Steven Furtick - God, I Don't Have Enough
This is an excerpt from: Faithful With A Few
I think the Enemy wants you to think you don't have enough of stuff. David not only said, "It was God who gave you Canaan…" That's the Promised Land. We're not talking about land. We're talking about the lives God has given us. You are living in what God has given you. That's the difference between me and the person who says, "I'm a self-made man". I don't claim that. Everything I have is the result of something God gave me. Everything.
So, I don't want to apologize for it, but I don't want to be proud about it, because God gave it to me. You are living in something that was given. If you don't believe that, you will be prideful, and if you don't believe that long enough, you'll be powerless, because you'll lean on your own understanding. You will say, "Jesus is Lord," but you will live like logic is lord. You'll always be counting. "We only have five. We only have two. This won't go very far; it's too few". I've been studying the Bible for over half my life seriously to teach it, not just to learn it, and I've been studying the Bible over half my life not just to preach it but to live it.
One thing I found out in the Bible is that, generally speaking… You can find some exceptions, but as a general principle, God never looks at your life and says, "I can't do it because you have too few," of anything. I can't find in the Bible very many times… There are a few, but this is one of those cases where the exception proves the rule. Mostly, the Bible is about a 75-year-old man named Abraham who became a great nation. When you're 75, you only have a few years left. I could go on and on with this. When you're making a plan to save the world, and you start at 30, and you're going to the cross… Why didn't Jesus die at age 75? Why did he do everything he was sent to do in three years? Even better, why didn't he run a big campaign so he could get a big number of disciples so he could have a lot of followers? If he was leaving, why did he spend so much time with 12 men, and one of them was Judas? Why did he do it in three years with 12 men and change the world?
Maybe he wanted to set the model so you could see what he can do through a few. He knew you would be in this situation in life, and you'd be saying, "I don't have enough. I don't know enough. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough talent. I don't have a big enough team. That song, 'I've got a really big team…' I didn't make that song. I have a really small team". In fact, some of you are here today being like, "I have nobody". That's not true, but the Enemy always seeks to diminish what you've been given. That's his strategy over and over. How many times will he do it? As many times as you'll believe it. He'll take what you have given and diminish it and shrink it and diminish it and shrink it until you can't focus on it, until all you see in your life is what others carry. Until all you see in your life is the things you don't have; until you forget the few that you do.
I want to preach to you today about the few you do have. If that's finances, I'm talking about the few dollars you have. If that's years you have with your kids left in the house, I want to speak about the few you do have. If that's friends you have who really love you, really believe in you, I want to talk about the few you do have. If that's the things you're good at versus the things you're not, I want to talk about the few you do have. That's why God used David. He knew what to do with a few. Do you? Or are you always waiting for something else? "More, more, more. God, give me more wisdom". Sometimes God says, "The problem is not that you have too few. You have too much". "God, give me more wisdom, more wisdom, more wisdom". God says, "The problem isn't the absence of wisdom. The problem is that you have too many opinions".
Sometimes you have too much information. "God, I just need to know more. Then I can do it". No, you don't need to know more. I had somebody leave our church one time. They said, "I knew all that today before I came". Some of y'all here are like, "I knew all about the ark of the covenant. You didn't even get to the good part about the tabernacle they made for it. That was awesome. You didn't talk about Obed-Edom who received the blessing. You didn't talk about that. That was good. I knew all that". You knew it already, but do you do it already? It's what you do with the few. I've learned this over and over and over and over again. Sometimes I had more faith with a few than I have with more. What's that about? As few went to many, faith went from big to little. What's that about? Because I started depending on the cart. I think I need more.
So, I'm just challenging you this week to take what David said to your own heart when he said that God gave it to them… Look at verse 19 again. I gave them so many Scriptures today. Y'all, my fear in preaching is running out of stuff. You should see all of the Scriptures we don't get to. It would give you heart palpitations to know what all they're looking through back there, because the last thing I want is to get up here and 15 minutes in go, "And, uh…well, uh…I guess, uh…" So, I'm always thinking that I don't have enough to say. Sometimes my biggest mistake in preaching is I try to say too much. I do too much. "It's the ark of the covenant, it's the book of Revelation, and it's the temple of Dagon". And you're like, "Whoa, whoa. I just had my first cup of coffee". It can be just as bad to do too much.
Here's David, from a shepherd to a king, and what does he go back to? Verse 19. He said God spoke it when they were but few. Then he emphasizes it. Watch this. "…few indeed". Just in case you think he's overstating it, he's like, "Nah. It was nothing, but Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the patriarchs… God did all this out of that. Don't get it twisted to think I'm so great as a king…" David said, "No, no, no. He did it when they were but few so he could prove that he was faithful". He couldn't prove that he was faithful if he didn't do it through a few. If he did it through a lot, you would consult the lot of your logic and the lot of your resources.
So, God has you in a season right now where he is stripping away some things and subtracting some things. Some people are leaving, and some things are disappearing, and some certainties are evaporating, and some things you depended on all your life are no longer able to hold you up, so God can show you what he can do through a few. It is almost like Gideon in the Old Testament where he had 32,000 warriors, and the Lord said, "I can't use you yet to deliver my people". Look at Judges 7:2. Why? Because you're not strong enough? Because you're not smart enough? Because you're not experienced enough? No, no. He said, "You have too many". Why are you praying about too few when God is talking about too many? God said, "Take them down to the water. I'll thin them out. I'll send home who needs to be sent home, and you'll deliver the people with 300 men".
I'm not good at math, but that's backward. I went from 32,000 to 300, and it feels bad to go backward. You've been going backward, and you've been feeling bad about it, but praise the Lord, because praise paves the way for the provision of God to be revealed in your life through the few. "I don't have that much". You don't need that much. You don't need what you think you need. I promise you don't need what you think you need to do what God has called you to do. If you needed what you think you need to do what God has called you to do and he's the one who called you to do it, he would have given you what you think you need to do what he has called you to do, because he's the one who called you to do it. He doesn't promise stuff he doesn't provide for. "Oh, if I was more even-tempered…" No, no, no. You need a little bit of that "Mm". All right?
We're going to subdue it and submit it, and we're going to train it to the Holy Spirit, but you need some of that. You're going to get some self-control, but you need some of that. "Oh, if I could do this, if I could do that, if I could be more like this…" When I first went to Shelby, I went to a music director. This guy was a legend. He was the best musician that, at that point in my life, I had ever met. He played in studios. He played on people's albums. Here I was asking him to come be my keyboard player at a church of just a few hundred people. Everybody around me told me, "He won't do it. He doesn't need to be on some church band. He won't play on a church stage". I said, "Well, let me just go talk to him". I said, "I know that you probably won't do it…"
By the way, you'll never get a date if you come up with this kind of confidence. I was like, "I know you probably don't want to do it…" Before I finished, he said, "Yeah, I'll do it". I said, "I can only pay you this much," and it was just a few. I was going to pay him for a week what he could get in an hour. He said, "I'll do it. I've been praying about that". I went, "Oh, okay". So he started doing it. Every week, I'd go over to his house, and it was such a trip, y'all. I would teach him the songs. Now let me explain to you. I don't have much musical training. Just the chords I learned on my guitar when I was a boy, and that's it.
Now, I know those four chords really well, but I learned to play guitar off Green Day. Not Bach…Hootie & the Blowfish. That's how I learned to play guitar. But I know what I know. So I'd go over to his house. He had a little studio in his house. I would sit down with him. His name is Richard. I'd sit down with Richard, and I'd take the little chord charts over. I'd say, "Let's go over these songs for the week". Not because he needed to learn them.
Just we were getting it all charted out. He would chart it for me and everything. I would always apologize to him. I always felt bad, because he's such a great musician. I mean, he knows jazz. He knows rock. He knows country. He can play anything by ear or by sight, and here I am with a G and a C and a D and an A, and that's the whole song. I would say, "I'm so sorry, Richard. I know this is so simple. This is so stupid, me sitting here with a great musician like you. I don't even know all of the chords you know".
One day he stopped me. He said, "Steven, you don't need to know more chords. You know the right four". Then he gave me a tutorial. He started playing songs with the four chords I used over and over again. He showed me at least 20 songs that used those four chords only. Every time he would do it, it would drive the message home a little bit more. "You only need four. You only need four". Then he'd play it again. It was just a 1, 5, 6, and 4. That's the notation, the Nashville Number System. It's the 1, the 5, the 6, and the 4. He showed me that with those four chords you can write a number-one hit.
It's not how many chords you know. It's how you use the ones you know. I'm not preaching to everybody today. Just the few. Just the few who have been going around saying, "God, I don't know enough. I don't have enough. I haven't been trained enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not sleeping enough". That must be a parent of a newborn or a dog. "God, I don't have enough". Richard showed me you only need four chords. You only need four. I'll prove it. When God got ready to turn on the lights of the solar system, he said four words: "Let there be light". Four words, and the lights came on. Four words, and the world was illuminated. Four words, and the darkness had to back up. You only need four. You only need four.