Steven Furtick - The Glitch That Keeps On Giving
2 Corinthians 10:7-12. The apostle Paul wants to tell you something. He has some expert advice for you on how to deal with this question. And here's the question you ready? This the question every man, woman, boy, and girl in the room is asking, and you've been asking it your whole life, in different ways, with different amounts of money in your bank account, and different color hair on your head, and different numbers on the scale when you step on it, and different places that you've lived, and different jobs you've had, you been asking this question your whole life. Do I have what it takes? Do I have what it takes?
Well, Paul has a way of dealing with this question that I thought would be helpful for us today. And let's read together, 2 Corinthians 10:7, he says, Your first problem is this, you are judging by appearances. He said, If anyone is confident that they belong to Christ, they should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as they do. Touch somebody and say, You're not better than me. "So even if I boast"... what are you arguing about it? It was just one line. Get back on the scriptures.
"So even if I boast somewhat freely about the authority the Lord gave us from building you up rather than tearing you down, motives are important. I will not be ashamed of it. I do not want to seem to be trying to frighten you with my letters, for some say, his letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing". Such people should realize that what we are in our letters when we are absent, we will be in our actions when we are present.
In other words, Paul says, I'm about to back it up. I don't just talk big. Because 2 Corinthians 10:12, we'll stop here, We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves. They are not wise. Wait, I'm confused. I thought that we were reading the Bible. This sounds like it could be a relevant Facebook post. People say the Bible is outdated. I sounds like a pretty good word for 2016 to me. Comparison and competition, self commendation. He said it's not wise.
Well, where I really want to focus is 2 Corinthians 10:10. So let me read that again. And Paul says, "There are some who are saying that my letters are weighty and forceful, but in person I'm unimpressive and that my speaking amounts to nothing". So I want to speak to you today from this subject, I want to talk about the glitch that keeps on giving. The glitch that keeps on giving. And let's pray one more time:
Father, open our hearts, our ears, our minds, and most importantly, what we learn today we're going to need the courage to put it into practice and the application to know what that means. To do it in Jesus name. Amen.
Touch your neighbor say, "You got a glitch, on your way down to your seat. You got a glitch". Amen, thank you. Yeah, I don't need anything right now. But just in case. Yeah. Okay. I feel like I might get to preaching in a minute, that's what I'm trying to say. So stay right there. Well, I want to give you a list of all the movies that have made me cry. I went back through my life and I thought about the first movie that made me cry, it was called "Follow that Bird". Very emotional experience to me to see Big Bird ostracized and alienated, trying to find his way back home.
Second movie that made me cry and I maybe should have reconciled this list with my mom's memory but I remember crying for this movie called "Harry and the Henderson's". Harry and the Henderson's, when they were slapping Harry and I know it was for his own good but I just couldn't take that. Then you know, you've been through a little bit in life and it takes more you know, you develop emotionally and stuff so that kind of stuff doesn't make you cry anymore. Then the movies that make you cry change and so the next movie that made me cry, of course was Rocky II, followed by Rocky III, and Rocky IV. While we're at it.
And a movie that still makes me cry every time I watch it to this day and if this movie does not make you cry, I question your compassion an your Christianity. In fact, I question your humanity and your ability to feel all. I think you might be a sociopath, if you can watch the movie Rudy, and not cry, or at least have a lip quiver. I don't know if you have any passion, I don't know if there's any reason for God to leave you on this earth, and I think you're probably going to go to hell when you leave this place.
So, it gets me every time. It was a sunny afternoon, Saturday afternoon, when normally I would be heading in to prepare for church, but I had a guest speaker and it afforded me the rare privilege and opportunity to take my two sons to see a movie. And I was not expecting that day to be wrecked by the movie, "Wreck-it Ralph". But it happened. When they put that girl on the screen called Vanellope and she was stuck in a video game, where they were supposed to race, but she couldn't race, and they called her "Glitch Girl" because there was something wrong with her programming and pixelation.
And so she wanted to race but she couldn't race and it was because of a glitch and the movie kind of takes a few turns and at one point in the movie, I was watching Glitch Girl glitch, and she wanted to race. And I started crying in the movie and I told, "Shut up", when he asked me, "Are you crying daddy"? And... It just got me thinking about all the ways that my glitches have caused me to miss God in my life and, and thinking about how many people would go further, faster if they knew how to deal with their glitch.
Just remind your neighbor again, they're not going to be offended, 'cause I made you say it, just remind them one more time, You got a glitch. Just make sure that they're well aware of that fact. And when I didn't say give them a whole paragraph of evidence. We preach things sometimes that are easy to accept but a little bit harder to apply and I understand that writing this book, "How God Uses Broken People to do Big Things", is two parts. One is just convincing you that God uses broken people to do big things.
I bet you don't believe that to the level that you should and all the efforts that we've made to convince you, but sometimes they fall short and we can tell you all the Bible characters. I'm trying to pull this thing up, just one that I found online, how, how God doesn't pick the ideal candidates for the offices that he appoints into, and one guy put it online, I've seen this before, maybe you have, but he went through a list he said, You know, Noah was a drunk. Abraham was too old. Isaac was a daydreamer. Jacob was a liar. Leah wasn't very good looking. Joseph was abused. Moses had a stuttering problem. Gideon was afraid. Samson had long hair. We all know God can use you with long hair, tattoos. Rahab was a prostitute, Jeremiah and Timothy were too young David had an affair and was a murderer, Elijah was suicidal, Isaiah preached naked.
You know, I've done a lot of things to get attention... I'm going to skip that. Point at the stage somebody and say, "Miss me with that Pastor Steven. I don't really want to see that". God told him to. Jonah ran from God, Naomi was a widow, Job went through bankruptcy. Peter denied Christ, the disciples fell asleep while praying. Martha worried about everything. The Samaritan woman was divorced more than once. Zacchaeus was too short. Timothy had an ulcer and Lazarus was dead.
Now touch your other neighbor and say, "What's your excuse'? The question isn't, "Can God use broken people to do big things'? I wonder, would you put my book title up, not my sermon title, my book title up, one more time, just so you can see, I want to focus, for week one, on this one word: "how" God uses, how God uses and I want to talk about how he does that. And of course, we could have no better consultant than Paul. I didn't put him in the list that I read, because Paul is more known for his gifts, he is very gifted.
Paul was very gifted. We know he was gifted because God chose him of all people to take the gospel to the Gentiles and he was the first one to take it beyond the original Jewish converts along with Barnabas, he was very gifted. Paul was very gifted in debate and in reasoning, as well as philosophy because he had studied under Gamaliel. Gamaliel was a part of the Jewish Sanhedrin and he was known as a guru. So Paul had that kind of pedigree. Add it to the fact that he was a Roman citizen, which gave him entreat and prestige into places that common people could not go. Makes sense God would choose them then to preach in Europe and in Northern Africa and parts of Asia, and to establish churches in the most strategic cities of his day.
So we see him in Rome and we see him in Athens and we see him establishing churches and Philippi and Galatia and Emphasis and Corinth, just to name a few. But in 2 Corinthians, we watch him writing back to the church at Corinth, and he's having to do something that you would never imagine Paul would have to do at this stage of his life and ministry, considering his accomplishments. He's having to defend his credentials.
How could a man that learned? And how can a man whose life had meant so much to so many find himself in a spot where he's having to defend his credentials, in fact, I don't take it as much of a dilemma as I do as an encouragement to know that Even Paul, at this point in his ministry, was still answering the question, Do you have what it takes? I put that out there. Because if you thought that question was going to go away when you hit 40, and it didn't, if you thought that question was going to go away when you graduated high school, and it didn't, if you thought that question was going to go away when you got married and it didn't, if you thought that question was going to go away when you first started making six figures and it didn't, if you thought that question was going to go away, you know, when you finally prove to your ex that you could get somebody too and it didn't.
Paul is at the pinnacle of his ministry effectiveness, and he's still dealing with people who are calling him unqualified. And so he deals with this question and he confronts this challenge because what he has to do in his life is too important for him to leave these issues unconfronted. Now I want to say that over your life today, whether you believe it or not, that what God has purposed for you to accomplish is too important for you to leave your issues unconfronted.
Touch somebody and say, "Confront it". Sometimes you've got to take a stand for what you know God has called you to do. And sometimes that means standing against what others say. And sometimes that means taking a stand within yourself against yourself. Paul said, "You can't strip me of my credentials. You can't. You can't take away from me what I know God has placed on me, I'm confident of that". He said, "And the reason that you're getting into trouble and the reason that you come to the conclusion that you don't have what it takes, and the reason that you are spending so much time trying to impress people is because you are judging by appearances".
There it is. That's the number one problem with our world today I think, that's the number one reason we get ourselves in trouble. and that's the number one reason that potential is unfulfilled, because we judge by appearances, but touch your neighbor and say, There's more to me than what you see. Turn to her and tell her, There's more to me than what you see. So don't judge me by what you see on the surface. Don't, don't judge me by what I look like right now.
That's what Paul was saying to these super apostles, that had permeated and pervaded the Corinthian church that he had established. And now they were claiming superiority over him and threatening to undermine the work that he had established. He wrote back to the church, and he said, You need to take another look. Another look. I wonder how many things in our lives would look differently if we looked beneath the surface? That's it, beneath the surface. If you got past your first impressions.
I want to preach a sermon one day and I may preach it next week, and I may preach it in three years. I want to call it The Estimation Game and I hadn't quite figured out everything I'll put in it yet, but it's just this idea that most of us vacillate between wildly overestimating what we can do without God and under estimating what we could do with him. 'Cause we look at it at the surface. And just in honor of the sermon that I may preach one day I just want to give a little illustration or something like that.
I want to play a little game with somebody right over here, I'm playing with him, I like his hat. Yeah, come on over man. Why not? Just a little game. You know I like to do stuff like this to keep people from falling asleep during the sermon, but I got some money. You like money? I got a little money. I'm gonna show it right here for everybody to see. Got a little roll, got a little something. Not much but if you can guess how much it is I'll give it to you. You want to feel it? You wanna hold it?
Male: I see blue, so there's a hundred.
Steven: He said something. He said something. I've done this in all the other worship experiences. But He's the first one that did what he was supposed to do. He did what he was supposed to do. He said, "I see blue under there. So I know there are some hundreds in the roll". I don't know what you do recreationally to make money... but touch somebody and say, "Look beneath the surface".
See, he got it right. If you judge this stack by what you see on the surface, you are going to underestimate, but if you peel back and look, come on, I'm preaching and y'all don't even realize it. If you peel it back, you're gonna see that there's more to the stack than you can see on the surface. That's my message. I wanted to let you know, you videoing? I'll preach to your iPhone. I don't mind. There's more to the stack then you can see on the surface. Touch somebody and say, I got layers. I got layers and what you see is not all there is to me and what I see in the mirror is not indicative of my ministry, of my life, of my potential.
Something's happening beneath the surface. I'm kind of struggling right now, I'm trying to get some stuff in order but there's something inside of me that is greater. What I'm wrapped with is not indicative of what I'm made of. There's, there's more inside of me. And if you'll notice, I walked away from him before he could guess the amount because I was scared he was onto something. That's why the devil's been fighting you because he knows you're onto something You're just starting to see yourself in a new light, you're starting to see yourself in a divine...
So, so, so look beneath the surface, and it'll give you confidence when you do. Confidence. That's what we're all trying to project into the world. But often we're trying to project something that we don't possess, talk to me. Often we're trying to project the confidence that we don't possess because we see our cracks. But Paul said, That if you're confident that you belong to Christ, you should consider that I belong just as much as anybody.
Now I want to make an announcement and this is in the book and I'm gonna say it right now. And I'm gonna say it to everybody who ever felt like you couldn't come to church because of your conflicts. I want to say to everybody who ever felt like you didn't fit in at church because everybody was so pretty. And so perfumed.
I want to say to everybody who has ever felt like that, that the presence of God is the last place you should be because of what your clothes smell like, because of who you've been hanging out with, I want to say to everybody who came into church with the religious pretense that is much more impressive than your actual performance. I want to say to everybody who feels like there's two, there are no second class citizens in the kingdom of God. It took the same blood and the same beating of the same Savior to get me in that it took to get you in. So I'm confident. It's believing that I belong.
Watch this. True confidence is a byproduct of belonging. True confidence is a byproduct of belonging. True confidence, the kind that will just run up in my green room between the 9:30 and 11:30 and barge in and say, Daddy, can I get a Sprite Zero? The only person bold enough to run up in my room and ask a question like that, is my 10 year old, who knows that he belongs to me. Do you know that the Bible says that You can come to the throne room boldly, and look for grace in your time of need, but you won't pray like this.
You keep associating your confidence with your conflicts. And so because you're conflicted, and because you're cracked, and because you're screwed up beneath the surface, and you know it, you don't come to God boldly. You don't run up and get in His face and tell Him that you need Him on the level that you really need Him. You don't, you know, walk with your head held high like somebody who has been redeemed, but the moment that you realize, you know what, I belong here. I belong here. I belong here. Not, not not necessarily, because of my behavior but my admission price was purchased. This does not speak well, in a self-help oriented culture because I, I believe in helping yourself, but I also believe that there are some times when you can't.
And so the essence of church needs to be restated, you know, we've made the church so much like a country club, but it's a wonder they let us keep our tax exempt status. Do you know what I mean? We've made the church so exclusive. We made the church such a place that, that you have to become something in order to belong somewhere. That might be church, but that's not the Gospel. The Gospel is not you can belong when you become, the Gospel is you belong so you can become. Because nothing will change you like realizing that I have a father. Nothing will change you like realizing before I ever take my first breath, He loves me. Nothing will change you like realizing, I belong here.
Shake three people tell them, I belong here. I belong here. I belong here. He purchased my right to be here. He gave me access into His throne room, and nobody can strip my credentials, because nobody gave them to me but Christ. I belong here. I belong here. That's the greatest sensation. I feel. You know, everywhere that God puts me he's given me opportunities, but I never feel like I belong. I never feel every week. Every week. When I walk up on the stage, I wonder when are they going to stop handing the mic to the wrong guy? Where are they gonna find the real, qualified preacher? I've been looking around for him because I know there's somebody out here with superior qualifications to me, I know I... 'Cause I know me. I know my cracks.
Do you know how I came up with the title for this book? If you do, just pretend like you don't, 'cause I'm going to tell you again. Now I wish I could say I went on a prayer retreat to the Smoky Mountains and the clouds formed the shape of the parentheses. But what actually happened. I was on YouTube, right? I was getting ready to preach on a Saturday, and I put on YouTube because I like that background noise so I don't have to be alone with myself. And that was that was honest, that was raw. It just kind of slipped up. And I had it on a preacher, right?
And you know how YouTube will take an algorithm and recommend something for you to watch next, the little sidebar thing, you know? I figured Hey, I may as well trust in the sovereignty of YouTube. So I went, they recommended this video, up to me next, these people are professionals, these people know my habits. These people are acquainted with my desires. So it said that there was one I should watch next. So I watched it next. And it was a theologian, this theologian is very well known, very well respected. He was doing like a pastor's conference, and he was doing some question and answer.
So I put it on the Theologian. And I kind of walked out of the room. And then I heard them call my name. They were doing a lightning round where the interviewer was asking the Theologian, now this guy's famous. I didn't know he knew who I was. When they said my name and asked him what he thought about me. I thought he would say Who? That's what I was expecting. Because I've read this guy's book, or I should say, I was assigned this guy's book to read in seminary. And I told you I wasn't qualified, come take the mic, anybody? Well, they said "Steven Furtick". They were going through names. What do you think about this? What do you think about that and Steve Furtick?
You know how, kind of, when you overhear somebody talking about you makes you feel important, you know? So I ran back in there, he said my name, said my name. I've made it now. And he said, "Steven Furtick"? Well, the Theologian, I should show you the clip, but I don't want you to see who he is because some of you, when you hear what he said about me, if I told you who he was, you're not saved enough. I'm serious. My mom has thought about cutting his brake cables in his car. But I told her not to do that. She's not as Christian as me.
They said "Steven Furtick", and he goes, his body language said it all. He goes, he drops his head, slumps his shoulder and he exhales as if the mere consideration of my name was so wearisome to the great man's theological brain, that he could not bear the burden. It was like he was flushing out the toxins of hearing my name, just... And the crowd chuckled And he summarized my whole ministry, which is interesting because I never met him. You are judging by appearances, summarized my whole ministry with one word. And I guess by now, I don't need to tell you what that word was. Because it became the title of my book. Steven Furtick, Steven Furtick. And he said it so serious. He said it so serious. He said, "Unqualified". Sounded like a gavel in Texas. Death Penalty case. "Unqualified".
Now there would have been a time where that word would have triggered some words in my mind, that would make unqualified sound like a Valentine's Day card. But I was surprised by my reaction. I started laughing. You know what I thought? If you only knew. You know what I thought? Thank you, doctor. Thank you, sir, for... I almost slipped. I thought Thank you. Oh, by the way, you know what I did this week though? I signed him a copy of the book and sent it to him with a skinny red tie. I just wanted to thank him for the reminder, for saying what I felt my whole life. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's have church.
You just gotta own it. Touch somebody and say, "Own it". Own it. Yeah, I'm unqualified. Yeah, I feel stupid sometimes. Yeah, I feel inadequate from time to time. Yeah, I'm not where I'm gonna be, but I'm not where I used to be. Yeah, I got some cracks, but I'm also called, Yeah, I got some weakness, but I also got some strength. As a matter of fact, call me unqualified. It puts me in some pretty good company, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, Rehab, David, Paul, Peter.
Reach over to your neighbor and tell them, Join the club, club unqualified, club dysfunctional, club screwed up, club I lose my mind sometimes, club tempted, club unsure, club insecure, club I'm not quite there yet, club please be patient I'm a work in progress. Join the club. Where is my unqualified club? Membership is free. All you gotta do is come in on your knees.
Paul had a great gift. But he still had to defend his credentials and the way he defends them is funny to me, because if you want to defend yourself, you know, you put up a front but he gets real honest and real raw, real honest and real raw. And he's hurt and I can tell that he's hurt. Because he starts talking about his letters versus his speaking, he said that some of you, verse 10, are saying that my letters are better than my preaching.
Did you read the verse? Look at it with me. "For some say..." You're always going to have those voices. They're never going to go away. If Paul had people saying it, you're going to have people saying it. And by the way, most of us don't need YouTube to inform us that we're unqualified. We have a little chatterbox that's alive and well reminding us of the fact. So, he said, I know that some of you are comparing my letters to my speech... "For some say, 'His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive'" .
Unworthy, unskilled, untrained. I know we wrestle with it because you mentioned that again in the next chapter in 2 Corinthians, 11:5 and 1:6. He starts talking about, I may not be trained as a speaker. I know I'm not trained as a speaker, but I have knowledge. Now you don't talk like this, unless you're wrestling with it. If you're a Christian for very long, you're eventually going to have somebody ask you this question, and it's kind of a funny question, but they'll ask. This something we do as Christians we say, When you get to heaven, who do you want to see first?
Now when I asked you that, the first thing you got to say, "I want to see Jesus"... But then after you say that, I've asked people that before and usually hear a lot of people say they want to see Paul but I don't know if they do. I don't know Paul's the first person you want to see. Because we know Paul according to his gift, but apparently, Paul had a glitch is that this man who wrote 23% of the New Testament, total up the number of words of koine Greek, which is a type of Greek that the New Testament was written in.
And you look at how many are attributed to Paul, it was up to 23%. Makes him the second biggest human contributor to what we have as our New Testament canon of Scripture. Second only to Luke, who wrote Luke, and Acts. That guy, who we could argue was the most effective preacher of the last 20 centuries, who took the gospel to new frontiers. That gifted guy had a glitch, and apparently, the way he preached, this preacher, because you know when you picture Paul, I bet you picture him with a big booming voice, funny illustrations, B-3 organ, but Paul stood up to preach and some people said, "He ain't nothing. He can't preach like Apollos".
Polis was another preacher during his day. And people always wanted to compare Paul and Apollos. And they say I follow Polis because Polis was an orator. He was spellbinding. He had a vocabulary like a thesourus. He had metaphors and analogies and synonyms and antonyms, other grammar tools and boy he could preach. So when he preach he was just spellbinding, he preached and people believed. Paul said I know I'm not a very good preacher. That gets me because he's talking about confidence. But then he talks about the conflict. He fulfilled a great destiny, but he illuminates his deficiency.
One of the great things about pastoring a large church now is that I get to know some of the people who have always been my heroes from a distance personally. And sometimes you wish that you had kept them at a distance. But sometimes you get to know them and you realize that the secret of their strength isn't what you thought it was. So there, there are three pastors that I consider the best, just my personal ranking, you know, for whatever it's worth, I've seen certain things that they do, and I respect them all on different levels for different reasons, but they all in some way represent something that I would love to emulate, and I've asked them over the last, I would say, eight months, the same question. Across the three different areas.
So the first one, he's really great with money. And his church reflects this. He has millions in assets and zero in debt, both in his personal life and his church life. And I see how he orders his life and how strategic and efficient it is. And I asked him, What made you that way? What do you think made you that way? He answered quickly, I was so broke growing up. I was so poor, I had nothing. So when I finally got something, it was the poverty that I experienced growing up that gave me the discipline to handle what I had when I got it.
Okay, second guy, he's the best empowerer, is that a word? He is the best at empowering other leaders that I've ever seen. And now at around age 60. He's got leaders that he raised up and sent out all over the world who are doing More than he could ever do through the power of his life multiplied. So I asked him, How have you always had the virtue or the humility to be able to empower other leaders in the way that you have? You know, I said, he said, I don't think it was humility as much as it was my insecurity. I never saw myself as a great leader. So I had no other choice but to lean on other people. That's the second one.
I want you to look for the common thread and the three of these because the third one, he's the best preacher I've ever heard. The best, the best, and I'll fight you over that he's the best. I heard him say twice in the last couple of weeks. Something that shocked me because I see his gift. I see his gift, but I never saw his glitch. I see his gift. And it surprised me when he said when I first started preaching, my hand would shake so bad. I could hardly hold the microphone. had to get a microphone that would clip on me because if I held one, my hand would shake too bad and I couldn't hold it still. And he said, when I first started preaching, he said I preached harder than anybody else. I preach for two hours, three hours, he said, I would preach so hard that not only what I sweat through my suit, I would sweat through my shoes. You could ring sweat out of my shoe laces when I got done preaching.
And he said, watch this, this. This made me cry, like Vanellope on Wreck It Ralph when he said it. He said, The reason I preach so hard, is because I never thought I preached that good. In each of those cases, it was their glitch that made them great. It was the thing that they would have asked God to take away. Or it was the thing that they would have asked God to put in, that he didn't that fed their strength through their weakness. This is such a powerful revelation when you consider that Paul wrote 23% of the New Testament. And I found myself wondering if Paul had been a better speaker, would he have picked up his pen and written all those letters?
I wonder if Paul could have preached like a Apollos, would we have Second Corinthians? Would we have Romans? Would we have Ephesians 3:20: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. He picked up his pen, perhaps because he couldn't preach like Apollos. I gotta be careful 'cause I'll get choked up thinking about it because I've spent so much time feeling like my glitch was going to keep me from being used by God. But it was his glitch that became his gift.
The words that you read today that Paul wrote, may not even be on the page, if he could have preached better. It was because he couldn't preach like Apollos that he wrote like Paul. His glitch was the gift that keeps on giving. How many Bible verses an you quote that Apollos wrote? But Apollos could preach. Apollos was impressive, no doubt what he said was profound. But he sat it and it died. Paul couldn't preach like Apollos. So it forced him to sit down. He said, I gotta take my glitch and find a way to turn it into a gift. And because he had a glitch, you got to get this in your heart because he had a glitch, his words are still reverberating today, I thought you might want to take 15 seconds and praise God for your glitch and praise God for your weakness and praise God for your struggles.
You might as well put your weakness to work 'cause it's not going away. I'm not saying don't improve. I'm not saying don't get more intelligent. I'm not saying don't take the class. I'm saying that there is a glitch in all of us. That's a lie. There are multiple glitches in all of us. When Vanellope found out... I'm gonna tie it all together, Wreck It Ralph. Apostle Paul. Here they come, they're meeting up, watch this, but Vanellope is stuck in a game and she can't race because she's a glitch. But guess what? The reason that they unplugged the machine to try to turn her into a glitch to begin with is because she was royalty. She was a hero. You got to watch the movie to get the full revelation of this sermon.
I want you to sit down and watch it for your quiet time this week. Because when you watch her you'll find out that the way she ended up saving the game was that she glitched to the finish line. It was her glitch. God, y'all don't hear me. Y'all don't hear me. You keep thinking that your glitch is getting in the way. I'm trying to tell you that Paul's glitch became the gift that we're reading today. And if you've got a glitch, and if you've got a weakness, and if you've gotta broken spot in your life, and you'll bring it to God in humility and sincerity, your weakness is about to become your secret weapon. Your weakness is about to become your portal to God's power. Now give Him praise if you believe it. Give Him praise if you believe it. Give Him praise if you receive it.
The reason I'm so smart with money is I was so broke, my glitch became my gift. The reason I empowered so many leaders is because I didn't think I was a very good one. My glitch, became my gift. The reason I can preach and connect with people is because I was convinced I never could. See, people who have a great gift often find that their gift stunts their growth. But when you know you have a glitch, when you know that you have a deficiency, and you begin to believe that my deficiency is connected to my destiny. That's how God uses broken people to do big things. Jump up on their feet. If you receive this word on any level, clap your hands and give God praise.
I want you to summarize my message, hug at least six people and tell them, "Your glitch is your gift". Your glitch is your gift. If he could have preached better, maybe he wouldn't have written it down. If he... Sometimes what God leaves out is just as important as what he puts in. If Paul had spoken 2 Corinthians 12:10, we wouldn't be able to throw it up on the screen. They didn't have a tape recorder. They didn't have Pro Tools, Reason, Logic, Ableton; I'm just saying stuff now. He would have said it, but because of his glitch.
Oh, God. 'Cause of what he couldn't do. I would've like to have been a better athlete. I would love to be able to run the 40 faster than over five seconds. I would love that. But maybe if I've been a better athlete, I wouldn't have been a youth minister. I know some of you would've love to had a dad that raised you and you should have, but maybe your deficiency, maybe the fact that you didn't have a great dad is going to be the thing that drives you to become one.
I don't think it's coincidence that the nerdy kids become the most successful ones. Because since they don't have a whole lot of people around, they have to get to know themselves and they have to develop themselves. So then what in high school is loneliness becomes later in life success. It's the glitch that keeps giving. You know the thing that didn't happen for you, that you prayed it would happen and you felt like a failure when it didn't happen. The thing you didn't get the opportunity that you screwed up. Hey, maybe you screwed it up. Maybe God didn't do it. But Paul said, "When I am weak, then I am strong".
Join hands with the person next to you. You think God doesn't see your glitch? You think he's limited by it? You think the manufacturer doesn't know your defect? Of course the does, shows you anyway. I know a lot of preaching says, you know, God's gonna use you in spite of that thing. That's not my message. I'm saying he's going because of it.