You are not your issue. In “Getting Over The Opinions Of Others,” Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church reminds us that we aren’t what we did or who people said we were — we are children of God. You are not your issue. In “Getting Over The Opinions Of Others,” Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church reminds us that we aren’t what we did or who people said we were — we are children of God.
I am not my issue.
See, you’ve been going through what you’ve
been going through so long you think the issue
is you, but you can stop it with a thought.
I mean, right now, the darkness that has overwhelmed
you…
You can stop it with a thought.
Now, she did not get healed because she just
thought.
She got healed when she touched, but she only
touched because she thought.
It starts with a thought.
When I think of the goodness of Jesus, when
I think about the Lord, how he saved me (we
used to sing this, Holly), how he raised me,
how he filled me, how he healed me, how he
reached down and rescued me…
You can stop it with a thought.
The gates of hell will not prevail one thought
about God.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts.”
I can stop it with a thought.
I found out thoughts are optional.
I might have a thought, but I don’t have to
let the thought have me.
I don’t have to think like this, live like
this, bleed like this!
I don’t have to die like this!
Think of all of the ways he made!
Think of all of the things he did!
I’ve been thinking about the wrong things.
I’m one thought away from joy, one thought
away from healing.
Thoughts are optional.
Can I tell you how I know?
If you did everything you thought, you’d have
a prison ministry from the inside of the prison.
Tim is so unsanctified he’d be in prison if
he did everything he thought about since I’ve
been preaching.
It’s kind of like a split screen to me.
It’s like probably what the other people thought
when the woman was coming up and what she
thought.
I almost called the message “Hold That Thought.”
She said, “If I touch him, it doesn’t matter
what anybody else thinks.”
Once you get over the fact that other people’s
opinions…
They are not limits; they are merely suggestions.
Contrary to what your mom told you, you don’t
have to eat everything on your plate.
You don’t have to believe everything in your
brain.
The thought is optional.
I imagine that the woman thought…
“Because she thought…”
That’s what got me started on wanting to preach
about this woman, because just like her bleeding
started on the inside, so did her healing.
“Because she thought…”
But you can’t see thoughts, so how does Luke
know or Mark know or Matthew know what she
thought?
By what she did.
I’ll make a suggestion, and y’all can click
over to an Andy Stanley sermon, or something,
if you think I’m preaching heresy.
What if she had a thousand other thoughts,
yet the only one she acted on is the only
one that mattered?
See, I can have a thousand thoughts, but the
one I hold determines where I go.
I bet she also thought…
Can we talk about what the woman also thought?
You’ve been sick 12 years.
You’ve been to every doctor.
You’ve been kicked out of every insurance
policy.
Nobody wants to hire you.
You have preexisting conditions, so nobody
wants to be with you.
Twelve years.
That’s long enough to completely give up hope.
That’s long enough where she would have also
thought…
Here’s the screen of what she did.
Here’s what she also thought.
What’s the point?
“I’ve tried this before.”
Some of y’all can’t even hear a sermon well,
because you got inspired last Sunday and you
feel like you had an even worse week, so you
don’t even want to hear it anymore.
“Cool, man.
Whatever.”
I bet she had the thought, “Whatever.”
She heard about Jesus.
“He’s a healer.”
I bet she thought, “Whatever.
I’ve seen this show before.
What does he want?
He just wants my money too.”
Do you ever think things?
Even good things can be wrong things.
I was talking to one of my friends this week
who studied the creative process.
I was like, “Give me a piece of advice on
the creative process,” because I’m constantly
trying to create.
I feel sometimes like I’m just bleeding, hemorrhaging
the next sermon.
My friend said, “Hey, make sure you rest while
you’re working and let your spirit work on
your sermon too.”
I was like, “All right.
Cool.”
I don’t know really how to rest, because I
identify myself by what I do.
I tend to associate my worth with my work.
I always thought I was only as good as my
trophy, only as good as my achievement.
So here’s what I said back to my friend.
I said, “That’s really cool.
I love that advice to rest and just let my
spirit work on my sermon, let my subconscious
work on my material.
That’s a great creative tip.”
I said, “It’s kind of like when a computer
renders.”
My friend said, “Yeah.
Kind of like that, but you’re not a computer.”
I’m not what I thought.
My friend was trying to get me to see, “You’ve
got the right idea, but you’ve got the wrong
identity.
You’re not an object.
You’re not a machine.”
I know every parent sometimes feels like a
vending machine, and then an Uber, and then
a referee.
What else do you feel like?
Parents, what do you feel like sometimes?
I feel like if I’m not driving them somewhere,
cleaning something up…
I’m a housekeeper.
I’m a short-order chef.
But that’s not all I am.
“Stay in your lane, Steve!
Be a preacher.”
That’s not all I am.
Do you feel God on that?
That’s not all I am.
Now, that might be all I’ve experienced up
to this point, but that’s not all I am.
My genetics just haven’t met Jesus yet.
I’m not just the woman with the issue of blood.
That’s not all I am.
I’m not just Jairus, the synagogue leader.
I’m also a dad.
I need ministry.
I need a touch.
I need refreshing.
I need a flow.
I need a prayer answered.
Yeah.
That’s not all I am.
I’m not what I thought I was.
I’m so much more than I thought I was.
How many times have I limited what I could
receive because of what I thought I was?
Because she thought, she touched, and because
she touched, the bleeding stopped.
Do you know what’s really crazy?
Instead of getting back on the road to get
to Jairus’ daughter, the one who was more
important, Jesus stopped in verse 30.
Here we see in the Scripture the first instance
of contact tracing.
The Bible says Jesus stopped.
So, her bleeding stopped.
Jesus stopped, and he realized power…
There’s power in a thought.
She thought, she touched, and Jesus said,
“I felt that.”
Now remember, she heard, she came, she thought,
she touched, she felt.
Feelings follow thoughts.
Jesus stops and goes, “Whoa.
I felt something,” and the woman is like,
“I did too.”
It started with a thought.
Feelings start with thoughts.
So, next time you wonder when you’re in a
bad mood, or something like that, like, “Oh
my god.
It’s like the weather just changed on the
inside.
What happened?”
Do some contact tracing with your thoughts.
For some of y’all, this is going to mean you’re
not going to be texting everybody back this
week.
“I did some contact tracing, and I found out
every time I text you, it’s trouble for me.”
Isn’t the Bible so up to date?
Isn’t the Bible so 2020?
Look at the Bible.
The Bible said Jesus stopped, and he turned
around and said, “Who touched my clothes?”
The disciples are annoyed, not just because
they don’t want to go back through and do
the paperwork to find out who had COVID and
who was exposed and six feet distance.
None of that.
Watch what the disciples said.
Verse 31.
It doesn’t say it was Peter, but I bet it
was.
“‘You see the people crowding against you,’
his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask,
“Who touched me?”‘”
Your feelings come so fast, don’t they?
It’s hard to even know where it started.
It’s like, “You want us to trace it all the
way back?
Jesus, we don’t have time to stop and talk
about your feelings.
Jairus’ daughter is dying.
We can stop and break it all down if you want
to, but it’s a lot of people, and it’s a lot
of stuff.”
I was telling Eric the other day, I try to
figure out why I’m in a bad mood, but if I
tried to trace everything that made me in
a bad mood back, I’d never go anywhere.
I’d never get out of bed.
Some days, sunny weather makes me depressed
because I think I should be outside enjoying
it.
Some days, rainy weather makes me depressed
because it’s raining.
I can’t trace anything back.
It just comes so fast.
“Who touched me?”
“A lot of people were touching you.
A lot of things are happening.
The world is really crazy right now.”
He said, “No, no, no.
Who touched me?”
Verse 32: “But Jesus kept looking around to
see who had done it.”
I know we don’t live by our feelings, but
sometimes we need to focus on our feeling
and see what led to it.
Jesus is like, “Who touched me?
Who touched me?”
He didn’t see her because she came up from
behind.
And the woman, who was only used to being
a nuisance or an inconvenience…
How many of you have ever felt like you were
a nuisance because that’s the way other people
treated you?
Or that’s what you thought they thought.
How stupid is it to be trapped in what you
thought they thought?
This is called thought tracing.
Not contact, just thought tracing.
“Well, I think they thought…
They did that because they thought…”
The woman thought she was in trouble, and
the reason I know she thought she was in trouble
when Jesus stopped on the way to Jairus’ house
is because when she came up (verse 33), the
Bible says, descriptively, she came back and
fell at his feet and, trembling with fear…
She thought she was in trouble, but she wanted
to tell the truth.
She heard, she came, she thought, she touched,
she felt, she told.
“It was me.”
I don’t mean this in any kind of stereotypical
way, but the fact that she was a woman makes
me think she didn’t give Jesus the plot summary,
because my wife doesn’t give me plot summaries
or CliffsNotes.
She told him the whole truth, what it had
been like to bleed on the inside, what it
had been like to once have resources, and
as you spend all of your resources, your issue
continues to deteriorate your reality.
She told him that.
Trembling, she told him, “I know I wasn’t
supposed to stop you.
I know I caused a big commotion.
I know you were on your way to heal that important
man’s daughter.”
Jesus stopped and said, “Who did it?”
It seems petty that he would stop healing
somebody to come fuss at somebody.
He said, “Who did it?”
I wondered why he did it.
When I read his response after she told him
the whole truth…
It says in verse 34 that he said to her, “Daughter,
your faith has healed you.
Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
But she was already freed from her suffering.
When she touched him, “Immediately her bleeding
stopped and she felt in her body that she
was freed from her suffering.”
She was already free.
Why did he call her back?
Not to reprimand her.
Maybe he called her back to give her a little
bit more money or a little bit more details
or maybe to give her a little extra help.
I read that over and over again.
Do you remember how she snuck up and said,
“If I just touch the hem of his garment”?
The dirty part, the part that has been dragging
through the street with feces and urine and
the mud off the shoes of the feet of the other
important people as they move through the
street to do things she no longer had the
resources to do.
That’s all she thought she was.
“If I touch it…
And then I’ll sneak away.”
She snuck away like a thief.
They couldn’t find her.
She snuck away like she stole something.
He said, “Who did it?
Bring her back.”
Then he told her what she already knew.
Why did he call her back and let Jairus’ daughter
die just to tell her what she already knew?
Then I realized something.
It’s not what he told her; it’s what he called
her.
He didn’t call her, “Woman with the issue
of blood.”
We call her that.
He didn’t.
There are many times in Scripture that Jesus
touches people and they’re healed.
There are very few where someone touches him,
and there’s only one time in Scripture that
Jesus calls somebody “Daughter.”
This is the only time Jesus uses that term.
Why did he stop on the way to heal Jairus’
daughter?
Because there was another daughter who forgot
that she was a daughter.
So, I’m not going to let you sneak away like
a beggar.
If I let you sneak away right now, the bleeding
may stop, but you will live the rest of your
life believing something about yourself that
isn’t true.
What would you do if you knew it was true
that you were a daughter of God?
What would it be like if you knew that almighty,
omnipotent, all-powerful God had committed
his resources to you, like weak little Steven
Furtick has committed his resources to Abbey?
What would you do?
What could knock you off your balance?
What could the opinions of others do to you
if you knew, “I am not what I did, and I am
not what I went through, and I am not what
I thought I was, and I am not what I suffered,
and I am not what I lost”?
Jesus said, “Call her back.
I know Jairus has a daughter, but she’s a
daughter too.
I know nobody else sees her, but that’s my
daughter.”
I need you to receive this word.
You don’t have to touch the dirty part, the
limited part.
“I’m not what I thought.
I am not my temptation.
I am not my perversion.
I am not my discouragement.
I am not my last mistake.
I am not my pattern.
I am not my flesh.
I have been crucified with Christ.
If I can touch him, I can have what he has,
because I am like he is.
I’m a daughter.
I’m a son.”
He called her back so she would know, “You’re
not leaving like a thief.
You’re not leaving like a beggar.
You’re leaving like a daughter.
Don’t you crawl out of here waiting to get
caught.”
She thought she was in trouble, but Jesus
brought her back to tell her the truth.
She was bleeding on the inside, and she did
something on the outside, but God didn’t just
want to fix what was happening in her body.
She heard about Jesus, and that freed her
from her suffering, but when she heard from
Jesus, not about Jesus, it freed her from
her shame.
Lift your hands in the air right now.
I break the power of shame off of your mind.
I break the power of shame off of your past.
I break the power of shame off of
your body.