Steven Furtick - Facing Not Enough
This is an excerpt from: Navigating Not Enough
Sometimes "not enough" is a fact. It is. I met a lady last weekend. She came up to me in tears. She said, "I listen to your sermons. I love God, but I need a job". We prayed on the spot. I didn't tell her, "Well, I'll go home and pray about whether God wants you to have a job". "You need a job? You have a God? I pray that God would give you the greatest job. I pray that he would open a door for you right now before you get home today". I don't know if he will, but I prayed for that. I love how she said that. "I love God, but I need a job". You do need God and a job. For all of y'all "All I need is God" things… And a job.
How many can testify? The light company, the power company… They don't really respect that Holy Ghost currency, do they? She said, "I love God, but I need a job". Sometimes it's a fact. When I said "Sleep…" If you have a child under the age of 73 or 74, there are going to be some sleepless nights. Right? But what you don't want to do is let one need feed another need, feed another need, until you let a situation that is not enough turn into an identity that you are not enough and eventually start to believe that God is not enough, and you die in a desert or a wilderness of want. You don't have enough money, but if you don't trust God with that and move forward in that, then you definitely won't get enough sleep. And if you don't get enough sleep, you won't have enough energy. And if you don't have enough energy, you will not have enough opportunities. And if they come, you'll kill them.
You'll yawn at them and pull a muscle. (I'm going to call back as many times. I'm going to use what the Devil meant for evil this morning, and I'm going to preach it. I've been afflicted, y'all.) "I don't have any friends". Well, if you let it define you, and you begin to navigate according to what you don't have… Jesus said something interesting. He said, "I have compassion". When you tap into that… When you tap into the compassion Christ has for you and the compassion he has for others, bread is no problem to God. I was just thinking how different this passage would have been… You know, they fed 4,000 people, verse 38 says, and they started with seven loaves. I think it's amazing that Jesus saw people and they saw a crowd. It made me start to wonder when it said that they fed 4,000 people.
Why did we always say that it was the feeding of the 5,000? How many of y'all have heard the story that Jesus fed 5,000? Why do we always call it that? Like, why don't we count the women and the children too? Well, they didn't at this time. That's how they did it at that time. Why do we call it 5,000 where it says 4,000 here? How many of you were wondering that when I read it? You were like, "Four thousand? I thought it was five. What happened to the other thousand"? You're not going to believe this when I tell you. This is the second time Jesus did this. So, now you're really judging the disciples, because in Matthew 14, there were 5,000 people and 5 loaves of bread, and Jesus fed all of them, and there were 12 baskets left over. A chapter later… I'm not talking about that happened in Matthew 3. That happened in Matthew 14. What chapter is this?
Okay. How many of y'all are good enough at math to say, "That's not that long"? And how many of you are good enough at math to put this all together? They fed 5,000 with 5 loaves. Now it's only 4,000, and they have 7 loaves. This should be easy. This should be simple. It's just simple math. Holly came to me this week. She was like, "You need to see this". Every once in a while, she'll bring me a trend or something, just something that's going on in pop culture, just to make sure I'm aware. I can be kind of clueless sometimes. She's like, "You need to know a few things today". She'll tell me about gas prices or wars or Taylor Swift attending football games…important things. She started showing me something called girl math. You've heard of this? I have too because Holly showed me. Girl math. She was like, "Watch this clip".
It was a lady saying, "Okay. If it's 'buy one get one free,' and I don't buy it, I basically lost money. #girlmath". "If I spent $38 online at Sephora, but it's free shipping if you go to $40, and I buy $20 of mascara so I qualify for free shipping, I basically saved money and got the mascara for free. #girlmath". I'm watching this like, "Why, woman, are you showing me this? This is triggering to me". All kinds of stuff. Then Abbey goes, "If I put the money on my Starbucks card six months ago and spend it, it's basically free because I already put the money on the card. #girlmath". I'm like, "Well, let me teach you some dad math. Until you are paying rent in my house and buying food…" Anyway… I don't really know anything about girl math, and I'll probably get criticized or something. I'll get called a sexist or a misogynist or some toxic masculinity something over this.
But I didn't come to talk about girl math. I do know something, though, about God math. That's the class I came to teach. Do you know anything about God math? This is not a trend; this is the truth. Can we talk about God math for a minute? God math is when you have seven loaves to start with and seven big basketfuls when you're done feeding a crowd. That's God math. I know something about God math. I don't know about this girl math or man math or boy math or dad math or mom math, but I know something about God math. Do any of you know anything about God math in your life? Maybe not. Where everybody else walked away from you, but God stayed with you, and you found out that if it's just you and God, that makes a majority, that's God math.
I want to teach a class about God math, because the Bible says he fed 4,000 with seven loaves. Anytime you have something left over that is greater than what you started with, that's God math. They fed 4,000 men besides women and children. Did you see that? They didn't count the women. They didn't count the children. But God doesn't count like people count, and I'm glad he doesn't count like people count. If we were doing my math, and I'm standing at a Red Sea, and all I have is a staff, then the sea is greater than the staff, but if God put me in front of that sea, and he spoke a word over my purpose, then guess what happens? The staff becomes greater than the sea. That's God math. If Moses were here, he would teach this class with me. Can Moses be my adjunct professor today?
Come on. I need an assistant teacher, somebody who knows something about God math. Maybe we could call on David who had a nine-foot giant and a little, tiny rock, but in the hands of one who is committed and called and chosen and anointed and oiled and raised by God, by faith in God… One little rock. It couldn't have been that big. What, about two inches around? Yeah. Two inches around, nine-foot giant. Watch two inches versus nine feet. That's what happens when you get God math in your situation. Or maybe we need to call on Joshua who's standing in front of a 12-foot-thick wall called the wall of Jericho, and all he has is a trumpet to deal with a wall. Anytime you have a trumpet versus a 12-foot-thick wall, you have a problem unless you have a God who is greater than the problem.
One trumpet can collapse a 12-foot wall. That's God math. That's not man's math. When you get in man's math, you start saying, "They're bigger than us. They're stronger than us. It's greater than us". But when you know he is for you, who can be against you, even if the whole host of the enemy's camp rises up? I love it. There's this one story in the Old Testament. The prophet named Elisha sends his servant out to check in the morning. The servant comes back and says, "We're in trouble. There are more of them than there are of us". Elisha says, "He's not seeing this right". God is saying over somebody, "You are not seeing this right". You're on the wrong app. You keep pulling up your map. You keep pulling up your calculator. You keep doing your math, but I've got news for you. Where God guides, he provides. Watch this. If it's God's map, it's God's math.
So, when you find yourself in a remote area, and you don't know what to do or how to do it or what to do it with… If I just came for three people, I wanted you to know that if you're where he put you, then you have what you need. If it's God's map, it's God's math. So, the prophet said, "Open his eyes that he may see that there are more with us than with them". That's that God math. Yeah, all of us who are bad at man's math, let's get good at God's math. Man's math says, "There's nothing there but a cloud the size of a man's hand". God's math says, "I hear the sound of the abundance of rain getting ready to swell in your life". Yeah, that's God's math.
I want to have a class called God's math, and we only need one thing to show in the class. It's just one thing. If you want to write it down, you can write it down. We don't need a whole semester. We don't need a whole course. I don't even need but five more minutes. Show them what God's math looks like. That's God's math. It's not a hashtag; it's a prophecy. It says that whatever I'm going through is not greater than the God who knew I would be in this remote place with this limited resource. "Yeah, but I only have six more months with my kids. That's not enough". It is if you let God do the math. He can take six months and accomplish more than you could in six years.
Come out of man's math. Come out of little boy's math. Come out of girl's math, women's math. I don't need man's math any longer because God knew what I would need for this season. I have never been in a situation that God called me to and felt like I was enough in that situation. Never. Enough is not a feeling. Enough is a place of faith that God is greater. God math. I know life has you in a place right now where you never knew you'd be. The disciples could relate. The interesting thing about this passage is they were no longer on the shores of Capernaum where they had done all of their ministry. They were now in a Gentile region, having to feed people who were strangers to the covenant they belonged to, and Jesus said, "I have compassion for these people".
What that lets me know is that God saw my situation coming before I did, and he put in me what I need before I felt the need arise. If I say this to a crowd, then it has a very limited yield, but God sees people today who are navigating a "not enough" in their life. You know that "not enough" so well it has almost become your name. For some of you, it is the shame of the mistakes you have made that is keeping you stuck in this season. By man's math, we all fall short of the glory of God, but God's math says that his grace is greater. That's the one word I want in your spirit about your God for whatever you're facing today. As simple as it sounds, if the disciples had realized that God's plan was greater, they would have never asked the question, "Where are we going to get enough"? You don't have to ask about bread when you're standing next to it.