Steven Furtick - Quit Letting The Devil Play You
This is an excerpt from: Instruments of Victory
I feel God coming into somebody's weakness today. I feel God coming into somebody's dysfunction today, saying, "You are an expensive instrument, but you've been played by the Devil". Today, we came to take back from the Enemy what never should have been in his hands to begin with. High-five your neighbor and say, "Snatch it back". Snatch what back? Your instruments. "You have a Paul Reed Smith"? "No. But I have a sanctified mind. I have an imagination that was given to me by almighty God".
Why would you take something as amazing as your mind, an instrument… Much more than $1,400 worth in your mind. This irreplaceable, indispensable part of you called your soul, your mind, your will, your emotions, and you're just going to give all of those gifts over to an enemy? You're just going to give all of those gifts over to an Instagram…I mean, an enemy…I mean, a Midianite? And it's not just social media. The Lord spoke to me recently, saying, "I'm going to help you reclaim your imagination. I gave you an instrument called imagination to serve the purpose of faith, but you use it too many times to go down roads of fear".
The Enemy got my instrument called imagination. Everybody in here who is really good at worrying could be really good at prayer, if you get it in the right hands, if you get your instrument back. Come on. If you stay in the cesspool of lust and say, "Oh, it's nothing but the dog in me. A man's got to have what a man's got to have," then you are going to entrust your mind and your heart to an enemy that does not have a good intention for you. But if you get that instrument back, it can become true intimacy so that the God who knows what he put inside of you can release everything that was meant to be sent into the world that he called you to. If you get your life in the right hands.
So, the first thing God had to do for Gideon was he had to get him to let go of some things. In Gideon's specific case, I guess it was kind of like a post-2020 world where they had the Great Resignation. Everybody I know who owns a business right now is saying, "Man, it's hard for me to find…" They don't say, "Good people"; they say, "People". I got used to the thing, "Good help is hard to find". Now they're like, "Horrible help is hard to find. I'll take some horrible help, Lord. It's help". Now listen. I'm not praying that God would downsize anybody's life. I'm not praying that. But I am saying it's not always the Devil when your life is downsized. There will be moments that God, to get you ready for the space he's taking you into, will need to thin out some things you were depending on that kept you from depending on him. This is Gideon. The Lord said… I noticed how the Lord gave him an instruction. He said, "Everyone who's trembling, send them home".
So, Gideon is like, "Everybody who's trembling, go home"! and two-thirds took him up on it. Probably he's like, "Well, I mean, you could tremble a little bit. A little tremble is all right. If you're trembling… God, did I do it wrong"? "No, you did it right. The only problem is you didn't do it enough". Remember, when we met Gideon a couple of weeks ago, he was threshing in a winepress. Now God is threshing, sifting. Not sifting for the purpose of subtraction; sifting for the purpose of strategy. Is that word for somebody here? Quit giving the Devil credit for it. "Oh, the Devil took this, and the Devil took that, and the Devil took the other, and the Devil…"
Did he, or is God getting room ready for your life? I know I'm ministering to one person right now. There will always be someone who will take this message out of the context I mean it in and use this as an excuse to be horrible to people in relationships and say, "You weren't one of my 300". But those of us who are mature enough to know understand this is not permission for us to be bad at relationships and blame it on faith. What it is, for me, is a promise from God that what I have in my hand in this season is what he meant to give me for where I'm going. I've got what it takes to win. I've got what I want? Not necessarily. I would really like to have 32,000 more, if you ask me. But God didn't ask you. He's doing the math. You have to put this in his hands now and say, "God, I'm going to let go".
Put up Judges 7:7. You'll hardly believe how clear it is. He said, "Let all the others go". Do you see that? Ninety-seven hundred on one side, 300 on the other, and the 300 are dogs. God says, "You're going to do this with those 300 dogs". "I've got that dog". The ones who were drinking like this, hand to mouth. "I've got that dog". God says, "That's what you want now". You want the stuff in this season that you can actually depend on, not the stuff you've been pretending with. Can I go a little further with this message? I'm going to have to put part 2 on YouTube this week, because there's too much. I've been putting these extra teachings on my YouTube channel from the Basin. Do you know what I'm going to do while I'm on tour? I'm going to put the Basin from the Bus.
I'm going to go on the bus, and I'm going to put some sermons on there, and I will finish this. But I can't not tell you this next part because it's really what led me to the message. God leads him to the 300. They have already sent home over 30,000. The Lord says, "Let all the others go, every man to his home". Verse 8: "So the people took provisions in their hands, and their trumpets". That's an instrument. I never played a trumpet, so I used the guitar because I thought it was more appropriate. The trumpet is not like an electric guitar because it doesn't have to be plugged in. A trumpet is a different kind of instrument. How many of you played trumpet in the band at one point for six months because your mom made you, or something like that, or you love it and you're great at it? Okay, great. A trumpet is a wind instrument.
So, a trumpet needs two things: somebody who knows where to put their hands… These musicians are getting excited because they know something about instruments. Somebody who knows where to put their hands and someone with breath control. Gideon has been in the wrong hands for years, like some of you. Just like, "It's mine. Go to this place of misery". Predictable misery, enslavement, entanglement, entrapment, and everything that comes along with the strategy of the Enemy. That might be, for you, a state of addiction. That might be, for you, a state of low self-worth where you have forgotten who you are. Some of you, if you talked to somebody else the way you talk to yourself, they would punch you in the nose. You use your self-talk to beat the crap out of yourself. I came today with a message from almighty God to let you know that you are a very expensive instrument. He paid too much for you to stay in a dead place.
So, when Paul gets ready to say it, he says, "You have been brought from death to life". Well, what does it take to go from death to life? Breath. So, what does God do when he gets ready to raise somebody up to do something significant for a purpose they didn't even see themselves for? God said, "I brought you to church today. You didn't just go to church today. I brought you to church so I could blow into you the wind of the Holy Spirit for this second season of your life, because the best is still ahead".
Come on. Receive the prophecy. Receive the breath. It's a wind instrument. The trumpet can sit there all day, and it won't do anything if somebody doesn't breathe into it. Do you know why you haven't had power? Do you know why you haven't had joy? Do you know why you haven't had peace? You haven't been letting him breathe into you. Oh, but if he breathes… Ask the bones on the valley floor what happens when God breathes. God said, "Live! Live! Live! Live! Live"! Come on, Easter isn't over! He's still alive! So are we, and so are you! You are an expensive instrument, an exquisite instrument. In the hands of the Master, there's no telling what might come out of you.