Steven Furtick — Put It To Work
I've been having the best time teaching in this Unqualified series and in our final episode today, I want to give you just a challenge, a really simple challenge, a practical challenge, hopefully an inspiring challenge that will bring some of the concepts that we've been learning together.
Hopefully if you've missed some of the episodes, you can go back and watch them but even if you didn't, I know this is going to speak to you because my challenge very simply to all of you today is to take the words that you've heard, take the things that God has taught you, take the faith that God has put inside of your heart, the gift that God has given you and put it to work.
That's my title for this final session. Put it to Work. Put it to work. It's not thinking about it more, or even praying about it more of waiting until the right time. You know, Ecclesiastes if you wait for the right conditions, you'll never get anything done. You gotta sow when you can sow and go when you can go and put it to work even when you don't understand where you're going. You gotta make movement, forward progress and put it to work.
Now, I'm somebody who doesn't mind working hard if I have a reason to work hard. I'm somebody who doesn't mind expending effort if I know that the outcome is going to justify the labor. What I don't like is working at something that's worthless. I don't mind paying a cost of what I'm going to do is going to count.
So, I want to know that my work is worthwhile. I love to know that I'm making a difference. I love to know that it matters. It motivates me to know that what I did matters because I get frustrated when stuff doesn't work. If anything doesn't work, like I was teaching a session in this series and I was trying to pull up my material on my iPad.
This thing is great most of the time but sometimes it doesn't work right and the only problem with the times when it doesn't work is since I don't know how it works, I mean, to me this is magical that stuff is just supposed to appear. I'm supposed to be able to put my notes in my computer and hit a button and it shows up on my iPad like presents under the tree when I'm eight years old. So, when that doesn't happen, I know that it didn't work but I don't know why it didn't work. It's the most frustrating thing in the world.
We have a staff member at our church that helps me sometimes with issues like this. He oversees our technology and his name is Nick and some of our audience knows Nick. Nick is somebody we call on at church when things break and since I'm the boss, I just call Nick all the time when stuff isn't working and one day he was working on something and he was helping me with an issue that I had, some technology issue I'm sure.
I'm technologically challenged and so, he came in and he was doing his thing and I was so impressed and I was kind of watching him work, you know? Just watch him work his magic and I was wondering how he got good at just fixing stuff, generally. Because I can't fix anything and I asked him the question, when did you realize that you're a genius?
When did you have the revelation that you had this brilliant ability to fix anything at all, mechanically, technically, when did you realize that and he answered really humbly, but what he said, what he said was actually, there was a lesson in it.
He said, "From the time I'm a little boy, I remember always being curios about how things work. I don't remember a time when I wasn't taking something apart, putting it back together just to see how it worked, whatever it was. A toy, a tool, even cars when I got a little older. I want to take it apart and put it back together."
And that's when I realized I am nothing like Nick. I don't remember a single time in my life that I have ever voluntarily taken something apart to see how it works. Now, I might have thrown something against the wall and made it fall apart when it didn't work but I don't care how it works, I just want it to. I just want it to work.
I think a lot of us have this approach to our lives and our faith. I mean, like, I just want it to work, God. Just fix it, God. Nick. God. Fix it. And then when things aren't working in our lives we resort to prayer and read a Bible verse or maybe hit church or catch an inspirational program on TV and it's like I hope this works, I hope this.
You know, it's kind of a wishful spirituality but God is a God of process. That's what we've been learning is that He'll often take your life apart and it will feel like it's broken down into pieces when something's not working.
We see in John 5, a picture of this kind of ministry, a picture of this kind of mindset. There's a colonnade where sick people are gathered together and all of them are trying to get healed. Maybe there's a blind guy. He can't see. His eyes don't work correctly. Maybe there's someone who's hand doesn't work properly. Maybe there's somebody who has an internal issue and nobody can see it but there's something on the inside that's not working.
All these characters are gathered around this pool. The pool of Bethesda it was called and they're gathered there because, well, the way it works is when, when an angel would trouble the waters at the pool, the first one who got into the water, according to the urban legend, could get healed. Whatever wasn't working, would function again. Whoever was first, whoever got there, that's the way it worked until Jesus showed up.
The Bible says in John 5:1 sometime later, "Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now, there is in Jerusalem near the sheep gate a pool." How many of you would like to be at a pool near the sheep gate? I'm not going to vacation there. In Aramaic, it gets called Bethesda and it's surrounded by five covered colonies. I already told you that. But remember that in the scriptures, five is always symbolic of grace.
So, there's going to be a contrast here between works, the system of the law and grace, which is what Jesus embodies in perfect form. So, grace shows up on the scene and it says in verse 3 that here a great number of disabled people used to lie. We just mentioned some. The blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. Hold onto that phrase, paralyze because that describes you at some level.
There is something in your life right now that's not working. I wish I knew exactly what it was. I would speak to it. It's something that's not work. I could guess. It could be in your life; your prayer life isn't working. It would be in your life your self-control isn't working in your eating and your exercise. Could be that your patience isn't working, just irritable all the time, exploding over everybody.
You might even be out of a job. You might not be working. You might not be providing for your family but everybody has something that isn't working. Some are easier to spot than others. Everybody has something in their life that isn't working.
When I teach a series on how uses broken people to do big things, I could really leave off the first part. I mean, who else is God going to use but broken people. What else does he have to work with? Aren't you glad that God works with you where you are, with your pre-existing conditions that he doesn't boot you off the policy of salvation like an insurance company?
So, he shows up into a situation full of pre-existing conditions, paralyzed people and it says that one was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. He was broken, a broken person. And when Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he's been in this condition for a long time.
This isn't when your iPad stops working for a minute. This isn't when you have a bad night with your husband. This isn't when you have a rough day at work. This is something broken that you don't know how to fix. This is when you can't get it to work. You pray that it just won't work. This isn't working. That's the situation that's represented here and when Jesus found out, he asked the question. The question on the surface seems rude to me and a little bit obvious.
"Do you want to get well." There is only one correct answer to this question by the way. Yes, please, how. Just tell me what to do. Yet, the man doesn't respond that way and the reason he doesn't respond that way is because he doesn't yet know who he's talking to.
See, God can be involved in your life and you don't even know it's him. The man didn't know much about Jesus. Had he heard about him? Well, no. Had he seen a picture? Probably not. He was standing face to face with the One who had healing in His wings and he didn't know it yet. So, he starts making excuses. You know? He starts giving valid excuses. Hey, these are real reasons. This man had a real problem, a real paralysis.
He's not making this up. "Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I'm trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me. I'm in a system that isn't working." Now, here's what happens when you have an area of your life that isn't working. You surround yourself with people that comfort you about what's not working in your life.
Instead of getting around people that challenge you, you hang out with people who can comfort you and now you're with him and his eyes don't work and you're with her and her feet don't work and so now, you start feeling better about what doesn't work on you. But you can get trapped in your own excuses.
Now, here comes empowerment. Jesus said to him in verse 8. "Get up, pick up your mat and walk." I don't know how He said it. I'd like to imagine it a couple different ways. One's a whisper. "Get up, pick up your mat." Slaps him on the butt, "Walk. Get out there. Go gettum, tiger. You got this."
The other one he's hollering at the man, you know. "Get up. Pick up your mat and walk." But I don't know how he said it. I don't know how he spoke to him. I know whatever tone He used, it was enough to get the job done. You know, God can speak to you in a lot of different ways but if you will take action on His word and put His word to work, it will work in your life. It's not going to work if you don't work it.
I can teach you the truth and you can learn the truth from the Pope himself but it's going to require your response. One guy said that God's word is like a can of paint. The value is in the application. It's what you do with the word of God that makes it work.