Steven Furtick - Failure Is Not Your Identity
Steven Furtick: You can have weaknesses and still be mightily used by God. Right.
Elijah Furtick: Not even in spite of those weaknesses, but like...
Steven Furtick: ...through them through them. Yeah, it's it's in my weakness That I'm strong. There's a verse we misquote from Paul I might have showed you this before but he says when I am weak then do you not goes then you are strong...
Elijah Furtick: Yeah, no...
Steven Furtick: ...when I am weak you then I am strong. Hmm It's always like when I'm weak God's strong, right, but he actually says when I'm weak and I'm then I am strong what? Whoa. And I think what he's saying is, that's the point where I know I need to rely on God. And as long as I'm thinking I've got this, I'm going in my own strength. But the moment that I realize my weakness and confess it, God's like, now you're working with me. Wow.
Elijah Furtick: It's not, it's not living in denial of that weakness. It's actually. That's when you become strong, is when you actually acknowledge it. Well, yeah...
Steven Furtick: ...because think about in a workout, when is the moment in a set of, and we, we work out together all the time, this is our bond, so please forgive us.
Elijah Furtick: And you even talked about this in the book, I don't know if you remember, but.
Steven Furtick: Well, I remember when you brought Alex over and he was, he was lifting, and he kept telling his spotter, help me fail. Yeah. He'd get to a certain rep, and, I thought that was a strange way to say it, cause I've heard before, help me get one more rep. Right. But what he was saying is, I can only push so hard by myself, and if I don't get to the point of failure, then I'm not gonna grow. And so, I think a lot of you probably quit too quick right before you hit the growth moment. You quit when something makes you feel uncomfortable, you quit when you feel like you can't do it, and whatever that failure point is for you, with God, He's your spotter. Yeah. So God is going to get you through that failure in a way that makes you grow, as long as you don't leave the gym. And what do I mean by that? Because it's just a metaphor. I'm saying like, if there's something you're struggling through right now, you're trying to quit porn, you're trying to quit this, you're trying to quit that, or you're trying to start doing something. That you know is productive for you. Don't just let the failures happen. And then the devil beats you up and you feel like you are a failure. Remember failure is never an identity. It's an event. So you are not a failure. Do not say I am a failure. I failed and guess what? Through my failure when I am weak. Then I'm strong. Cause the moment that you're growing the most lifting weights is the moment when you're going, the weakest. And you look ridiculous. Oh, it's the worst. That's your growth rep. That's where you're growing. And it's like that in life. And with God, it's the moments where we're like, man, I feel just absolutely out of my mind right now, but I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do anyway. I'm going to, I'm going to focus. I'm going to show up at church. I'm going to show up at my e group. I'm going to do this
Elijah Furtick: Anyway. And that's where you let God kind of, kind of push you there. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeez Smith: That's great. And I'll, I'll, that's so helpful for me too, because I feel like one of the, I'm going to choose my words carefully because I'm trying to apply the book to my life, but I feel like one of the, the default me would say that I'm bad at self reflection and I want to just keep pushing past it. Because I don't want to deal with it, and I don't want to sulk and sit. And one of the things that I can get stuck with is just thinking that that's just who I am. And so I feel like as you're, you know, articulating this, I'm seeing probably so many lessons that I could have learned with God if I would have just sat there with him and not denied the failure. But actually brought him into it. Well...
Steven Furtick: ...try this. Have you ever done like a walking meeting? No. For work? Oh, like, yeah. Yeah, like, hey, we need to meet, but I want to get some exercise. Right, yeah. So do both. Keep it moving. Don't sit and sulk and sit there and go, Oh, God, show me my sin. My sin is great, God. Oh, God. Yeah. But like, just kind of take that thing on your mind and say, Okay, God, I'm not going to fixate on this because it's going to make me feel worse. I'm not going to sit down for an hour, light a candle, burn some incense. Yeah. I'm just going to like, as I go through my day, God, I want to kind of think about that with you. And that phrase right there, think about it with God, God, help me think about this and watch what he puts in your life that day to speak to you as you're moving through it. See what I mean? It's not just sitting down at a kitchen table or kneeling down at a prayer bench. It's going, God, that way that that sitting with me, it's just not going away is sitting here. So would you show me how to interpret this and then do both? Because I would, I would add JT that sometimes sitting with it and living in it isn't reflection. It's rumination. Rumination is when you turn something over and over in your mind. And that can actually be where the enemy can show up and cause you to go blind to all the good stuff that's around you. Because. It would be basically like, if we were playing, what, what sports did you play growing up? Soccer, baseball. Yeah, I mean, it'd be like, it would, it would be like you're, uh, you are still looking, uh, at the pitch that you just swung at and missed. You know, still looking at the pitch that you just swung at and missed till, and then you struck out. So I don't think it's a bad thing that you're feeling is, okay, next pitch. Yeah, in a way that's...
Elijah Furtick: ...a strength. It's a strength. But like you were saying before, sometimes that strength can.
Steven Furtick: Can get flipped, can become a weakness or a strength can become a weakness if it's not guarded, a weakness can become a strength if it's submitted to God. Jeez. Wow. That is...
Elijah Furtick: ...deep.
Steven Furtick: That is deep. And do that in your life everywhere. What we just did, that was like a therapeutic exercise. You're like, honestly, I feel like my tendency is like, just go get around people. I'm social. Cause I know enough about how you are. I don't know you that well, but I know. You probably don't want to be alone with yourself that much. And you're like, that's a weakness. I'm like, are you crazy? That's one of the greatest strengths people would kill to have the people skills that you have. Right? So we're not trying to eliminate that from your life, right? We are just trying to join that. With the part of your life that can sometimes tend to use that as a substitute for actually working through an issue. Right. And the more we start seeing ourselves that way, how God sees us, it's like, Oh, old you, new you, it's not like all of that is bad and I need to just hate who I've always been and change it. Future youth treadmill treadmill treadmill. Yeah, it's just integrating it and saying like god. Why did you make me like this? How can I bring more of this in here? Right? And then you get to partner with god in finding out who you really are.
Elijah Furtick: So, it's almost, yeah, it's exciting. It's like you get to do this...
Steven Furtick: ...new thing. It's like an experiment it's like the other night she was cooking some um Soup and it was just me and her eating and I was like don't you love just cooking for two people? And she's like well, yeah, I mean, I wish kids were here But, um, and I, I know this is making you kind of lust right now after the food that you're not getting while you're at college. Yeah. I know you've been on steady ramen. Yeah. But, uh, so she's, she's like, uh, the dinner will be ready in such and such time and it took a lot longer. And when I came out, she was like, I know it took a little longer, but man, I had fun playing around with the soup. I put a little of this, uh, just. You know, they didn't have this. I had that. And then I, last time I did this and I did that. And I'm thinking like, you are kind of like that suit. And it should be a feeling sometimes, not just of like, I gotta get better cause I suck and God hates me and I'm gonna burn in hell if I don't fix this and he's never gonna be able to use me. It's like, well, okay. Or, just like, this is an experiment. Right. I like to think of like, myself as I'm a beta version, not beta like alpha, beta, not that the pre the, the version that's like, I know I still got bugs, but there's going to be updates. Yeah. And so for everybody who doesn't see the potential in you because of your bugs, there's going to be updates.
Elijah Furtick: Jeez.
Jeez Smith: That's crazy.
Steven Furtick: Touch three people say there's going to be an update. Yeah. Put it in the comments. There's going to be an update. And the thing that we're updating. Right. Is our mindset. That's how we update it. We set our mind on things above. Update. Set your mind on things above. Update. That's, that's what I want to get you in the flow of at a young age in your life. And I know not just youth watch this podcast. I know y'all reach people of all ages. This could be as true if you're 60 as if you're 16. Right. There's still updates. Abraham became the father of many Nations when he was 99. Crazy. So there's, there's still updates available for your life. It's not over...
Elijah Furtick: Right? It never, it's never, it's never too late for an update, come on, is that point or cool, there's a fine
Steven Furtick: line. Right? Right. , it's never too, it's all about context. If you were like, if you were like, it's never too late for nothing, it could definitely Right. But what I would do if I was preaching it, I'd be like, you know, um, there are a lot of people in your life. Um So, so you could say like, God will use your haters to be your updaters. God will use Judas to get Jesus to the cross, because if Jesus stays on the earth, he's limited to his physical body. But if he dies on the cross, and he goes down into the grave, and he rises from the grave and ascends to heaven, he sends his spirit, and his spirit can live in all of us at the same time, and greater works shall you do. So he used Judas to bring Jesus into the earth in the form of the spirit, through his hater, through his hater. Your haters are your updaters and some of you would think yeah, that would have been great If I could have heard this when I was a kid, but i'm not a kid anymore And I wish I could have but you need to talk to abraham because Jesus spoke about a man named Abraham and Jesus said before Abraham was, I am, and that's when they wanted to crucify him and Abraham said, God, will you give me an heir seeing that I am childless and Eliezer is my servant and he will inherit everything. And God said, you shall have a child and it shall be your seed. And when he was holding Isaac, he realized it's never. Too late and then hopefully everybody would say...
Jeez Smith: Says update Dude we just got a master class Geez...
Steven Furtick: You just took the book Some real random thing The thing about is it corny or is it cool I noticed that shows up in creativity We were writing a song this week and we were being real serious So this is serious And then there was a moment where like Bathroom break or whatever And I did something just that I thought was and I'm going to show it to you because I'd like you to Put some production on it. Oh shoot, and I'm gonna show it to you And but it was it was something that I was like, is that corny? Or is that awesome? Yeah. Yeah. And that kind of goes to the thing like, we are so, can I speak to this? Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. We are so consumed with cool. We are so consumed with acceptance. We are so consumed with being guarded that some of our best stuff never gets shared. Whether that's how we show up in our friendships or who we really are deep down. Mm-Hmm. . And we cover all that up for the sake of Cool. And. The friends that we win by pretending to be something that we're not aren't friends with us because we're pretending, right? They're friends with some...
Elijah Furtick: ...pretend version.
Steven Furtick: They're friends with the pretend version. So...
Elijah Furtick: ...what did you gain? You gain...
Steven Furtick: ...nothing. You gain nothing.
Elijah Furtick: And it's not their fault either. Because that's what you're presented. Yeah, okay in chapter two you talked about how we had the choice to either Um, argue for our limitations or agree with God about our potential. That's my favorite. It was banger. Banger line. What advice do you have to the kid out there who maybe can't figure out what they want to do in life, where their potential is, how would you speak to that? Because I feel like that's a very pressing issue with like this age range.
Steven Furtick: You are accurate if you say that we have no idea what our potential is that will always be true But think about the first part I think you you hit my favorite line in the book and I don't know who said it first I heard Les Brown say it. Okay. Okay, you have something special. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody tell Les Brown to hit me I love Les Brown somebody somebody tell Les Brown He gave me that line, but I don't know if he made it up But he said, if you agree with your, if you argue for your limitations, Let me start it all over. If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. Do not say I am only. Then I added a back half to it. If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. But if you agree with God about your potential, you get to grow into it. So I'm going to say the whole thing again. If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. Put this in the comments. If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. That means if you go young, bad with people, then you get to keep being bad with people. That means if you say I'm not disciplined, then you get to keep not being disciplined. And then you get to flunk out of school. And then you get to be homeless. I'm just taking it as dark as I can. I'm like, I hope this isn't my path. Yeah, you're not, you're not undisciplined. But if you say that, if you say, I'm not disciplined, I'm not good at focusing, I'm not good at music, I am not good at this, I am not, my thing was that I shared in the book, I'm not a workout person.
Elijah Furtick: We literally have that in the question.
Steven Furtick: I'm not a workout person. And that's what I told Buck when I started. Having him work with me and show me stuff. I'm like, I'm not a workout person. I don't do legs. I don't do chin ups I don't do cardio right like so you just bench. Yeah, just you can't make this up.
Elijah Furtick: That was literally the next question really about I love the story from chapter 4 where you said you weren't a lifting person. We're in the flow. We're in the flow.
Steven Furtick: We're in the flow because look if I say that and I argue for it, it will become self fulfilling I'm not a workout person. I don't work out. I'm not a workout person, right? But if I agree with God I'm using working out as an illustration About my potential, I get to grow into it. The first part of that is just to agree with God that I don't know everything that's in me. And most of us won't even do that. We have such a made up mind about who we are, who we're not, who we could never be. Right? For sure. We all do. We all do. I told your mom I'm not writing any more books. Right. Here we are. I am telling you on the podcast about my new book. About when I said, I am done writing books. And as long as I argued for my limitation, You could have
Elijah Furtick: easily never dropped another book again.
Steven Furtick: Easily. It was in me and I believe, I believe somebody's going to watch this today and they don't even have to buy the book, but you should. And they're going to get so much out of this, it's going to propel them, but it almost didn't happen. My first step though wasn't to know what my potential is. This is what, this is what I think you're asking. I don't have to know what it is to agree with God that there's more there. You get to grow into it.
Elijah Furtick: I get to grow into it. Wow. And it's just taking that first step of basically, like, saying it, just...
Steven Furtick: It's always taking the next step. There's, there's, there's nothing but the next step. There's never anything God calls me to take that is not just the next step. He doesn't promise that He will give us The headlights to see. Yes. A hundred yards away. Lamp into my feet. He promises to give us a lamp unto our feet. Yep. And how much light does a lamp give? Enough for the next step. Next step. So just put in the comments. Next step. Next step. Thinking that way is way better than. I see a lot of kids getting this, I don't know what I'm about to do in my life, what am I about to do in my life, you're 14, play a video game.
Elijah Furtick: Play a video game.
Steven Furtick: Read a bible verse, play a video game, and uh, you know what I'm saying, like we can get so overwhelmed by the destination that we don't really commit ourselves and devote ourselves To what God has revealed, because we're so consumed by what he hasn't revealed. Right. And I just think you need to take that quote and think about it a little bit because it is so powerful. If I agree with God, okay, yes, God, I'm limited. Yes, God, I'm, I'm maybe nothing special in other people's eyes. And I may not play professional sports and I may not do all these things, but I agree with you that you've put more in me than my mind can comprehend. And I agree with you, God, that you're going to show me what you put me here for. As I take the next step, you get to grow into it, and that's really the privilege of walking with God, is that he shows you step by step, you're like,
Elijah Furtick: Wow. It's almost like the other side of that coin of the fear that comes with that is the excitement of, like, you could either sit there and be scared of, oh my gosh, there's so much, I don't know what I want to do with my life, or like, oh my gosh, like, there's so much potential for me to, to grow into this. I don't even know what I want to do with my life, like, there's nothing but. Potential that kind of unlocked that. Yeah.
Steven Furtick: Yeah. So in other words, you're flipping the unknown from being something so scary and something that can almost be paralyzing to something that's just endless possibility. And I taught you this, I don't know if you remember, psychologists teach us that there's really not that much difference. What our body experiences when we're. Nervous or anxious and when we're excited and sometimes I'm worried about the way we throw around the word anxiety, not for people who actually. Um, need medical treatment and psychological help, please get that help. But when you just say, man, I'm so anxious about the podcast today, it's great. I'm nervous about it because I'm excited about it. That's not anxious. Yeah. That's I care. Right. And I'm going to invest my energy into my preparation. Right. Rather than allowing it to consume me. And just sit...
Elijah Furtick: ...there and soak in that...
Steven Furtick: ...yeah. Sitting there and letting it Letting it sour the experience and so that's true with anxiety and excitement and it's true with I want to act it out for you Watch this. Watch this. I just don't know what God has for me in the future Yeah, that's the old you new you I just don't know what God has for me in my future Jeez, and that is The new you yeah, and so we took the same Uncertainty right you said it's already in you. It's already in you And we acknowledge that, I don't know, and if God is the author of my life, He's a pretty good storyteller. You ever sit down and watch a movie, and you're like, I'm not sure where this is going, but you like the person who made the movie, who wrote it or directed it, and you're like, I always like their movies. And if you've seen God see you through some things in your life, and you believe in Him and that you're in His hands, you can get through parts of the story and the plot where you're like, this is confusing right now. He always makes it pay off in the last scene. Yeah. And I think that's what Joseph was in the scriptures, where he said, You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. I think Joseph was basically saying, like, The story was really confusing, and it sucked, and it had some really hard years, and there were many scenes I would have skipped. And you might be in one of those scenes right now, where you're like, You don't understand my, my, my dad walked out on our family. You don't understand, like, I'm actually in, in a part of my life that is very abusive and confusing. And that's not only heartbreaking to me, that's heartbreaking to God. He's still the author, and this is a chapter of your life. And now it's time for us to see how he's going to work this chapter into the story that he's telling, because he's not finished telling your story yet. And I want to encourage you with that, that the story isn't over. And learn to view that as a positive, because it's like Well, that's kind of cool that you don't know what God's going to do with you. That means it could be anything.
Elijah Furtick: Right. And you know what I'd love that you've preached on before that I feel like ties into that is the idea of when you did the illustration with the piano and how, like what note comes after changes the story. It's like almost as God's writing your story, you get to choose like, okay, let's say like what you were saying. Like you're having like terrible stuff going on with your family. Like you get to choose whether that in the plot, whether that breaks you or whether it. Makes you stronger. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's almost, you, you get to walk in, it's as the story's being written. And it's all based off of what, what comes next and that next move.
Steven Furtick: I think it was Miles Davis, but I don't remember which jazz musician, because I'm not a jazz guy, that said, Uh, there's no wrong note. It's the note that comes after. Right. Can somebody grab me that guitar, please, real quick? Yeah, illustrating, because, thanks Josiah, I think it's worth illustrating, because it works better on a piano, But I think this will be cool for everyone to see where basically he's saying, thank you that there's no, I hope it's in tune. There's no...
Elijah Furtick: ...if it's not, he's, he's tuning it.
Steven Furtick: There's no way to tell if that's a good note or a bad note. And I want you to compare a note to an event in your life. It is just a note. If this comes after it is dissonant you know, it's the note I'm putting after. So you say, oh, that's a bad note. Well, not necessarily if I say ugh, ugh, still, but.
Elijah Furtick: Oh, shoot.
Steven Furtick: Same starting note. What makes it good or bad is what comes after the next note. So something really horrible just happened, or you made a really bad mistake. And you're like, man, I'm stuck on this note. It would be a real mistake for you to just go deeper down into the spiral. Just make it even worse. Like now you just running through all kinds of girls. You're running through all kinds of boys and just trying to fill this hole. No, no, no, no, no. The note right now, it might not be a note that you understand out of context, but it's amazing grace. I'm trying to play. Oh yeah. And it, it became grace because of what came after it became amazing because of what came after and let's learn to do that more in our life. Let's go. Okay, I absolutely wrecked that moment, but the next moment, the next, the next, the next step. I'm learning from that. I'm moving forward. And that's how you get out of the trap of like all this condemnation. You can take this before I start playing James Taylor. It's just this idea of saying like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not the last note. This is not the last chapter. This is not the final word. This is not the last relationship. This is not the last friend. This is not the last opportunity. This is not my final note. Just put that in the comments real quick. This is not my last note. Mm-Hmm. . There. There will be more grace after this. And that's what I love about the new you. The new you is the next note. Yeah. And the next note. And the next note. And who's deciding what that note will be? Is it always God? Right. Or does he sometimes put it in our hands to say, Yeah. Do you want to forgive this or do you want to stay bitter? Do you want to learn from this? Go back and apologize? And then get better from it? Or do you want it to keep you stuck here? And that's a decision that we make. Until you realize you have that power, You're thinking like, oh well my life is bad and theirs is good. He said there's no bad note or good note. It's the note that comes after that makes it a good note or a bad note. And I think that's true of a lot of things that happen in our lives.