Steven Furtick - Find Out What's Really In You
Development on demand. What it means is that to really find out what's in you, which I think is something everybody in this room wants. I think that's part of what attracted you to ministry. To really find out what God has deposited in your life, what gifts, what tenacity, what resilience God has put in you, let me do it like this. Stay right there. Y'all said you were the strongest interns and so let's test that theory. Let's see where I can do this, real quick. Just follow me. You didn't get to stretch or anything today, did you? Meet me on that wall. We're going to do some wall sits this morning. I didn't get to exercise yet. Usually I exercise a little later in the day.
What did you say? Start now. No we can't start yet. You thought you were just going to do some body weight wall sits? Not today. Not today. In fact, the whole point of me having you do a wall sit is kind of to illustrate here, let me do a sit, a chair sit while you do a wall sit. The advantages of being the boss. I want to illustrate something, how long do you think you could sit on that wall and not fall down? A minute? (A little more than that.) Two minutes? (Probably three to four minutes. I say one.) He said one, one minute. All right. Both of y'all assume the position. Three, two, one and I want to illustrate something for you.
Team I want you to see this not as a physical demonstration but I want you to see it as a leadership exercise. I want you to ask some questions of yourself today. Because what I want you to remember, just one thing I want you to take away from this teaching is that the only way for us to find out what's in them is by what we put on them. Bring me another plate because the only way to find out what's in him, how much capacity, strength, endurance is in him is by what we put on him. It's development on demand. Bring me another one. Because the only way for us to find out what's in them is by increasing what we put on them. I notice that a lot of people want development with no demand, but the only way to find out what's in them is by what we put on them. You said one minute. It's been way over a minute and I don't know how much longer you can make it. But you have already done more than you told me you could do. Because I put something on you, you found out that there was something in you. You understand? This is what an internship is.
A lot of people want to go in a classroom and hear lectures and stuff like that, but God's development process feels like you feel right now, wondering can I take this weight but the only way for us to find out and increase because right now what's happening is you're putting a demand on your quads. You are telling your quads, you must grow to support the load. I demand you to grow. I demand you to grow. It's development on demand. Just about the time you think you can't take it anymore, here comes Pastor Steven to lighten your load and let you know that, listen, listen, when you have trouble walking tomorrow around noon, I want you to remember that that sensation of instability is meant to give you a physical reminder of what real growth feels like. It feels like that. Y'all sit down. Can I teach a little bit?
Peter is tired, frustrated, perhaps a bit shaken because why? I fished all night and caught nothing. I've done all I can do. Now let's review the situation. Here comes this teacher, ex-carpenter, radical self-proclaimed messianic figure walking by, teaching a Bible class and now he wants my boat. What got me speaking to the volunteers last night and caught my attention, that made me want to bring it into the staff, was that Jesus did not ask. He just got in the boat to see what Peter would do next. A lot of times we have a self-development image of the way that we want God to make us better leaders, better husbands, better friends, better wives or even better believers.
What challenged me about the passage in Luke 5 and really the whole ministry model of Jesus, whether he's multiplying fish and loaves, that he did not give the disciples time to prepare for and plan for. What challenged me about it is that living in an on demand world where every TV show that you could ever think of to want to watch is on Hulu. Living in a world where the people coming to our church have everything that they could ever want on demand, I'm wondering do we have that same view of how God is going to develop our lives, that we get to pick which episode, pick which lesson? When you have an on demand view of God, when you say, you know God, this week I really want the opportunity to, you've already missed the point.
Watch this. What was Peter's profession? What was his next profession? Come on? Fisherman, but what did he do vocationally? He became a ... It's not a trick question. A disciple, but what did he end up doing on the day of Pentecost.. All right watch this. Jesus did not offer Peter an opportunity to preach, even though that was the ultimate outcome of his life, was to preach the most important sermon to inaugurate the coming of the Holy Spirit. He told him to do something that had nothing to do with what he would eventually do, to see if he would respond to the demand or if he would demand to understand the instruction. We fished all night. Caught nothing. Didn't bring a Bible. Didn't get to stretch. Didn't get to get ready for this.
I worked my legs yesterday. All kinds of things they could have said, but just by doing what, if I asked them, can you do it? They wouldn't have done it. They did it because they did it. Development doesn't look like this really. I am not really developing you today. I am giving you tools ... Where did the ... Yeah. I'm giving you something that you can use for your development. But watch this. Nothing is growing because this is in your vicinity. So put your nets down into the deep for a catch. What you need is at the bottom but you won't draw it out if you don't drop it in. It's called development on demand. It means that the only way for it to grow is for there to be a load.
There is no other way for your muscles to grow, there’s no other way for your mind to grow. There’s no other way for your ministry to grow than for you to be put in a situation where it feels like you don’t have bread. You’re being asked for bread. You fished all night, you caught nothing. You hit all the spots and well I mean I’ve done this before and here comes this guy. And the decision comes down to this, "Will I demand more of myself"? I would be heartbroken if the people who work for me were asked to describe me in 3 words and one of them was not demanding or a synonym of demanding. Usually that’s used as an insult. "He’s just demanding".
And I guess to a degree that’s not exactly what you want to be called. If you demand more from others than you demand from yourself. But for me, one of the greatest compliments you could pay me is to say that when I came into your life as a leader, you found strength or found substance that you didn’t know that you had. You found out what was in you because of what was put on you. Down into the deeps. You got it. After you washed the nets and started hanging them up and now you got to put them back in and you don’t even really think there’s a point, that’s where you grow. That’s where you grow. They were not really growing over there, correct me if I’m wrong Buck, Chunks, anybody who thinks they know more about fitness than me, until that starts, nothing’s really growing because there’s no demand.
Until you teach what I taught you, there is no demand for retention so you won’t even remember it, if you don’t do something with it. But my problem is, see if you can relate, is that I want to select from the menu what developmental opportunity I want God to give me next. I want an opportunity to, you know whatever, preaching or to work on this project or to be over this thing or make this decision or whatever like that. And so I demand a certain type of development. How good is this for a Tuesday morning? I’m saying, when I demand the next part of my developmental process, the limiting factor of that is that I don't really know what I’m capable of.
So I will always demand something that I’m either not ready for yet and God knows and He’s protecting me so that I don’t kill myself with the weight that I’m not ready to bear yet. Or this is more likely, or I will underestimate what I can do and I will tell God how much I can take and I will quit when I’m tired and I will quit when I don’t feel it. Because to be honest with you, if I didn’t preach separate from my feelings, I would only be up there about 40% of the time that I am. But what I do is I put a demand on myself and when I demand it, I can do it. I put myself up there. And I was telling Buck the other day, with no net. When I got up in front of you today, I had no notes, no net for what I’m going to say. Just the thought that God has been giving me, but rather than working it out in an outline, I wanted to put a demand on my ability to communicate.
So I put a demand on Buck and I said, "At 8:45, I need four 45lbs plates in the auditorium in the next 5 minutes". I put a demand on him. I put a demand on those poor interns. I put a demand on Bowser and Ryan Monette when he holds the boom thing like that. I asked him one time, have you ever seen him do it? It’s an impressive thing to see. He can hold it for like 20, 30 minutes. And one day I said, "How do you hold that thing so long? That’s ridiculous". And he said, "What choice do I have? There’s 5 other people and you’re still talking. And if I drop it, then it lets everyone down". But I guarantee you if he was in his bedroom holding it up, 3 minutes, he’d put it down. Why? Because of the demand.
And sometimes, we think we’re running low because we ask too much of ourselves when it’s really that we’re not asking enough of ourselves. Sometimes we say a minute and he didn’t even know about the plates yet. When all it took was all of us watching him and homeboy beside him. All it took was that. So here’s Peter, he goes from empty nets to full nets, from one boat to many boats. Because, watch this, demand signals supply. You’ve heard of supply and demand? Okay. Well, Peter didn't need any partners to help him with an empty boat or empty nets. But once the boat was so full of fish that it was starting to sink, now he needed partners. Sometimes God will not send the help that you need because you have not yet put what you have down into the deep.
God is not going to send you help for an empty net. God is not going to send you more when you haven’t maximized what you’ve been given. Just because you demand it, "God I need help". And God says, "Okay. I will send you help when you create the necessity for help by maximizing the space that I’ve given you. I will give you more when you need more". I will give you, watch this, I’m about to come up side your head so this is just a warning, I got a brick too, I’m gonna hit you with a brick, you ready? God will give you more authority when you take more responsibility. Call your mom. When she asks what you learned in your internship, say, "Mom today, Pastor told me something that I know you’ve been trying to tell me. He said that God would give me more authority when I take more responsibility".
When I have a full boat, when I’ve maxed out this boat, now here come the other boats. When I’m faithful in little, I’ll be faithful in much. And I only mention it because, we have a really twisted view of development sometimes because we live in an on demand culture. And so we want people to help us how we want them to help us and we want them to coach us how we want them to coach us and Jesus upends all of that and says, "I’m not going to send them away. You feed them. I’m not going to lighten the load because I want to put something on you that will reveal what’s in you".