Steven Furtick - You Can Overcome Your Insecurity
This is an excerpt from: Move In What You're Made For
What insecurity is beneath the surface in your life right now that God wants to speak a word to? You don't experience insecurity as insecurity. Nobody runs around, "Just pray for me for my insecurity". When we ask people to pray, we say, like, "I'm worrying a lot lately". But why are you worrying? Because you're insecure. "No, no, no. Now, Pastor Steven, that's quite a jump. I'm worried because life is crazy, and I'm worried because I have these things".
But if you believed that you are so blessed… Like, deep down, if I believed that, then I would look at the birds, who neither store nor reap, yet my Father feeds them… There is something in me that does not believe I have what I need for where I am. Fundamentally now, I do not believe I have what I need for where I am. Or maybe in one area of my life I know I have what I need for where I am, but then I get in another area of my life, and then I get in another area of my life… This is the kids that are really good at school, but watch them on the soccer field. Or they suck at school, but they can kill you on the soccer field. This is one thing I know. This isn't a Bible verse, but I want to say it. Everybody in here sucks at something. It's not in the Bible. How many think I'm right? Everybody in here has an area of your life… Don't make me come through that camera. But God told the birds…
Let me show you this. I don't know if this is getting through. Hang on a second. I'm going to be like God for a minute. I'm going to go back in the dark, and I'm going to bring something out in the light and show you what I'm talking about. I'll be right back. This is like the beginning without form and void. The earth is without form and void. Then God said, "Let there be light. Let there be vault. Let there be sky. Let there be ocean. Let there be moon. Let there be stars. Let there be plants. Let there be ground. Dry ground, appear". Then on the fifth day (because we're talking about the principle of the fifth day), God said, "Let there be birds. Let there be fish". I know this is not the natural habitat. This is a reproduction. It's just for a mental image, because you'll forget what I say if I don't show you something, because you're a visual learner. That's how God made you. They told you you were slow, and they told you you were stupid, but they just didn't teach you right yet. I'm going to do it enough where every bird gets to eat today. All right?
I have the deep stuff in this sermon for the deep Christians, the ones who just want to be confused so they don't have to apply it, and then I have the… I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. The Lord said both are blessed. He blessed both. That confused me at first, because it said… He told the fish, "Fill the waters," and he told the birds, "Fill the sky," and it was good. Which one? Both. It leads me to believe that I'm blessed when I'm doing what God called me to do where God called me to do it. The quote I read was attributed to Albert Einstein, but I don't think he really said it, upon further review. It said if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend the rest of its life believing it is stupid. Some of you tell yourself you're stupid because you are trying to swim in somebody else's sky. Some of you are telling yourself you are incompetent or nothing or insignificant or ridiculous because you, on the other hand, are trying to flap…
Look. Here's what I'm trying to say. We have a lot of "Little Mermaid" Christians. Did y'all see the movie? I used to have such a crush on Ariel. I'm confessing it in front of Holly just so I can get healed from it and delivered from it. She was my first crush. But Ariel had a problem. Remember? What did she say? "I want to be part of that world". We have a lot of Christians who haven't read Romans 12:1. "Do not conform to the pattern of this world". Did y'all see The Little Mermaid? God is not King Triton, and God is not going to give you legs if he made you for water. God is not going to help you flap if he gave you fins. You have to move in, operate according to, and function by what you were made for. I didn't want to bring any animals out here, because we live in a contentious time, and I figured I would offend somebody and PETA might shut my church down, but just imagine… (This would be really bad. I would never do this. I'm not an animal person, but I would still never do this.)
Imagine if we put a bird in the bowl. I knew Holly would like this sermon. Babe, did you know there are six birds for every human? I thought about you this week. I was studying the birds. She's a bird person…in theory. Let one fly up close to her… She likes the information about the birds. A lot of Christians are confident in Christ in theory. "I'm a child of God. Yes, I am". That's your surface self, but before God can bring forth what he really wants to bring forth in this season, he has to move waters. He has to start clearing out stuff that is covering up stuff to ask you what is beneath the surface in your life and whether you are moving in it. Are you moving in what you're made for? Take a picture, if you want to, so you can put this on your screensaver this week. You know what I'm saying? I'm not saying you want to look at me, but maybe you just want a little reminder, like, when you're comparing yourself, when you're sitting there looking at other people's lives, comparing yourself, because what we do…
Go back to Genesis 1:26 for a minute. "Let us make man in our image," God said. But we don't go off of God's image. We go off of an image of what we think a good mom is supposed to look like or a good dad or a good man or a successful person. That's what we think. Right? You have to be like that. But it's an image. You imagined it. It's not the real image. It's a surface image. So, now you try to make memories with your kids, and they backfire. It doesn't go down like it was supposed to go down. That's because you are making memories compared to somebody else's pretend memory that they posted. They captured it. You're a bird in a bowl. We have these amazing things God made called brains. Your brain is amazing. Your mind is amazing, absolutely amazing. I mean, even the ones of us in here who had to take algebra a few times… Your brain is amazing. What it enables you to do is just amazing.
I mean, come on. The moon is jealous of you. The stars are jealous of you. God made you by hand. He made all that stuff with his mouth. He made you by his hand. Your brain is amazing, but your brain was not made to look at everybody else's life all day. Your brain was not made… I'm going to make CNN and Fox News mad (like they're watching). It was not made for you to process all the information of the world all the time. You're a bird in a bowl right now, and you are drowning in stuff God did not intend for you to live in. I'll read y'all a quote. Listen to how good this quote is. This book is called Gift from the Sea. The lady said, "We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world…" Listen again. This is the demand that's being placed on us today in the day we live in, going back to the beginning, what God made you for versus what is being marketed to you today as normal.
"We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print…" All of it. You have to know everything all the time…what's happening on the other side of the world. You are watching people eat lunch on a screen, and they sit three cubicles down from you. That's how weird it is right now. You are asked to digest, on the same screen, world events and also somebody's vacation who lives three doors down from you. It's all right there. Now listen to what she says. "[We are asked] to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The interrelatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold". She wrote that in 1955. What would she say today? What would she say about your week? Where have you been this week? Have you been a bird in a bowl? Here's what I mean by a "bird in a bowl". God told the fish "You are good in what I made for you".
I think the Lord wants to say that to somebody. You are good in what he made for you. You're going, "Don't you mean that he made me for"? No, no, no. What he made for you. Ephesians 2:10: "For we are created in Christ Jesus…" This is like the New Testament explanation of the illustration in Genesis 1. "We are God's handiwork…" Remember, he spoke the sun with a word. He made you with his hand. The author here is simply saying… Paul is reminding you God made you by hand. That's good enough…to know that he stitched me together. He made me by hand. I'm not mass produced. I didn't come off an assembly line. That means I don't have to fit in with something else, because I was formed by someone who knew me before my frame was. So then, if that's good news, how much better is it to know what comes next? "We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do".
To understand the fifth day, you have to understand the second day. To understand your life, you have to understand the heart, the mind, and the order of God. God wouldn't have made a bird before he made a sky. God wouldn't have made a fish before he made an ocean. Do you think God just dropped you down in your life and didn't put in you everything you need to do everything he has called you to do?