Steven Furtick - Get Ready For Something Better
This is an excerpt from Stop Crying, It's Coming!
In John 11:35, Jesus is going to see these sisters named Mary and Martha. Their brother died, and Jesus didn't show up when they thought he would or when they thought he should. And he could, and they thought he should, but he didn't, and they were crying. Now, Jesus did not say to the sisters what your dad might have said to you that my dad would say to me. "If you don't stop crying…" Finish it. "…I will give you something to cry about". (Y'all look traumatized. I felt trauma. Your shoulders got tense when you said that.) He didn't say that. He wept with them. He weeps with me. He knows my disappointments. They don't have to stay hidden.
I can bring them right out in the light of day, because he knows the deeper disappointment behind the disappointment that created the disappointment. He knows the descendants of my disappointment. He knows what disappointment led to what disappointment. Jesus did an ancestry tree on all of the things I'm frustrated about, and he sees all of that. He knows the real template that's driving my behavior. He knows the same about you. He knows why you push people away who are trying to love you. You don't even know why you do that yet. It's a mystery to you. You don't even know why yet when things get good in your life, you find some way to screw them up. He knows why. It's because you figure "Rather than let somebody else take it away from me, like happened last time, I'll just take it away from myself. I will take my ball and go home. I will take my blessing and go home".
Watch this. If your template is "Every relationship ends in pain or betrayal," you will start creating the very thing that you fear to avoid being surprised by it ever again. The template of these people was a temple that had so much gold they had to start putting gold in weird places, like the washbasin. They made Solomon's temple's washbasin gold, just because God is that glorious. So, then they start building the new one. "Ah, we're going to build a temple". "Oh, we're going to get our life together". "Oh, we're going to lose 20 pounds".
Do you know what the hard thing about keeping weight off is? Nobody congratulates you for not putting it back on. "Oh, you've lost weight". Nobody has ever said to me, "You still look decent. It has been six years and you haven't fluctuated. Your jeans look the same size. That's awesome. Good job". Nobody compliments you when the jeans stay the same size. That's what's difficult. They're not just rebuilding a temple. God is reinventing their template and their identity. They've been in Babylon so long they have forgotten the songs of Zion. They've been on pandemic, on church online so long they don't even remember how to be in a crowd without being scared of catching their death around people.
Do you see why I have no patience with people who say the Bible isn't relevant to our day? Is this not us? Not only have you been rebuilding what was destroyed in the last two years, you've had to reinvent. You have the same title, but it's a completely different template for your job. I talked to the campus pastors when they were calling church members, and we couldn't pray for people and lay hands on them. I said, "This sucks for you, doesn't it? You signed up to do ministry with people, and now you're basically running a call center, because you can't touch, and touch was your template for ministry". It was so hard to reinvent. It has been hard for me to reinvent my identity as a pastor. For years, my adult identity for my ego… In high school it was "How much do you bench press"? Then as a pastor it's "How many people come to your church"? I went from bench to attendance. "Oh yeah. You have 10,000? I remember those days. Small beginnings. That's all right. Don't be discouraged. The Lord will give you 20".
Can I get a 30? Can I get a 40? Can I get a 50? Wait a minute. Now you're talking about… I was coming up in the church wondering if anybody would come back. I mean, after training behavior… I'm not fussing at anybody who comes online, because really, God has given us a template for ministry now that we can reach you wherever you are. I praise God for it. I mean, there are some places we can't put a building, but I can preach the Bible. God can give you a breakthrough where there is no church building. Now God is expanding the territory of the church. I hear from Zimbabwe and Sao Paulo, Brazil, about this ministry. I hear from everywhere. I hear from Kentucky. God is good. Sometimes God says, "Your template is too small for what I want to do". This is not a temple built by human hands. This is a temple that his name in heaven is unknown to men, but it is revealed to us. It is a shadow of Jesus Christ. Wow!
It's a text about reinventing. It's a text about temples. It's a text about templates. It's a text about trauma. It's a text about tears. There's a time for tears. If sadness was a sin, Jesus couldn't have died for yours, because he cried. Disappointment doesn't make you wrong. Anger doesn't make you wrong. There is just as much of a danger of stuffing it and letting it come out sideways than letting it out. I hate to hear preachers say, "You don't need therapy and counseling. All you need is the Holy Ghost". The blood is on our hands when we talk like that, because God uses all of that in people's lives. It's all a part of the process that he uses. As a matter of fact, that's so dumb. Let's take that to the extreme. "You don't need airplanes. All you need is the Holy Ghost".
I don't see any preachers flying to their preaching engagements with their own wings. It's so stupid. God uses stuff. Even in the text I read, it said the word of the Lord came through Haggai. Sometimes the help you need, the healing you need, comes through people. I treat my daughter differently than my sons, and sometimes I have to catch myself, because they'll remind me. "You're too easy on Abbey. It wasn't like that for us". And they're right. For them it was "Dry it up". For her it's like, "I'll buy you one. Don't worry about it". What's wrong with me? It's different raising boys and girls. It's like a different template. It's different. So, what God is trying to get the people to do in Haggai 2 is not just to build what they had before but to get ready for something better.
So, all this time you're spending wishing it would be like it was before is completely wasted, because God is not going to make it what it was before. If he listened to you and made it what it was before, he couldn't make it better. The Bible says we go from glory to glory as we are being transformed by the image of God. Not your image of what God is supposed to be like. Not your template of what you were told God was like when you were 7. Not your template of what men have always been or women have always been or church has always been. God is not consulting your template. It will be according to his truth. "God, what is your truth"? That's what I want to be my blueprint. I have to get in the Word and find out what God said about me before what people said about me became a faulty template to keep me trapped and buried in the rubble of yesterday. It's going to be better. Sometimes the enemy of better is not bad; it's before.