Steven Furtick - Getting Your Heart In Tune
This is an excerpt from: Tune Your Heart To Truth
If we would learn to worship God in quiet and in private, some of the things that wear us out he would work out. I'm not saying it's magic. I'm just saying that you in tune with God is a bad dude in a good way. A good man with a good heart. She says I'm that, and sometimes I am. What happens to me from time to time… It happened to David, too, so I don't feel so bad. And it happens to you. Through daily life, we get distracted. (Chris, come. I think we should do this together. We talked about it, and I told him I might call him.) You get distracted, right? You don't decide to just start following your own whims and fall back into old temptations. At least, most people don't. Instead, it's more like a distraction. We worked this out ahead of time, and he's cool with it. He's going to be the Devil. He sang like an angel, but he's a versatile worshiper. Just for illustration. So, I'm flowing, you know. "Yeah, man. Yeah, I'm going to start the business. I'm going to raise these kids to be world changers". Right? "Come thou fount…" Flowing like that.
Then you look away… You thought you could set it and… Then you get a text message, and then you have to walk into a meeting. You go to say what you're supposed to say and be who you're supposed to be and show up like you're supposed to show up, and it's "Come thou fount…" That doesn't sound… Do a little more, Chris. Sometimes the Devil just tweaks you a little bit, but sometimes… No, I know. I know how it has really been in your house with your teenagers. I'm about to prophesy. You go to step up to it, and it was good, and now it's "Come thou fount…" Wait a minute. "God, did you leave me? Did you forsake me"? I know what it is. I need a new guitar. "I need a new husband".
Maybe you do, but before you trash it, tune it. It happens to all of us every day. If you think for one moment that you can get saved one time and your heart is permanently set on the affections for the things that matter to the heart of God and that now you will be selfless in every encounter and will always know the way he leads you to go in… Watch these musicians the next time we worship, because they don't tune their guitars once a month. They don't tune their guitars once a week. They don't even just tune their guitars every Sunday before they play. They tune it between every song. It means that every day I'm alive and every breath I breathe and every transition I go into, there is a possibility that my heart will go out of tune.
From the same heart come your greatest fears. From the same heart comes your greatest faith. Which one you move into depends on what you're tuned to. Why this helped me so much was because I struggle with a lot of condemnation at how much I change from wanting to do God's will to not wanting to do God's will, from feeling motivated to preach the message to feeling like I just want somebody to preach to me, from feeling like I want to be more giving to feeling like nobody is taking care of me and being very… I can have very big pity parties. When I realize that my heart is a lyre, that my heart is a harp, a stringed instrument, then I realize it has to be tuned to truth. I told you this illustration was going to help us. That's really why I'm doing it. I'm not trying to just put an entertainment value on the sermon.
I don't care about that. There's way better, more entertaining stuff you can watch on your Hulu account, but you came here to get help for your heart. I'm trying to show you that it sounds like that right now, but the guitar is good. The wood is good. You've just been tuned to some stuff that is beneath who you really are. How many are glad that Jesus Christ does tune-ups? Is that why you came to church today? Is that why you logged on today? Now, there are two ways to tune this guitar. The guitar is in tune, technically, when the strings have the appropriate tension through these pegs that Chris so rudely tuned down, like the Devil does with discouragement, disappointment, bills, offenses, and all of these things. I could spend a whole hour just going through all of the things that distract you and detune you.
If the Enemy can detune your heart, he can defeat you in your life. You'll be reaching for slings, fighting, when you need to be reaching for strings, tuning. "He trains my hands for war". But David said, "I've learned to tune my heart to truth". Not cultural truth. We have personalized the precepts, so we say things like, "My truth," but I don't tune to my truth, because my heart is a liar. I cannot just listen to my heart at all times. That would cause me to want to quit. That would cause me to want to give up. That would cause me to lash out. That would cause me to sink. That would cause me to go all the way down farther into the spiral. It's fine to follow your heart when your heart is going up, but there are times in your life where you need to be tuned.
I want you to make sure in those times that you are tuning to truth, not your subjective experience. Not even what your parents taught you. If your parents taught it and God taught against it, your parents were wrong, not God. What your parents taught you was tradition. What God wants to tune you to is truth. "Tune me to truth". That means, "God, show me where I'm wrong and blaming them". That means, "God, show me where I think I need to get more and I really need to give more, because I want to be tuned to truth. Show me where I've been thinking I'm at a disadvantage when, really, my slingshot is a secret weapon". "I've been saying I don't have the resources". But maybe God didn't give you the resources so he could source this one so he could get the glory for what he does that you could never do. To tune my heart to truth.
There are a couple ways to tune the instruments. A stringed instrument, like you and me… We have heartstrings. Right? A stringed instrument goes out of tune. This guy came over to tune our piano and charged, like, $300. Then he was back a few months later, and I was like, "Bro, do I get a discount? This is your second time trying this". He goes, "No. I have to do it every time the weather changes". When the seasons change, the strings must be recalibrated. You're not a kid anymore. The season is changing. How many of you are going through a seasonal change in your life right now? Wave at me. How many of y'all feel like in Charlotte we go through three seasonal changes every day, every week? I'm going to have the piano tuner over at my house three times a day if we keep this weather fluctuation up. Good lord! It can feel like that in your life, because every time the temperature changes, you have to retune.
Every time the seasons change… So, you need to be asking the question, "God, who do you want me to be now? Who are you calling me to be now? What childish things do I need to put aside? My season is changing". Sometimes you are in a season of abundance, but you keep thinking like scarcity. You're out of tune. Sometimes you are in a season of focus, but you're thinking… Sometimes you're in a season of marriage, but you're scheduling your life like you're single. Your season has changed. You have to retune. So, when you need to retune you can do a few things. First, you can buy one of these. This is a tuner. This one is about $20. You can tune. You can do that, but I'm going to give you something from the Bible. Okay? (I feel like Garth Brooks with this microphone and this acoustic guitar right now. This is so weird. I visualized it, but I told the Lord, "I'll flow with it however you want". I never saw myself standing here holding the guitar in this moment behind the pulpit. This is very awkward, and I love you.)
Okay. Here it is. Give me verse 10. I wanted to check the verse. David said not only is it important what you tune, that you see yourself as a stringed instrument that has to be tuned regularly to the intervals of God's specific purpose and designation of your life. Not only do I have to be tuned when I go into a new room, a new season, so I don't carry yesterday's manna mentality into today's Promised Land situation. Not only do I need God to tune me when I go into something new, but watch this. He said, "I will sing to the one who gives victory to kings". Now, not only is David saying, "I will sing to the one…" Like, if I gave you a dollar, I gave a dollar to you. But he's saying, "I am going to sing in tune with the one…" I'll show you. LJ is playing a digital instrument. His keyboard does not go out of tune. It can't. It's digital. It is set, and it will stay set. His keyboard is tuned, and I know it's in tune right now. So, the fact that I'm out of tune on this stringed instrument means I need to turn around to someone who is always in tune.
Look. I've been thinking about how to get this across to you. I've been thinking about it for months. You think you're trash. You are about to break your Martin. You're about to mess up your mind. You're about to walk away from your opportunity. It's not trashed; it's just not tuned. So, if I turn to the one who is in tune and say, "Hey, LJ, give me an E," and he plays an E, and I play what's supposed to be an E on my liar… He's playing the truth, and I'm playing the liar. He says E sounds like this, and I say E sounds like this. He's playing higher and I'm playing lower. He's right. I'm wrong. He's not coming down to me; I'm coming up to him, because I'm turned to the one… Do you get it? You're not coming down to it. It's not coming down to you. God is not going to lower his standard. God is not going to decide you're just in bondage and that's just the way you were born. If the Son will make you free, you will be free indeed. So, if I'm down here and he's up there, I'm not staying down here; I'm coming up higher!