Steven Furtick - Cutting Room
Welcome to our family all over the world, our eFam, our extended family. Let's take a moment at Ballantyne to clap our hands. Welcome, every location, every person watching, every family. Hey, how are you doing? Tell the kids to be quiet. Tell them you need some peace and undistracted space for God to speak. For all of you who made it out today in person, welcome. It's so good to see you. A big hug. A big hug to each and every one of you. I am excited. I would ask that you remain standing for just about 90 more seconds, because I want to read my Scripture, and I want you alert and ready for what the Lord is going to speak from his Word to you today.
How many are excited? Oh, boy. I used to, when I was a rookie pastor, get depressed if it was raining or rainy outside when we were coming to church, because we are kind of fair weather sometimes, and it doesn't take much to convince us not to come to church. I used to think, "Oh, no. Well, the people won't be there today". Then one day a switch flipped for me. On the days where it's a little rainy, the people who really want to be there come, and you can have some amazing, amazing experiences. So, just look at your neighbor and say, "Extra credit, for real". It's probably beautiful somewhere where you are, but here we are together. Week five of a series called Ghost Writer. I'm talking about the Holy Ghost. When the Holy Ghost gets ahold of you, there's no telling what you're liable to do, so don't be surprised today if you feel like shouting when I start preaching or if a tear hits your eye and God speaks to you.
We welcome the Spirit of the Lord. I'm going to be sharing from Acts 4:23-31. This is a very practical message. I pray that God would surgically remove, rebuild, and insert whatever it is he sees fit in your life today. Amen. Acts 4:23-31. If you were here last week, you have a head start, because this is the very next thing that happens after the great miracle we preached about last week where I told you, "Places, everyone. Places, everyone".
Now we continue in a different place in Acts 4:23. The Bible says, "On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. 'Sovereign Lord,' they said, 'you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: "Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one". Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.' After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly".
I want to talk to you about something very important today. The name of this message is Cutting Room. Yeah, I want to talk to you about the place called the cutting room. There's some stuff that needs to be taken out, some stuff that needs to be added back in, and it all happens in the cutting room. That's where God has had you lately: in the cutting room. You were confused about it. You thought the story was over. It's not over. You're just in the cutting room. Father, I pray that you would enable me, like you enabled them in Acts, chapter 4, to speak your Word boldly; no fear or nerves, only a desire to serve your people so they may be built up for the very thing you've called them to do. I claim it now in Jesus' name, and I thank you for it in advance. Amen.
The cutting room. They took that term from back in the day. When they were making a movie, they used to actually use razor blades and knives and surgical instruments when they were taking the film and making it shorter or if they were moving the order of the scenes around. Of course, the director would go into the cutting room. It had to be a certain physical place. Now it's all digital. Now they have software on the computer, like Final Cut Pro. You can do it all on your computer. But, of course, when you would do it physically and snip it and get the scissors or the razor blades, or whatever they would use, you would go into a special room that was for it. They even say, "This needs to hit the cutting room floor".
Of course, they didn't leave it on the floor, actually. If it was an important movie, they'd pick those scenes up, put them in a canister, and save them, but anyway, it's just a phrase…the cutting room. As I thought about that, I thought about how I probably need to go to the cutting room more before I preach my sermons to you. You're like, "Yeah. They're a little long, brother. You could definitely". I never have a hard time figuring out something to say to you on Sundays. I just don't. The Bible is awesome. God is awesome, and he wants to help you, so he gives me stuff. It's what to cut that really kills me after I preach. I don't usually go back and regret things I said. I regret things… "Oh, I should have said that".
So, the cutting room… It can bring clarity to a story. It can make a story move along. It can keep a character consistent. You might go into the cutting room and say, "You know, this is a good scene, but it really doesn't fit with the character, so we've got to get it out of there". The cutting room. I think one of the most stressful things in the world would have been if you were writing a book of the Bible, God's Word, as a human being, and you had to decide what to leave in and what to take out. Like the book of Acts where we've been studying. It's about the birth of the church. A very important story. How many agree this is a very important story? This is how the gospel got out of one little place in the world and came to us today.
So, what do you put in? What do you leave out? Luke, who wrote this book, is a doctor, so he's surgical. He has to get his scissors out and make decisions about what to include and what to remove. You could almost see him arguing with himself. You know, "Well, I've got to put that part in about when they brought Paul the handkerchiefs and people were getting healed off of Paul's handkerchiefs. That part is awesome. I am totally putting that in". They put in a lot of the miracles. The Holy Spirit had certain miracles included in the Bible, the Holy Bible, so that you and I could increase our own faith. I don't believe the miracles in the Bible are simply a history lesson. I believe they are meant to inspire your faith for your life and your walk with God today. I believe God is still moving, and I believe this story is still being written.
So, the miracles are important. I'm glad for the miracle we read about last week. Last week, we read about a man who was sitting at a gate called Beautiful, and his situation was anything but. He was sitting at a gate called Beautiful not because he was resting but because he was restricted. It gave us hope, because he got up from that gate and became in himself a message God used to teach people what Jesus can do. Did you know God wants to turn your life into a message to show those who are looking at your life how miraculous, how awesome and magnificent, how all-encompassing the grace of God is? So, I'm thankful that he left miracles in the Bible, but I'm also grateful that he left some mistakes in there, too, the times where they didn't get it right, because the miracles give me faith, but the mistakes help me understand grace.
If you read the whole book of Acts, you have Peter and Paul fighting over circumcision. What a great church fight. I get criticized over a lot of things, but I never saw a YouTube comment about circumcision at Elevation ministries. (I will probably get one now, and that's all right. We'll block it. YouTube might block it automatically.) I'm glad they left some of that stuff in. One man lied to the Holy Spirit and died from it. That encourages me to know, like, "Oh, thank God I don't have to lie to God. I can be honest, and my honest living brings more life". I'm grateful for the mistakes being left in there, because even the main characters I read about in the book of Acts messed up pretty badly in their past. Also, you'll see where the writer of Acts includes the message itself that was preached.
So, you have miracles, you have mistakes, and you have the message, and that's where I get the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not "Come to him and buy a lottery ticket, because you'll for sure win after you've received favor with God". The message of the gospel isn't "Come to him and go to heaven one day when you die". It is that by repenting and believing in him, we can have life in his name right now. So, I'm grateful it includes… You'll see many times in the book of Acts they'll say, "And Peter preached this. And Peter preached that". He preached about repentance and change and belief and resurrection. I'm glad for that, but today we come to something I'm very glad was left in, and I know you are too. Not only do we need to see miracles, not only do we need to see mistakes, not only do we need to hear the message, but we need to know the method, and that is this.
When I'm under attack, whether it's an emotional attack, a physical attack, or a social attack, whether I feel it in my finances, in my body, or just in my mind, how do I respond to that rather than react to that? When I feel the pressure of the world on me, it helps me to read things like we just read from Acts 4:23-31. These believers are under attack. Not the kind of thing we call an attack either. Not where somebody cut us off in traffic. "Did you see what the Devil just did to me"? That wasn't the Devil; that was just a Honda Civic. The Devil has much better vehicles to mess with you than a Honda Civic. That's not a temptation; that's called traffic. It happens to everybody, good, bad, saved, tense, skinny, tall, fat.
All of us deal with it at various stages of our lives, but what we're really talking about here is… Remember, they did something good. Peter and John see this man. They help him up. They help him, and then, in trying to do good, trying to be helpful, instead of being rewarded for their helpfulness they are hit for being helpful. Have you ever felt like you got hit for trying to be helpful? Have you ever felt like you stepped in to try to say something helpful to somebody and they attacked you for saying it? You thought, "Well, I was just trying to help," and they said something back like, "Well, why don't you help yourself and get your own kids straight before you start telling me how to parent mine"?
Now, maybe you needed to hear that. I don't know. Maybe that's exactly what they should have said back. But in this case, they are trying their best to just be helpful, and they end up in jail. And not only in jail kept overnight, but they are dragged out publicly, humiliated in front of everybody, and told they are not allowed to speak anymore in the name of Jesus. The Bible says they responded by saying, "We must obey God rather than men". That's a good word for somebody all by itself, and it's not even my Scripture for today. Peter and John said, "I've got to do what God said to do. I've got to do what the one who has the power to judge said to do, not the one who thinks they're a judge telling me what they think I should do".
Then the Bible says they went back (we pick up in verse 23) on their release to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. Now, I wonder what they shared, because it's a little vague right here. Luke doesn't take the time to say, "And they told them this, and they told them that. Then Peter said, 'And I told them we must obey God rather than men.' And John was like, 'No, I had that line. That was my line. I said, "We must obey God rather than men".' And Peter was like, 'Well, I'm the one who told you to say it, and I just let you say it so you could have a speaking part.'"
Who knows? They don't talk about all of that, but they tell them what the chief priests have said to them, and they say, "They told us we can't preach anymore in the name of Jesus". So, now I want to take what they did and teach it from the subject of the cutting room, because they have a decision to make right now, and so do you. "Am I going to allow my life to be led and limited by what the Enemy told me or am I going to allow the director of this film decide which scene happens next"?
For everybody who is in a transition, for everybody who is in a season of life that feels uncertain, you can relate to these disciples. They are shaking with fear. They are certainly, in their own way, a little bit confused. "I thought God wanted us to preach, but he let us get thrown in jail. I thought we were doing what we were supposed to do, but it went backward instead of forward. There are great results from what we're doing, but there is also great resistance".
So, if you are confused, join me and Peter and John and these believers in the cutting room where we can see what God wants you to keep in, where we can see what God wants you to integrate, where we can see what God wants you to emphasize, where we can see what God wants you to eliminate, where we can see which numbers in your phone are keeping you numb, because those people are no longer supposed to be your support system, but you keep running back to them after 1:00 a.m. We're going to delete some stuff today. We are going to delete some scenes so you can see the good things God has prepared for you. Join me in the cutting room. We'll use three points, and I have a bonus point, but we probably won't get to it, and you'll be frustrated, because I shouldn't have even told you about it if I was just going to cut it. The points go like this.
First, the review. Write it down. Put it in the chat. Put it in the comments. Second, the reframe. That's the one I'm excited about, so don't shout much about the review, because we need to get to the reframe. Zoom the camera out. Zoom it wide. The reframe. Zoom it in. The reframe. Zoom the camera out. The reframe. Third is the release. It seems strange that I put that last, because the Scripture started with these words. Verse 23: "On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people…" But that was the first release. I'm going to explain that to you in just a moment. First, we'll talk about the review. It's so amazing that we get to see these characters go through horrible things, because we get to benefit from their experience and glean wisdom from it. I told my wife the other day one of my favorite things about being only slightly young (I don't call myself old)…
One of my favorite things about this sweet spot of life we are in right now in terms of our age (that's how I choose to see it) is that I get the privilege now to go back and revisit experiences I've had. Not only for the sake of feeling the memories of them, but one of my favorite things about my 40s so far is getting to go back to myself in my 20s and my 30s and relive those experiences with a better perspective. Nudge your neighbor. You might make them mad, but say, "You need a better perspective".
If you go back to a previous experience with a better perspective, you can get a fresh lesson. That is a formula for spiritual growth. If you revisit a previous experience with a better perspective, you can glean from it, to use an agricultural term, a fresh lesson. The fresh lesson that came from the better perspective through a revisited experience can be used going forward in your life. In this way, every regret you have is redeemable, because revisiting that experience with a better perspective will give you a fresh lesson. You will see it was something seven years ago that you blamed on the other person, but what you blamed on the other person might have been only 15 percent them. It might have been 85 percent what they tapped into that reminded you of somebody who's not even in your life anymore. Once you begin this process of going back over your life with God, you will never be the same.
That's what happened in Acts 4:23. "On their release, Peter and John …" They got out of jail, but here's what matters. When you go to the cutting room of your life to evaluate, "Why did that happen? What needs to happen next? What am I going to do about it? Did you hear what they said? How am I going to respond to this…"? When you are released from a situation, when you are between situations, when you are reevaluating situations… When you go into the cutting room, who is in there with you? The Bible says Peter and John went back to their "own people". This is not an ethnic statement. This is not a gender statement. This is a statement about the belief of the people they needed to be around at that moment. I don't know about you, but when I process my life, I need to be around believers.
"I've had enough dumb conversations with doubters, skeptics, and cynics who told me to tell them off. I told them off, and I lost my job, and you still have yours"? So, the cutting room, as we see it today, is not only about a place but is about the people who influence you. Isn't it amazing that they took the raw footage of what had just happened to them and converted it into a revelation? Did you know the Holy Spirit will help you do that? To take the raw footage… My favorite movie of all time is a documentary about a band. I will not say the name of the band, because some of you would criticize me for being worldly, and you would be right. But I love the band, and I love the documentary. It's two hours long. I got so obsessed about the documentary, which is already a movie about a process, that I read a book about the documentary.
So, now I'm reading something about how something got made that was made to tell how something else got made. That's how much I like it. In my reading, I discovered that for this two-hour documentary, there were over 1,600 hours of footage captured over the course of two years. So get this. They had to take two years of footage and make it fit in two hours. That's when I realized the importance of a cutting room. Nobody is going to watch 1,600 hours. I don't care how much of a binger you are. Nobody is going to sort through that. If that same raw footage were given to me or, I daresay, to you, we probably could not have produced an award-winning film out of it. But the person who went into the cutting room and decided, "This scene here. This scene there. This has to set up that…"
That person, the director, the one who employed the people who technically edited it, was able to take 1,600 hours over the course of two years of footage, put it in one movie, and edit it down to tell a story that was compelling. While you are looking at me, like, "Yeah, that sounds challenging," please realize you do this every day. Every day, you have 24 hours. Twenty-four hours is 1,440 minutes. So says ChatGPT. In those 1,440 minutes, you experience some highs. You experience some good things. You experience some blessings. You have some bursts of insight. You feel kind of clear. You feel kind of smart. You feel kind of loving. You feel kind of joyful some minutes, but some of those remaining 1,439 minutes left over might be a little iffy, and some of them might be downright horrible.
Yet when it comes down to you coming home, especially if you're a teenager, and they ask you, "How was your day?" you are able to take 1,440 minutes of highs, lows, goods, bads, yeses, and noes and condense it into one barely audible word: "Good". "Bad". "Alright". It was much more than good, bad, or alright. It was some good. It was some bad. It was some alright. I've found out that what kind of day you think you had depends on who you have helping you edit when you reflect on it. That's why the psalmist said, "This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it". Now wait a minute. Will is a decision about something that hasn't happened yet. So, he is deciding in the psalm "The story I want to tell at the end of this day is that God made it".
God made it. That means he's the director of it, and that means there will be some scenes in this day I wish I could cut, and he'll say, "No, leave that one in, because that's the mistake that's going to teach you the grace". There are some scenes in this day you won't even know to look for, but God will just give you a miracle. You'll be sitting at the gate, begging for change, and God will send somebody to give you something you didn't even have the faith to ask for. God will put that in your script in the day that you were waking up, wondering, "I don't know if it's going to be a good day or a bad day".
Well, I'm going to tell you right now. It's not going to be either kind of day. You have some scissors, see. You have some scissors. I'm talking about editing now. I'm talking about your scissors. I'm talking about your mind. I'm talking about your soul. I'm talking about your emotions. I'm talking about who you process with. I'm talking about you making a decision in your life, "I will not process in my head any longer, because every time I edit in my head, every time I try to make sense out of my life in my head, it ends in the death of something I love". You kill relationships because you make edits in your head. "They didn't do anything for me for Mother's Day". (I'm getting out ahead of this one, everybody. I'm doing a little prepaid tuition here.) "They didn't do anything for me for Mother's Day". Or the other way around, like, "My mom wasn't [this and that]".
I want you to understand about editing from the disciples. You are always editing, and you need help. The truth of the matter is you need help editing, because every time you make an overgeneralized statement… Imagine the statement the disciples could have made here. They could have said, "This is unfair," and they would have been right. They could have said, "We have God's favor," and they would have been right. What was important about this moment was not the event but the intention of the author. The author is God. So, they understand in this moment, "We have to get into a place where we can process". Your process, a lot of times, and how you deal with the thing that just happened to you is more important than the thing that happened to you. You could have the best thing happen to you, but it can backfire if you process it without God. If you get a promotion, and it turns into pride, pride comes before a fall.
So, you'll go back and say, "If I had given God more glory for what he did and leaned into him more, then he could have sustained what he started, but I got high and thought I got there without God, and then life had to pull me down, because I got prideful when I got high". Any process that does not start with God is doomed. Any process that does not start with God is dead in the water. That is why they came together in this place to pray, and that is why they reported, "They told us not to preach anymore". What has the Enemy been telling you? He has been telling you, "You're not good enough to do this". He has been telling you, "You've run out of time, and it's too late for you in your life". He has been telling you, "You will never be free of this thing. Maybe that thing. Not this thing. It's just what you're going to pass down to your kids. You did the best you could, but give up now. There's no need to even try".
What has your Enemy been telling you? I think we need to take the Enemy's words over your life to the cutting room. Stop saying, "I'm in a bad season". You are in a season, and some days are good and some days are bad. Sixteen hundred hours of footage into two hours. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible, and we get this entire prayer that they prayed. We're going to look at it right now, because it is going to help you edit. Now, there will always be somebody to help you edit what happens to you in your life. When you start going through your life and saying, "Okay. What am I going to do in this decision? How am I going to respond to this?" you will always have help.
The Devil will always be there to help you, because he has scissors too. The Devil will be there to take out every kind thing, every good thing, every lovely thing, every generous thing. He might even cut away some of the good stuff you did to make you feel like you never do anything right. Have you ever had a good day with your kids, and then the last 30 minutes…? The cutting room. I'm not talking about film editing right now; I'm talking about knives and violence and cutting room and blood and shouting and cursing. A whole good vacation, and then 30 minutes from the house… Then you start thinking, "All of the things I did for you…" (Maybe this is just parental therapy right now, and maybe I should be paying somebody for this time.)
I noticed how sometimes the whole thing can go so well, and then something happens so bad. When I lay me down to sleep, it's like the Devil wants to turn my bed into a cutting room and just start slicing me with all the stuff that went wrong today, slicing me with all of the ways I failed. Somewhere along the line, I have to stop the slicing and tell the Devil, "You are not here to help me edit. Get under my feet. I said, 'Get under my feet.' You're not the director. You're not the author. You are not financing this screenplay. You didn't make me. You didn't create me. You didn't die for me, and you don't get to drive me crazy. Get your scissors out of my spirit! Get your scissors out of this room! Get your scissors out of my mind"!
So, I need help, because so much is coming at me. I can't figure out what to focus on. I need help. So much is coming and going. I'm confused. So much is being said. I don't know what's important. So many priorities are pulling at me. I need help. Just like the Devil wants to help you edit, so does heaven. So does the Holy Spirit. You thought the Holy Spirit was just a goose bump. You thought the Holy Spirit was just a good feeling. You thought the Holy Spirit was just... That's all good too, and we get all of it, we do all of it, and we want all of it, but what about when the Holy Spirit brings some scissors? Yeah, get surgical with the Enemy.
Now, I can't cut out what happened, but I can refuse to make it the definition of my identity. It is not the definition of your identity. It is not. So, we talked about the review, and the fact of the matter is some of the things we say about experience are just not true. We will say to people, "Oh, I'm sorry you're going through something right now, but don't you know we grow through what we go through"? No, we don't. Not automatically. If that were true, why did you go through it 15,963 times last month? You don't grow through what you go through. Sometimes you go through something, and then you create something else to go through to keep you distracted from what you went through that you've been going through for the last 37 years. Don't lie to me. If you grew through it, you'd be through with it.
Here is what is true. While we do not automatically grow through what we go through, we grow through what we go over with God. That's the process of review. I sit down all the time and ask the question, "God, what am I missing in this? God, how did I focus"? Holly, do you remember the insult somebody said to me the other day in a professional setting, and we kept talking about it? They said a hundred thousand things nice to me in the same session and one thing that I was like… Then, if you could see my cutting room, it's like I took this scene, zoomed all the way in, and framed it. Just push in on me really quickly. Look at how ugly this is. Why do you want to be stuck in something like that? All right. Back to normal shot. After the review comes the reframing. This is what they prayed. They made a great decision. Peter and John were like, "We don't know what to do next".
How many feel like, "I don't know what to do next in an area of my life"? Raise your hand. Okay. You need to go to the cutting room. How many of you feel like it wasn't fair what happened to you? Raise your hand. Yeah. You need to go to the cutting room. How many of you feel like there's something in your life that you can't decide if it needs to be there any longer? It served you in a season, but it feels like it's getting in the way now, and you don't know what to do about it. How many of you need to prune some things you said yes to yesterday that are making you pop pills today because you said yes to them yesterday? You need to go to the cutting room.
Now, when you go to the cutting room, it is important that you review, and it is important who you review with, mostly with God. Reviewing it with God doesn't look like asking God to write something in the clouds. "Check 'yes' or 'no,' Lord". That's what the girl did in fifth grade, not God. God is not your fifth-grade hopeful girlfriend. God doesn't do that kind of stuff all the time. He does it sometimes. Typically, what we do wrong is when we sit down to process the problem, we process the problem, and we start with the problem. When we start with the problem, we never really get to God, because by the time we've been through the problem, we're so exhausted we don't even see God. We are so confused, we are so blinded, we are so taken, we are so sense-driven, we don't even see God anymore. We start saying, "Well, I don't see any way this can work".
I guess you don't now. You wasted all your vision looking at it. "On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them". Now, how long did that take? "They told us not to speak anymore in the name of Jesus, and we told them we have to obey God rather than men, and they let us go". They could have spent three hours talking about how much it sucked. They could have spent days talking about how it didn't seem right. If you take your complaining into the cutting room, what kind of movie do you think this is going to be? I think it's going to be a horror movie. I think it's going to be a slasher film. I think it's going to scare you to death and keep you up at night if you start with that. But watch. I need every person who has ever been Pentecostal or wanted to be Pentecostal for 15 seconds to get ready to shout when I show you this.
"On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them". Do you think anybody in this room knows what they should do? Do you think anybody else in this room has had training for this? Do you think anybody in this room has the political power to stand down the entire Sanhedrin, the religious ruling body of the day? No. But watch this in verse 24. "When they heard this [the attack]…" "When they heard this [the threat]…" "When they heard this [the message of the Enemy]…" Verse 24: "When they heard this, they raised their voices together…" Don't leave the 300 Pentecostal people alone. "They raised their voices together…" I'm not done yet. "…in prayer to God".
That's the part: to God. Right now, if you just attacked me for helping somebody, I want to attack you back, but I can't talk to you right now, because I need to go above your pay grade to talk to the one who made you. I can't solve this on the level it started on. I have to go higher. I want to give you two things you need to do. When you find yourself under attack, when you can't breathe because of it, when you can't see straight because of it… When you're so angry you want to do some stuff you haven't thought about doing in a long time, but you feel it kind of coming back… When you're so sad you can't figure out how to get out of the bed… I want to teach you the reframe.
Two things. First, go wide. Did you see how they started their prayer? They didn't start praying about, "God, that one Sadducee was so mean to me. I pray he'll have hemorrhoids tonight so you can show him your judgment". None of that. They're not starting with hemorrhoids or the problem or any of that. He said, "Sovereign Lord…" Sovereign doesn't mean a lot to us, because we think we run stuff. Sovereign doesn't mean much to you, because you thought it was your story, but it's his story. He's sovereign, and he made you. He gave gifts to men, and he stirred them. He seeded them. He watered them. He prunes them. He cuts back. He cuts off. He raises up. He brings down. He is the Sovereign God.
So, start with sovereign. You need some new words in your vocabulary. You need some big words in your vocabulary. You need some king words in your vocabulary. You need some "God is in charge; you're not" words in your vocabulary. You need some big God words in your vocabulary. So, for everybody who needs to go wide… Go wide and realize… I'm going to give you the statement that really helped me this week. I was processing some things, and I was processing them without God. It was really punishing me. It was really beating me up. I was really having a pity party, and it really felt good for about 30 minutes. Then you get sick of it, because you realize you're really just cutting yourself when you complain. You realize you're really just cutting yourself when you condemn. Whether it's you or others, you're really just cutting yourself.
So, the Lord dropped this, and I started saying it. "This is bigger than me". Give me a wide shot. "This is bigger than me". See what all we saw that we didn't see before they did what they did? That's what prayer is supposed to be. You have too narrow of a definition of prayer. You think prayer is "God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food". God is not inextricably linked to your digestive process of turning french fries into protein. "Bless this food to our bodies". That's too narrow for prayer. It's too narrow for prayer to pray before you have a big match, "O God, help me win this". What if the other kid prayed that more, and what if he's better than you? You can pray that, but prayer is much more than that. Prayer is an awareness that "This is bigger than me". That's why they said, "Sovereign Lord…" Watch what they prayed next.
Tell me this doesn't feel out of focus. "Sovereign Lord, you made the heavens…" Whoa! We're going all the way back. Yep, we're going all the way back to remember who the director is. We're going all the way back so we can remember the source material. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". So, I'm going back to the one who spoke the Word so I can fight the word the Enemy spoke with the Word that was here before my enemy was a thought. So go wide. "This is bigger than me". Sometimes that means I'm just selfish. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean it's not the Lord. I told you it's a cutting room. Some of what we have to cut is some of the stuff we cling to that God wants us to grow out of to help somebody else. Waking up, praying, "God, just give me a blessing today". "God, make me a blessing today. I've been blessed so much".
You mean all this he gave you? The Devil will cut all that out and make you think you have nothing to give. Yes, you do. "Well, no, you do, Pastor Steven. You preach these words". Yeah, but you live the gospel, and you can cook good cornbread. Sometimes cornbread is better than a Bible verse if somebody is going through something. Make some cornbread and take it over to somebody. Watch what happens. God has given you gifts, and the Enemy wants to eliminate your gift consciousness to keep you stuck in selfishness. Go wide. "Holy Spirit, give me a wide shot so I don't get all zoomed in".
Zoom in. No, no, wide shot. Give me a wide shot. That's the reframe. Do you see it? Even if you find yourself in a situation right now where you feel like you are Peter and John up against the whole Sanhedrin, where you feel like you are up against an entire system…a boss who definitely is not going to watch this message online, a medical diagnosis they don't even have experimental stuff for, things that go on inside of you that you can't label, much less learn from yet… Even if that's you today, and you say, "This is bigger than me," remember how your prayer started: "Sovereign Lord…" Don't just go wide; go high. Go high to the Most High whose name is holy forever and ever. Go high until you are one with Jesus and joined with him who died for you. Go high until you are so far above the situation with him it starts to look small.
The next time you stand in front of it… "This is bigger than me. I'm small compared to this. I'm too weak for this. I don't have what it takes for this. These bills are bigger than my check. Don't you understand? This situation is bigger than my experience or my training or my knowledge or my wisdom". Say, "This is bigger than me, but God is bigger than this". That's the Holy Ghost to let you know "This is bigger than me, but God is bigger than this". Do you want a demonstration? I'll give you a demonstration. Abbey, stand up. Abbey, stand up next to Mom. Abbey is standing next to Mom. Now, Abbey, say, "This is bigger than me".
Abbey Furtick: This is bigger than me.
Steven Furtick: Say it again. "This is bigger than me".
Abbey Furtick: This is bigger than me.
Steven Furtick: Truth to power. "This is bigger than me".
Abbey Furtick: This is bigger than me.
Steven Furtick: But now let's say we do this. Now there's something bigger than bigger. You're like, "Oh, she's going to tell you when you get home". She's not, because I'm only talking about height. She's a way better person than I am and more convincing. If I give you a physical demonstration, maybe you can see something with your spirit that you do not understand with your mental facilities. To reframe my situation is to acknowledge, "This is bigger than me, but God is bigger than this". I don't care what the this is. God is bigger than this. We need to re-edit this movie and remember for a moment who the real director is, who really backed your life, who really started your life, who really gave you those experiences, who really gave you those skills.
I see you staring at a mountain, and I know the mountain looks immovable, but when you pray, "Sovereign Lord, you made the heavens and the earth," you realize that while you've been staring at the mountain, you could have been talking to the one who made it. "This is bigger than me. I'm not going to pretend like I know what to do. This is bigger than me, but God, on a rainy Sunday morning; but God, in a hopeless situation; but God, in the middle of my loneliness; but God, in the middle of the process, is bigger than this". Somebody say, "He's bigger than this". Serve notice. "He's bigger than this. That's how I know I'm coming out, because God is bigger than this. I'm coming out with a testimony, because God…"
High-five six people and tell them, "God is bigger than this". He's bigger than this. "You don't know what my this is". I don't have to. God is bigger than this. God is bigger than what they said. God is bigger than what they didn't do. God is bigger than bipolar. God is bigger than depression. God is bigger than this. God is bigger than Twitter. God is bigger than this. God is bigger than AI. It's not going to wipe us out unless God wants us wiped out, and if he wanted us wiped out, he'd just send another flood and not tell us to put the giraffes on the boat. God is bigger than this. Stop stressing about stuff, stupid stuff. Save your strength for stuff God called you to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reframe it. "I'm going wide, I'm going high, because this is bigger than me, but my God is bigger than this".
I have to get in the cutting room, because Jesus said, "Every branch in me that bears fruit my Father prunes so that it will be even more fruitful". Oh, it is unpleasant at times to be in the cutting room, but if you stay there long enough and really give it to God, watch what happens. "They lifted their voices together in prayer to God. 'Sovereign Lord, you made the heavens. You made the earth and the sea and everything in them.'" Stuff I can't see, God can. Stuff I can't fix, God can. Stuff I can't fish out, God can. Stuff that I would drown in, God can save me from. That's what I mean when I say, "The reframe". Stop praying so much about the problem you never get to the God of the problem. Go to the cutting room.
God is the main character of this story, not you, not me, not your ex, not the person who walked out, and not even the people who stayed. God will support you. God will sustain you. God's hand is on you. God has anointed you. God has called you. God is with you. God is bigger than this. Even when you get a blessing, don't worship the blessing, because God is bigger than this blessing. Ask the children of Israel who were fed with manna. They thought, "This is what God has given us," but when their this disappeared, God had something else, because God is bigger than this. If God cuts it out, he already knows what he's going to put in its place. God is bigger than this. He has a thousand ways to provide for you. He has a hundred ways to help you. He has a million ways to see you through it. Don't get picky about it right now.
Let him prune what he needs to prune so you can be fruitful. This is a productive cut. The instrument of scissors is surgical in the hands of the Savior. It's masterful what he's doing in your life right now, and if you stay there long enough, if you pray there high enough, if you pray there wide enough, and say, "God, I'm in this right now, but I know you're bigger than this, and this is bigger than me…" "When they heard this, they raised their voices and said, 'Sovereign Lord, you made the heavens and the earth and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David…'" What are we doing talking about David? He has been dead over a thousand years. "Because I'm going wide. I'm remembering this isn't the first time this happened to somebody".
As a matter of fact, church, what blessed me the most about the text was that after they quoted Psalm 2 from David, "Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and his anointed one," they revisit… See the power of it. Please see the power of it. I know I preached too long, and I know I should cut some stuff, but I just want to give it to you so you have something when you go back into your mind tonight. Verse 27: "Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles…" The Gentiles didn't even know God. They met together with people who didn't even know God. "…and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did [the enemy]…" "They did [the opponent]…" "They did [the ruler] what your power and will had decided…" They did what God decided.
The Devil can't do anything to you without going through God first. This is the release. When you let go of control, when you let go of what you've been trying to keep in the story and focus on and this one scene you get stuck in, this one thing you can't get over, this one thing you won't let God remove… When you let go, watch what happens. When you release, God releases. When we release, he releases. What does he release? Watch this.
"They did what you had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord…" "That's what happened back then. Now, Lord, take me into the cutting room". "…consider their threats…" "God, don't let this overwhelm me to the point that I become paralyzed by it. Don't let me keep repeating this same mistake for 10 more years. Now, Lord, don't let me back down just because it's scary. Don't let me give up what I worked so hard to get just because there's pressure with it. Don't let me faint along the way and be disqualified". "Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders…"
They're not playing defense; they're playing offense. It's a release now. They're giving up what they thought should have happened. They're giving up what should have been done for them. They're giving up on the way they might have wanted it to go. "Now, Lord, heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus". Verse 31 says, "After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly". "Wait. I thought they were already filled with the Holy Spirit in chapter 2". They were, but you need a fresh refill for a fresh battle. God said, "I'll give you a refill when you release it". "The place where they were meeting was shaken". The place started shaking.
When they went into the place, they were shaking. They had just been threatened. They had just been scared. They had just been intimidated. But after they prayed, and after they remembered who their God was, and after they got their eyes on the Sovereign Most High… After they remembered what he did for David, and after they called the name of Jesus, they weren't shaken; the place was shaken. I think we ought to go into the cutting room and give God at least 24 seconds of place-shaking praise today! Shake the place! This is your cutting room, and God is holding the scissors. This is your cutting room, and God is directing the film.
When a director is really good, they give the director a privilege called final cut. That means they can shoot whatever they want to, but by the time this film is released, the one who directed it gets to decide what goes in it. Your God… I know y'all are tired, but I came for three people. You've been cut off. You've been cut down, but God said, "I'm going to make you fruitful". Your Father has final cut. Heads bowed, eyes closed. Grab the hand of the person next to you. They're in the cutting room right now. It's not convenient in the cutting room. It's confusing in the cutting room, but God is with you in the cutting room. The reason I wanted to preach this series, the reason I wanted to preach this sermon is you need some help with your edit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You are leaving out some things God put in.
This week, he's going to fill you with his Spirit and flood you with the realization of how beautiful he made you, how wonderfully crafted you are by his masterful hand. He has final cut. He's going to show you that the people who left your life were not meant for the next season of your life, and he's going to show you where David is on the way for every Saul that has been rejected. This is your cutting room. For everything you don't like about yourself that you thought was a bug, what if it's a feature? What if God wants to show you to put something back in, something you haven't done in years that used to bring God glory? It's time. This is the cutting room. You came in shaking. I know.
I come to this pulpit shaking every week, but I ask God, "God, would you take my nerves? Would you take my fear? Would you take my uncertainty and shake this place"? In the place where you're shaking, may God shake the place and use you. He's using you. You have to cut some stuff back now so he can use you. You have to cut some stuff out now so he can use you. You have to get some new disciplines in there so he can use you, but it's his scissors. It's his garden. It's his hand. You are his planting for his renown. He is the Sovereign God. He made the earth and the sea and everything in them, and he made everything in you.
Now I call it forth in Jesus' name. I call forth miracles from your spirit in Jesus' name. I call forth freedom from your spirit in Jesus' name. I call forth abundance of compassion; abundance of joy; wisdom from above, first peaceable, then pure. I call wisdom by the Holy Spirit of God. I release it in your life right now, a fresh filling of the Spirit of God. I release it in your life right now in the name of Jesus.
Everybody who has been set free, clap your hands and give God praise! Oh, thank you, Lord, for a final cut. You have the final cut. You have the final say in my life. They crucified Jesus. They hung him on the cross and stretched him wide and hung him high. From that place of his death came the possibility of new life for you. There is someone here today, and lately in your life you've been realizing, "I need God. I cannot do this by myself. I need Jesus".
I believe God brought you to this stream today, God brought you to this sanctuary today, this building today, so you could be saved. Right now, I'm going to lead you in a prayer. Right now, if you're ready to give your heart to God, ready to receive the forgiveness of your sin and repent of your sin and trust Jesus, I believe he will hear you from heaven and heal you and give you a brand-new nature. We're praying this together as a church family for the benefit of those who are coming to God or back to God. Repeat after me.
Heavenly Father, today is my day of salvation. I am a sinner in need of a Savior, and I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. Today, I make Jesus the Lord of my life. I believe he died that I would be forgiven and rose again to give me life. I receive this new life. This is my new beginning. I am a child of God.
On the count of three, raise your hand if you prayed that. One, two, three. Shoot them up all over the room. I see you. God sees you. God bless you. Congratulations. Amazing. Online, just say it in the chat. "I received Jesus". Come on, let's shake this place with praise for the salvation of our God. Did you receive anything from the Lord today? Clap your hands. Join hands with your neighbor one more time. If you haven't caught something from them by this point, you won't now. Tell your neighbor, "I'm contagious". Tell them, "If you hang around me, you might catch faith. If you hang around me, you might catch praise".
Our Father said I'm blessed, and I am. Now I bless you in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to bless everybody who stays until I'm done. Do you want this blessing? This one is worth waiting for, because I'm going to tell you how blessed you're going to be this week. You're going to be so blessed this week that every weapon the Devil forms against you… It might fly by, but it won't work. It'll only make your faith stronger.
Somebody say, "How blessed am I going to be this week"? So blessed that anytime you want to talk to God, you can talk to him wherever you are. How blessed am I going to be this week? I'm going to be the head and not the tail, above and not beneath, running over, a lender and not a borrower, a child of the Most High God, the righteousness of God. I am who God says I am. You are dismissed. I love you so much.