Steven Furtick - Deceitful Desires
This is an excerpt from: Tricks Are For Kids
Here is how the Enemy pickpockets you. Here is how the Devil gets you to give up the new self that God knows, the you that you kind of suspect is there, the you that you can be for about three days at a time, and then you give in. How does he get you to give up on that so easily? Deception. In order to deceive, you have to diminish. Quick story. I mentioned my mom taught me about Jesus. She also confronted this person one time for me. I never will forget being 9 years old, going to the trading card shop in Moncks Corner at the railroad track, right up the railroad track. I bought a pack of basketball cards. I didn't know anything about basketball cards. This was my first pack of basketball cards. I had baseball cards. I open it, and there's a Michael Jordan card in the pack. The guy is watching me. I'm in there by myself. She's waiting in the car. He goes, "Hey, I'll give you a whole other pack for that one card". I'm like, "A whole pack for a card? Sure, Mister". I called him "Mister".
I sound like The Andy Griffith Show in here. "Sure, Mister. Gee whiz! Golly! A whole pack for a single card? Wow"! Because I'm just a kid. So, I opened the next pack. I didn't recognize any names. I knew Michael Jordan. I went out to the car. My mom said, "How did it go"? I said, "I got two packs"! She said, "How did you get two? I only gave you money for one". I said, "You'll never believe it. He gave me a whole other pack for one card, Mom". She said, "What was the card"? because she knew, "This man has a book. He knows how much that card is worth, and he's grown, and my kid doesn't know the value of a card". So she said, "What was the card"? I said, "Michael Jordan". She said, "A Michael Jordan card. How much was it worth"? I said, "I don't know what it was worth, but I got a whole pack".
My mom went back into that store with my Michael Jordan card and a third pack because she knew what was in the book. Do you have a book? Have you read it? Have you met Jesus? Did you know he's the perfect, spotless Lamb of God? Did you know they marched him up a hill called Calvary and he died for you and bled for you and suffered for you and took the stripes for you and took the mocking for you? He stretched his arms and said, "You're worth this much". Did you know that when he left to go to heaven he sent his Spirit and that Spirit lives in you? We don't know that. We're so busy copying other people's style we don't even know the Spirit that came from God because we've got so much stuff from culture. (I'm sorry, y'all. I'm Baptist in my heart. I went to a Baptist school. It comes out sometimes.) I'm sick of this.
I feel like walking up in the Devil's card shop and helping you get your peace back, your joy back, your dream back, your sweet self back, your created self back. I have the Book! I looked you up in the Book. I found out that you are precious in the sight of God. I found out that you are more than a conqueror. I looked you up in the Book. "You don't know me, Pastor". Neither do you. That's why I'm trying to introduce you to Jesus so Jesus can introduce you to you, the new you. "Knew with a K or new with an N"? Both. That's what I want you to get this year. I will preach through every battery they sell in RadioShack until you get this. Do they still have RadioShack? I need to update the reference. All right. We'll order them on Amazon. It'll be fine. We'll get the batteries. Y'all get distracted by the dumbest stuff. How about that? When you think of the Enemy's tricks and God's truth, what comes to your mind in your life? The first step if we're going to do the new… Notice, evaluate, and then the W is not quite as good, but walk in. Okay?
Notice, evaluate, and walk in. Psychology for all of you who are too stubborn to go to therapy. You can't deal with feelings until you know they're there. One habit I've incorporated in my life in the last five years… Instead of going, "I'm scared," I try to back up and go, "I'm having a feeling of fear," because if I say, "I am scared," that becomes an identity. "I'm feeling fear". That's an event. The truth is in Jesus. Jesus isn't scared. Jesus is in me. So, I'm feeling fear, but that's the old thing. So I notice it. I evaluate it. You would probably, I would think, spend time shopping for a pair of shoes if you were going to spend money on them. You probably would spend time figuring out if they fit. We will spend more time evaluating what we put on our feet than what we put in our minds and our hearts and who we let in our phones. So, is this from God? Is this what God gave me or is this a trick? Now, how do you know if it's a trick?
Well, you have to have the book value, and then you have to… Well, you have to actually spend time around people who love God. They had a thousand eGroup leaders, online and physical, who they encouraged this week. Let's thank God for our eGroup leaders. Amazing. Holly came out and preached. We've just been going this week. We've been going. We're getting ready. I don't even know what it is God wants to do, but I figure since they're saying the world is going to fall apart… A fallen-apart world needs a built-up church, and I want to be that. I want to be that church ready for it all over the world. Praise the Lord. I'm going to do it with whoever God gives me around me to do it. We're going to build something significant for this season of our lives, in Jesus' name.
Then, if you think about when somebody uses a counterfeit ticket… Elijah shops all the time for these shoes. I'm like, "How do you know if they're real or not? If you get it off this site or that site, how is it all verified and all of that"? When my father-in-law and my brother-in-law and I… They all go to our Greenville Campus. Holly's family is all at Elevation Greenville. (They'd better all be there right now, because it would be embarrassing if they're not.) We went to a New York Knicks game. We were just spur of the moment wanting to go. This was when I was dating Holly. Her dad… You have to know this guy. He's a bull in a china shop. So I said, "How are we going to get tickets"? He said, "Well, they're too expensive. We'll just buy them off a scalper". I'm like, "Isn't that dangerous"? He's like, "No, no. Not if you know what you're doing".
So, we buy these tickets, and we're walking up. It's kind of dark. We're walking up to the game. I'm like, "Murrill, these tickets don't look… Are they supposed to be printed diagonal on there? Doesn't Knicks have a C in it somewhere"? It wasn't that bad, but it looked kind of fake. We get to the thing, and we hand them to the guy, and he laughs. He doesn't hardly even look. He laughs. He goes, "You got ripped off, man. Go do what you have to do at the box office or go back to the hotel. This isn't real". My father-in-law goes, "How do you know? You didn't even hardly look at it, pal". He goes, "This is what I do all day. When you've handled as many real ones as I have… I saw the fake ticket in your eyes. You walk like you have a fake ticket, you country bumpkin. This is New York City".
(Can I be myself in the pulpit? Sometimes it feels good. "Do you, Pastor". I promise I'll do the good one, the anointed one. I won't do the other one.) Now we decide what to walk in. So, when Paul says, "Deceitful desires," the key is for you to be handling the real thing enough that your feelings begin to align with your faith, and when they don't, you notice it and bring it back. Feelings have their place. How many of you agree with me? Feelings have their place, but it's not on the throne. Jesus sits there. The Book sits there. The Spirit of God is the seat of my decisions, not what I feel.
If I do, I'll end up with a pack of crap and trade the GOAT. So, if the Enemy is diminishing it, he's deceiving you. "Well, you're not that gifted". I think it comes in this way. Like, "You don't really matter that much. This doesn't really matter that much. I mean, there was one time. Who cares"? That's how deceitful desires work. The desire isn't bad. The way the Enemy tries to get you to fulfill it is. That's what a deceitful desire is. Whether it's a sexual desire, whether it's a financial desire, or whether it's a desire for success, you can't attack the desire and demonize the desire.
The first question Jesus asked in the New Testament was, "What do you want"? So, apparently, desires are not something to be bypassed in our lives. The deceit is not in the desire. The deceit is what the Enemy tries to get you to do to get the desire. That's where the deceit is. "Oh, no. You just settle for that. You just scavenge for that. All you're ever going to be is that. All you're ever going to get is that. All you really can do is that. All you ever have done is that. All you ever have been is that. You're trash. That's why they walked out. You're trash. That's why it hasn't happened yet. You're stupid.
That's why you haven't built it yet. You're an idiot. That's why all of your friends make that and you make this. You suck". But if you are growing in Christ… The more you grow in him, you get the ability from the inside to notice it, evaluate it, and look him right in his eyes and say, "Silly Devil…" "You should have tried this on me before I got back to church this year, because I'm growing this year.
Tricks are for kids, but I am a new creation in Christ. I've got the book! Silly Devil, that's for kids. That's child's play. That's how I thought when I didn't know God. That's how I spoke when I didn't know God. That's how I came running when I didn't have a liberator named Jesus. That's how I struggled in my sin before I had his name to call on. I have help now. I have a new self and a knew self. The me God saw in eternity is the me that I see in the future, and I'm moving into it. I'm growing into it. I'm going to be it because I am it". Yes, Lord!
Touch somebody and say, "Silly rabbit". Trying to eat kids' food, trying to do kids' stuff, trying to get people to notice you. What are you, fifth grade? Saying, "I can't change". What is this, seventh grade? Somebody wrote in your notebook, "Never change," and you took their advice and raised hell over the summer, and here you still are pitching a fit over what you didn't get when God has given you the riches of Christ and the Spirit of God and the fire that came down on the day of Pentecost is burning in your belly. "I'm growing now. I'm growing out of this. This addiction will not be able to hold me another 10 years. I'm growing out of this. It might take me some time. It might take me some tears. It might take me some tough decisions, but I'm growing out of this. I will not stay in this prison, not one more day. I'm coming forward"!