Steven Furtick - This Will Completely Change Your Perspective
This is an excerpt from: The God Of Already
When I start forgetting what God has given me, it's a little trick I've learned to do to realize that I have everything. Oh, yeah. You're looking at a blessed man, a very blessed man. I've got it all. I have everything. And here's how I get everything. I'm going to teach you how to get everything in five seconds. I can really convince myself, "Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I guess I'll go eat worms. I guess I'll just go over in my corner and write one of my other little sermons. Nobody loves me". Then I go, "No. This is ridiculous. What are you talking about"? Not only have I been blessed with so many things… I do an exercise where I imagine the loss of someone I love the most. You're like, "That's very negative". No. Watch where it's going to get me, because it's very, very powerful.
I imagine, "What if I lost Holly? What would I give to have her back"? Two hundred dollars? Come on, man. Everything! I'll kill you and take yours, if I have to, to get her back. Everything, whatever it takes. I'll be Mel Gibson. I'll be Liam Neeson. I will storm through the gates of hell. I would give everything to have her back, and I have her now. So what do I have? Everything. See how quick that was? I went from being annoyed, being perturbed, just being all… You know how stupid we can get when we get adjusted to something we've had access to for too long. We get acclimated to what's available, and then we become unaware of how valuable it is because we become too acclimated to what's available.
So, when it says in verse 4… Oh, I have to give you a little bit more about this. "Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus". I realized that their awareness had not caught up with his thereness yet. He was there. They weren't aware yet. He was no less there because they weren't aware of it. He's standing on the shore, cooking fish, getting ready for them to haul in some more fish. They have plenty of fish. There's going to be fish today. But the one thing they couldn't know in that moment was that he was already there where they were headed for, but there was something he wanted to show them before they got there too.
So, I look at Jesus in this passage, and I realize it's one thing to look back over my life. I see almost a sign hanging over every open door in my life: "Jesus was here". I almost think of Jesus as a graffiti artist. You know how they have a tag, and they tag when they do it? Jesus does it legally. I studied a little bit. The first graffiti artist who was recognized for his tag was named Cornbread. He was really cool. He was in Philadelphia. He hopped over the fence at the Philadelphia Zoo one time when he was 17 and spray painted the side of an elephant, and he tagged it "Cornbread lives". I look back over my life now, and I see all of these tags over not just the open doors and the opportunities God gave me but even some of the closed doors that God didn't let me go through.
Now I look back and see a tag that says, "Jesus was here". I look back over some of the relationships God brought into my life and some of the ones I asked him for and he said, "Not yet". I look back over some of the "already" blessings in my life, and I see that, hey, God has already been working on this for a long time for me. I mean, he has already done so much for me. The more I access the "already" blessings in my life… The more aware I am of the "already" blessings, the better I can deal with the "not yet" questions. To get in a space where you go, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute". Yeah, there are some things I want God to add to my life, but being blessed is not about what he might or might not add; it's about what I access that I already have.
Learning to access what I already have is the process of gratitude. Gratitude is the access point to joy. That's why I love my little exercise. When I am unaware of a blessing, I feel like it's not there even though it is. Read the Scripture. Jesus was on the shore. They didn't know it. He's there. They're not aware. He can be there, but until you are aware that he is there, it will feel as if he's not. So, the challenge of this season of my life, as a grown man, is not to look back and say, "Jesus was there," but to stand in the middle of my "not yet" and declare "Jesus is here".
I have to tag it while I'm going through it so I can hold to the truth in this situation that what I will look back on in my life in the next season and say, "God was there," he's here in it right now. His thereness always outpaces your awareness, which is how you end up like my dad, and you go, "I felt sorry for you". "You felt sorry for me? I feel sorry for you. God was working on your dumb butt, and you were too blind to see it. God sent an arrogant little 17-year-old punk wearing some Doc Martens to tell you God is going to turn your life around, and you couldn't see it. He was there. You just weren't aware of it".
How many of y'all have something you're worried about this week coming up in your life? I mean this week. I'm not talking about when you turn 94, and will there still be Social Security, and will Biden still be president or somebody older, but something this week. All right. God is going to beat you to it. Let me get more specific. Jesus is already there. "Oh, that's so nice. Imaginary Jesus is already there. This is the problem with you Christians. You have this imaginary friend named Jesus who you think is going to work everything out for you". It's not imaginary. For me (I don't know if you could say the same thing), I have more proof that he has been there for me than almost any other person in my life.
So, if you wanted to convince me that God wasn't real, you should have done that a long time ago, because you're a little late. I've already seen the ways he has made for me. I've already seen the things he has brought me through. I have already seen him bring water from a rock. You can't make me doubt him because I know too much about him. I already know. I'm not studying a book to find out if he's real. I'm not waiting on a scientist to bust open a molecule or split an atom to tell me if Christ lives. I've got the tag over my life. Jesus lives! If you know he's alive, shout "Hallelujah"! Come on, give him an "already" praise.
What's an already praise? It's when I praise him in a "not yet" situation for a blessing that he has already pressed down, shaken together… I think we need to recognize the connection between appreciating our "already" as we anticipate our "not yet". This is the greatest skill God can give you to help you fight depression, distraction, discouragement, and temptation. See, when you stay in "not yet" and forget your "already," you go running after stuff that is less than you because you got tired of waiting on something that was not yet ready for you, but when you know who you are, when you know what you already have, when you know who has already chosen you to be his, called you by name, sealed you with his Spirit, adopted you as his child, you can stand in your "already" and say, like Paul, "I don't have it yet".
I love that word. I went to therapy, and my therapist taught me how to say that word. I'm serious. It helped me. I would say, "I just can't figure it out," and the therapist would interrupt and say, "Yet". It got on my nerves. I said, "I'm not paying you to correct me. I said I can't figure it out, and I haven't figured it out," and the therapist would say, "Yet". Every time they said, "Yet," it took me back to how many things God had already done for me.
See, my "already" gave me the balance for my "not yet". That's why I want you to imagine things being out of your life that are in your life so you can get back in your "already". I drove up to the church today, and I was like, "Oh man! This church… We have so much debt. We just have to pay off all our debt. Oh, wait. No, God already paid off our debt". Now do y'all see why I'm in such a good mood preaching today? I preach really good with no debt on my back. It didn't get paid off in those five minutes before I came out to preach to you. I just recalled it to my mind, and I accessed the "already" so I could move ahead into the "not yet".