Steven Furtick - Where Is God In This?
This is an excerpt from: God's Got The Hard Part
So, I came to ask a question today: Where is God in this? "I've been sowing, I've been weeping, but I'm not reaping yet. Where is God in this? You tell me he's here, but it's still hard. You tell me he's here, but I'm still not over the things you say he died to save me from. Where is God in this"? Jesus said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed…" This can't be God. "…on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up…" The second evidence that it can't be God: he sleeps. My Bible says God never sleeps nor slumbers. So, this can't be God we're talking about in this passage, because God is watching over you even as you sleep. God works the night shift. God will sit by your bed and sit there with you in the most hard emotional place.
So it can't be God who is referred to here as the sower. Then I realized the star of the text is not the sickle that reaps the harvest, nor the sower who sows the seed. Watch this in verse 28. This is so anointed a chain is going to fall off of somebody's life when I say it. Verse 28: "All by itself the [seed] produces grain". "All by itself the soil produces grain". Wait. Did I say seed? That's what we think. We think, "I've got to do this. I've got to make it happen".
Now we're nervous, and now we have no lining in our stomach, and now we have no friends because they don't want to hear us complain anymore, and now we have nobody else to call, because they don't have our answers anyway, because we think we have to do this by ourselves. There are situations in your life right now where you're thinking about how hard it is going to be…how hard it is going to be in this next season, in this next stage; how hard it is going to be for me to make it through this period that's coming up; how hard it is going to be for me to go into this meeting next week; how hard it is going to be for me to deal with my kids (if I can't deal with them now, how am I going to deal with them in three years?); how hard it is going to be for me to go through another year like this with these unanswered prayers.
After you get done telling him how hard it's going to be, you realize you forgot that he promised to do the hard part. Everybody in the text has a job. The sower has a job to sow. You should sow. The reaper has a job to reap, and you should reap. Both of those things are important, but did you notice in verse 28 that the most important thing that happened in the passage happened whether the man was asleep or awake? It happened regardless, because all by itself the soil produces grain. I could preach for 13 weeks on "All by itself the soil produces grain". Yes, it needs a seed to pull from, but it is not dependent on the seed in any other way. I am trying to say that while your part has a part it's not the main part.
Stop bringing that main character energy to your prayer life, acting like God is going to lead you to speed run all of these levels without him. He's not going to do that. When you get to the hard part, he's going to do the hard part. Even if your part feels hard right now and harder than you can bear, I want you to think about all the hard stuff God is already doing right now that you're not even thinking about. This helps me to realize that while I'm preaching, which is hard, my heart is beating. It's said that it beats about 100,000 times a day. (I looked it up, Graham. You used to not be able to do that, so you could just make up a number.) It's sending all that blood all through my body. I just looked this up. I don't know if it's true. It was on the Internet. It said there is enough in my body right now that of the 22,000 breaths I will take today that will basically process the oxygen and expel the carbon dioxide… There are 300 million tiny little sacks where all that happens inside of me.
So, when you say, "It's God's breath in my lungs," your body has 300 million tiny little sacks where the good stuff is getting taken in and the bad stuff is getting taken out, and God is doing all that. I've never heard a worship song about it. I've heard about the lungs, filling our lungs with praise, but I've never heard about the tiny little sacks where all the carbon dioxide gets expelled and the oxygen gets processed and gets sent back out to the bloodstream. I never read about any of that, because God is so good we take him for granted. Then we run up on something hard, and we're like, "Oh, that's going to be hard". Like the rest of it isn't?
The possibilities that you would be born in this time are so tiny. The fact that you would even be here today with the opportunities you have, with the life you have, with the strength you have… God has already done that. So what's the next hard thing you have in front of you? If God has already done a miracle in 300 million tiny little sacks that I didn't see in my body yesterday, that I didn't even thank him for yesterday, that I didn't even know was happening yesterday, that I'm not even sure I'm explaining right today… If God did that for me then, bring on this one too, because God made me a promise. He's got the hard part. We get so anxious when the Devil roars. We get so anxious playing out our lives. Yet we, like the disciples, forget the fact that we have the Bread with us.
I wish y'all had three hours today. I would tell you about how in Mark, chapter 8, the disciples were heading to a ministry assignment, and they were stressed out because (look at Mark 8:14) they forgot to bring bread. Jesus had already multiplied to feed 5,000 men, women, and children, but they were still stressed, because no matter how many hard situations God brought them through, they still forgot what they had in him. They got focused on the next hard thing. You are focused on the hard thing, and when you focus too much on the hard thing, you forget your help. The irony of this… Verse 14: "The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 'Be careful,' Jesus warned them. 'Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.' They discussed this with one another and said, 'It is because we have no bread.'"
Yeah, that's going to limit him. Pop quiz. Who is the Bread of Life? Who's in the boat? So what do you have to worry about if you forgot bread? I'm trying to say that your sowing is not the most significant thing when it comes to the sovereignty of God. I know you didn't get some things right. I didn't either. I know there are some things you don't understand. I don't either. I know it's hard to be you. Me too. But the most important thing in the boat is not what they forgot; it's who they had. How cool Jesus is.
"Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: 'Why are you talking about having no bread [when you have me]? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?' 'Twelve,' they replied. 'And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand…'" Now Jesus is doing a math lesson. "'…how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?' They answered, 'Seven.' He said to them, 'Do you still…?'" This is what he wants to say to you today. "Do you still not trust me? Do you still not know"?
We don't, because that thing about the soil that he shared is scary. It's scary for a seed to be in the soil. It is scary to be in the middle of your life. It is scary to go through a messy divorce. It is scary when they tell you, "We're not renewing your position". It is scary when you don't have your next step planned. It's scary in the soil, but notice that the place in the passage where the most happened was the place that was the least visible. If the seed stays in the sower's hand, it will always be a seed, but if it goes down in the ground… It goes down seed, but it comes up grain.
Now high-five your neighbor and say, "I'm coming up different". That's how you'll know God has met with me. I won't look like I went in when I come out. I won't be like I was when I come forth. "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed…" The seed is on a trajectory to become bread, which is sustenance, but in order for the seed to be bread, first it must be buried. I want to talk to you for one moment about buried bread. You say, "I didn't read any bread in Mark, chapter 4". Yes, you did. Jesus said to them he is the bread. He's talking to them about seed, but he is bread. He's giving them a picture of what is possible, and he's painting it on a level that they can comprehend. And they get it. The seed can't stay in your hand and become a harvest.
I'm trying to tell you, "Let go". Let go of your need to control people and just start adjusting your access. Let go of your need to have data make sense and start checking in with God more than you check in with graphs. I'm saying, "Let go". If you don't let it go, it will always be this, but if it gets in the soil… Let's go back to our key verse. This is going to be my new life verse…until next week. Mark 4:28: "All by itself the soil…" The soil represents God. The soil represents "In him I live and move and have my being".
The soil lets me know that when the seed went out of sight, it didn't go away. It went somewhere to change. Everything in your life has to go through the soil to become what it's meant to be. If it never gets planted, it never becomes grain. If it never becomes grain, it will never be bread. If it never is bread, it will never be what it was meant to be. So, before it can be bread, it has to be buried. You never heard about buried bread, because you just get it from the bakery. You just look at someone's life and say, "They're so patient. They're so wonderful. They're so amazing".
Well, before they became bread, let me tell you what they were. They were buried. They went through something that pulled out something, that changed something, that broke through something. I'm telling you, God has you in this place in your life because he's pulling out something to break through something, to bring forth bread. It's going to be bread. It's not going to be fast, but it's going to be bread. It's going to be bread for your children. It's going to be bread for your community. It's buried right now, but it's going to be bread. It's uncomfortable right now, but it's going to be bread. It doesn't look good right now.
Do you ever feel like, "I can't even see anything happening in my life. This is not making a difference"? For everyone who feels disappointed, I want you to know that it is not a death; it is a stage of development.