Steven Furtick - Guided By God's Word
This is an excerpt from: Wasted Rain
Here's what I want to say to you. How many of you love the Word of God? How many of you believe the Word of God can change your life? How many want the Word of God to work inside of you today? All right. Well, I want to tell you this first point: God's Word does not override your thought process. He said that before the earth is filled with the rain that will bring forth the purpose for which the Word was sent… First there has to be a forsaking before there can be a filling. The reason that helped me is I realized that, a lot of times, God has wanted to speak something to me, but I did not have room to receive it.
Let me ask the question again. How many of you want to receive a word from God today? I do. I need his Word. I don't just want it. I want a Quest cookie after I preach. It would be nice, but I don't need that. I need God's Word. I need God's Word for my dysfunction. I know you dropped down out of the second cloud right there behind Gabriel and put your harp in the closet for church today. That's all right. I need God's Word. I need God's Word to give me direction. I really do, because I don't want to spend any of my time making decisions that I will spend more time cleaning up because I didn't first seek the Lord.
How many of you wasted some days because you didn't get God's direction for your life? You would have never had to delete their name out of your phone if you would have prayed before you… So, we understand this on one level, that in order to receive God's Word there are some of our own thoughts we have to forsake. God's Word is free. Aren't you glad? You don't have to pay for this.
In fact, that's the context of Isaiah 55. He says, "You who have no money, come". But it will cost you your thoughts. It will cost you your will. It will cost you your opinions. It will cost you your preferences. The Word of God. I love the Word of God. I don't know why. I've always loved it. Since I was a little boy I liked it. Even if I couldn't understand what the preacher was saying, it felt different than everything else everybody else was saying. Sometimes I slept through it, but when I woke up, I still liked it.
Now I'm coming to the point in my life where I value it and I realize that God's Word in different seasons of my life will come to me in different ways through different people. Well, the Bible tells us so much about the Bible. The best way to know about the Bible is to read what the Bible says about the Bible. Yet at the same time, God's Word can be so plentiful and our lives can be so pitiful. I read something. I normally don't believe anything I see in newspapers, and you shouldn't either. But I read something, and this sounded accurate, so I'm going to read it to you. This was from the L.A. Times last year in February. They were talking about a state that is so prone to droughts. Those of you who live in California, this may really hit home for you.
In February of 2019, this writer, Hannah Fry, said, "California's wet winter has dumped an estimated 18 trillion gallons of rain in February alone [in the state]". Eighteen trillion gallons in that month alone. Listen to this. "But much of it is simply going down the drain". I'm about to preach the L.A. Times. I'm just warning you. Then she quotes this expert, and his name is Mark Gold. He said, "When you look at the Los Angeles River being between 50% and 70% full during a storm, you realize that more water is running down the river into the ocean than what Los Angeles would use in close to a year". He said that it's a waste of water supply, that so much water in a land that is so concerned about drought is going down the drain.
I don't know anything about environmentalism, but I've been preaching God's Word to God's people long enough to know that some of you… You have about 18 trillion gallons of notes in your sermon notebook. You know who you are. Now, some of you just turned on for the first time. You weren't even trying to watch church today. It came up in your feed, and you didn't know what it was, and here you are. But some of you have 18 trillion gallons of truth, but what are you doing with it? What am I doing with it? I want a revelation. "God, speak to me today. Show me today". And he has, and he will, and he does, but so much of it… This is what the article was saying. The systems can't handle, because they don't know what to do yet with the runoff.
They said in the article they're trying… I don't know if they're doing it yet or not. I didn't look at the update, but they said until they can get the supply to the place where it needs to be, there can be 18 trillion gallons of downpour and still a drought. There can be 18 trillion gallons of truth… Oh yeah. God has been trying to encourage you all week, and you're discouraged. Why? Because it went down the drain. I wonder what God has spoken over your life in this season or a previous season that you've been letting go down the drain. You know how it does. It just goes down the drain into the pessimistic… Pacific Ocean. It said all that water… What a waste. All that water down into the pessimistic emotion… Pacific Ocean.
Some of you have been wasting the words God has spoken over your life. It's one thing if you don't need to pay attention to people. People are always talking. You can even not pay attention to me, but when God speaks… That's how he supplies all of your needs, yet so much of it goes down the drain. You do know that by the time you finish hearing this sermon, the Devil will have arranged three clever distractions to get you from digesting what he gave you and drain you of the deposit so that you stay dehydrated in a state of drought. I just needed you to know it's not a shortage of God's Word.
Do you know what's weird? When I looked at that, I thought, "Well, if God's Word comes…" You know, like how we like to do. We just quote Scripture over the top of struggles we don't really deal with. Remember, God's Word is like the rain. Oh, by the way, it also says in Scripture that God's Word is like honey. It'll brighten your eyes. These are all things in the Bible about the Bible, because the Bible interprets itself if you let it. God's Word is not only like honey, but one writer said it's like milk. It's like pure milk. The pure milk of the Word of God can come in and nourish you in the infant stages of your faith. But then he said you can't just be hanging out drinking that milk forever. You need to grow up and mature and get off the bottle. Lord, I thank you that the mature people can receive solid food.
So, the Bible is milk. The Bible is meat. The Bible is honey. This is the food category. Everybody who loves to eat, thank God that the Word of God… Jesus said, "Man does not live on bread alone but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God". Think about it. That does no good without digestion, just like the Word of God cannot do what it was meant to do if you have a jacked-up thought process.
So, if you are a pessimist, you will always hear God's Word like it's for somebody else or you will only hear the parts of God's Word that reinforce your emotional biases. If your heart is rooted in suspicion, you will transfer that same suspicion to the Scriptures. You will come to the Scriptures thinking you have life, but you will not know him. We think, "Oh, well, God can just put a word, and I can put it up on a Post-it Note on my mirror". That's fine on a Post-it Note on your mirror, but until it gets into your thought process, which the Bible calls meditation… I just wonder what you've been doing with all the water God has been sending you.
As the rain falls from heaven, as the snow… The Bible calls itself a sword. Did you know that? That means you can fight with it. It's not only a sword you can fight your enemy with, but it's a sword that pierces you. The Scripture says it's a double-edged sword. That means you don't go around attacking others with Scripture verses that apply to their situations, the things you happen not to struggle with, but you know those Bible verses. It means the Bible is at its best when it is dividing the bone and marrow and the soul and the spirit.
That's what the Word of God can do. I guess that's why I love it. It cuts through all the clutter, and it cuts through all the crap, and it cuts through all the cynicism, and it reminds me who I am apart from the layers of what life has tried to label me with. I love the Word of God because it's a sword. "Take up the sword of the Spirit". In Baptist church, Holly used to do sword drills. They would quote Scripture at each other, competing for God's love, to see who could quote the most Scripture like Pharisees. I'm kidding. It's a good thing. Get the Word of God in your heart any way you can. But it also says not only is the Bible carbohydrates like honey…
How many thank God that the Bible is carbs that don't make you fat? And then that the Bible is a weapon. Not only is it a weapon, but it's a surgical instrument. But then I love this, because I was reading about it and it said it was a lamp. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet". Can we spend a little bit of time talking about why we love the Word of God? Well, the Word of God says the Word of God is a lamp unto my feet. Not a floodlight. Just enough to show me the next step. I love the Word of God like that. God can't be memorized, calculated, or predicted. He certainly will not be confined to the GPS coordinates of where we thought he would show up at this age in our lives. The Word of God is a lamp to my feet.