Steven Furtick - Beating Burnout (02/14/2017)
In the final Mood Swingers message, Pastor Steven uses Exodus 27:20-21—commanding pure, pressed olive oil for lamps that burn continually before God's presence—and ties it to Matthew 6:22-23, where Jesus calls the eye the lamp of the body. The key: beating burnout requires the right light (perspective), essential pure oil (joy from pressed thoughts), and ongoing pressing to extract what's precious—turn demands exceeding resources into sustained passion by filtering thoughts, beating out negativity, and letting God's oil of joy flow.
Final Week of Mood Swingers – Beating Burnout
So now let's read from the great book of Exodus chapter 27, verses 20 and 21. Just two verses. And then I want to tie them to a couple other verses as well. But I want to use this as a basis. Exodus chapter 27, verse 20 and 21. A lot of times going into a week's study, I know exactly what scripture I want to preach on. This week I was headed over to the scripture in my Bible that I thought I might preach on. And I saw this neon flashing sign in this scripture that I just told you about. And I peeled off the interstate, wasn't planning to get off here, and I just got stuck there. And I decided to preach it instead.
So, has that ever happened to you? You just decide like, we're going out to eat here, but hey, that place looks great too. And you pull in there, and it's amazing. That's what happened to me in this scripture this week. I never even knew this scripture was in the Bible before. And every time I read it, I mean, I'm sure I read it because I read through the Bible before, but I never paid attention to it, and you'll see why. But it's amazing, and I want you to experience it the way I did today.
The Lamp Instructions – Clear Oil of Pressed Olives
So, let's look at Exodus chapter 27, verse 20, where the Lord is giving Moses some instructions, and he tells him as follows, Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light, so that the lamps may be kept burning. Three phrases that stand up to me in that particular verse. Clear oil, pressed olives, kept burning. They jumped out at me. That's what I'm telling you when I saw it. It's like it's supposed to be just this little obscure part in where God is telling the people about how they should build the tabernacle, which is where his presence would come and meet with them when they were journeying through the wilderness.
And it was this portable tent structure that they would set up. It was 11,250 square feet called the tent of meeting, or the tabernacle. And he tells them, when you're building it, outside the area where the Ark of the Covenant is, look at verse 21. He says, In the tent of meeting, outside the curtain that shields the Ark of the Covenant law, which is the place where God would meet with the people in a special way, meet with the priests in a special way.
He said, Outside that curtain, Aaron and his sons, those were the priests that helped the people meet with God, that represented God to the people and the people to God. Aaron and his sons are to keep the lamps burning before the Lord from evening till morning. You're going to love that scripture by the time I'm done with it.
The Subject – Beating Burnout
I want to speak to you today for a few moments on this subject for our final week of Mood Swingers. I want to talk to you about beating burnout. Beating burnout. And after you've written that title down on your page, tell the person next to you, you're too bright to burn out. You're too bright to burn out. Too bright to burn out.
Burnout, for me, it might seem like it's a strange subject for a young man to preach on. Burnout. But I don't think burnout is a product of how long you've lived. I think it's a product of how you live. I was studying about burnout just as a psychological phenomenon this week. And, you know, we all hear about various crash and burn scenarios. But I think what a lot of us never hear about or never tell about is just ordinary people who don't crash and burn, but just live life kind of burned out.
Now, we hear about burnout, you know, sometimes it's used in a different context to talk about people who enjoy various substances until they're no longer able to enjoy them. And we call them a burnout, but, you know, athletes can burn out. They did a poll of Olympic athletes. I don't know how many they pulled into the selection group, but they studied and said that over 60% of the athletes, the Olympic athletes that they had studied, had experienced not just being tired, but severe burnout, career-threatening burnout, in an effort to be the greatest at what they did. They experienced burnout.
And the thing about burnout is, see, the more fired up you are, the greater the likelihood that the flame that makes you so excitable, so enthusiastic, so powerful when it's on, that same flame can turn on you and actually burn you out from the inside out.
Why Burnout Fits Mood Swingers
Why preach about this in dealing with mood swingers? Well, because a lot of the moods that you experience are a result of unchecked, unrecognized burnout from an untended internal state. And a lot of us are all over the map in the way that we act, not because we're bad people, but because we're burned out.
I was studying in Forbes magazine. Well, that sounds so deep. I read an article online that was originally on Forbes magazine. Preachers, man. But this lady, Lisa Gary said, she had a definition of burnout. She said, you know, simply define it. I thought this was pretty good for our purpose today. Burnout is when the demands placed on you exceed the resources available to you.
Have you ever felt like the demands that were on you were greater than the resources available to you? If so, if you live that way for any length of time, burnout is inevitable. And it is marked by the following characteristics, although not limited to them. I'll just read a few. I don't want this to get too depressing. You might be burning out if your life is marked by chronic exhaustion. I don't mean you're tired because you had a report to. I mean, like, just tired, even when you're sleeping, you're not waking up rested.
Lack of motivation. Can't get excited about stuff that you used to live for. You're doing some of the things that you love, but you're not loving what you do. It's called burnout. Frustration over things that you could fix, but instead of fixing them, you become so frustrated that you impair yourself from fixing them. Cynicism. Just always finding everybody's angle on everything. You know, life is a giant conspiracy theory for you.
Broken focus. Wavering concentration. Slipping in areas that you used to be strong in. Just slipping a little bit. Unnecessary conflict. Conflict isn't a bad thing, but just conflict for the sake of conflict. Just butting heads with people just because they happen to get near you, just because they happen to look at you kind of funny. Just conflict. Unspoken conflict. Spoken conflict. Preoccupation with the wrong priorities. It's a sign of burnout. You no longer have the emotional energy.
I'm taking a little longer to build this up, because when I get into the Bible text, I don't want you to think it doesn't apply to you. I like to connect things that you can feel to things that you read in the Bible, so you know that God wasn't just writing Exodus 27 to the Israelites when they were wandering through the wilderness, but that we also wander through wilderness. We also wander through dry seasons. We also deal with silent frustration, although we don't always voice it. Some of us are burned out on the inside. We're making bad decisions, and we're chronically in a bad mood, and we have bad relationships. Not because we're bad people. Tell somebody, you're not a bad person. You're not a bad person. Come on. Tell them they need to know, because sometimes they look at their responses, and they measure themselves on the revelation of their response, but it's not that you're a bad person. It might be that you're burned out, and so you're discontent, and you're restless.
To not deal with the issue that is causing your life not to burn brightly like you want it to anymore and just be frustrated with the symptoms is like you screaming at the grill because it's out of propane. The grill might be a good grill. Your life might be a good life. Your wife might be an excellent lover, but the passion might have waned. You might be out of propane. Tell somebody next to you, do you have any propane?
The Tabernacle Lamp – A Model for Sustained Passion
In Exodus 27, we have an instruction from the Lord. I'm going to put it as simply as I can. I think there's a direct connection between what God was telling these people about how to keep these lamps burning and what he would speak to me and you about how to keep our passion intact in our lives.
In this section of scripture, God has just revealed to his people the Ten Commandments. He's called them out of slavery. He's showing them a new way to live. I said, a new way to live, University City. Not the old way, not the oppressed way, not under bondage, but in freedom and in Liberty. How many know it's not as hard to be set free as it is to live in freedom?
They're set free from their slavery, but now they've got to learn how to live in freedom and how to tend to their passion so that their lives reflect the God who called them out. He's given them not so much regulations of how to live, but a revelation of himself that will show them how to live together as a new community. That's a whole sermon in itself.
By the time you get to Exodus 27, verse 20, he's spelling it out in detail. God said, I want to build a place where I can meet with my people. In fact, one of the things they call the tabernacle, it goes by several names, and one of the names of it is called the place of promised presence. I love that phrase. God said, there's a place where I will promise to meet with you. Even when Waffle House is closed, I'll be open, which is never, but I'll always be there. I'll be there beyond 24-7, 366, leap year. You can count on my presence in this place.
And where the Ark of the Covenant was in this tent of meeting or the tent of promised presence, outside of it, there were curtains, because the people couldn't just come in any old way. They had to come in a certain way, represented by priests. Now, you and I don't have to do that anymore, and I don't have time to break down how the book of Ephesians said that we are all members of the body of Christ and how the Scripture says that you are a royal priesthood in 1 Peter 2, verse 8. You are a holy nation. In other words, Jesus is our high priest. He tore the veil or the curtain, made a way for us to come to God.
That's how you can come into church, and even though your week was characterized by burnout, you can still have a fire in your life, and it doesn't have to be started by a preacher. Come on, I want to show you this, because he said in Exodus 27, 20, he said, Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives. In other words, it's the people's responsibility to start the fire, not the priests. Let me keep chewing. Let me keep chewing. It's not my job to fire you up. Now, I'll do my best to stoke you, poke you, preach to you, inspire you, but the fire is within you, and only you can make it burn. Only you can light your fire. I know Jim Morrison said, Come on, baby, light my fire, but I'm not your baby, and I can't be your fire starter, and I can't be a circus clown up here to entertain you. It is nobody's job.
Take me out of the equation. It's not your mama's job. It's not your husband's job. It's not your best friend's job. It's your job to keep your passion intact. You've got to tend your own passion. He said, Command the Israelites to bring the oil, and out of the oil there will be a light, and out of the light there will be an illumination of the place where I have promised to meet with you, the place of promised presence.
The Eye as the Lamp – Internal Light
Now let's go to the New Testament, Matthew chapter 6. Jesus is giving some instructions much like God in Exodus 27. I'll try to show you every chance I can how the New Testament and the Old Testament are telling the same story of the same Savior. How Jesus is in Exodus 27, even though he's not mentioned by name.
And when Jesus finally came upon the scene in Matthew chapter 6, he preached this sermon called the Sermon on the Mount. And when he preached it, he was inaugurating a new kingdom. He was teaching people how to not live as slaves, how to not live oppressed, how to not live in bondage. They were in the bondage of religion. They were in the bondage of legalism. They were in the bondage of a political system. And he's teaching them how to be set free on the inside. He's teaching them how to unhook those chains that bind them on the inside.
And one of the things he said... Listen to this in the light of what we just read in Exodus 27. He said, the eye is the lamp of the body. We got an external lamp in Exodus 27, and we got an internal lamp in Matthew chapter 6. Because a lot of times what you see in the Old Testament external, when Jesus came along and when he went to ascend to the right hand of the Father, as we believe that he did as Christians and sent his spirit, it's internalized in the New Testament.
So he's saying, you know how they had those lamps on the outside of the curtain in the tabernacle? He said, well, now in your relationship with me, the eye is the lamp of the body. Now, if your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. I love that scripture, because it means that God isn't interested in just saving my soul. He wants everything about me to be lit on fire with him. He wants me to actually enjoy the life that he died to purchase to give me as a gift.
And he said, I want your whole life to light up. I want to light up your life, but it happens through your eye. Now, we understand he's not talking about a physical eye here. Jesus isn't giving a diagnosis about cataracts. Jesus is talking about that eye of your heart. He's saying, the way that your heart perceives your life determines what you see and what you don't. Are you with me?
But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. And if the light within you, the light within you, the light within you, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we just stumbled upon something. In Exodus 27, God met with the people in a tent of promised presence. Now, Jesus says, you don't need a tent anymore, because you are a tent, and my presence is no longer in a place. My presence is in a person.
Let me stay on this for a minute, because I need you to know you are a person of promised presence. Jesus said, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age, 24-7, 365. I'll be there, not around you, not in a place waiting for you. God wasn't waiting for you in church today when you came. He was with you when you showed up. It's only a church, because you're here, because his presence is in you.
So now let's work it. We have the tent. That's you. We have the presence of God. That's him. That's the Holy Spirit. And then we've got the light. We've got the lamps. And Jesus said, that's your heart. That's where the light comes from. That's where the passion comes from. And if your passion goes out, you won't be able to locate my presence. And this fundamentally explains, on some levels, why we can't sense God a lot of times. It's not that he's not there. He's within you. He promised he would be. He sent his spirit to live in you to the end, to the very end, to guide you, to comfort you. He said, it's to my advantage that I go away so I can send you the comforter, so I can send you my presence within you. It's there. But when the lights go out, you can't find it. It's very difficult to meet with God when you've lost yourself.
If the light within you is darkness, in other words, if you lose your passion, it's going to be very hard for you to locate God's presence. Am I preaching good? Can we go deeper?
Three Thoughts on Beating Burnout
I want to give you three thoughts on this, just three. And with each one, I want to look at it like a little mini-seminar. And I want to teach you something about not burning out. I'm talking to the new Christians who are excited about God right now. But, you know, we don't want you to just burn up real high. We want you to burn a really long time. I'm talking to those of you who have known God for quite some time, decades perhaps. And yet it's not getting easier for you to find God's presence. Could it be that the presence didn't move, but that the light went out inside of you?
See, when you don't let the light in, that's the first thing I want to talk to you about. I want to talk to you about the right light. Put these down, class. This is a biblical seminar, free of charge. I want to talk about the right light, because I've learned that the light that you look at something in is just as important as what you're looking at.
Any photographer can tell you, any videographer can tell you, the light that you put something in is just as important as what you film. Have you ever seen a picture of yourself? Where you look thinner, more muscular, the picture was more flattering than the reality, because the lighting, they got you in the right light.
On the other hand, if you've ever seen a picture of you, whoa! Too much light. I need a dimmer switch. Filter that. Because the right light is important. And you know what's crazy about the church? The church will divide over the stupidest stuff. Just the dumbest stuff. I mean, we'll take a theological thing that really none of us understand, and we'll divide into camps over it as if we've been to heaven and Jesus personally told us, as if we had a personal consultation with God before he created the universe.
And we'll just go over here, this group over here, and you believe this about baptism, I believe that about baptism, and you believe this about predestination and all these church words. And a lot of it is a lot of people who are compensating for their lack of personal intimacy with God by trying to regulate a philosophy by which they can feel closer to him, because they don't want to do the actual hard work of getting to know someone who thinks differently than them. We'll just divide over the stupidest stuff.
And what does that have to do with my sermon on burnout? Because this week I came across something that I actually think is worth a church taking sides over. And I want to show it to you, because some things are. Come on, church. We have to be engaged with the real issues of our day. How many of you have not been exposed to dress skate? Let me see your hands. As I thought, the whole world is broken, fractured. Talk about healing the racial divide. We have to heal the dress divide before we can do anything else, people. All right, so let's do it. We have to do it.
And I've hesitated to put the illustration up here, because this can cause a lot of contention. Holly and I got in a screaming match about this dress when it was first sent to us. And different people see different things at all of our locations. Come on, let's play along. How many of you see a white dress with gold trim? Raise your hand. Get a good look at these people, because they are the crazy, delusional ones. You should be on the lookout for them. You should not engage them in conversation. Security. These people are seeing things.
Holly is like you. She has issues. My brother-in-law sent me the dress. A picture of the dress. He said, what color is this, bro? I said, blue and black. It is blue and black. No, I'm saying factually. Look, here it is on Amazon.com. It is blue and black. It is not an opinion. It is an objective statement of fact. That dress is blue and black.
However, put the other one up there. When you put it in... Put the other one up there. The other one that we have on the screen that we just showed. When you look at it in a certain light... See, I've been studying this on the YouTube. I got real intrigued about this dress. Holly is screaming at me. It is white and gold. I'm telling her, it is blue and black. She's saying, you're lying. There is no way you can see blue and black.
I said, I promise. I see blue and black. She said, you don't even have your lying face on. You're a horrible liar. I'm promising on my children's right arms and lives and things like this that it's blue and black. And we're going at it. And it almost was the end for us. We've been through a lot of things together. But this almost... It's unimaginable to me.
Put it up one more time. But I get it, because I studied about it, how it all depends on what light you perceive is in the background. Everybody, the neuroscientists, are stumped about it. They've never seen anything like it. Because if you see in the background an artificial light, a yellow light, if you perceive that as the background and see this picture is cropped just such that none of us can really tell it. It's just the right amount of mystery for none of us to really know what setting it's in.
So, since we don't know the context, our eyes process it different ways. Because when you see colors, you're not actually seeing a color. You're seeing a reflection of light, and then what's hitting your retina is sending a signal to your brain to let your brain know what color to call it. And this is problematic, because if you think that's blue skylight shining on the dress, you'll see it as a white and gold dress. And you will be wrong.
Take it down. I don't want to split the church over this. I'm just trying to say that looking at your life in the wrong light can cause you to see things that aren't really there. Come on, last night they were much more responsive when I told them that your situation may not be as bad as you think. Your prognosis might not be as dire as you made it out to be. Maybe what you need to do is get this thing in the right light.
See, if you get it in the right light, if you get it in the purvey of truth, if you get it out where the light is shining, that's our problem. We spend too much time in the wrong light. We spend too much time exposed. Somebody's shouting it at another campus right now. We spend too much time in the shadows. So we start to see things as scary that really shouldn't scare us. Things start to depress us that really shouldn't depress us.
But if we look at it in the right light, that's why you came to church. I got to get that natural light in my life. I got to get that sunlight. I got to get that shining. I got to get that bright light. I got to get a good light. I got to see this in the right light. I've got to get God to shine on my situation so I can see the true colors of what I'm going through. Maybe you're looking at it in the wrong light. Maybe if you bring your struggle out into the right light, God could show you, you've got this. I'm with you. I never left you. I promise my presence. You are a person, a promised presence. You just need to turn the lights on.
Come on, tell somebody to flip the switch. Turn the lights on. It's not as bad as it looks. That's only the first point, so we have to go. You know, I could preach all day, don't you, about the right light, the right perspective. He said, If your eye sees your situation wrong in the darkness, you will think my presence is no longer in the tent, but in actuality you just let the lights go out. You will think that I am no longer calling you, or that I am no longer in that situation, or that I have no longer sustained you.
See, I said burnout is when the demand placed on you is greater than the resource available to you. Could it be that if God's presence is inside of you, you have unlimited resource? But just when your lights go out, you no longer can access what is available to you? You have to get it out in the right light. That's why you can't go too long without being in God's presence, because that brings the lights on.
Essential Oils – The Fuel for Lasting Light
Let me move from this, because I talked about the right light, and I think you could study that a little bit more on your own. Or look up 2 Corinthians when you do. 2 Corinthians 4, 6. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts. He made the lights come on to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ.
If you were here last week, you remember me talking about the countenance. And you know God can be smiling on your life, but you not see it. Because there is no light shining in your heart to behold his face. The right light.
And we need to talk about something else in the passage. I want to talk about number 2, essential oils. Essential oils. Have any of your relatives tried to sell you some essential oils? I know that on the East Coast, we're a little behind on a lot of trends, our West Coast audience. But the essential oil craze has completely caught on in the Southeastern United States of America. Everybody's rubbing oil all over each other all the time around here now. There's an oil for everything.
You don't believe me? I brought some oils. Just a few. I'm not selling them. I could make a lot of money getting in this oil thing, couldn't I? I'm not selling them. I'm not even saying anything about them. I think they're wonderful. They smell great. I like good smells. I'm sure they're great. But I got this book. They found me a book where I started studying about... Because in the passage, he talks about oils. So I wanted to bring it up to contemporary, modern language.
And these essential oils, listen to what the book says. They are nature's volatile, aromatic compounds generated within shrubs, flowers, trees, roots, bushes, and seeds. They are usually extracted through steam distillation, hydro-distillation, or cold-pressed extraction. The power of an essential oil lies in its constituents and their synergy. Each essential oil is composed of 200 to 500 different bioconstituents. This is so fascinating. You guys are enthralled. Which make them very diverse in their effects. And no two oils are alike. Amen.
And to prove that, let me show you a few of the oils. Just a few that I was studying. Did you know that they have the unique ability to penetrate cells within your body and travel throughout your blood and tissues? Amen. Thank you, Jesus.
So you got... Let's start off basic. Lavender oil. And Nicole, tell me if I'm messing any of this up. It can be calming, sleep-inducing. You may not know that it can be used as a disinfectant as well. It is often used to help relieve tension or with insomnia. That's lavender oil.
You got your chamomile. Chamomile. Chamomile. Chamomile. These are your basic standards. Your basic standards. Traditionally, listen to this. Chamomile essential oil has been used for almost anything you can imagine. Wow. What a claim. To prevent muscle spasms. To reduce nerve pain. To promote the discharge of bile. I'm just reading the card, y'all. To stimulate blood flow in the pelvis. Whoa.
The health benefits of chamomile include fighting depression, soothing inflammation, eliminating gas, and killing bacteria. But then they have the oils that they blend together. Here's one. This blend is called humility oil. Humility oil. If the person next to you needs a few drops of this, just let me know. We could meet up on them.
But this one, listen to all the oils that go into humility oil. Coconut oil. Coriander. Ylang ylang. Did I say it right? No. Bergamot. Well, how do you say it? Lang lang. It has a Y in front of it. Geranium. Melissa. I dated her. Frankincense. Myrrh. Lots of other ones, too.
It is helpful. Listen to what this one will do for you. It is helpful for obtaining forgiveness and a deeper spiritual awareness. This soothing and calming combination of oils brings balance to your heart and mind, enabling you to find a peaceful place where healing can begin. Try rubbing a couple drops in your hands and inhaling it. And you can even put it in your bathwater.
And then, I'm only going to do like 15 or 20 more of these. Just kidding. It's the last one. Here's the Joy blend. Joy essential oil. And it is a luxurious, exotic blend with uplifting overtones. You don't want that stuff with the downtrodden overtones. It creates magnetic energy and brings joy to the heart. It will also help with grief, depression, and a variety of other emotional feelings and memories.
When worn-as cologne, and I like this part, or perfume, it exudes an alluring and irresistible fragrance that often inspires romance and togetherness. And, I'm going to wear those hands. I'm going to wear those hands just for after I preach. Anyway, that's some of the oils they have out there today.
The Lord told Moses... Oh, I'm going to bring it together. I'm not lost to sea. You think I am? I'm not. He said, Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives. Wait a minute. Not just any oil. Clear oil. One translation says pure oil.
Now, why does it need to be specified what kind of oil should be brought to burn in the lamps that illuminate the place of promised presence? I'm going to tell you why. Because the light is only as good as the fuel that creates it. Because if you put just any oil in the lamp, it will burn, but it will burn out. It will burn, but it won't burn long enough.
And see, here's what God told Moses. He said, I need you to light these lamps. I need Aaron and the priest to light the lamps every evening. Look at it, verse 21. Exodus 27, 21. He said, every evening, from evening… I need them to see it. I need them to see it. From evening till morning. So, it's got to burn all night. It's got to burn through the night.
I need oil in my lamp that will burn all night. I need oil in my lamp that will burn through the trial. I need joy in my heart that will burn when I'm… I need oil in my heart that will burn when my wife walks out. I need oil in my lamp that will burn when it rains. I need oil in my lamp that won't go out overnight, that won't go out when the sun goes down, that won't go out when times get tough, that won't go out when people walk away, that won't go out when my health is bad, that won't go out when I...
I need pure oil. I'm going to find another campus to preach at if y'all don't stand up in the back. I want somebody who wants pure oil in your lamp to give your God a great praise. The pure oil. The pure oil.
Pressed Olives – The Process for Purity
Okay, so here's what they had to do. Let me show you Exodus 27, verse 20 in another translation. In one of the literal translations, because the Bible is translated from the original languages of Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, but when they put it into English, there's different committees that translate it different ways according to different philosophies.
Well, one of the translations takes it real literal, and here's what it says. It's called the English Standard Version. It said, you shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure, beaten olive oil. Pure, beaten olive oil.
How do you get the purest oil out of the olive? You have to beat it out. Maybe this explains why you've been going through some of the things you've been going through in your life. Come on, Rock Hill. I'm preaching. Maybe this explains why you had to be under some of the pressure you had to be under because God is using the pressure to extract the essential oils, the pure oils, the clear oils.
And that's the final thing I want to talk to you about. I want to talk about pressing thoughts. Pressing thoughts. Pressing thoughts. See, it is one thing to want a light that shines. How many don't want to burn out? Come on, raise your hand if you don't want to burn out. I don't want where I am at in life right now to be the highest point I'm ever going to be at. I don't care if I'm 73 or whether I'm 13. I want to burn bright. I want to burn out. It's better to burn out than to fade away. No, it's better to keep burning. Better to burn on. Burn on. That could be a whole series, couldn't. Burn on, my brother. Tell the person next to you, burn on, brother. Unless they're female, then modify accordingly. Think on your feet, people. I can't do everything.
Finally, my brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praiseworthy. Think about such things. Could it be that what's represented in Exodus 27 is a good model for our thought process as we engage God? Could it be that God wants us to learn how to get past our first impressions of how we feel and what we think and what we want and press the olives until the oil flows out in a pure way?
Could it be that the reason your lamp has stopped burning is because the oil that you put in it is not pure? Listen to me, church. The quality of your joy cannot exceed the purity of your thoughts. You can't live better consistently than you think.
When I read the verse, I quit thinking about olives altogether, and I started thinking about my mind. because I don't have an olive press at home. I don't even like olives. I think they're disgusting. We're not eating them today. We're just getting oil out of them for the lamp, and we need a certain kind of oil. We need a certain kind of joy. We need a certain kind of motivation. We need a certain kind of passion. What kind? Pure oil. Essential oil. The oil of joy. The oil of the Spirit of God.
You know, oil in the Scripture always represents the Spirit, and God says, I put my Spirit in you, but for it to flow in your life, there has to be a pressing. A pressing. And not just any kind of pressing. See, there's two ways to press olives, in case you want to try. You can press olives in the mill where you just run them through the machine. I studied this this week because I wanted to understand how you would get pure oil as opposed to impure oil.
If you get oil in the lamp that has all of the pulp of the olive, then there will be all kinds of smoke when you burn it. My dad used to tell me a story. He told it to me a few times about when he was young and they took one of their parents' cars without permission. And they wanted to put gas back in it so they wouldn't know that they had taken it. And they didn't know the difference between diesel fuel and regular fuel. And the diesel fuel was cheaper, so they put the diesel...
How many know it matters what you fill up with? Sometimes it's a better idea to pay a few more cents on the gallon and get the good stuff. And God says to you today, it does matter what you put in your lamp. It does matter what you put in your heart. It does matter how you process your thoughts, because I'm going to tell you something. We started off the year studying about John 15 and the grapevine and the pruning. Do you remember this? He takes every branch that bears fruit and he prunes it. And I don't care whether you're talking about an olive vine or a grapevine. It has to be pruned. God has to take stuff out of our lives. God has to take stuff off of our vine. It's the only way we grow.
But I want to preach part two as I close this series. After it's pruned, it has to be pressed. You're not getting any oil from unpressed olives. Not any pure oil anyway. So they have two processes. Keith, they have a crushing process where they run the oil through the mill, the olives through the mill, and they come out with oil. They come out with oil, but it's not pure oil. What it is is it's all of the crushed up parts of the olive. And so out of it, you get, you know, maybe one part oil, 10 parts olive. And it's quicker that way. It's quicker that way to just run it through the mill, just automatic run it through the mill. You can crush so many more olives at a time running it through that way, and you get some oil. But when you put it in the lamp, it won't last long.
Life is like that. You can just think whatever you think, do whatever you do. I'm on autopilot. Just run it through the system. Here comes the negative thought. Cool, I'm going to have a bad day. You can live like that. It is your prerogative, and for many of us, it's our habit. It's our pattern, one preacher said. But if you don't want diesel fuel in your Ferrari, because the more expensive the car, the better the oil has to be, the better the fuel has to be, the more important God's calling on your life. You were bought with a price. You need the good oil, only the best for God's tabernacle, only the best for the lamps outside of the place of his promised presence.
Here's how you do that. If you want to do that, you have to press the olives. You don't crush them in the middle. You press them by hand. I was picturing this like I was just going to bang the microphone, but it's expensive. You know how much longer that takes to hand-press the olives? You know how much more effort it is to hand-press your thoughts, to hand-press your motivations, to hand-press your situation and say, where is God working in this? To press it by hand?
But oh, do you know how much better the oil is when you do it that way? How much purer, how much brighter the light is when you press the olive by hand? When you take the time, see, you press the olive. That's what you do. Oh, God, I don't have time. I can't tell them. I can't tell them. They have to get it online or something. Okay.
God who made his light shine out of darkness, given us his light in our hearts. That's the first part of 2 Corinthians. But a few verses later, Paul says, 2 Corinthians 4, for we are pressed but not crushed. We are pressed but not crushed. Now, that seems like the same process, but one is done by hand. Paul said, even when my life is being squeezed so hard, I realize that what's going to come out of me because of what happened to me was under the hand of God. It was God's hand. And it changes how you face your problem.
He said, we are hard pressed on every side but not crushed. No, to be crushed would mean that my life is just going through the machine. But to be pressed, that means God knows there's oil in me. That means God knows there's preciousness in me. And the only way for him to get it out is for me to be pressed, pressed, pressed. He's not crushing you. He's pressing you because of what's in you. He's not concerned about what's on you. He's trying to get past that surface layer. And the seed inside contains very precious oil, but what's precious must be pressed out.
Pressing Thoughts – A Mini-Seminar
You want me to teach a five-minute seminar on how to press your thoughts, or you want to go? All right, let's press our thoughts real quick. You got to look for the stuff in your thoughts that is not pure and press it out. In fact, it said pure beaten olive oil. Sometimes you got to beat it out. Make the finance department nervous. Make the sound engineers cringe. I said, I'm about to beat it. I feel the spirit of Michael Jackson coming upon me. I'm about to beat it. I called this message beating burnout for a reason. If you're going to beat it, you got to beat it out. Beat out the stuff.
They would take the olives. Robert, you got to go read. It's just so cool. Isn't it cool? They would take the olive, and they'd press it. Then they would put it in a basket, right? And they would let the oil drip from the bottom of the basket, and they would catch what was dripping from the bottom, and they would take the pulp that was left in the basket that wasn't useful that they had pressed, and they'd take the pulp and remove it from the precious oil, and the precious oil was what was left in the basket that would drip down, and that's what they would put in the lamp so it would burn bright.
And that's what you've got to do in your life. You've got to get a basket where you press out the stuff that's not helpful and take out the pulp that's not positive. And I'm using a lot of Ps just to say you've got to beat it out so you don't burn out. So you've got to look for the pulp. What's the pulp? Okay, just four categories. There are 12 that I studied. We'll do four. It's going to be quick. It's going to be quick.
Misinterpretation. Misinterpretation. A lot of the reason we don't have pure joy is because we misinterpret the circumstances of our life. You know, I'm convinced with every year I live and everything that I go through and everything that I survive that if you're really convinced that God is for you, you won't be intimidated by what comes against you nearly as much. If you really believe... Now, if you don't believe it, it's just rhetoric. But if you really think I'm on the same side with God, he is my offensive line, if you believe that, there's no way that you can spend your whole day hopeless. There's no way. You can have moments of that, but you'll eventually press that out.
And so you look at situations, and sometimes we misinterpret. You know, we think that somebody doesn't like us. No, they don't like them. You're misinterpreting their misery and owning it as your own. And you're upset over the way they treated you, but the way that they treated you is a reflection of how somebody treated them and now how they're treating themselves. Why are you going to misinterpret their misery as a reason for you to be miserable? You see what I'm saying? And I could preach the whole sermon on that, Tom, but we misinterpret things.
I'm going to do a sermon one day called The Gift of Interpretation and teach how just the way that you interpret has everything to do with the way that you experience your life. Drawing thought bubbles over people and an interpretation of their silence. Anyway, that's one. You've got to press that out.
This one's big. Over-generalization. This is... This is when you take one thing that happened and make a statement out of it as if it is a reflection of your entire reality. So, you know, this always happens to me. Nope, nope. Totally doesn't. Happened once this week. Hadn't happened in like three weeks before that. It's the story of my life. Nope. No, it's really not. The story of your life is, God, has been good to you. The story of your life is, you shouldn't even be here. The story of your life is, if it had not been…. If you're going to over-generalize anything, over-generalize the goodness of God, not the hardships of life.
Let's keep going. Obligation. This is when you've got to rather than you get to. And it'll take your joy. And you won't have pure oil if you do it out of obligation. When I'm really at my best preaching is when I am seeing it as a privilege. When I come up in here or anywhere I go and I'm like, oh, man, thank you, Jesus, I get to preach today. You know, I got to go preach this week, but why would I say I got to go preach this week when the reality is I get to go preach this week?
I'm going to Seattle this week. Do I got to? No, I get to. I'm going to Oklahoma next week. I know it's going to be kind of busy, but I don't got to. I get to. There was a time when if I could have had any little audience to preach to, and now I'm going to get to the point where I'm talking about, I got to? To hell with the devil. I get to. You've got to press that griping spirit right out of your life so you can get something clearer that'll burn through the night.
And I think what I struggle with that I have to press out is something that psychologists call disqualification. When you disqualify every positive thing that happens to you because you really don't believe that you're worthy of love. You disqualify. You disqualify the nice things that some people say about you because you convince yourself, well, they didn't really mean it.
Now, that happens to me when I preach all the time. Holly will go, that was a great message. And I'll think, eh, she has to say that. She just wants me to go home in a good mood. She's my wife. Is that the way to look at it? Or is it like, if the woman who lives with me wants to hear what I have to say, that's a success no matter what hateful Harry thought about the sermon online on Tuesday. Come on, somebody.
You've got to press your thoughts. Somebody gives you a compliment. Oh, they're just saying that. They're just being nice. And you wonder why you're discouraged when you're not even taking the oil that God is trying to give. There's too much pulp in our basket. There's too many lies we believe. And you can't have lasting light without pure oil. And you can't have pure oil without pressed olives.
And I know it to be true. Oh, by the way, if you put all those four things together, maybe this will help you remember it. It spells something that's very pertinent to our series. That when we want to learn to understand what's going on inside of us, we've got to press our thoughts. We've got to press against. We've got to beat. I know you've got some discouraging thoughts. I know you've got some defeating thoughts. I know you've got some negative things to process. We all do. But I believe you can beat it. I know depression. I know despair. I've been there. I've experienced it. I've felt it wrap itself around me and drape itself on me. But I wanted to let you know you can beat it in Jesus' name. You can beat it. You can beat it. You can beat it. You can. Amen.
Closing – The Oil of Joy from Pressing
Because the one who was pressed to the point of death now wants to take the joy that is his. You do know Jesus prayed one time in a place called the Mount of Olives, don't you? And you have heard that while he was there, he had so much sorrow in his soul that he was pressed to the point where he began to sweat, sweat that was like drops of blood. That's a pressing.
And that's why he was able to say, y'all, if you're ever going to be able to say that your life is flowing with something important, he was able to quote the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah said, the Spirit of the Lord is on me. It's on me. Now we get to say the Spirit of the Lord is in me. How does it flow out? By pressing. By pressing. By pressing. By beating sometimes. Beating just by pressing, pressing.
I will rejoice. He said, the Spirit of the Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me. You know how you anoint people? You do it with oil. You know how you get oil? You press olives. Do you really want God to use your life? Do you really want his presence to flow? It's going to take a pressing. You see? And he's anointing me not just to do some things, but he's anointing me to do specific things.
Proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted. To proclaim freedom for the captives. And release from darkness. To bring out the people who were enslaved in Egypt. And to bring them into the light. To bring the right light on your situation. Release from darkness for the prisoners. Release from darkness for the prisoners. To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And the day of vengeance of our God. To comfort all who mourn.
This is what Jesus does. And provide for those who grieve in Zion. To bestow on them a crown of beauty. I speak this blessing over your life as we close one series. Instead of ashes and the oil of joy. Joy. That's stuff that drips down out the bottom of the basket. Joy doesn't always come in a downpour. Sometimes it comes in a drip. And you've got to be there to catch it after it's been pressed. Drops of joy. Drops of joy.
Well, I believe drops of joy are falling today. From the pressings of life. The oil of joy instead of mourning. And a garment of praise. Instead of a spirit of despair. And they will be called. What's that? Oaks. What do you know about oak trees? What do you know about oak trees? What do you know about oak trees?
Come on, let's bring the series together. If we're going to close it, let's close it outright. I want to be a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. Now, God says to somebody today, I know you're being pressed, but I'm not crushing you. I'm pressing you because something precious is in you. And the only way to produce it is to press it.