Steven Furtick — I Know I Am
So, any time you're looking for the deepest parts of your soul, there's only one place you can go, and of course, it's YouTube. I don't normally go to YouTube for my theological questions, but sometimes it just so happens that's the place where... I'll explain.
It was a Saturday afternoon. I was preparing to go and preach, and I'd been watching a sermon on YouTube, and you know how YouTube has the little recommended for you thing on the side bar that you could go, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you freefall into the abyss of the sovereignty of YouTube. So, it gave me a clip that it suggested I should watch next, and of course, since YouTube is all-knowing, I decided I'd give it a shot, and I played the video, and it was an interview with a theologian.
Now, this theologian is world-famous. This guy is world-renowned. I had read his books in seminary or I should say I was assigned to read his books in seminary. I'm not sure I actually finished his books, but I knew the guy, and it was an interview to ask him about theological questions of the day.
And so, I kind of walked away from the clip. I hit play, and I was going to get ready to preach, and all of a sudden, I heard something really strange just in the background. I heard them say my name, and I ran back into the room, and I realized they had gone into a lightening round, and the interviewer was asking the theologian at this pastor's conference his opinion on several different topics, and he wanted him to answer in just one word these different topics that he threw out, and all of a sudden, the topic of my name came up.
Well, I was excited. I was like, they're talking about me. I didn't even know the guy knew who I was. You know, this famous theologian. And so I ran back into the room to hear what they're going to say, and the interview asked the theologian.
He goes, "What comes to your mind when you hear the name Steven Furtick?" And the theologian dropped his head and he sighed as if like even considering the mention of my name was a burden, like my name was toxic chemical radioactive gas that he was breathing in, and he breathed out, big sigh, and he looks back up, and he stares at the interviewer, and he summarizes my entire life and ministry in one word.
And the way he said this word. I'm going to try to impersonate it. I can't even tell you what it sounded like. He said it with the finality of a gavel in a death penalty case in the state of Texas. He said one word, and he looked at the interviewer, Steven Furtick, and he said, "Unqualified."
What was interesting to me is I had never met the guy, and I found it kind of funny that he could summarize my whole life in one word. I mean, at least it was four syllables, so it was kind of a big word, but I was sitting there surprised that he could so accurately summarize my whole life and ministry in one word, unqualified.
But what surprised me the most about it was the fact that I wasn't really angry. I mean, there would have been a time where I would have followed that up with some words, and I don't even need four syllables. I could have followed it up with some words that would have made unqualified sound like a Valentine's Day card greeting, but instead, what I found myself thinking was, "Exactly." That's exactly how I feel.
I know I'm not the only one. I hear that all the time in my own mind. I don't need YouTube to tell me. I don't need a theologian to tell me. I've been a pastor now for coming up on ten years, and there hasn't been a day that I've reported for work whether I'm preaching or helping people or leading that I haven't felt unqualified.
He just finally put a label on what I've felt my whole life, and I didn't just start feeling it when I became a pastor, and I don't only feel it when I comes to my leadership duties. I feel it as a dad. I feel it as a husband. I feel it as a Christian. And so, I decided to approach this topic of being unqualified, and I started asking people all around me, "Have you ever felt unqualified?"
And I wasn't asking people who don't have jobs. I wasn't asking people who never made it past the seventh grade. I was asking people with college degrees. I was asking people who are seemingly happily married. I was asking people who look like they're at the top of their game.
And every single person that I asked, no matter how long they've had a relationship with God or no matter how much Bible knowledge they have, it resonated with them that deep down somewhere within myself, I feel unqualified. And the more I thought about the designated term that the theologian chose for me, unqualified, the less it felt like a criticism and the more it felt like a compliment. 'Cause see, if I'm unqualified, that puts me in some pretty good company.
Like that means I get to hang out with all the Bible heroes, the people that God hand-picked who were screwed up, dysfunctional. People like Noah who got drunk after a flood. People like Gideon who was hiding out in a wine press threshing wheat. People like Peter who couldn't shut his mouth when he needed to shut his mouth. People like Peter who cut off Malchus's ear in the garden when he should have been representing the one who came to bring healing to the world.
I'm just saying that if you've ever felt unqualified, you're in pretty good company. So, I want to issue an invitation to everybody who has ever felt unqualified to join the club and own it and realize that that's never stopped God because I found that it really doesn't matter what a theologian thinks about me. It really doesn't matter what someone says about me.
Really what matters is what I see in myself. And you can't talk about being unqualified without talking about Moses. Moses is my main character. He is the poster child for the unqualified. I wonder if we could look at him for a moment because one of the most famous scenes in Moses's life is found at what we call the burning bush.
Now, to Moses, it wasn't the scene at the burning bush. For Moses, it was just any other day. It was just a day at the office tending sheep for his father-in-law, Jethro, on the far side of the desert. He had no idea that he would encounter God in a special way on that day, and you know a lot of times we don't.
A lot of times we're just going about or business, just flipping through television, just going to our job, and sometimes in those moments, God calls us to look and to step aside and to stop, and He reveals something about our identity that we never could have known otherwise. Something that YouTube can't show us. Something that you can't even see in yourself sometimes, but God has seen it all along.
And so when God calls to Moses and tells him that I've come down to rescue my people from Egyptian slavery, and I've heard their cries, and I'm choosing you to be their deliverer, Moses says to God in Exodus 3:11, "Who am I that I should go to pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"
Who am I? Isn't that the central question that really never goes away? Isn't that the question of identity that can keep us in so many stages and phases of our life pretending, posturing, posing, trying to accomplish our way into an identity that God has already given to us as a gift?
And when God speaks to Moses about the great plans that He has, Moses has no doubt that God can do it. It's not God that Moses is concerned about. It's Moses. It's Moses. The researcher, Brene Brown has some interesting work on vulnerability, shame, and whole-hearted living, and Brene Brown posits that the feeling that most of us are walking around carrying the weight and the burden that most of us are living under and the cloud that is covering our view so that we can't receive our calling in life is this sense that I am never enough.
And maybe even put a blank there. I am never enough. I asked a group of people to fill in that blank. I said what is that you feel that you are never enough, and their answers ranged. Someone said never experienced enough. Someone said never patient enough. Someone said never competent enough. Someone said never consistent enough. Someone said never strong enough. Someone said never smart enough. Someone said never awesome enough. I like that one.
Maybe you have your own word that goes in that blank. I am never enough. I understand why Moses would have wondered, "God, did you dial the right number?" You know, we use all kinds of phrases and terms to qualify ourselves and to explain ourselves and to even understand ourselves. I call this concept the third word, meaning that you've been filling in this blank, I am... sometimes it's hard to even know what to put after I am.
Moses has a few different things that are defining his identity at this point in his life. You have to understand that at this point in Moses's life he is a murderer, a fugitive on the run. He grew up as Egyptian royalty, but now he's back in a place. He's actually dislocated from his destiny in a sense, and so when God speaks to Moses, the first thought that Moses might have is, "I am dysfunctional."
I wonder, can you relate to this feeling of being dysfunctional? Now, you may not have Moses's same dilemma. Moses was a murderer. He killed an Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He tried to do the right thing which was deliver his people, but he did it in the wrong way. And so because of his choices in the past and his experiences in the past, he reaches this place of dysfunction, and Moses is certainly carrying with him the dysfunction of knowing that I had a destiny, but I blew it.
I wonder do you feel dysfunctional? Now, you may not say it this way, but all of us have these third words. I am dysfunctional. It's that thing you know about yourself that nobody else knows. It's that thing that you struggle with that you don't talk about in prayer group. It's that thing that you think about over and over again that if we asked you about it, you would develop a code name to talk about it, but you wouldn't really get to the essence of it.
It's the thing that you try to hide. It's the thing that makes you feel hidden. It's the thing that prevents you from connecting with others. "I am dysfunctional," Moses may have said or the next one, Moses may have said, "I am deficient."
You see, God was calling Moses to go to pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world and to speak on God's behalf, to release the captives by speaking liberation. The only problem is Moses wasn't a very good speaker. Have you ever felt like God called you to do something that He should have wired you to do, but apparently, he forgot the part or put that part in when He let you off the assembly line? Yeah, we all feel that way.
Maybe it's not speaking for you, but maybe it's an area of expertise that you lack. You feel like you're trying to put in something that God left out or that life is demanding something from you that God didn't give you. Moses felt that way. "I am slow of speech. I'm not very eloquent. I am deficient." And, "I am doubtful."
I wonder could you really use me? I know some of you have probably never had anybody break your heart. Maybe you're the heartbreaker, but I'll never forget a girl breaking up with me one time, and what she told me was meant to make me feel good, but really she was just trying to let me down easily. She had this thing she said. Maybe you've heard it before. She said, "It's not you. It's me." You've heard this too? You've heard this. She was trying to say, "You know, I'm not ready for a relationship. It's not you. It's me."
That's what I hear Moses saying to God at the burning bush and that's where I see a lot of believers getting stuck. It's not that I don't believe that God is mighty. I know God is mighty. He created the mountains. I know God is mighty. He summons the wind and the waves at His word. I know God is incredible. I know God can do all things. I just, I just, I just know me. It's not God that I'm worried about. It's not you God. It's me. I am doubtful.
Well, what's interesting about Moses and what's interesting about our lives is that God bypasses all of that and uses Moses anyway as unqualified as he was according to his ability, as disqualified as he was based on his history. God used him anyway.
And I wonder is God trying to speak to you today that He has seen you and watched you and formed you and made you, and He has chosen to use you anyway. Because Moses went to the pharaoh, and he unleashed the plagues of Egypt, and maybe you want to read all of this in your Bible, but I wanted to go all the way over to Exodus 20, and this is where God is giving Moses what we call the Ten Commandments or the Hebrews would have known them as the Ten Words or the Ten Laws, and there are several that you may be familiar with.
There's, you know, don't kill and don't commit adultery, and all of those are good, but for the purpose of this study, I wanted to look at Exodus 20:7 where God tells Moses something that you may have heard before, but I wondered do you know what it means because God tells Moses in this list of ways that He wants His people to relate with Him in covenant and to know Him as God, He says you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.