Steven Furtick — Brace Yourself
One of the things you should try sometime, it's so much fun. You should just like walk up to a guy, any guy, you can pick any guy, doesn't matter how old he is, how big he is, doesn't matter. Just walk up to him and say "Hey! Have you been working out?" Just try it.
If you're a married woman don't do it to another man, don't do that, but just try it sometime. It's interesting you'll notice he'll suck in, he'll start flexing stuff, he'll start contorting his body in all kinds of interesting ways in response to that question.
There's nothing men love more than to be complimented on their growth, their muscular growth. And it can take on different shapes and things like that. I personally, personally, am not a fan of exercise in any format, but I have embraced exercise, realizing that sometimes routines and results are connected in unexpected ways. Like, if you actually move more and eat less, you will look better.
How bout that? It's a new nutrition program, it's exclusively available here. I'm a spiritual teacher, and a nutritionist, who knew. A fitness coach, strength coach. In some ways though, I think a lot of times our solutions are a lot simpler than we think they are.
It's the implementation of solutions in our life that's more difficult, and we're talking all in this series, we've been looking at different ways that God makes us stronger, and the fact that God will often take someone who looks weak and use them to demonstrate His strength.
Sometimes God prefers Danny Devito over Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's a dated reference, but some of you will get it. Sometimes God wants to use the weak things of the world to confound the wise, and so you can't just always walk up to somebody and see how strong they are, not on the surface.
Its been a major theme of this series, I hope the message is starting to get through to you. To keep this moving forward though, I want to take a look at a church in the New Testament, a church that was struggling, a church that was dealing with immense persecution, and in the midst of their struggle, God is using the writer of the book of Hebrews to speak strength to their struggle.
And he's going through a list of different people throughout the scripture, who were unlikely, people who didn't look very strong, but who God used to accomplish great feats of strength. He's using these illustrations because they need to know that although they are a young upstart church, this is not mega church, this is not modern Christianity which is spanning the globe.
This is when the church was considered a cult, this is when Christianity wasn't a brand name, there were no television networks proclaiming the name of Jesus, it was just a huddle, just a group. It was starting to spread though, starting to gain traction, and starting to increase in intensity of persecution and difficulty.
And so the writer of Hebrews is listing some examples that they can draw encouragement from, people who didn't look that big, who didn't seem that strong, but who God used to accomplish great things. In the middle of this list, the writer of Hebrews is ready to land the plane, but doesn't know where to stop and he says in Hebrews 32:11, which is sometimes called the Hall of Faith, get it?
Like the Hall of Fame. Hall of Faith, this is things that preachers sit around and think of because we don't have real jobs. He said "And what more shall I say, I don't have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Sampson, and Jeftha, about David and Samuel, and the prophets who through faith" pay attention to that phrase because I want to come all the way back to it in a moment. "Conquered kingdoms," listen what they did "administered justice, and gained what was promised. They shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword."
I want to be in this club, I want to do big things for God, who's weakness was turned into strength. That's the phrase puzzled me in this list, cause I don't want to argue with the author of Hebrews, he's much smarter than I am, whoever he is. We don't know who he is, it's an anonymous book of the Bible, some have suggested he's obviously a coffee drinker, because Hebrews.
But whoever he was, I just would love to interview him cause I get, I get most of the list that he used right there in that little section, I totally understand why he brings up Samuel, Samuel's mother was unable to conceive a baby for a period, and when she finally gave birth to Samuel she dedicated him to God, and he was thrust into a wicked temple system and he was a reformer of that system in many ways, as a prophet, but he came from a barren situation so I understand that God wants to use Samuel to illustrate how you can come from a barren situation and redeem a broken system.
I understand that part, and I understand why God would mention David though the writer of the book of Hebrews, that makes sense to put him in there as an example of somebody who as we mentioned in several of these sessions, started very much from the bottom, started almost excluded, not in the line up at all of people in his own family who were candidates to be called by God for kingship, but he rose to prominence and did great things, and delivered God's people.
Speaking of delivering God's people, it makes sense that the writer of Hebrews, who's writing to a mostly Jewish community, would reach back into the canon of their history and mention some of the judges who were, well in-between the time where there were no human kings, God would raise up judges for the people of Israel to deliver them in battle.
Some of the famous ones are mentioned here, Gideon, I get Gideon. I get Gideon, and he hid in a wine press because he didn't want to thresh wheat out in the open, because he didn't want to expose himself to the enemy. I know what that feels like, I know what it feels like to retreat in fear, and I know what it feels like for God to stir up my faith, and Gideon went and with only 300 men did awesome things for God, so I get mentioning Gideon, because that's an example of God turning weakness into strength.
Anytime that God calls you out of a wine press of sorts, raises you up to be a warrior, and gives you a great victory in spite of your limited vision, that's an example of weakness into strength. And so is Barak and Jeftha, Jeftha was the one who's mom was a prostitute, I don't know if you know about Jeftha, we don't do bible studies around Jeftha, because the Bible says that he was kicked out of his house and surrounded by worthless men.
But it's not what surrounds you that determines how far you can go in life, and it's not where you started that determines where you end up, so he ended up being used by God in some unusual ways, so I understand his inclusion. Weakness into strength.
But Sampson, Sampson, he gets me, he gets me because if you know anything about Sampson's life, wouldn't you call that strength into weakness? We've got a whole list of people who started weak and finished strong, but then we've got this guy, this legendary, mythical, bible character that even people who have walked by a church at any point in their life have heard of, Sampson. Sampson who started out very strong, and ended very weak, ended up in a place that was not fitting for his potential.
In fact the Bible says that Sampson after he had renounced his vows as a Nazarite by not only touching a dead body, that was one of vows that he broke, and not only drinking alcohol that was another one of his vows, there are three vows that were a part of his Nazarite vow that coincided with his miraculous birth that gave him his great strength, but when his hair was cut off, because he wasn't supposed to shave his head, when a razor touched his head the Bible says "His strength left him."
His strength left him, the writer of Hebrews is encouraging a church that's getting stronger, but facing more resistance because that's the way you get stronger is to face more resistance. I mean, what if you got a trainer to help you get stronger, and the trainer pointed you to the weights, and you were frustrated with the trainer for making you work.
I think sometimes the direction God points us to in our spiritual development, frustrates us even though that's the very reason that we came to came to Him, to make us stronger. So when you come to God and ask Him to strengthen you, don't be surprised when He puts a weight on your life. You've gotta brace yourself.