Steven Furtick - Don't Quit Before The Victory
This is an excerpt from: The Gift Of Victory
Are you really going to let that make you quit on all of the good things God has given you? Are you really going to make the three annoying things about your wife (I'm talking about your wife; my wife is perfect) keep you from seeing the 300 amazing things about her and the 3,000 screwed-up things about you? You little jackalope hypocrite. You Pharisee. You whitewashed tomb. No. Victory… Not only is it a gradual realization, but it is a focus. It is a choice.
I feel like there are some things God has given to you that you are not giving yourself to it. You're in a quiet quit. All right. I'm going to give you an Old Testament Scripture and we'll get out of here, but let me tell you a story. I went home and told Holly awhile back, "I think I'm going to quit songwriting". No sooner did I finish saying it to her and go off by myself, the Holy Spirit had this very frank conversation with me. Holly spirit. Holy Spirit. But this was just between me and God. You know how when preachers say, "God spoke to me," and you wonder, "Why doesn't he do that to me? I never hear anything like that".
Okay, first of all, it's because preachers are crazy, and secondly, they're lying and exaggerating. The Lord doesn't talk out loud like all that to most people. Most people the Lord talks out loud to… I just want to give you this little word of wisdom. He may do that occasionally, but if he has to do that for them all the time, that means they haven't matured enough to hear him speak in the silence as well. So, the Lord didn't speak over the intercom or anything like that to me, but here was the sense. I'm going to give you this because I think he wants to say it to a few hundred of you. I said, "I think I'm going to quit songwriting". The Lord said, "Did I say you could quit"? Boom. I can't quit. I have to give myself to it out of gratitude that God gave it to me. If he gave me a gift, if he gave me a victory, if he gave me a seed, and I quit on the gift, it will quit on me.
You're like, "I don't write songs. What's the point"? You're raising kids. "Well, I'm not going to put them up for adoption, Preacher. I'm good". Have you quiet quit? "I'm not leaving. I'm good. This message is not for me". Have you quiet quit? Paul didn't say, "Keep showing up for the work of the Lord," did he? He said, "Give yourself fully". You heard it? "Give yourself fully". How can we expect total victory and live in partial obedience? How can I try three times? How can I try five times? I had a friend who went to therapy once and said it didn't work. Well, maybe get a new therapist, but don't quit. The issues you're wrestling with… You're going to go to one therapist, and because they didn't have the answers in an hour to fix the life you've spent 53 years messing up, you're just going to quit on the process? You're just going to quit on the church? You're just going to quit on your dream?
You don't get to quit until God says quit. That's not how this works. He who began a good work will be faithful, but you have to bring you to it. I have the gift. God gave you a gift to do it. God gave you a charge to do it. God gave you the ability to do it. God gave you the sling. He gave you the stone. He gave you the opportunity, but you are not giving yourself to it. It's no fun if you're not winning, and you won't win if you don't give yourself fully to it. That's why I was standing on your chair: because I'm giving myself to this. I don't come up here to preach to you and go, "Are they ready for a word today"? Ready or not, here we come! I'm going to put myself in this message. I'm going to sweat all the way through this sweater until it's nasty when I take it off. If you don't want the word, somebody else can get it on Tuesday. I'm giving myself to this!
You know what? Some of you are just like me. You have the gift of keeping going because you have the belief that "If I don't quit, if I keep believing, if I show up enough times not feeling it, if I keep doing it in God's name, if I keep getting better and learn from the losses and learn from the pruning and learn from the cold nights and learn from the mistakes…" If I don't quit, I'll win. Why? I have the gift. In the Scriptures there was a prophet named Elisha. Elisha, not Elijah. That's the one who came before him. Elisha, the one who came after him, did twice as many miracles as his predecessor.
I love preaching about Elisha because he had the gift. Oh man, he had the gift. Listen to what he could do. They'd come to attack Israel. He was the prophet of Israel. They would come to attack. God gave him a gift. He could see them coming before they started lining up. So he'd go over and tell the king. He'd be like, "Hey, they're going to attack you at 7:45 a.m". Wouldn't it be good to have a prophet who could tell you when the Devil was going to get on your last nerve? "Now look. Your daughter is going to be bringing drama in here, so go ahead. Get everything done an hour early. Pray, quote Philippians, listen to Bethel, and get ready for it, because it's coming".
Well, he had the gift. Not only the gift of power in the battle, but a preemptive gift of perceiving the battle before it happened. That's why I love reading about his life. He would see things. One Scripture… I used to preach this passage all over the world. I quit preaching it for a little while, but I'm going to do it one more time in the next 7 minutes and 24 seconds. It's over in 2 Kings, chapter 13. I'm going to tell you this story, and I'm going to get out of the way, and I'm going to change out of this sweater, and I'm going to go home. I may eat eggs, bacon, and keto biscuits. Mm. Let's hurry up and get through this so I can eat my biscuits.
In the Bible book of 2 Kings, chapter 13, it says, "Now Elisha had been suffering from the illness from which he died". Now watch this. He didn't die until God was done with him. The illness didn't kill him; God took him. You don't understand how big God is, how sovereign God is, how great God is, how vast his plans are, how awesome his might is, how strong his armies are. The Devil can't do anything to you that God does not permit. He just can't do it. He can try it, and even if he does it, God will use it, because that's how big God is. He had been suffering from the illness from which he died, but that's not the part I want to preach.
I want to preach about this: "Jehoash king of Israel went down to see him…" Why did he go see him? Because he had the gift. He needed to know, "Who am I going to be fighting, and how can I win"? Some of us come to God only when we're in battles. Jehoash, the Bible says, was an evil king who did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but now when he needs the word of the Lord, he knows where to go: to the one who had the gift of discernment, the gift of prophecy, the gift of instruction. He went down and wept over him. "'My father! My father!' he cried. 'The chariots and horsemen of Israel!' Elisha said, 'Get a bow and some arrows,' and he did so. 'Take the bow in your hands,' he said to the king of Israel. When he had taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king's hands".
I don't know what God is going to call you to do when this sermon is over, but it's going to involve putting your hands on something you already have. God is not going to speak to you about something you could do if you had someone else's stuff. Stop comparing. Stop lusting. Stop even wishing. Don't make a wish list this Christmas. Make a weapon list of what you already have that if you point it forward in the coming year, God will give you the victory. He told him what to do, and he did it. He said, "Get a bow," and he did it. "Get some arrows," and he did it.
Look at verse 17. "'Open the east window,' he said, and he opened it". Everything is going well. He's doing everything the word of God says, everything the man of God says…nothing more, nothing less. He doesn't know where this is headed. He doesn't understand how it all works together. He's just doing it because he knows God has given the word he needs for victory inside of this man who's dying.
Even though he's a king, he knows God's word is what gives him the wisdom to win the victory. I want you to get that. I don't care how high you are, how smart you are, how good-looking you are. It is God's word and God's will that gives you the wisdom to win in the areas of your life that matter the most. He said, "Open the east window," and he opened it. Then he told him, "Shoot"! and he shot. Everything is going well. Watch this victory verse. This goes exactly perfect with what I read you to start my sermon. This goes so good together, because he said, "Thanks be to God who gives us the victory". Watch what the prophet said. "The Lord's arrow of victory…" Whose? Whose victory is it? "The Lord's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram"!
We could substitute in whatever you're fighting, because everybody in this room and everybody online has an Aram. It might be addiction. It might be bitterness. It might be resentment. It might be a prodigal child away from God and away from you and away from how you raised them. Everybody has an Aram, but everybody has an arrow. If you have the arrow of the Lord's victory, no weapon formed against you shall be able to prosper. So, he said, "You will completely destroy the Arameans at Aphek". If it ended there, I would shout, but the Bible says that after he told him about the victory… Verse 18: "Then he said, 'Take the arrows,' and the king took them. Elisha told him, 'Strike the ground.' He struck it three times…" The next part is the quiet quit. "…and stopped". "There's nothing wrong with stopping, Pastor Steve. I mean, after all, the prophet didn't tell him how many times to strike".
Watch what the prophet said. The prophet was angry. Elisha had an attitude. Elisha had a temper. "The man of God was angry with him and said, 'You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only [as many times as you did what I told you to do].'" "But you told me the Lord gave me the victory". "But then I told you that if you didn't get down on the ground and do something that corresponded with what I spoke to you, you would not realize everything I revealed". How could he have known that he needed to keep going? I think it's pretty obvious, y'all. The prophet didn't say, "Stop". You keep doing it until God says, "Stop". Do you hear me?
I need you to stand up if this is your word, because there's a temptation to quit right now. In fact, there is a generational spirit that is not limited to Millennials. It's all of us. We're all thinking we can just quit stuff whenever we want to quit stuff and walk away from stuff the first time it doesn't work. The moment it gets hard we quit because we don't feel it, but feelings are not lord. Jesus is Lord. We don't walk by feelings; we walk by faith. If God didn't say quit, you don't get to quit! Let me be a prophet for a moment. You can't quit on yourself. You can't quit on your freedom. You can't quit on your destiny. You can't quit on your assignment. You can't quit on your anointing until God says quit.