When life is confusing, God still knows the way. In this message from Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church, learn how God can use your confusion to prove His power.
But we will subjugate our relationship
with God to our feelings. Notice this.
The cloud didn’t ask the children of
Israel, “Do you feel like moving today?
Would this be a good time? Did I catch you at
a bad time?” God doesn’t consult their mood,
see if they feel like moving. I don’t have
to feel it. I’m not being led by my feelings;
I’m led by my priorities.
It is the difference between mature faith
that will get you through the wilderness
and the kind of faith that goes up and down
and flows like this and has you going all
around to all different people all the time. God
sent them the cloud to teach them to prioritize.
Some people came to church today
because they felt like it. Other
people came to church today because
this is the day the Lord has made.
I set this time aside, and the less I felt
like it, the more I knew I needed to do it.
“Seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness.” That is a statement of
priority, not a statement of feeling,
not a statement of preference. If I did
everything I felt like doing, I would have
a prison ministry, from inside the prison.
If I preached when I felt like preaching,
you would hear three sermons a year from me.
I didn’t preach because I felt like it,
although I did today. I feel like preaching
today. I can’t explain it. A little extra
caffeine will work a wonder in your soul.
But even if I didn’t feel it, it’s
11:30, and here come the people,
and the Word of God is here, and somebody needs
it. It’s preaching time. It’s praising time.
I don’t lift my hands because
I feel like lifting my hands.
I do it because he’s worthy. How many worship him
because he’s worthy? That’s why I seek him:
he’s worthy. That’s why I offer him the honor:
he’s worthy. That’s why I’m staying
where he told me to stay: he’s worthy.
You don’t stay married 15 years being
nice when you feel led to be nice.
You stay married 15 minutes.
But if it’s your priority…
God is my priority. One way of saying
this is he’s at the center of my life.
Think about that. The tabernacle is in the
wilderness. It’s a portable tabernacle. Many
of our locations at Elevation Church still meet
in rented facilities. It means we have awesome
volunteers come early, stay late, set up, tear
down. Some of y’all didn’t come to Elevation
during that season, and those of you who did
are thanking God that those days are over.
That’s where you find out who your really
faithful people are, hauling those trailers
in Winston-Salem and in and out. We have
portable locations. Well, we didn’t start that.
God started that. He not only told
them how to build the tabernacle
when Moses went up and sought
him for six days in the cloud,
and after seven days in the cloud God spoke…
Some of you leave too soon before God speaks.
When it’s cloudy, you quit listening, but that’s
where God speaks: in the valley, in the cloud.
He told them how to build the tabernacle,
but he also told them where to put it.
He told them, “Make sure you set it up in the
middle of the camp so that everybody has to face
it, so that all of the tribes standing under their
different banners have to face the same center.”
When I look at my life,
I realize that not only is God leading me
but he is leading me from the center. The
cloud would hover above the tabernacle, and the
tabernacle would stay in the middle. Watch this.
This is so powerful. I should demonstrate it.
Come here, Jordan. Come here, Buck. Come here, JJ.
Wherever they went,
this had to stay in the middle. Sometimes we are
so paralyzed about where God is positioning us,
so we go, “Does God want me to take this job
or that job?” and we become really flaky.
We won’t commit to anything. We’re moving
all around. “I don’t know. Did God want
me to marry him?” You married him 27
years ago. That is a done deal. Now
what you have to do is keep the presence of God
in the middle. When God moves, you just have to…
Of all of the ways God could have led them, this
is a strange scenario. How many would agree this
is strange? If you want the people to get up
and go, put them on a schedule. That’s just some
parenting advice, by the way. You decide to have
a baby. Put them on a schedule. God does the exact
opposite of what every parenting book tells you
to do. He wants to teach his children something.
The Bible says that sometimes the
cloud would stay for two days,
and then it would move, so they had to
move, because they had to keep the thing
in the middle. Then it would stop, and they would
stop. Sometimes the cloud would stay for a year.
I want you to think about this. Somebody has
to stay up all night. There are millions of
people. We just read the Bible and think,
“Wouldn’t that be cool if God would give
me a cloud to show me which job to
take, what school to put my kids…?”
No, it wouldn’t be cool. It
would be horribly inconvenient,
because you’d always be thinking, “Are we moving
today?” Then just about the time you would unpack
in the spot you were in, it would start moving
again. The craziest thing about this whole
scenario that is not mentioned in the text but
is implied is they weren’t really going anywhere.
If you know your Bible… You know your
Bible, Jonathan. At least you should.
You’re an ordained minister of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. Buck is just a security guy.
No, he’s actually a great
example. I met him in college.
I liked him because he was a
wrestler, a successful wrestler.
He won a state championship. He fought in MMA
tournaments. They were illegal, unsanctioned MMA
tournaments with interns at Elevation
Church, but that’s not my point.
I met him on an internship. The whole time
I was at the internship I was complaining.
I didn’t see Buck until seven years later. I
didn’t know when I was doing the internship
that he and I would travel… We’ve been to six
continents together preaching the gospel now.
Sometimes he’s an illustration. Sometimes he’s
making sure everything is set so I can minister.
God had to take me all the way through an
internship I didn’t even want to be at.
We went to Hohhot, China, together. We got
chased through Chinese nightclubs together.
Sketchy stuff. Before social media, thank God.
God was guiding us for where he knew
he was taking us, but he had to take us
the long way for something he
wanted us to pick up along the way.
If I hadn’t have done that internship… If I had
gone to Charleston Southern University, there
would not have been a Holly Boitnott. (Oh yeah,
her last name was worse than Furtick when I met
her. She got an upgrade on Furtick, and that is no
small feat.) I couldn’t go to Charleston Southern.
They had to take my scholarship away, because
I had to go to Tigerville, South Carolina,
in the mountains, in the woods, where boys and
girls are not even allowed to look at each other
across the street because it’s a Baptist school. I
had to go to the Baptist school to get a Boitnott
girl, because God knew he was calling us to… I’m
trying to say that if you keep God in the center,
you don’t have to know where you’re
going. Just keep the guide in the middle.
He’s guiding me, and he is teaching
me to prioritize his presence.
He will not do it in a way I can predict, because
my tendency is to turn God into a formula.
You know as well as I do that if God
had moved that cloud at 7:00 p.m.
every Friday, they would have become more
dependent on the system than the source.
He loves you too much to let
your faith become a formula.
Can I say this? I need permission even though you
don’t know what I’m going to say. I need you to
trust my integrity. God is using your confusion.
I can hear it right now. On 1 Corinthians 14 on
Facebook… There are people who sit around on
Facebook, and they have nothing better to do.
On this clip they’re going to say, “But God is not
the author of confusion.” I read the same verse.
It’s talking about having an
orderly worship experience,
so it says, “God is not the author of confusion.”
In other words, “Don’t everybody try to talk at
one time or nobody is going to hear what
anybody is saying.” That is the context of
that verse. He’s not the author of confusion.
That doesn’t mean he won’t use confusion.
Do you know what I believe? The only path
to true confidence is through confusion,
because only after you’ve
been through the confusion
and after you’ve been through the valley
can you say, “The Lord is my shepherd.”
He told them, “I’m going to put you
in that wilderness for 40 years,
but while you’re there, I’m
going to train you to trust me.”
See, we are so destination-minded, but the cloud
didn’t move because they needed a new destination.
Study this sometime. They got
manna wherever they set up camp.
The only reason God moved them around was so
they wouldn’t get stuck in one system. God said,
“I don’t want you to get stuck in a
system that will short-circuit your faith,
so I’m going to allow life to throw
you off balance from time to time,
and I’m going to put you in some
situations where you don’t feel certain,”
because you can’t have your
certainty and God’s confidence.
“So I sent the cloud to guide you. I sent the
cloud to teach you to prioritize my presence.”
The cloud was above the tabernacle. How many
know not only is he central but he is above?
God has exalted Jesus and given him the name that
is above every name, that at the name of Jesus
every knee…every sickness, every
disease, every worry, every attack,
every fear…every knee will bow, every tongue will
confess. I feel God guiding me right now. I feel
these words going right into your heart. Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Notice the Scripture says it was a
pillar of cloud. A pillar is an image
of stability. How can you have stability
if what you’re following keeps moving?
So Jesus is getting ready to be taken
up. He’s resurrected from the dead. I’m
fast-forwarding a couple thousand years.
He looks at his disciples, and he knows,
like the children of Israel, they
have never been this way before.
He has a mission for them. He said,
“You will receive power.” God’s presence
is God’s power. It’s not an accessory. It’s not
a bonus feature. God’s presence is God’s power.
Up until this time, they have been relying on
God’s presence in the visible form of Jesus
Christ, but you have to watch this. Something
shifts. Just before Jesus leaves the earth…
He has already taken the keys to death, hell, and
the grave. He has already paid the price for the
sin that stood and kept record against us. He has
already nailed your condemnation to the cross.
He has already carried your shame. He has already
borne your burden. He has already taken your
sorrow, and now he’s standing, resurrected, and
is about to ascend into heaven to be seated at the
right hand of God the Father Almighty, from whence
he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
He looks at his disciples and says, “You shall
receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends…
I am sending you into an unstable world
with a sure foundation, and
you will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of
the earth.” Watch this. “When he had said this,
he was taken up before
their very eyes, and a cloud
hid him from their sight.” They couldn’t see him
anymore, but they didn’t need to see him anymore,
because when he sent his Spirit…
They got a GPS. I don’t
have to stay lost and lonely
and confused and uncertain anymore. Jesus said,
“Today is the day. All systems go. Today is the
day you get your driver’s license, and you will
receive power when the Spirit comes on you.”