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Watch 2022-2023 online sermons » Steven Furtick » Steven Furtick — Chain Reactions

Steven Furtick — Chain Reactions



But what if the doubt that has stood at the door my whole life is only an indication of the power of the purpose that's locked inside? What if the thing that's been holding you captive your whole life is just an indication of the potency of the calling that's inside of you? And if it ever got loose, if it ever got free, if it ever got out...

I believe the Lord's given me a word for your situation today a liberating word, a powerful word, a word that'll set you free. Scripture says, "The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. And after they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly" — everybody say suddenly — "there was such a violent earthquake..". How many know God can shake the foundations of things that have been holding you down in one moment in your life in His presence? "...the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone's chains came loose".

Wow! What if that happened today in the presence of God? What if chains fell off of your life in areas where you've been bound for years? What if things that have held you hostage for decades fell to the ground in the presence of God today? You believe it could happen? I want to speak to you today from this subject. I want to talk about "Chain Reactions". Chain reactions. Chain reactions. Touch somebody next to you on your way to your seat. Say, "You're about to get set free". Amen. You may be seated. Chain reactions. Whoo! I feel like God's going to do something great today. I need a little... Oh thanks, guys. You're good. You can stay if you want. I always love having a string section behind me while I preach.

So very epic. Lately, I've been asking God for different kinds of blessings in my life. And I've stopped asking Him so much to bless the items on my list, and instead I've been asking Him to bless my perspective, to bless my perspective. The reason for that is because I think I've spent too much of my time trying to get God to see things from my perspective when all he's really ever wanted is to show me how to see things from His. And one of the most powerful things that you can do, that I can do is when we just ask God to help us to see things like He sees them.

When you get down to it, really, all that you have control over, complete control over, is your perspective. You know? You really can solve one problem and another will take its place, so you'll never really be in complete control of your problems. But I do believe over time, with practice, you can gain mastery of your perspective. And this may be worth writing down — your perspective is a product of your connections. Your perspective is a product of your connections. The perspective that you have right now about your life, about your wife, about your job, about your abilities — that perspective is a product of the connections that you've made, in the way that you think about one thing.

Maturity is the process of learning to make better connections so that a little child thinks they're getting in trouble because "it's not fair," but an adult learns to make better connections and learn that some of the consequences in my life are the product of my own decisions. And we call that maturity because maturity is the result of better connections. Better thinking is simply better connections. And the more that you learn to pay attention to your connections, the more you can live with the correct perspective, which is so important because your perspective will either become your prison or your passport. Your perspective will either become the thing that confines you to the way things are or releases you into the way things can be and the way God designed your life to operate.

So checking your perspective is a daily habit, more important than brushing your teeth, more important than fixing your hair, more important than toning your obliques. It's to check your perspective. Touch the person next to you. Say, "Check your perspective". Really, when you come to church, one of the best things about that decision is that you are making an investment in your perspective. We invest all kinds of money and all kinds of time into all other facets of life, but when's the last time you made an investment in your perspective?

When we come to church and we say, you know, "That was life-changing," or when we read something and we say, "Man, that changed my life," what we really mean is it altered my perspective. And one of the greatest gifts that people can give you who are different than you is the wisdom of their perspective. It's a real gift when somebody doesn't agree with you, because they just opened a door or a window for you to see life through their lens, thereby granting you wisdom that you might not have otherwise been able to access. The power of perspective.

Some of you today are locked in ways of living that are the result of incorrect perspectives. And the word of God has the ability to gut your perspective of past memories that haunt you, of future fears that intimidate you, and of personal insecurities that damage you and cripple you and bring you into a proper perspective of all that God says you are, all that He says you can do, all that He says He is, all that He says you have because you're connected to Him. When you realize that you're connected to God, it changes your perspective because your perspective is the product of your connections.

So if I'm connected to the all sufficient God, I don't see lack. I see all my needs abundantly supplied by His glorious riches in Christ Jesus. It changes my perspective when I understand my connection. That's why when I lift my hands in worship, I feel strength coming to every weak area in my life. My life didn't change. My perspective changed. And if I get my perspective right, my life will line up over time. So I'm coming to realize that being blessed is not a state of affairs. Being blessed is a state of mind. Being blessed is not a level of my bank account. Being blessed is not a condition or a circumstantial reality as much as it is a way of thinking and a perspective. Blessing is a perspective.

So I want to ask you a question today. You might have a blessed body or a blessed marriage or a blessed family or a blessed career, but do you have a blessed perspective? And when's the last time that you came into the presence of God and said, "God, I just want You to touch my mind and bless my perspective. I'm not even going to ask You today to bless this and that and Jimmy and Johnny. Just bless my perspective to see how You're already working in all areas of my life. Bless my perspective".

Lately, I've been reading scripture even, looking for the psychological construct that brings the text together. And in Acts 16, I see such a powerful picture of perspective, the kind of perspective that can cause you to make it through the darkest night of your life. The Bible says that Paul and Silas were out preaching on a missionary journey in the city of Philippi. "And the crowd" — verse 22 — "joined in the attack against Paul and Silas..". Notice the word against. You probably won't be attacked by a mob because of your faith in Jesus Christ, not necessarily, but I will illustrate the principle that when there is an advance, there is always a counter attack.

When there is advancement in your life, or the desire to advance, there will always be an attack — always, always, always. The enemy doesn't attack apathetic people. He doesn't have to. You're sabotaging yourself. You're sitting on your destiny. He doesn't have to get you to forfeit it by becoming discouraged. You're not doing anything with the gifts you have anyway. But the moment that you make up your mind to advance, you can expect an attack. And little baby Christians get all upset anytime they're attacked for any reason. Any little thing can cause them to want to give up. But the sign of an attack is the indication of advancement in my life.

So stop being surprised when stuff is hard. Stop being so shocked when things don't go your way. In fact, I was studying about this whole scene. It's kind of a racial riot, if you want to know the truth about it, because Paul and Silas were Roman citizens but they were also Jews and they were preaching the gospel of Christ in Europe for the first time in this city called Philippi in the Macedonian region. The reason that they ended up in Macedonia, and in Philippi to be exact, is because they tried to go into the province of Asia. The Bible says that the spirit of Jesus would not permit them to go there. And it was because of what they didn't get to do, that they set out to do, that they ended up where they needed to be to accomplish what God had put in them.

That's for somebody right there. You've been crying about something that didn't happen for you or somebody who didn't like you or somebody who rejected you, but rejection is nothing more than a redirection. And when you begin to see it that way, you see that some of the heartbreak in your life was really God moving you into position for some of the blessings that He desires to bring that you don't even know to pray for yet. It's a chain reaction, see?

So Paul couldn't get into Asia, so he said, "Well, let me try Macedonia". And he goes to Macedonia and there's a girl following him and Silas around, and she's mocking them while they preach. And Paul put up with it for a little while, but eventually he turned around and said one word, "In the name of Jesus, come out". And when this girl, who had the ability to predict the future — I'm just filling you in the context of the thing, so you can understand how sometimes it's a chain reaction, how one thing leads to the other and how even bad things can lead to good things, and sometimes you try to do a good thing and it leads to a bad thing, because when he turned around and did that, this spirit that had enabled this girl to predict the future left her and now her masters who were pimping her out could no longer make money off of her, so it upset the region.

So they used the Jewish nationality of these men to insight the crowd to put 'em in prison. And that's where we pick up. It says that they were stripped and beaten and fastened in stocks. Stripped... I wonder, have you ever been stripped of your self-worth? Let me be specific about this. I've got to word this carefully. Stripped of your self-worth. It's a different kind of stripped. It's when you get stripped of your confidence, stripped of possessions. Some of you have been stripped of your health. Some of you have been stripped of your own love for others by some abuse that happened to you that made it really hard for you to give what you never got, and they were beaten, beaten, beaten.

Maybe you haven't been beaten by rods, but maybe you've been beaten by thoughts. Maybe you've been beaten by doubts. Maybe you've been beaten by words and criticism and cynicism. Maybe you've been beaten by habits and addictions. Stripped and beaten and guarded. Guarded — why? Because they were so important to God's purpose that the enemy had to do everything that he could. In this case, it was the Roman magistrate; but in your case, you have an enemy who has set up guards at the door of your life to make sure that the purpose that is in you never gets out.

You know, I remember, even as a young boy, feeling like that God had given me a calling to preach the gospel. I couldn't describe but it was a feeling that I was supposed to preach one day. Maybe I just wanted to tell people what do to. I don't know what the motivation was. I'm not saying it was a holy motivation, but it was a sense that I had a calling. But even from a young age, I remember thought processes in my mind and perspectives that seemed to contradict that calling. So I can remember, very vividly, being seven years old, eight years old, lying in bed, trying to believe in God, but couldn't do it, as a little boy, because I couldn't get past, "Well then, where did God come from".

And it would trip me up every time, as a little boy, just an overactive, hyperactive imagination of a little boy, just wondering like, "Well then, where did He come from". And I couldn't get past that. And I can remember staying up later and later and later with every year, just thinking about stuff. I've always had a real acute sense of doubt that would seem to disqualify me from doing this. But what if the doubt that has stood at the door my whole life is only an indication of the power of the purpose that's locked inside? O God. Did you hear me? I said what if the thing that's been holding you captive your whole life is just an indication of the potency of the calling that's inside of you? And if it ever got loose, if it ever got free, if it ever got out, it might change the world.

That's why you've been struggling with so much. That's why you fight so hard with your temper. That's why you fight so hard in your mind. That's why you'll fight so hard with pessimism — because there's something so great on the inside the enemy has been commanded to guard you carefully. Keep you locked down. But where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. I came to announce the spirit of the Lord is in this place. And if Son makes you free, you are free indeed.

So please, calm down. They were thrown in prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. It's hilarious to read about this if you understand that Paul and Silas were joined by two partners called Luke and Timothy. Timothy was a young protégé they picked up along the way of this Acts 16 journey that I told you about. And Luke was the physician that wrote the record in the book of Acts. But I don't see them in prison. Why? Because they're not the leaders. And so when you ask God to use your life in a significant way...

Let me put it this way. Maybe this will make sense. If you want the fire, you've got to be able to stand the heat. If you want to be on the front line serving God, if you want to be on the front line raising kids that have values, if you want to be on the front line shaking things up in your school... The ones who are the most on fire have to face the most heat. So it's no surprise to me if people say bad things about our church. Why? We're on fire. Yeah!

That's why they picked Paul and Silas to put in prison. "I don't understand why everybody's always picking on me, why it's always so hard for me, why everybody else..". 'Cause you're not everybody else. 'Cause you want something more than everybody else wants. Because you've got your eyes set on things above. So Luke tells the story. He said that, "When he had received these orders" — verse 24 — "he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks".

Now, he did one thing right and one thing wrong. 'Kay? One thing he did guaranteed that they couldn't get out, but the other he did guaranteed that they wouldn't stay. What he did right is he put their feet in stocks. So technically, they can't move. But what he did wrong is in the same verse, and you missed it. You weren't paying attention and you missed it. But I'm going to review. Put the verse back on the screen. He put them in the inner cell — singular. He put them in the same cell. He shouldn't have done that. If he wanted Paul and Silas to stay in that place, he should have kept them separated. He guaranteed when he put them in the same cell that that cell couldn't hold them.

The enemy always wants to fight you one on one, in isolation. If you can look back over the times in your life where you were the most discouraged, I guarantee you that it was because you allowed yourself to become isolated and you may even have had people around you who wanted to help you but you were in solitary.

Holly told me about a study — I don't know if it's true, and please don't write me any animal rights letters about this. But they took two monkeys and they put 'em in an experiment to see if they could scare the monkeys. So they did it two ways. The first time they put the monkeys in separate cages. And they measured the cortisol, the stress hormone, and it measured off the charts. They would flash lights and make loud sounds and I know they shouldn't have treated those monkeys like that. I didn't do the experiment. I just heard about it from Holly.

So write her about it if you don't like it. But they put 'em in the cage alone and measured the stress and then they put 'em in the cage together. And they did the same experiment: the same flashing lights, the same loud sounds, but the stress level when they were in the cage together was half what it was when they were apart. O God. Touch somebody and say, "Will you be my monkey"? 'Cause if I'm gonna half to go through hell, at least don't' make me go through it alone. Come on, somebody.

It said Paul and Silas. Now that little "and" is the devil's problem 'cause if he would have wanted to kept you bound, he shouldn't have let you get into church today. 'Cause if he can keep you in the cage by yourself, he can torment you with fear. Ahhh, but I got a connection today. Come on. Shout somebody. Say, "Make the connection".
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