Steven Furtick - Overwhelmed By Life's Demands
This is an excerpt from: Overwhelmed... But Not Outnumbered
How many are grateful that the first thing he wanted you to know was, "I am not only your provider; I am your provision"? "If I'm just your provider, then you need what comes from my hand, but if I am your provision, you can trust my heart to know that even if it's not coming your way, everything you need for life and godliness is in me. I am the Bread of Life. I am the Light of the World. If you can't see your next step, it's all right. I'll give you enough light for the next step I've called you to take. Not the next 1,500. It is a progressive revelation. I am the gate. That means you come in through me. You go out through me. Church is not the gate. Other people are not the gate. They don't get to decide what your life becomes or what it doesn't. I am the gate. I am the Good Shepherd. I will lead you through the valley of the shadow of death. It's just a shadow, because I am the resurrection and the life. Even the things that have died in your life are subject to resurrection. I serve notice on dead bones. If the breath of God hits the bones in the valley, they have to rise up and live in the name of the Lord. I am the vine, the true vine. There are imitators. There are substitutes, but they can't sustain you. I am the Bread of Life".
In order to get them to see it, he has to bring them all the way back to their experiences, and many of these experiences happened before they were ever around. In order to get you to see that God is your provider, I want to show you something from Exodus, chapter 16, that really speaks to me about how in some seasons of my life I feel like the demand is greater than the supply. The disciples weren't the first one that got put in a situation that was too much for them. I'm preaching to people who are looking at too much in an area of their life today.
I believe if nothing other than the device that is in your pocket, we are living in a time of too much…too much information. They're showing us now through studies on compassion fatigue that by knowing everything bad that happens in the world, we are becoming unable to mobilize to do anything about the real things we can affect, because we are so overwhelmed with too much. The disciples saw the crowds. They said, "It's getting late, Jesus". This is John, chapter 6, before he said, "I am the Bread of Life".
This is what led up to that statement. This is the story behind the statement. He wasn't just saying something out of context. He took the bread and multiplied it, and everybody was fed, but before that happened, the disciples' tendency was like the same tendency we have when it's just too much. "Send them away. It's just too much. I can't fix it all. It's too much. It's too much debt financially. I don't even know where to start digging out of this. It's just too much. It's too much on my schedule. It's too much". Then, if the spirit of "too much" stays on you too long, it'll become the spirit of "not enough".
So then you start evaluating your potential on the basis of your experiences. What God is so good at in moments like these in our lives… If you're in a moment like that in your life (and I know I certainly have been), where you start sending opportunities away because you don't believe you have the resource to meet the need, you can relate with this passage and this statement. "I am the Bread of Life". Recently, I started noticing I was turning down things I believed God wanted me to do, but it wasn't even because I was too busy to do them. I started to feel like I didn't have enough to give, and it started scaring me that maybe I was going to get out there to try to do it and I wouldn't have what people expected me to have.
So I started to send stuff away that God was trying to bring to me to multiply his provision and to use me, which is what I wanted. When you stay in the spirit of "too much" long enough it becomes a deep feeling of "not enough". I believe I'm looking at people today… I believe it's a cultural epidemic, that we have never been in a time where we have felt more deprived and depleted and insufficient to face life's challenges, because we are constantly exposed to the world's entire need all at once. So Jesus says, "Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness".
Last week, I talked about the wilderness, and I talked about finding your water in dry places, that God will always put a rock where water will come from even in the driest, most difficult seasons of your life, and how when you're too hungry or too thirsty you become susceptible to substitutes, which is why you can be tempted to turn stones into bread. The wilderness passage, which Jesus demonstrated by overcoming temptation and the nation of Israel succumbed to the temptation, is mentioned in Exodus 16. Remember that they came through the Red Sea. They had been in Egypt for a long time, suffering under slavery.
After they came through the Red Sea, they dwelt in a place called the wilderness. That wasn't the name of it. It was several stops along the way. For a little while after they left Egypt, apparently, they had some Snack Packs, but at the point that the food ran out, they were caught in an interesting situation. Just like the disciples in John 6, where we're in a remote place and we don't have enough to do what we need to do. I want you to look at the Scripture, because it's kind of a test that some of you are dealing with right now, the "Do you trust me now?" test. You get so many opportunities in your life to trust God again, and every time you trust him on a different level in a different scenario, you see a different dimension of who he is and what he can do.
Now look at this in Exodus, chapter 16, verse 1. It says, "The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt". Where they had been for 430 years in Egypt, where they initially went to escape a famine that was in Canaan. But then in Egypt, the place where they went to escape the famine became the place where they were enslaved by Pharaoh. We dealt with that last week. Watch the message. It's free on YouTube, and you have no excuse not to watch it. Download the podcast. Download the app and watch the message.
Where it brings us to is they're out of Egypt, but they're not into Canaan. They are in a place where they need God's provision, but they have not fully accessed the promise of God. I call this the disappointment of deliverance. It's when God brings you out of something but not all the way into anything either. It's when you raise your hand to receive Christ and you still have issues with your anger. It's when you believe God touched you during worship and you still have bursitis in your right knee when you go home. It's when God makes you a promise and speaks a word concerning your daughter and her attitude gets worse on Tuesday than it was last Wednesday.
It's the disappointment of deliverance, when he brings you out, brings you through, brings you forward. But now they're in a stuck place, really, to wonder, "What will we eat?" and they don't pass the test, because instead of gratitude for the grace of God that brought them this far, they begin to grumble about what's ahead. Now this is in Bible times. We don't deal with this anymore. The Bible is outdated. Times have changed. They came out of Egypt when the expiration date on their season of suffering had reached the ears of heaven. Everything you go through in your life, everything that even the Enemy does in your life, anything you do to yourself in your life, it can't go on forever.
Here's why it can't go on forever: because you are not in charge of the calendar of events of the purpose of God in the world. Even if the Devil is messing with you in your mind, even if the Devil is messing with you in your family, he can't just mess with you for as long as he wants as much as he wants. God had to give the Devil permission to hurt Job. He didn't just get to do what he wanted to do for as long as he wanted to do it. God said, "Now that's enough".
When God saw his people struggling in Egyptian slavery, at a certain point he said, "Now that's enough". When he spoke to Moses, he said, "I see my people mistreated, and I see how their backs are breaking with heavy labor, and I hear how they're crying out to me, and that's enough. I came down to deliver my people and bring them out of Egypt". Every season of suffering, every season of struggle has an expiration date. God is sovereign. God is in charge. The Enemy doesn't run my life. So, when that ended and a month passed… They've come through the Red Sea, but now they need something to eat. This is why I thought Jesus brought it up to say, "I am the Bread of Life". "Just like I did it then, just like I did it in that period of time, just like I took care of you before, just like you didn't know how before and I did some 'how,' I Am. Just like I was, I am, and just like I am, I will be. I am, I was, I will be. How do you know I am? Because I was. How do you know I will be? Because I am. How do you know I am? Because I was".
There is a testimony in your life to the faithfulness of God that will enable you to trust him in this season. You just get to do it over and over again. If you trust God with one test, you get to trust him with another. Algebra 2 is your reward for passing Algebra 1. Y'all don't like that. You don't get to graduate; you just get to trust him again. I will never forget what Holly said to me when Elijah was born. She goes, "Oh, you don't get to quit worrying about your kid after you have them". Because, you know, we're rubbing oil on her stomach and feeding her avocados, or whatever.
Everything prenatal, "What to Expect When You're Expecting". By the way, that book sucks. I want my money back. But it put an expectation on us. It is the disappointment of delivery. "Oh, I had the kid. Now I have to check on him all through the night. I'm worried when they're crying. I'm worried when they're quiet. I'm worried".
Now, not only do I get to trust the life of my child to God when they're a toddler, because that's scary. You run around the house protecting them from everything. Well, the first one. We have three. By the third one, you figure it out. But the first one, you're plugging electrical sockets with plastic things. Then you get to trust God when they're a teenager. They don't make one of those plastic plugs for their friends. Now it's like, "Hey! Trust me now. Trust me deeper. Trust me broader. Trust me greater. I am because I was, and I will be too. It's the kind of God I am, the Bread of Life. Here is the bread".