Steven Furtick - Restoring Your Hope
This is an excerpt from: Rescue Your Testimony
I realized a long time ago that what the Devil is actually attacking when he comes to me with worry is my ability to anticipate what God might do and that every time I worry, it's a perversion of worship. Worship and worry operate from the same energy. They both attach to something I can't see to deal with something I'm going through. Worship attaches to a God I can't see. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen". Worry attaches to something that hasn't even happened yet and gives more power to the problem than it does the promise of God who said he would be with you through every problem.
So, now we're beginning to see that the Devil is after your anticipation. If he cannot get you to fear the worst possible scenario, he will hurt you so many times when you get your hopes up that you learn to manage your sense of disappointment by bringing down your level of expectation. This is the truth about a lot of us. Really, the reason we go through life with a kind of bad attitude, with a pessimistic attitude, not leaving the house, is because we left the house one time and it didn't work out very well. So now every time God calls us out to do something… It could be anything. God could call you to do anything…speak a kind word.
Last time you spoke a kind word they thought you were weak, and then they took advantage of you. So now I'm not going to speak any kind words to anybody anymore, because you know how it is. You say nice things to people, and they don't do anything back. See, what the Enemy is doing there is he is trying to inform your anticipation of the future based on the thing that happened to you in the past that was poorly processed. The way we anticipate our lives is a process. Even sometimes when I'm talking to Holly about something that could happen bad or something that did happen bad or what might happen bad or how it's going to backfire, I'll tell myself as an excuse, "I'm just processing".
Really, while I say that I'm processing, I am, but not all processing is productive. It's not always productive for you to just process, because if you just process, but there is no God in your processing, you will end up with a godless thought because you started with a godless process. That's why I think it's important that when you process things in your mind for a little while you come outside of your head every once in a while and verbalize it in prayer to God. The verbal process of praying out loud will actually help you with the internal struggle of a hyperactive mind.
So, for everybody who struggles with an overactive imagination, you can think more than one thing at a time. You can't speak more than one thing at a time. There comes a time where you have to start speaking things of faith to fight against the spaghetti noodles of fear. Satan will spaghetti your emotional state and get you so tangled up in the things you've been through, so tangled up in the things you're suffering. I found it interesting that Paul said, "We boast in the hope of the glory of God".
I thought boasting was bad until I read Romans 5:2. Paul said there is a type of boasting that is totally appropriate for the child of God. This boasting, however, does not come from an anticipation that things will always look the way you wanted them to look. This type of boasting does not come, for example, from your anticipation that you will never suffer. Jesus did not die to save us from suffering. He suffered and died to save us from sin. So, when we suffer we're not surprised. He suffered to save us.
Now, he did not save us from suffering; he saved us by his suffering, and in his suffering we have hope. I have hope, not because I think I'll never go through anything, but I'm one of these hopethetical Christians. I don't have hope based on the fact that I will never go through it. So, this is not a naïve sense in which I go through life knowing it will always be okay. This is not a hope based on how I know it's going to go. I'm leaving the house, I'm leaving my complacency, I'm leaving my shell, I'm leaving this relationship, I'm leaving this thought pattern, not based on the hope that it's going to be so easy when I leave but that he will be with me as I go. I have a hope. So, do you process with God what you go through or are you processing without God?
If you are, you do not have what the Bible says here in verse 1. "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God…" He didn't say, "I don't have fears about my future". He said, "We have peace with God". He didn't say, "I don't have regrets about my past". He said, "We have peace with God". He didn't say, "I don't have conflict in my home". He said, "I have peace with God".
I'm going to go a little deeper. He didn't say, "I don't have temptations that are dragging me back to the Egypt I thought I left". He said, "We have peace with God". He didn't say, "I don't have bills that I don't know how I'm going to pay". He said, "I have peace with God". He didn't say, "I don't have pain in my body". He said, "I have peace with God". He didn't say, "I don't have issues I'm going to counseling for". He said, "I have peace with God". He didn't say, "I don't have anger that I don't even always know where it's coming from". He said, "I have peace with God".
So, my peace with God is not in the absence of the problem. My peace with God is not in the absence of the anxiety. My peace with God is not in the absence of my shaking hands. My peace with God is not in the absence of enemies who don't like me. My peace with God comes from somebody who won a game I didn't even play in. What I think is good for us to remember when we have something we have hoped for and it didn't happen for us is that before we can move forward in pure faith, God often has to heal our hope.
The first step of healing your hope is changing what you boast in. The book of Romans was not written as a pep talk to tell you, "Do better. Get out there. Go get 'em. You've got this". Nobody is slapping anybody on the bottom in Romans except Paul saying that what you used to boast in was your relationship to the law. Remember? They kept the law. They did that through circumcision, which was an external sign of their faith, and they were trying to go back to that. But Paul says in this passage that what you used to boast in is insufficient to hold your hope in this season of your life.
One reason you can praise God after you've been through something… After you've been through something, but you found that God was still with you after you went through it, now you have something to boast about that you didn't have before. I saw somebody in this room… You've been like, "Why am I going through everything I'm going through? Why does this all keep happening to me? Why has this been so hard the last three months? Why did I think I was so far along and then I just snapped right back to the previous place that I was? It seems like nothing has moved forward". Instead of you seeing yourself as going through something, I want you to see yourself as getting something from.
Going through something and getting something from, two completely different paradigms. The focus on what I'm going through is me, hypothetical. The focus on what I'm going to have to go through… Isn't it crazy that the Devil can beat you with something that may never even happen? Ask the prophet Elijah, who ran from Jezebel and wasted days he could have spent in revival running from somebody who already proved she didn't have the power to kill him. You know, when you're going through something or when you might have to go through something, your focus becomes only the pain it will cost you, so now your story revolves around your suffering.
How could Paul say in Romans 5:3 that we glory in our suffering? We glory in our suffering? Maybe he doesn't mean that we like it. Maybe he doesn't mean that we ask for more of it. Maybe he means that while we're going through it, we get something from it. Recently, I was telling a friend a story. You know how we all have these pity-party stories that we tell? I was sharing it under the pretense like it was a testimony of something God brought me through, but in the middle of telling the story, it was as if the Holy Spirit said to me… I'm going to do a whole sermon one day… I don't exactly know how I'm going to do it yet, but it's going to be called "When You Say 'God Said,'" because a lot of times when I'm preaching I'll say, "God said [this]" and "God said [that]".
A sweet middle school kid came up to me one time and asked, "When you say 'God said,' what does that mean? Did you hear an out-loud voice? Did you read a Bible verse? What do you mean when you say God said"? So I'm going to do a sermon on that one day. In this particular case, it was an impression. I was in the middle of telling the story, and midsentence, I stopped telling the story, because it was as if the Holy Spirit said to me, "I'm sick of this side of the story". "You're telling him like it's something you went through, but you're talking like you're still in it. If you really believe what you're saying you believe, this is something that I brought you through. So why are you not through with it"?
Now, I'm not saying this always works. Please don't take me out of context. I hate the thought that we can just cut short trauma by putting on a happy face. That is not my point. This was not a situation where there was unresolved trauma. This was a case where there was unreleased bitterness. The Lord showed me as I was speaking… I'm telling you, it was almost like my mouth got zipped by the Holy Spirit. The Lord said, "I'm sick of this side of it, because all you keep talking about is the story from the standpoint of how hurtful it was to you. But you know good and well that what I did through that was something I absolutely had to do, and you know good and well that if it hadn't hurt you like that, you wouldn't be here today.
So stop telling that story from that side. Start saying things like, 'Yeah, it hurt, but God healed me from it. Yeah, it was hard, but I got stronger from it. Yeah, it was weighty, but I built some spiritual muscles, and I got a miracle from it.'" There are two sides to this story. There's what you went through and there's what you got from what you went through. While you're still worried about what you might go through, you need to pick up something that's sitting right in front of you. I feel like preaching. I'm glad my mic went out. I needed a big boy mic today. I'm glad the mic went out.
Some of y'all need to say, "I'm glad about stuff that goes wrong. I'm glad that went wrong. That was a redirection, because I would have stayed in this wilderness if the manna didn't go away. I would have stayed in that place if they didn't push me out. I would have stayed stuck in something I'm so much greater than". I went through it.
That's what the Bible says. He didn't say, "We have hope because of what might happen. We have hope because of what could happen. We have hope because of what probably will happen". No. The apostle Paul said something so much greater than that. He said, "Therefore…" I'm about to blow your mind. For everything you're going through, for everything you might go through, for every hypothetical in your life, let's get hopethetical for a moment. He said, "…since we have been…" He said we have been. In English, have been means past tense. That's behind me. That's why it's my testimony, because I passed. It was a test, but I passed it. It happened, but I'm here! It happened, but hallelujah! It happened, but I have this hope!