Steven Furtick - How To Deal With Relational Resentment
This is an excerpt from: He Was The One
There's a lot of relational resentment that can build up in your life, people who disappoint you. I'm no different than you. I get disappointed in people. The man we're reading about in this Scripture, Uzziah, in many ways was a disappointment because he didn't bring the nation back to their rightful place. I'll show you in just a moment it even got worse than that. Before I show you how bad it got, let me talk about your disappointments in people. As Holly and I began to talk, I said, "You know, Jay Hardwick was the one who kind of put us on that team, wasn't he? And we never even thought about it".
Who was someone in your life you don't think about? I'm not talking about the hall of fame, like Mom and Dad, and all that stuff, and Billy Graham and the apostle Paul…and Jesus. It's going to be in the comments. "Jesus is the one, Steven. Jesus. He's the one". I'm going to say it for you. There are people who you think are going to be the one to be with you forever, but they're not. Just because they're not with you forever doesn't mean they didn't serve an important purpose in your life. I don't know who this is for, but I really need to say it. Some people in your life are port people. They move through. You move on. They move on. Just because they didn't stay planted doesn't mean they weren't important.
What this will help you do, when the Enemy says, "You have nobody. Look at how they let you down. Look at how they didn't come through for you. Look at how they don't get you. Look at what they weren't able to do. Look at how you believed in them. Look at how you thought they were going to be the perfect partner. Look at how you thought they were going to be…" I want to revisit this for a moment so that you stop focusing on the disappointment and start focusing on the deposit. I could tell you somebody right now, and you could do the same for me. You could say, "Man, she was the one I counted on, and she let me down". But if we took it a little deeper, there was something God used that person in your life for. Even if it was just a port moving through… Do you understand what I'm saying about Elath? We have Elath relationships, and they may not last as long as we wanted them to, and they may not be everything we wanted them to be.
If we're not careful, so careful with our souls, the Devil will set up camp in that disappointment and say, "You have no one". But they were the one. They were the one for a while. Look at what they added to your life. "Yeah, but they betrayed me". It was Judas who got Jesus to the cross. He was the one God used more than any of the other disciples, because it was Judas whom God used to get Jesus to the place where he paid for your sins and mine. Even the people who hurt you God used. I don't say that coldly. I don't say that to celebrate abuse or neglect or abandonment. I just know someone has been living in this place for a long time. "I have no one". You are so good at listing the disappointments that you're missing the deposits.
And not only those who are gone. Not only the people who planted seeds. Not everybody who starts with you is supposed to stay with you. Not only that, but there are fresh people God is bringing into the port of your life, and if you do not do the work in this season of setting free and forgiving the things that disappointed you, you will not be open to the deposit. So you stay poor, you stay sad, and you stay alone. If you will get your eyes off of who left and put your eyes on what they left that God is still watching over in your life to bring you to a new level, I declare and decree he will rebuild and restore everything the locusts ate, every year the cankerworm gnawed off. After all, it wasn't them who blessed you anyway. He was the one. God was the one. His mercy was the conduit. His grace was the power.
Get ready to shout. You've had your eyes on people. Put your eyes on Jesus. He was the one! Got too focused on others. Got too focused on stuff. Forgot that he was the one. He was the one who brought me through depression. He was the one who forgave all my sins and healed all my diseases. He was the one whose blood washed me clean. He was the one who knelt in the garden of Gethsemane with me on his mind and pressed through to the cross. He was the one! That's why I know he's not through with you, because it was him all along. Uzziah rebuilt and restored the port. I'm going to ask you a question. When we write your 2 Kings 14:21-22, what are we going to say? He was the one.
I know some of you in here… I want your 2 Kings 14:22 to read like this: "He was the one who battled through the addiction his dad couldn't defeat and beat it for his own kids. He was the one". "She was the one who forgave her mom for never telling her that she was loved, for making her perform, and because she forgave her mom, she was able to face herself and love herself and see herself as a daughter of God. She was the one". I don't see crowds today. I don't know why God gave me this anointing. I just see ones. I just see ones…one God, one person. Which one do you want to be? Because this can go the other way too. "He was the one who gave up on himself because he got tired of making excuses, so eventually, he just brought his belief in God down to the level of his lifestyle rather than bringing his lifestyle up to the level of his belief in God".
I want to tell you something about Uzziah. We might want to sit down for this. Uzziah did really well. In fact, 2 Chronicles 26 kind of says the same thing about him, but it gives us a little more detail. I bring you this in a spirit of humility. Look. I know when you hear a strong word from God… And for some of you, this is a strong word from God. It's not because of me; it's because of the importance of your life to what God wants to do through you. This word is hitting you right now because this is an Elath message for you. This is a port sermon for you. What goes forth from here is important. You don't think it is yet. You don't even know why you're the one.
I had a man come up to me after I preached one time, and he said, "Preacher, when you were preaching, you said, 'This message is for someone. I don't know who.'" He goes, "I just want to let you know I was the one". He said a little bit of what he was going through. I said, "Thank you for telling me". Then somebody else came up, and they had overheard. It was a man and a woman. The woman said… She was really funny. She said, "I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I heard that man who came before. This is my husband Joe, and I just want you to know that man who was here before… He was wrong, because he was the one you were talking to" and pointed at her husband. Somebody say, "I'm the one".
See, I'm the one who decides which one I'm going to be. He was the one who rebuilt and restored. If your life is in ruins right now, you didn't control that. You may have contributed to it, but will you be the one who rebuilds and restores? I know God wants to be the one who helps you do that. I know that. He'll be the one who will empower you to do it. Uzziah does amazing things, y'all. For a guy who had to start being a king at age 16… Wow! He defeats three of the Philistine countries, knocks down their walls. He puts these watchtowers all around Jerusalem where they can see where their enemies are coming from. Then, after he builds the watchtowers, he puts in these special military devices where they can shoot the arrows and hurl the stones and their enemies can't see them. He buys new military equipment for every single one of the soldiers, and there are 305,700 of them.
Soldiers. He gives them all new equipment. He's also a gardener. He does amazing things with agriculture. This guy is amazing. So are you, in some ways. But the Bible says something really scary to me. Let's look at it. Second Chronicles 26:1: "Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in place of his father Amaziah". We already read that. This is a different account of it. "He was the one who rebuilt Elath and restored it to Judah after Amaziah rested with his ancestors". We already read that, but this is a different account.
Now watch this. "Uzziah was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-two years. His mother's name was Jekoliah; she was from Jerusalem. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Amaziah had done. He sought God during the days of Zechariah…" Zechariah was the one who mentored him. "…who instructed him in the fear of God". Listen to this verse. It's going to feel haunting. "As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success".
The next several verses really break that down, all of the successes God gave him. It says that God strengthened him, God helped him, God upheld him, and God resourced him. If you go all the way down to verse 16, it says, "But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God, and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense". Now listen to this. "Azariah the priest…" This is a different Azariah. As if it wasn't confusing enough already, there has to be two Azariahs and one who isn't going by the name Azariah anymore. Thanks a lot, chronicle writer. Listen to this. Back into the scene.
"Azariah the priest with eighty other courageous priests of the Lord followed him in. They confronted King Uzziah and said, 'It is not right for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord. That is for the priests, the descendants of Aaron, who have been consecrated to burn incense. Leave the sanctuary, for you have been unfaithful; and you will not be honored by the Lord God.'" The kings weren't allowed to burn this incense. It was for the priests to do. You always get in trouble when you try to do what God called somebody else to do, when you start wishing you could be this one or that one. See, Uzziah was powerful. God called him. Don't get it twisted. God anointed him. God put the crown on his head. No matter whose hands he used to position it there, it was God who did it, but then he got out of his place. Even when he was corrected, he wouldn't listen.
Listen to this. Verse 19. God is bringing you to this point today, and I want you to hear this as a warning for your life. "Uzziah, who had a censer in his hand ready to burn incense, became angry. While he was raging at the priests in their presence before the incense altar in the Lord's temple, leprosy broke out on his forehead. When Azariah the chief priest and all the other priests looked at him, they saw that he had leprosy on his forehead, so they hurried him out. Indeed, he himself was eager to leave, because the Lord had afflicted him". Listen to this. I wish the story ended differently, but I have to give it to you how it is in the Bible. I don't write the book; I'm just giving you the mail.
The Bible says: "King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in a separate house—leprous, and banned from the temple of the Lord. Jotham his son had charge of the palace and governed the people of the land. The other events of Uzziah's reign, from beginning to end, are recorded by the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. Uzziah rested with his ancestors and was buried near them in a cemetery that belonged to the kings, for people said, 'He had leprosy.' And Jotham his son succeeded him as king".
All he did, and the people said, "He had leprosy". He died like that, because he forgot that God was the one. You die alone when you forget that God is the one. You live alone when you forget that God is the one. Your worship gets weak when you forget that God is the one. You start running from what God has called you to when you forget that God is the one. You feel cut off when you forget that God is the one.
How many are grateful that of all of the kings who are in 2 Kings 14, none of those kings are the one we came to worship today? Yeah, me too. People will disappoint you, but God will carry you. People will leave you; God never will. The Bible says King Uzziah died with leprosy, a skin condition that isolated him, but you don't have to. You don't have to stay away. Do you know why? Because Isaiah prophesied to Uzziah, but he did not prophesy about Uzziah.
Isaiah prophesied about another King, a king who would come at a later date, a king who would not come through any human father, a king who would come not in a palace, a king who would come in a Palestinian environment that would have been unfit for many animals. See, the thing I want you to know today, for all of you who feel alone… "I have no one. I am no one. I can't rebuild. I can't recover. I'm down here, and I have to stay here. There is no more for me. I'm not the one. This sermon is for somebody else, because I've tried this before, and it didn't work".
I wanted you to know this from the heart of God today for his child. Your leprosy is not your legacy. This leprosy, this issue… Everybody has something like that…not a skin disease, not something others can see on your forehead, but a label that follows you through life, a condition, an issue, a struggle, a tendency, something that has been with you and may even be consuming you. But somebody shout, "This leprosy will not be my legacy". Say it by faith. "This leprosy will not be my legacy". One more time. Say, "This leprosy, this label, this limitation, this loneliness, will not be my legacy". Now look at your neighbor and say, "God is not through with you".