he has been named america's best for each year by time magazine he's worked with both presidents bush and obama he's the founder and senior pastor of the potter's house in dallas it's one of the fastest growing churches in the nation over thirty thousand members of bestselling authors latest book is going to be a runaway hit instinct the power to unleash your in morning drive and talk a lot about the book in a little while surprised at the title there's a number herd instinct was very religious school of bandits and we'll get to that in the nearly five c. is since you were with us back to c.n.n. obama was kicking it as a presidency how do you think he's doing i think he's doing pretty well under the circumstances no president goes through the kind of to mulch or is terms that he's gone through without scrapes and bruises but the overall at the good he's done

pretty we'll. you support affordable care i do i do too but do you think it's going to kick in where i think it's going to have problems i think it's got a lot of problems i think that some of the critics of it are absolutely right that there's a lot of work that needs to be done on it but it is a starting point and i'm glad to see as make a start i think that over the next probably the next decade we'll still be correcting it and fixing various nuances that weren't considered or been properly but there had to be a start maybe for the millions and millions of people in this country that have no health care at all my friend billy graham told me that throughout the is it was still always humbling in knowing many to be with presidents is it humbling for you absolutely unbelievably so and i'm very respectful of any relationships that they extend toward me i've been very very careful to honor the privacy of whatever conversations might be shared and to be just to honor the office for what it is

we've got a list of what party is in that office president bush was very religious he was they want to get this you think we're legion has a role in politics in this country yes motives going to be separate yeah but whenever anybody is ready to run they get religious whether there or not so this certainly has the ramifications and like it had been all cultures religion has affected our to the effect that literature and have affected politics i think it affects the way that we perceive and interact with each other everything you always religious. it depends what you call religious rule red tape the group around church and everything but i think one of the misnomer that people think that when you grow up around church that you're this puritanical individual assortment of that i would normal kid like anybody else but faith certainly had an influence on me all of my life and still does today why the initials while my leisure wise in t.v. is shorter than thomas dexter and i'd like thomas to know when your book starting yesterday you get it is really really

a lot less books there's always been the right i know nothing is tedious but it wasn't like that early on i mean people call me thomas for years and years and years but suddenly when i got outside of west virginia the missile thing took off and i kind of went with it this easy decide historic supreme court ruling recently five to four on open prayer at council meetings they limited that they didn't expand it to schools or anything and they did expand that council used to only do christians you know they did jewish muslim now and you make a ruling i think it's very good i think it's reflective of who we are that the people i mean no matter what you do you're going to offend somebody with whatever you believe or think about anything and that just speaks to the diversity that exists in this country and for the supreme court to acknowledge that faith is a part of our labs and i think they did it more from a traditional historical perspective is an idea from a theological one but be that as it may to acknowledge the fact that there are people who who are very comforted by the by their pro-life regardless to their

built their belief system as what the majority said that it brings comfort him out he said no that it has no place in the political in the larry with pastor you have to about eleven and churches synagogues and mosques all over this country were running over with people you'd be surprised when we're up under attack of people stop being offended by a lot of things when they're really in trouble and to those people who are adamantly atheistic or agnostic i mean their views are to be respected too but if we respect him in fact we have thing on my belief. system in order to accommodate your own there has to be some middle ground because our country is going to continue to be increasingly diverse as we begin to bring in more and more people groups and we have to set policies and embrace of people's views and accommodate them as best we can how do you feel those bugs me when we still have that incredible. yes since slavery times not totally recovered from a racist background and then we see things that paula deen donald sterling that

keeps coming back what does it do to you i'm not really surprised by that there is no i'm not surprised my father was from mississippi my mother was from alabama i grew up in the sixty's so you know i'm aware this culture this generation is shocked but i'm not shocked by that all and i don't think it will ever totally go away not only in this country but in every country it's not always over black and white but it's always a risk something in some parts of the world is over traps and other parts of the world with a religious but there's always going to be anybody forward bottom line is stupid his name is no but if i was younger that color and that is it did stupid and is ignorant but that's part of human humanity and i think that we who are victims of that in any way have to move beyond it and progress and not make changing your heart the goal of my life because if i may change your heart the goal of my life i

couldn't in total disappointed because i have no control over the way you think of the way that you love you cannot legislate love you just cannot legislate it you cannot make a mandate for people who to feel differently you can make them say different things but but for other they mean it or not is something that is a matter of the heart and i don't think our government can do that doesn't make you ponder why someone i mean is no baby it is a racist right to be taught that i thought is a learned behavior is absolutely the learned behavior that absolutely the learned behavior and i think it's also a generational issue i think as we get further and further away from our history and as we update the challenges of our contemporary times we will be less inundated with the bruises from our past but it is a slow healing gaping wound not only on the big them but even on the victimizer because i think the racist. if an expression of your own will really depends on your own absolutely the book is instinct the power to unleash your inborn drive

defined it instinct is instinct is the adding an acknowledgement that we have been pretty word research proclivities to which is that when we are placed in though the burmans which we are attracted to we are best suited to function from that perspective it's the old as was trust should absolutely how about though when your instinct is wrong like you like someone they turned out to be terrible my instinct was to take that job it was bad job how do you deal with that when i look at the instincts i look at the more from a global perspective than some specificity i want to make a distinction between instincts and urges we all have human urges which may take you anywhere but when i speak of instincts i think of your ability to be artistic not necessarily a particular job your ability to be prolific of the writer not necessarily working for a particular journalistic per persuasion so we're talking about categories as opposed

to specific locations and to find out who you are and for you shine the best what you are designed to do may not really point to a person you date or a job you take but it's set you on a course for human development and for a sense of contribution to the world at large and you always trusted your ins. sometimes willingly and sometimes before think you develop it as you go along and you know instincts become defined but in retrospect when you look back over your life you can see when you went with it and how it worked and when you didn't go with it how it did not work and again i can see many to the my life that i took the wrong turn and then decided well i thought i would end up doing something in the three or music because i love music but i am not. a gift with music but i'm not equipped to the degree that i could've made it my lad. calling so now in the pew that a jury of people think of examples where i was supposed to be. but or writing speaking

is something that is that i'm passionate about why what made you write this book i wrote this book because of i'm getting older and as i get older and collect the rich body of experiences that i have been blessed to have that many people won't get to have got to sit larry king got to sit with presidents and and kings and people in hollywood and elsewhere the people who really shattered the glass ceiling were people who did it from their gut that they did it instinctively they broke the rules took the risk and went ahead to be authentically them and i wrote this book because i'm concerned about the next generation that we leave them with all the tools and all the advice and all the help that we can to maximize with their own become all that they could be and i think it makes a difference other than i want to say this i did it because i live in full many different in the book i call them jungles they are social constructs from politics to religion to journalism i operate hollywood and i begin to talk about people who

are wearing a lot of different heads and about to lose their head how how to manage all of those jungles to juggle the message as we'll as it were without losing sight of who you are as an individual when you see a book is written by d.d.j. she knew written many and naturally thought is that this is going to be a book about god and religion can an agnostic. enjoyed his books absolutely because of the only reason that you think that is because if you if you do family about how you met me then you see me purely as a preacher but i knew me as a man and so i'm a man who is a preacher cama who is a film producer comma who is a business person producer with a father so all of those people meet and complicate when i write the father the son the c.e.o. the pastor the person the guy that all of them are sitting down to write together a composite of the total. conclusions that i have gathered in fifty six years i

love you chapter titles like the elephant is over the dead. elaborate well every day. when i was in south africa on a safari i was blessed to be on a safari after i had taught for a group of black millionaires a seminar about faith and tenet says and they detained me over and gave me the the probably just staying out of j. paul getty as a place of their the middle of the jungle somewhere and to go on a safari with my son it was amazing so there i am in between to all of just who is giving me all of this information about all the animals or habitats or mating practices how they live how they operate and sitting on the edge of the jeep with a shotgun to protect us we weren't hunting we just watch it was a salute zoonosis nothing at all zoologists explains all the animals that we visit all the different places and see a lot of that was a book we had not found elephant he explained the elephant but he could not find the family there's a zulu stood up and put his finger in the air and put it up he said the elephant is

over that when he said to me my head exploded larry it exploded because all of a sudden i realized i'm sitting between intellect and instinct and intellect can describe it but only instinct found it and from the premise of that. ideology i begin to go back to all of my life and begin to see not only me but others how if they position themselves between intellect and instinct and know when to yield to which was the next big thing for there's an elephant and entrepreneur pursuit over raising a family it is simply over there if you follow your instincts have you learned from your poor instincts yes yes you know instinct didn't work yet i have learned from the difference between miss defining my emotions as instincts as opposed to disarming even deeper to proclivities that are authentically my that

are truly all instinctive to me i think a lot of things that people call instincts are really impressions that they get that are feet from their emotions or by societal influences for example sometimes people create biases in the hold they teach you like we were talking about prejudice a moment ago or fear and so sometimes we misread instincts and they are actually either urges or emotional impulses the most is as saying to power to unleash your inborn drive in hollywood be saved the bishop takes on the movie industry on that when we come back. i'm married join me. for impartial and. carry on for

good and much. only on them best and only. for your particular moment in life. think it's a. pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i roll research you. know that when t.j. as i did not know that you produced heaven is for real based on that book yes on

a four year old child it was the maid the book how you get involved in well i was on or not it would have been doing several i've done about seven films and i have a first look deal was only two which i've done a mirror to did that if you will remember i did that movie with whitney houston sparkle i was one that's raising that and joe roth is also one of the producers on have this for you think that i'm macy they make directed me really and i would tell him i was honored to be on the same bill with him so we had just a tremendous story with a brand that will always be built on it as the father of the in real life came to me and said i want you to be a part of this project i don't want to do it without you he actually heard me speaking at a conference and from that perspective mr bercow asked me to be involved a sit down with them on franklin from columbia pictures and we worked out an agreement and i became one of the producers probably you believe that story a four year old kid he saw jesus right was he injured was the sake of the

boy he was not dead he almost that he had a near death experience he came out of it saying that he had seen heaven. and at some of these you read the book you know yes i will yes absolutely it is an amazing read and it's a powerful read and you have to meet. the birth both to understand how unique this family is and how creative they are i don't know what he's so but we wanted to be true to what he said he saw and that was quite intimidating because when you start trying to depict heaven there's all this theology there's all of this drama i mean if you do it from a apocalyptic perspective with the sea of glass in the twenty four elders and all of that and it was a daunting movie to make because we we grappled with that we finally realized that it was not our voice nor the voice of the book of revelations that was supposed to lead the conversation it was the voice of the bar pows and their child in

particular and from that perspective we told stories the movie is a big hit it is when you find a kid that is the most amazing so he had never acted before i was i think he was five years old i'm not mistaken and i mean he's little adorable kid who has these this might sound offensive but they really were mandeville shirley temple ok you remember the magical shirley bundle where he the boy but he's got those kind of ads and they kind of adorable this and he never acted before and i wasn't with the casting team but i was told that they've gone through about a thousand kids he's a last one is absolutely as lot and he walked in and nailed it. you've been preaching the bible all your life with this kid almost like he writes a book heaven is for us a bestseller movie's going to make it a kid so i have an. easy thing in your god and you're insisting

that he was fantasizing based on what he'd heard his house or been taught so he. imagine this well that's what his father thought and that's truly when the father who is a preacher found it difficult to believe because first of all from a theological perspective the board did that so it was a you know what was he doing exactly so if the father had trouble with it and mumbly thought about it from a theological perspective as this is if you believe the bible or that it legit went to heaven and he did that in a was translated and did see death and he did that and then there's the possibility maybe it wouldn't have been at all maybe closer to your idea maybe it was a vision but perhaps god allowed him to have a vision to tattle out of our imaginations and to prove to broke the kind of

conversation we're having right now all i know is that millions of people around the world have lost loved ones and the idea that there is something beyond this world fascinates us intrigues us it may not satisfy every but if there are strange crutches in it i mean to. death is the great mystery dread and religion has the answer to that you go on somewhere and it's good feeling to have and you can't be proved wrong because if you don't go anywhere you don't know what's in your go somewhere you're right there right so it's it gives you a good feeling but how do you know it can know it i don't i don't think that knowing something one should know it it takes it out the realm of faith i don't need to believe that i'm sitting here talking to you about no i face bridges is meant to bridge the gap between that that is scientifically proven and that which we we believe it is the substance of the very thing that we hope for but to the

mind that wants to rationalize and reason everything to the point of knowing this is not meant to be for the time to do you know yourself you go not unless you have underlings who up and but that's good so i have one key question i've been asking all my life and. why do you believe it why do i believe why do you have the faith i have the faith beyond the realm of my intellectual is that in my heart i believe i believe it like i believe i'm in love and i could never prove to you that i'm in love but i know what i am i believe it like i know when i'm in pain i could never prove to you that i'm in pain but i know what i am even when the doctor says i should be there are some things that are true to us that are innate to us that cannot be analyzed they must be embraced by faith and you find it seeking seeking there is a gap fee my father got sick when i was ten and that when i was sixteen so i took

life a lot more seriously than kids who grew up playing football and basketball and put over they do. when a kid ruffles and lives in hospitals and is race leaping on hospital floors all of his life as these kids his age used you become hungry to know answers on a personal level not necessarily to preach i was too young for that or to prove you'll never be able to do that because god is the one thing that cannot be proven he must be revealed and like many things that we grow up with that we come to be real that cannot be proven like love or anger or hate they are still things that we sense in the individual who has and knows that they are so it is the most personal relationship you will ever have in your life because it lives within your heart. i can see why his things t.d. jakes we have some social media questions money monday july instagram how do you

decide which principles and ideas from the bible of literal and which up parables open to interpretation you don't decide that i don't let me say that from a parable they are generally identified as parables in the scriptures are generally confined to the things that jesus said that tell you a story or the kingdom of heaven is like and and he sets it in the context of a metaphor and we assume that it is a metaphor when we go beyond those parameters and we assume things to be parabolic that were not sent to be parabolic then that gets up to interpretation and i know always think that's a wise thing to do and weapons of worship on twitter are instincts equivalent to what some believe as well expresses the holy spirit no there are two different things when i'm talking about instincts i'm talking about how the creator wired you how the manufacturer may do when people talk about the holy spirit that's how he read danger or how he brings you into relationship with him and follow instincts was not written to be exclusive to those people who have had

a holy spirit experience it is more about how we have been created to function better or best in certain types of environments and purple rose on twitter what is something you'd suggest to add to our daily routine to empower ourselves quiet. quiet we are too busy. we are so busy that we don't notice that we're not productive busy does not mean that you are producing it we are just spinning our wheels and the great thinking and progress that we've made in this country steam engines telephones automobiles all types of things spacecraft were done by people who had moments to think we're moving so fast and at breakneck speed and if we get a free moment we're on twitter and facebook and everything is the death of creativity and i would challenge people to to go back to meditation and and if you're spiritual back to prayer if you're not just go back to just laying still for

a moment to clear your head to hit the reset button because we are starting every day with the burdens from from yesterday assaulting us and today let's put a comma between all of that i resume as a cat things that once a week isn't all. done dog all day it just peace yeah just please shut it all down and you'll be surprised what you get here and you shut up kathleen with wire on twitter how do you balance your personal life the professional if you will with all is an ongoing challenge every day i wrote in the book a chapter called juggling jungles because i'm living for many different worlds and how i have to touch a little bit of everything almost every day i learned this that at the end of the day i will never have a day that i get to the end of the day and everything is done whether i've been the perfect father or the perfect husband or the perfect ball for the perfect pastor or

the perfect feel i'm not going to hit one hundred every day in all of those areas i just try to make sure that it's not a deficiency in the same area every day. ok so today i got the father thing real good tomorrow give the husband think really good things to give the c.e.o. but you can't be one hundred every day when you have a lot given to you just don't be deficient every day in the same place at c.n.n. delta on twitter was the best advice you ever received to go with my gut to listen to my inner instinct my instinct i mean it's really true and that's why i had a moment out there because when i look back over my life i wrote a book a man writing a book called women are loose to women at a time no publisher wanted to publish it there was no presidents for it but i went with my gut and the books all seven million copies bless people all over the world been translated into two different languages if i would have gone by the imperiled that i would have never done it every move from charleston west virginia to dallas

texas didn't even know any better but i felt like i was finished in west virginia instinctively solve dallas is a place that i needed to be and i went from pestering up to other people to thirty thousand every major move that ever happened in my life from going gospel place and turned into movies that ended up with contracts was so nice and i've never been trained to do it it was all instinct and when i presented this this idea to begin to talk about and i start talking to other people like tyler perry or oprah winfrey or or anybody else that i got a chance to corner long enough to ask a question or two they were instinctive to what do you do when you see. tragedy that man didn't create when you see katrina children dog how do you rationalize it's a painful thing it's so horrible and whether you're talking about katrina which it was to make a tree nothing to do with man's will free will no controlling the weather

collaborative back between the deficient form of government that failed to prepare for the amount of citizens that it had living in that area but the wind then the rain but if the wind and didn't create know and the wind of the rain would come and it will bring destruction but in katrina's case it was not wind in the rain alone had the levees been done properly and people been about to properly so man was a man one of them bob good for you know a great man t.v. thank you sir name that's not wait another five years it might not be on the phone that he had better be some take i mean the real larry heaven is for real nice him i guess bishop t.d. jakes is doing the power to unleash your inborn drive is in bookstores now so you can find me on twitter at kings things see an extra.

or a. very hard to take that. you can hear. that that will help her make her. appear.