers advisor sat me down at 15 and said to me kind of one after the other we sit down he said to me what do you want to do for a job and I said to him I want to be a fighter pilot and he laughed at me like you get real that is not an option for you that's an option for the grammar school kids but not for people that come to this school so he laughed in a way that I knew he didn't take me serious so he said no no he said I'm serious what what what do you want to do what would you what would be an ideal job I said I told you I want to be a fighter pilot so realizing that I wouldn't let go of this fantasy in his opinion he said to me well let me ask you what does your dad do what does your dad do meaning whatever your dad does is what I think you should think about doing because this was the day and age of apprenticeships and so if my dad had a certain job I knew he would say to me next well maybe your dad could get you an apprenticeship what does your dad do so he said to me what does your dad do so I said to him my dad is a serial killer I did I should have known then I was destined to be a rebel and a revolutionary I said my dad's a serial killer he said what excuse me what did you say I wanted to say that to him so he couldn't say to me perhaps he can get you an apprenticeship I wanted to shortcut the script I wanted to take the script off him and tear it up and throw him of course he just saw me as rude and as out of control and tried to fix me but I realized at 15 years of age that the system was stacked against me that the system and some of you are in a system and if you're at school you're in a massive education system the education system in this country and in our country and in generally westernized education systems is killing our kids every parent in here more than ever you have to get involved in in nurturing your kids because schools are killing them schools are obsessed with tests and exams that tell you nothing about your child what we're interested in is the flourishing of people it's a big passion of my life to invest in people so that they can flourish because I believe we have a crisis of human flourishing all around the world because natural resources are buried deep in the ground and they're very complicated and expensive to reach so are human resources the best parts of you your particular genius and brilliance is way below the surface and if no one helps you to figure it out if you're not in cultures like this church where our culture is geared towards championing your potential towards helping you get out your brilliance because school won't help you do it so we have to find other places where we get around people that are not going to say to us what does your dad do and stop you there as if that's the limitation of your life what does your dad do so I realize early on that I must not accept nor must you these imposed limitations that are put on us by where you were born the color of your skin your social economic background the education system the system of the country that you're in apartheid that this country came out of was an institutionalized limiting non-believing in people's potential system and thank god that that is over but it's still not over in many people's mentalities we still got a long way to go as we have in america with the whole black white race issues there because I also have a home in america spend a lot of time there so as I got into my late teens early twenties I had a epiphany defining life-changing experience around about 20 years of age I call it I call it the yellow that triggered the green the yellow that triggered the green now I got married when I was 16 and by the age of 20 I had three kids I know told you I was 95 I have been married now for 45 years and have four children and our first daughter uh charlotte who herself is in ministry all around the world and charlotte and her husband now passed to the church that I handed over to them in 2012 um she was born when I was 16 she wasn't planned you know I'm talking about she was five months old before we got married most people caught date get engaged get married we just bypassed all that stuff and just had a kid then my wife and I had twins I know people go oh fantastic no no no come in let me talk to you a little bit because I didn't sleep for three years so by the time I'm 20 I've got three kids I'm living in a council house a government owned house you might call it the projects they call them in America and it had a bright yellow front door because in the council houses the government houses this was how it worked this is how the painting scheme went blue green yellow blue green yellow and the house you moved into was forever that color you couldn't paint any other color you couldn't you couldn't mess with it it was government controlled government pleased government backed up color scheme and so if you moved into a yellow house and thought you know what I'll just change that you realize then you can't all the woodwork all the all the front door the the frames the glass frames were all painted and I'm talking bright canary yellow that yellow that that's the only picture I could find I couldn't find the picture of my house but it's kind of like that so blue green yellow so so we were yellow and I was about 20 and I had three kids and we were broke and I was in a job that I hated but I had to kiss that frog to pay the bills because we had three kids and and we were not doing well and we were struggling in our relationship and fighting and arguing all the time because we just were so young and so stressed out and didn't have any help and I just felt so I felt such a failure in not being able to change that not lifting us out of that and you know I didn't have a good relationship with my dad one of the books I wrote was called I am not my father as as a commentary about that situation with my dad um but I remember feeling about 20 I am a total repeat of my dad that I would not want to be him I don't want to repeat his life but I'm kind of defaulting to becoming like my dad because I feel powerless which my dad felt all his life I have no money my dad didn't all his life I resent my life or my dad resented his life all of his life and we grew up around that moodiness and that aggression which became violence and drinking in him and I thought I can see the beginnings here of me becoming a repeat of my dad and and one morning I opened the curtains to to get up and you know start the feeding routine and then set off to walk to work I worked in a carpet factory and I was going to set off to work I opened the curtains and there's a guy on a ladder painting my house bright yellow a council workman a government employed painter painting my house yellow I opened the curtains he did the worst thing or the best thing he could have done I opened the curtains and he went winked at me like good morning I'm painting your house I'm doing your favor aren't you glad I'm painting your house but it had a different effect in me it woke up the incredible hulk in me the passive dr. david banner version of me that have been going along with this life I didn't like that morning something happened you you've all had and will have moments like this sometimes you can't see them coming sometimes the way they arrive is a bit odd a bit weird it's hard to explain to someone something just happens you see something feel something experience something and something just goes off inside you what you got to do then is not calm down last thing some of you need to do is calm down you've been too calm down for a long time what we need what we need you to find is this person inside of you because everybody has one every single one of us has the equivalent of an incredible hulk angry I'm done with this I won't have this anymore person in us mine had gone to sleep and that morning the council painter woke up the incredible hulk in me and I turned to my wife and I said right that's it I'm done with this the guy's paint I don't even have the power to determine the color of my own house never mind do I want it painting today it's yellow it's been yellow for years and the man winked at me how rude how cheeky he winked at me I said to my wife and I'm ranting as she is feeding the babies and I'm ranting about the painter and she said to me well what are you going to do about it I said I'll tell you I'm going to do I'm going to get out of this crummy job I'm going to get a job that pays me more money and I'm going to start saving we're going to buy our own house so she said to me go ahead and make my day so I was so angry and I kept that anger alive in me and I went out and started to look for a job and I thought I'm going to get a job in keeping with my strengths I talked about that so with your strength I hadn't figured out by then what all my strengths were but I knew I could talk the gift of the gab some people call it so I thought you know what I'll get a job selling stuff my idea being if I can get a job selling stuff as a salesman I'll get a car as well and we'll have transport because we have no transport we were in the church that I passed it for 30 years but we didn't live in the city we were getting three buses every Sunday morning with our kids taking them to church every Sunday morning for years and we didn't have a car so the idea of a car that was provided with the job to me was an ideal scenario so I went long story short I got a job as a salesman I started saving for the first two or three years and I saved up enough money to but to get a deposit on a house to get a mortgage to buy a house and I was the first scanlan ever the first scanlan ever to own our own house it was kind of a it was kind of a no big deal to people that have always owned their house but but it was it was precedent setting it was it was barrier breaking in our family as is some of the things that you have and you will go on to do in your life and and for me to buy our own house and to take my little family to our own house I don't remember in the first week I painted my front door I tell you now it was not yellow and so this has to happen I think in some shape or form in life for all of us and it needs to happen for us corporately and organizationally and politically and in so many ways we need the equivalent of something like the yellow that triggers the green something in your life that makes you feel okay I'm done with this I am I'm so done with this and it wakes up this other part of you that has been passive for too long this is how we begin to figure out the difference between limits of design and limits of default let me speak to you about limits of design and limits of default so that you can understand the gift of one and the non gift of the other limits of design is stuff that you were born with so the physiology the DNA the biology the limitations that God gave you so you're never going to be Beyonce and you have to accept that you're never going to be Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran or Mo Farrow or whatever figure you aspire to you have to accept these God given limitations if you can accept the limitations by design you were designed not to be able to do that stuff it then frees you to not waste your time trying to make a limitation of design into a strength because you can't do it and then we wish we wish people would tell that to these people that go on Africa's Got Talent or whatever you call that show here these talent shows when these kids get on stage and they interview their friends and parents before they get up and they say oh she's gonna blow you away I'm telling you now she's he's unbelievable oh man and then and we all know don't we what's coming then the kid gets on stage and it's a train wreck and when the judges say what we all know they get offended and how the parents get offended and the slam the door behind them cursing the judges that's that's not accepting a limitation by design and if you'll accept limitations by design you will not spend seasons of your life trying to make toast when you're a laptop trying to be trying to be Beyonce when you are beyond a doing that oh what happened just then it's been a long day for me so limitation by design is something you were born with and what people say to us which is why this life without limits thing gets loose hey you can be whatever you want to be no no no no that is bad advice to tell a child to tell anyone you cannot be whatever you want to be you can only be whatever your strengths allow you to be if at first you don't succeed try try again no no no if at first and second and third and fourth you don't succeed you need to stop and check am i trying to do something that actually i'm good at because people try try try again and don't succeed and think the answer is to try more and you'll spend years of your life trying to get good at something that god never made you good at because it's a it's a it's a it's a limitation of design you were built not to be able to do that and if you can figure out what those are then you are free to focus on limitations of default limitations of default are the things that you should not accept in life the things that society that the careers teacher put on me limitations of where you came from your background as i said the color of your skin or a system that stacked against you or some identity that you shouldn't have accepted or anything in life that says to you you can't do this and you should question it and lean against it and push it limitations of default are up for grabs limitations of default and the all over our society all over our society and relationships are the ones you should say i don't think that's true about me i don't accept that i don't i don't i don't want to settle into just becoming that person i'm gonna push that a little bit i'm gonna see whether or not i can actually change that i'm gonna see whether i can go for that these are limitations by default default means this is the danger of default default is like autopilot on your life so you kind of don't know it's happening you just bob along for years accepting that that's not an option for you accepting that you'll never be any good at that accepting that you shouldn't really aspire to that people like you really don't aspire to that and default is this autopilot going along in life accepting this stuff and what you have to do with with limitations of default is you have to take manual control of your life you have to take you have to take your life off autopilot setting and grab the controls for yourself and start flying your life manually start saying i refuse to accept this about me that my family and friends and sometimes family and friends are the worst at putting default limitations on us because they can't see you any different to how they've always known you and you must never ever be loyal to an old version of yourself you can't do that that's a default setting ask just the way i am just the way he is just the way we are we kind of always been like that yeah hello then maybe you need maybe you need a yellow to awaken your green for you to break that containment because millions and millions and millions of us live our lives in these contaminants that we don't know we have because it's a limitation not the god chose not a design one you can't change those but it's a default one and we think that we think that they're the same because people tell us you'll never amount to anything you'll never be able to do that i don't think that's possible i don't think that can happen in a place like this a town like that a country like this and we think that that is somehow a limitation of design so we leave it alone it's a default one you have to figure out the difference and then start to push against the ones that you should not lie down under you're okay i know that some of you are lacking a few bible verses tonight to make you feel this is kosher and from jesus but you'll be okay i want to mention this last few minutes what i think is the greatest secret limitation of all the greatest secret limitation of all it was worth coming just for this tonight and the sick the greatest secret limitation of all is what i would call our belief systems our belief systems belief systems are something i'm fascinated by and i've studied psychology for about 15 years now because i wanted to understand people better than i did because people can be interesting weird strange random complicated scary and i wanted to understand people i think anybody that works with people at least owes it to yourself and them to try and figure people out because most people are too lazy to figure themselves out so i thought i better figure themselves out for me so that i am not all the time dealing with weird stuff that i can't explain and i get discouraged and fed up and think i'll change my job because you've got to figure people out so psychologists teachers the belief systems are the hard wiring of what you believe problem is that the belief systems are established by the age of eight so whether you grow up to be a stingy person or a generous person is decided by the age of eight whether you grow up to be a risk taker or a plate safe person is decided by the age of eight whether you grow up to be a forgiving person or a person that holds grudges and you don't forgive is decided by the age of eight these belief systems that are embedded into us in the most formative season of our life childhood because kids don't learn like you're learning now not in your head taking a note kids just learn by monkey see monkey do don't they kids just pick stuff up and you say to kids where did you get that from and the answer is from you and because you don't remember telling them to behave that way you don't think you're responsible for it but kids don't learn by telling them this is what to do or not to do kids learn by example and by atmosphere and by the default autopilot mode of the home they're in so you can tell the kids all day you i could do a i could do a lecture in here on mumps and do a brilliant multimedia presentation on mumps you'd have a notepads filled you'd be a genius on mumps but if i've come in here with measles you leave here with measles knowing everything about mumps because people catch who you are people catch what you have not what you say you have or what you say they should have and this is how kids pick up and people pick up default mode beliefs so these belief systems we all came into this room with tonight and these things were decided way upstream of where you are now and now you're not eight maybe now you're 38 or 48 all you know is i've got stuff in my life that i don't even like about myself and i don't know what to call it i just feel threatened in certain situations or i feel insecure around people or i'm i'm cynical all the time i always have to sort of bring someone down a peg or two i always have to have the last comment or i'm a very nervous person or i'm kind of um overconfident and i kind of over talk and over share the over sharing thing over share and there's these fault lines in our lives and it's cost your jobs and it's cost your friendships cost your opportunities but we don't know to call it and usually they are these default mode belief systems that we don't know that we had for instance three million plus Hebrews came out of Egypt but they died in the wilderness not because they were slaves physically but because they were slaves mentally so they had a slave mentality they had a victim mentality because oppression breeds victimization oppression breeds victim mentality and your country knows a whole lot about that so do other parts of the world so these these generationally established slaves couldn't get over the fact that they were free and so still behaved like slaves though they were free and it was that belief system that cost them get into the promised land so this is how real this is these things can be life or death and no one tells us that's why it's a secret no one tells us that these that these social economic cultural regional racial gender whatever they may be belief systems are deeply embedded in our lives and because um because we have two minds we have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind we all know that what we don't know is the ratio the ratio is that our conscious mind is only 20 percent of our thought life 80 percent of your thought life is subconscious how scary is that 80 percent of where your thinking comes from is below your consciousness it's where your beliefs sit and those beliefs are controlling all outcomes this is why you can go to the gym in january you know that new years resolution stuff i'm gonna get fit lose a few pounds go to the gym in january and by february march at a stretch you go in less often or not at all or the treadmill someone bought you for christmas so that you can work out at home you are on it religiously dedicatedly every single day until about first of feb and by the end of feb you just use it to hang your clothes on because your 20 head said this is good i'm gonna do this but you didn't know and no one told you that your belief system sat there saying no freaking way are we doing this and what you don't realize is this and what we don't realize is this with this issue you cannot have a behavioral change without a belief change it will not sustain but we try to change things by behavioral modification all the time never realizing that we default back to the wrong behavior because what's feeding the wrong behavior is these deeply subconscious belief systems and these belief systems are controlling all of the outcomes in all of our lives here tonight this has been good for me as a leader and a pastor because it makes me more realistic about what's possible in a service like this my expectations have totally changed on what's possible in me talking to you for 30 minutes i kind of downgraded years ago what i believe was possible you'll never hear me saying ever i stopped these years ago hey i'm going to tell you this is going to change your life tonight because that's over promising and i don't decide that you decide that so when people say in a when i'm in a meeting and people say i'm going to tell you this will change your life i say to myself i'll be the judge of that because you will and i will i might say something to you and say guys this is really really important but i don't hear what happens next which is what goes on inside your head because there's two voices in this room there's what i am saying to you then there's what you are saying to you about what i'm saying to you and what you say to you is by far the most powerful voice in your life let's get the band back up here i should have said that some moments ago when you say that gives people hope we finished seriously i've been in some meetings where i wish to god the band would have got up sooner from a life flashing before me on the third hour thank god for these kind of churches where we realize people have lives outside of the church and families and jobs and stuff so the band can come back up now thank you when you don't say can the band come back up and they get up it's like they're always saying okay get off so we all have here tonight you've all come with these subterranean subconscious default belief systems i don't know what they are for you jk rowling that wrote harry potter was interviewed on tv a while back and she's now multi multi millionaire worth hundreds of millions married two kids and she was telling the story about she was trying to write the seventh edition of harry potter but her house was chaos with the kids and school run and school pick up and family around and stuff in the home and she was behind on the deadline and panicking and her friend said to her joe you should go and rent a hotel suite buy a flipping hotel go and buy rent a space and go and write there don't try and write at home go and buy a space rent a space and go and write there then come home and be mom and then go back and write in the hotel go and rent a hotel room rent a hotel suite and and jk rowling said to a friend but that would be such a waste of money so expensive to which your friend went you didn't just say that to me did you you didn't we get to say that not you and when when jk rowling said i heard myself say but that would be so expensive is that it's only she said it's only then i realized that the broke single parent that wrote the first harry potter in a coffee shop in erin borough where she went to keep warm because she couldn't heat her flat when she drank two coffees a day because she couldn't afford more than two and she would sip it slowly so the owner didn't throw out and she would sit for the warmth in the coffee shop typing the first ever harry potter she said it's then i realized when my friend said that to me she said this then i realized that the broke single parent version of me had not caught up with the multimillionaire version of me that's a belief system that locks you and anchors you in an old mindset even though your whole surroundings now say that all that should have changed so this is the greatest secret that keeps people limited these belief systems that prevent you progressing even though you want to and you know you can and you should and you do the equivalent of going to the gym the equivalent of trying to improve yourself and you default back all the time to the person you don't want to be the chances are you have a belief system and the only way to change it is you have to reprogram that subconscious jukebox gotta put new tunes in there and it's hard work it's hard work personally and corporately and a lot of people quit because it's so hard work and the longer you leave it the tougher it is but i gotta tell you those belief systems are where your default limitations are coming from i'm gonna identify them find a language for them least if you go home tonight saying i wonder what would be my belief system ask your friends what would you say would be possibly one of mine can you help me get in the neighborhood even aware that i might have an internal default limitation that's just stopping me progressing because you know what your natural ones are they're easier to spot maybe these default ones are tricky and so i'm just shining a light on them in the hope that it may become aware to you that you have one or two or three that you can identify tell you if you can change just one of those for the rest of this year you can work on one and reprogram one belief system it will completely seriously it will completely release your life to a whole new level and give you a lot of more options that you don't have right now because you don't know what it is that's holding you back because you want to change you want to do that and you try but you keep being dragged back it's probably a belief system that's limiting your life and that's one of the best kept secret the devil has but it's not a secret anymore because i just told you amen come on let's stand together all across the room well father we thank you so much for this amazing idea that you had at the beginning to use us to use ordinary people to represent you in the earth and we feel privileged to have met you that you even glanced in our direction still is amazing to us let alone that you would include us and use us and believe in us and get stuff done through us and so we are here tonight always in awe of your grace and your inclusion of us and i just pray tonight for everyone here those listening later to the download online that you will help us to get intentional about this issue of limitation help us to figure out our default mode limitations help us to find the courage and the wisdom to identify and to navigate our way through the complexity of this limitation issue and i pray for change and progress and upgrades and breakthroughs for us as we become aware of our self limiting default modes and the green as it were wakes up inside us and i pray for and enough is enough moments for us in these weeks and months ahead as we start to tackle and change things that we shouldn't have been living with for as long as we have and we thank you for your divine assistance help partnership belief in us as we attempt massive things in our lives that people tell us we can't do and our forefathers never beat but on our watch in our time and our turn we are committed to not default to our ancestors our forefathers helplessness victim mentality fear insecurity small mindedness Lord we refuse that every generation has to make a choice about these things which used to step up and to stand out and to speak up and to take manual control of our lives in Jesus name thank you father let me ask all across the room while eyes are closed if you're here tonight and you've never ever given your life to Jesus who gave his life to you 2 000 years ago so this moment isn't about God making his mind up about you that happened way back this is down to you now never given your life to Jesus i wonder would you want to do that tonight is this the right time and the right moment for you maybe you once prayed a prayer lifted a hand and prayed a prayer but you weren't ready you did it to keep someone else happy that happens a lot did it for your spouse did it to keep your friends happy because you thought if i don't lift my hand it's a deal breaker so tonight i want you to listen to because this is about you for you deciding for you not for anyone else that i i want to make this decision i want to make this stand tonight god i i give you my life i want a new beginning i'm stepping up and i'm stepping out come on if that's you tonight will you lift your hand where you are when i've seen your hand you can take it down you're just saying yeah that's absolutely me tonight come on someone here someone over there come on over there over there fantastic come on who else just keep lifting your hands someone there down here there there fantastic anyone else just lift your hand where you are come on anyone else someone there over there over there fantastic everybody look at me a minute let me just say listen lifting a hand is only one way to come to christ it's not the only way if lifting a hand doesn't suit you then don't lift your hand don't let our methods stop you find whatever way works for you we don't care how people come to christ we just care that you do and we care that our methods don't stop you so listen if you're not offended that we ask you to lift a hand we're not offended that you don't it's a win win but those that did lift a hand tonight we honor you we celebrate you we thank you because it's a tough thing to do sometimes but if you're in your heart thinking i would like to do that but i would like to do it in a different way we don't care find someone speak to someone but let today be the day where you do the equivalent of that somehow in your life is what this moment is all about i'm going to say let's give a huge applause to the ones that did lift a hand i'm going to hand back to pastor donovan thanks everybody for having me go strong thank you blessings thank you