Steven Furtick — Measuring More
And one thing that's really interesting about teaching God's word and preaching on a regular basis, is people, please say awkward things to you sometimes after you preach. One of the things that I've told everybody that's on my team that I never want them to say again is my least favorite thing that people will ask me after I preach, and if you have a pastor, if you go to church, don't ask the preacher this after he preaches. It's like the worst thing you can ask him or her.
And here's the question, they'll say, "So, how did you feel about that?" Which to me, I mean, you were in the same sermon I was. I felt pretty good about it until you asked me. Should I not? I thought it was all right. Is there something I need to know? It's just like, it's the worst question ever and it's a bad question on multiple levels.
Number one, you should start with, "I thought that was awesome. How did you feel about it?" Even just that tag at the beginning, that would help so much, like, "Well, to me that was amazing, did you also find it amazing?" You know, lie to me. Even if you don't think it's amazing. Just tell me what... I have a fragile ego.
But, another reason that I hate the question, "How did you feel about it?" is because when you're doing something that's kind of ambiguous or nebulous like ministry where you can't always see the effect of it right away, it's hard to know how to feel about it.
You know, if it was a sport and somebody won and somebody lost, "How do you feel about it?" is easy to answer. Well, we lost. I hate it. We won. I feel great. But when you're doing something like preaching and I think a lot of areas of life are like this, not just preaching but growing spiritually, parenting, trying to be a good husband or a good wife or a better person. It's kind of hard to measure certain things.
So, when you say, "How did you feel about that sermon?" And sometimes I want to say, "I don't know, we'll see." I preached about giving, we'll see if the people give any more. They politely listened but have to see if they took action. I preached about serving. We'll see if the people serve more.
It's hard to measure certain things. And the world has a system of measurement. We've been talking about this a lot in this teaching series is that the world's measurement system is often very different than heaven's measurement system. The way human measures and the way heaven measures can be pretty different.
And so, I want to incite a rebellion. I know that's a strong call to action, but I mean it. I want to incite a rebellion in your heart against the world's measurement system of how you see yourself and how you qualify yourself and you know, you should be able to do this if you're an American. I mean, we've been rebelling against the metric system for decades.
Do you not know that we have been approved to use the metric system now for decades as our official system of measurement but we won't do it? We won't do it. We're not, we want nothing to do with your meters. You can have your meters. We just made a decision that we're not going to measure the way that every other developing country measures. We're not going to do it.
We're not going to do it and you know, I'm using that humorously but sometimes you gotta make up your mind as a citizen of the kingdom of God, as a child of God, as somebody who lives under a different law, the law of grace to say I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to measure myself the way I'm told to measure. I'm not going to measure. And I want to talk a little bit about measuring more in this session. Because the Bible says in Ephesians 3:20, and man, this is my verse. If there's one verse that describes how I want to live my life and what I want to believe God for, I gotta go to Ephesians 3:20 because in Ephesians 3:20, Paul is talking about, well, before he gets to this verse, he's saying how high and how long and how wide and how deep is the love of Christ.
He's saying, it's beyond comprehension. It's beyond measurement. You can't see it with your eyes. You can't even really express it with your mouth and in some ways, you can't know it with your heart how much God loves you and how great His love is through you and to you and after he gets done saying all that, he says, "And now unto Him, who is able to do," listen to his word choice, "immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine according His power that works in us in unseen places, to Him be glory through Christ Jesus in the church now and forever. That's verse 21 but verse 20 says immeasurably more.
So, how do we measure more? If it's immeasurable, I believe God wants us to grow. I believe God is into measurement. As a matter of fact, I can prove it scripturally. If you go to the last book of the Bible, you don't have to flip there now.
Take my word for it. It's revelation 21, I think around verse 17, where the new Jerusalem is being measured. It says something kind of interesting though. It says that they measured the walls using human measurement and it was as wide as it was long, as long as it was wide, so it was perfect dimensions because everything that God builds, He builds according to specification. That's true of your life as well. What God built, He built it by design and the dimensions of the design are perfect for the purpose that He desires for that thing or that purpose to serve.
That's why the Psalmist said, "I'm fearfully and wonderfully made." God made me just right. You're a masterpiece made in God's image. He doesn't make junk. But then it says something interesting that after the walls were measured using human measurement, using the measure of a man, the writer says that then the walls were found to be made of jasper.
It's interesting because human measurement measures how long it is, how wide it is and any time you see jasper in the scripture, it represents glory. Now, I wonder if this isn't symbolic. You know, so much of the Bible and particularly the book of Revelation is symbolic and so I think maybe God is trying to show us that sometimes we need to measure not just how long or wide or big or fast something is but what is it made of.
And I know this is an Old Testament story but maybe it'll relate to your life today that when Israel was sizing herself up as a nation and they compared themselves to all the other nations, one thing that discouraged them is that they didn't have a king.
All the other nations had a king to lead them into battle. God wanted to be the King of Israel. He wanted to be the King of His people but they wanted a visible king because we always want something to trust in that we can see. That's what idolatry is is trying to trust in something that I can perceive with my senses rather than God, whom I have to believe by faith.
So, they wanted a king, so they picked out a king. God gave them a king. Sometimes God will give you what you ask for even if it's not what's best for you because He's given you a will and they got this king. His name was Saul.
Now, let me tell you something about Saul. Saul was handsome and Saul was tall. The Bible says he was a head above everybody else. He was a head above. A cut above. Saul, tall Saul. Better call Saul. Better call tall Saul. They called Saul to be their king because Saul was tall, y'all. I've just about worn that out but you understand that they were choosing their king by height. By height.
How many decisions have you made in your life based on what you could see on the surface. Saul looked like a king. Saul must be a king. We know, because we have the benefit of seeing the whole arc of the story, that Saul didn't turn out to be the best king. I don't want to say he was a bad king. I don't know that I would have done much better. But he didn't ultimately become everything he could have become.
Sometimes we pick people out based on what we can see. So, Saul kind of did his thing for a number of years, won some victories, lost some battles, became in many ways psychotic by the end of his life but he was still tall. And somewhere in the saga of this kingship, God decided that He was going to choose a new king. That's David. That's the one that you know a lot more about. The one that brought down Goliath with a slingshot.
We mentioned that in an earlier episode. The one who went on to be one of the greatest kings if not the greatest king that the nation would ever know. And I want to show you something that God said to Samuel, the prophet, and I hope this will help you in your life because we're all trying to measure, you know, measure success and measure our potential and God says something here that I think is an all-time truth.
When Samuel was trying to figure out who should be the next king, the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him." This was one of David's taller brothers that was passing before Samuel and he looked kind of like a king, 'cause the last king they had was tall and so when David's older brother came and he was kind of tall, he looked like a king, but Samuel said, "Don't pay attention to what people pay attention to."
Don't pay attention just to how long his neck is. Don't pay attention to the things that just grab your attention right off the bat. Look deeper, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, don't they? And that's not necessarily bad. I mean, I think it's good sometimes that we put our best appearance forward.
When I was getting dressed today, I wanted to wear something that I thought would look nice for the television program. I thought it would be a good idea for me to dress for the occasion. This is not what I woke up in. I was going to be in front of people today and so I figured that it would be good, because people look at the outward appearance.
So, I thought I would style my hair a little bit. Don't tell anybody but because I'm on camera, I even had to put on some makeup. Don't tell anybody. You have to do that. You go on camera, so you face don't shine. I put a little makeup on. I don't do that everyday but I did it today for you.
So, people look at the outward appearance. That's the way it is and there's nothing wrong with outward appearances, but realize that when it comes to the things that ultimately matter, that the Lord, He's the only one who can do this by the way for all of you who think you can judge what somebody's capable of or what their motive is.
People see this and the Lord looks at the heart. What's inside. The heart. People measure with a stick. God has the scale. The stick is about the surface. The scale is about substance. One of the things about biblical language that's very interesting is that terms we translate into English can have multiple meanings in the original language.
So, when we talk about that the walls were made of jasper in the book of Revelation and that jasper represents glory. The Hebrew word for glory is Kavod and Kavod translated means glory but literally it means weight. Weight. People measure this. God measures this. How'd you feel about that sermon? I don't know. I know how it went in the room but we're going to have to wait to see how much weight it carries after I preached it. I can't measure like this. I don't know.
I think we need help measuring more. I think we need to be more selective in what we measure and how we measure. So, a few questions on a practical level to help you with this today because you know there were three or four people who told me that I probably would not be a very affective pastor and there are probably some people who think that they were right. They're probably like, "Yeah, you should have listened to them." But you know, there are thousands of people that I've been able to help and there are thousands of people that I've been able to be a blessing to in some way and I don't think it would have happened if I would have measured myself.
Ask yourself this question, "How do I measure myself? How do I measure myself?" You have to, you have to make a decision as to who gets to size you up. And one thing that can happen in life is that people who have small dreams for their own life can use their stick to try to limit and relegate yours to a lower level. But you gotta reject that. God rejects that. He said, "I don't see people the way people see people. I look at the heart."
God's the only one who knows what he put in you. He's the only one who knows the content and He's the only one who determines the capacity. And God knew that David was a great king when he was just a shepherd. If you measure yourself according to where you are, you'll always stay stuck in what you see. I'm a shepherd. You're a shepherd, David, but you're also a king. You know, David was acting like a king before he had a crown.
When he went out to fight Goliath, he was demonstrating this kind of God-reliance that results in a healthy self-confidence because Saul, remember Saul? Saul, the tall guy? Tall Saul? Tall Saul was like, "Well, you can't fight him, you're too little, you're just a boy." And David was like, "Well, that's how you see me. But I don't see me how you see me. I don't see me in the light of what you say about me. I see me in the light of the One that I represent and He's bigger than this giant, so let me at him. Let me at him." And he won. I mean, spoiler alert, but David beat Goliath.
How do I measure myself? Another question to ask. How do I measure opportunity? How do I measure opportunity? It's interesting that Goliath represented a threat to the nation of Israel and he represented an opportunity to David or we might want to say that the opposition became his opportunity.
When he came up on the battle lines, he said, he said, "What's going to be done for the man who kills this giant?" And there was a reward associated with his obedience but if you measure your opportunities like this, you'll always see the size of the inconvenience. You'll always see the size of the sacrifice. You'll always see the size of the challenge. But if you put it on the scale and realize that you're carrying the name of the Lord God.
Now, I want to take a moment on this. It's very important. David said, "You come against me with sword and spear to Goliath. But I come against you in the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. So, I'm carrying the weightiest name. The name that is above every name."
And I need you to understand that whatever situation God sends you into in your life, you are carrying the name of God. What does that mean? You're carrying the character of God. That competency of God is in you. But if you only go by what you see on the surface, you'll miss the opportunity. How do I measure opportunity? By the size of the challenge or by the size of the one who's name I carry? How do I measure opportunity? How do I measure myself?