Steven Furtick - Why God Doesn't Tell You Everything?
This is an excerpt from: Kept in The Dark
God is not protecting your plan; he's protecting his promise. He's not protecting your preference of how you wanted it to go, how you wanted it to be, who you wanted to stay. He's not protecting any of that. In fact, he's disguising the prophecies… See, we know these are prophecies, but the magi didn't know that. They didn't even quote a single Scripture, and they found Jesus. Isn't that weird? Then the chief priests and the scribes and the teachers of the law know every Scripture, and they don't even see the Savior. The ones who should have seen God first were kept in the dark. I don't like being kept in the dark. Do you?
Then you would not have liked to have been a disciple of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, because his communication skills were suspect at best. "You could have told me to feed 5,000 men and their wives and children before you were on the third hour of your sermon, Jesus. Why did you wait until now to ask us if we have any food for these people"? We think about everything Jesus taught his disciples, but how about all of the things he didn't tell them? "Hey, go over in that boat to the other side. I'm going to see you there in a little while". He didn't say anything about the storm they would spend the next six hours rowing through. Why would you love somebody and keep them in the dark? I told my staff one time… I said, "Do not play God with information you are waiting to give me until I'm in a good mood, because by the time you're figuring out how to tell me, it's going to get three times worse. I need to turn off the sink or unhook the pipes or burn down the house or whatever I need to do, so tell me now"!
I don't want to be kept in the dark. I used to go on Twitter. This was "BC". It would say on Twitter, "I was at the so-and-so campus today at Elevation, and the video went down in the middle of the sermon". And nobody on my team had told me. I'm calling a meeting. One day I'm like, "Y'all, if the video for the sermon cuts out at the Matthews Campus, you have to tell me. I can't find out on Twitter. I'm going to find out, because I'm trolling the Internet to see all of these problems y'all are trying to hide from me. So tell me"! I've told God before, "You've got to tell me stuff. You can't let me get out here with a slingshot and a bag lunch and put a Goliath in front of me. Tell me there's going to be a giant so I can do some bicep curls and some jujitsu training. Tell me! Don't keep me in the dark. If you love me…" The Bible says, "In him was life, and that life was the light of men".
So why would God, who is the way, the truth, and the life, whose life is the light of men, whose light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not (John 1:5, King James Version)… Why would the God who dwells in ineffable light keep his children in the dark? Why didn't he just tell Joseph…? When he said, "Hey, Mary is pregnant. It's the Holy Spirit…" Why didn't he tell him that before Mary started to show? Why does she have to be six months along before you give me a dream? Don't keep me in the dark. Just tell me. Tell me when I meet somebody, "They are lying through their teeth, and you will not even want to see their name on your phone three months from now". Just tell me, God! I could save a lot of texts back and forth. I could just block them on day one if I had some advance planning, strategic knowledge. Just tell me. "Hey, by the way, you're going to have the baby's birth in Bethlehem, so get a room".
Why do you have to trick me into going to Bethlehem with the census that Caesar called for to get me there so I wasn't even expecting it? Why didn't you tell me, God, before we had multiple kids? No, I'm kidding. I love all of my kids. But I'm saying I could have planned for it. I could have saved for it. I could have gotten ready for it. Maybe I wouldn't have built all of these campuses if I had known about COVID. Maybe God doesn't keep you in the dark all the time because he's cruel; maybe sometimes he keeps you in the dark because he's getting something ready inside of you. Right now, in our house, Holly has a little room right off the kitchen, and the door is shut all the time. It wasn't shut last month. All this stuff that's coming through our house right now, all of these boxes… It's giving me gray hair in my beard how many boxes come into my house this time of year. All of these boxes.
Holly is a wonderful wife. She's always happy to see me, but she's been telling me lately on the other side of the door in that little office where she has all of these Christmas gifts… She says, "Stay out"! I'm like, "Who are you talking to right now? This is not Graham knocking on the door. This is not one of your children. This is your husband". "No, stay out, because I'm getting something ready for you. Stay out right now. I'm not in this room…" Now, you're saying, "That's kind of a silly illustration". Is it? Is Holly not like God? Is she not like your God? Sometimes you say, "God, show me this, and tell me that, and give me your direction for this and that," and does God not sometimes, in his silence, send you the message, "I need you to stay out, because my ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts, and as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts"?
Sometimes God, because he has these… See, he has these boxes that have been coming in of something that he ordered before time began. From eternity, he spoke a word, a prophecy, concerning your life. Not just the life of Jesus. No, no. There's a prophecy over your life. The prophet said, "Before you were born, I knew you. When you were in the darkness of your mother's womb, I set you apart, and I kept you in the dark". No eye has seen, and no ear has heard, and it hasn't even entered into your heart what God has prepared for those who love him and trust him enough to follow him even when he keeps you in the dark. Do you trust the one who's behind that door? Do you think he's wrapping up Anthrax in those boxes, trying to hurt you? He said, "I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I'm a good God". The irony of the passage is everybody was kept in the dark…all of them. "Mary, did you know? No". That's the remix. That's the Steven Furtick remix. Y'all, put that on Spotify for me. No! She didn't know. She hoped. She carried. She didn't know. You don't know. Merry Christmas.
That's the message I'm getting from this passage. "We saw his star. We came to worship him. Where is he"? They didn't know. The ones who should have known didn't know because of their knowledge that kept them from knowing what they were supposed to know. They knew the Bible too well to believe it. God said, "I'm going to lead the pagans to a place the priests wouldn't even go". "Oh my god! Do you mean what I think I know about God could keep me from seeing him for who he really is"? Yes! "You mean I don't know God in all of his fullness"? No! He's omniscient. You're not. I'm not even "some-niscient". I'm "no-niscient".
I don't know nothin'. I don't even know grammar. Can't you tell? See, now you're kind of in the Christmas story, because you're like the magi. You don't know. You don't know where this is going. You came to Charlotte for a job, and then they fired you eight months in. What if the problem is the costume for a prophecy? "God, why did you keep me in the dark? Why didn't you tell me that relationship would fail"? Maybe he wanted the relationship to surface some stuff in you that he could work on so your relationship with him could get better. If he had told you how it would end, you wouldn't have taken the first step.