Steven Furtick - Let God Help You Process
This is an excerpt from: Cutting Room
When you go to the cutting room of your life to evaluate, «Why did that happen? What needs to happen next? What am I going to do about it? Did you hear what they said? How am I going to respond to this…»? When you are released from a situation, when you are between situations, when you are reevaluating situations… When you go into the cutting room, who is in there with you? The Bible says Peter and John went back to their «own people». This is not an ethnic statement. This is not a gender statement. This is a statement about the belief of the people they needed to be around at that moment. I don’t know about you, but when I process my life, I need to be around believers.
«I’ve had enough dumb conversations with doubters, skeptics, and cynics who told me to tell them off. I told them off, and I lost my job, and you still have yours»? So, the cutting room, as we see it today, is not only about a place but is about the people who influence you. Isn’t it amazing that they took the raw footage of what had just happened to them and converted it into a revelation? Did you know the Holy Spirit will help you do that? To take the raw footage… My favorite movie of all time is a documentary about a band. I will not say the name of the band, because some of you would criticize me for being worldly, and you would be right. But I love the band, and I love the documentary. It’s two hours long. I got so obsessed about the documentary, which is already a movie about a process, that I read a book about the documentary.
So, now I’m reading something about how something got made that was made to tell how something else got made. That’s how much I like it. In my reading, I discovered that for this two-hour documentary, there were over 1,600 hours of footage captured over the course of two years. So get this. They had to take two years of footage and make it fit in two hours. That’s when I realized the importance of a cutting room. Nobody is going to watch 1,600 hours. I don’t care how much of a binger you are. Nobody is going to sort through that. If that same raw footage were given to me or, I daresay, to you, we probably could not have produced an award-winning film out of it. But the person who went into the cutting room and decided, «This scene here. This scene there. This has to set up that…»
That person, the director, the one who employed the people who technically edited it, was able to take 1,600 hours over the course of two years of footage, put it in one movie, and edit it down to tell a story that was compelling. While you are looking at me, like, «Yeah, that sounds challenging,» please realize you do this every day. Every day, you have 24 hours. Twenty-four hours is 1,440 minutes. So says ChatGPT. In those 1,440 minutes, you experience some highs. You experience some good things. You experience some blessings. You have some bursts of insight. You feel kind of clear. You feel kind of smart. You feel kind of loving. You feel kind of joyful some minutes, but some of those remaining 1,439 minutes left over might be a little iffy, and some of them might be downright horrible.
Yet when it comes down to you coming home, especially if you’re a teenager, and they ask you, «How was your day?» you are able to take 1,440 minutes of highs, lows, goods, bads, yeses, and noes and condense it into one barely audible word: «Good». «Bad». «Alright». It was much more than good, bad, or alright. It was some good. It was some bad. It was some alright. I’ve found out that what kind of day you think you had depends on who you have helping you edit when you reflect on it. That’s why the psalmist said, «This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it». Now wait a minute. Will is a decision about something that hasn’t happened yet. So, he is deciding in the psalm «The story I want to tell at the end of this day is that God made it».
God made it. That means he’s the director of it, and that means there will be some scenes in this day I wish I could cut, and he’ll say, «No, leave that one in, because that’s the mistake that’s going to teach you the grace». There are some scenes in this day you won’t even know to look for, but God will just give you a miracle. You’ll be sitting at the gate, begging for change, and God will send somebody to give you something you didn’t even have the faith to ask for. God will put that in your script in the day that you were waking up, wondering, «I don’t know if it’s going to be a good day or a bad day».
Well, I’m going to tell you right now. It’s not going to be either kind of day. You have some scissors, see. You have some scissors. I’m talking about editing now. I’m talking about your scissors. I’m talking about your mind. I’m talking about your soul. I’m talking about your emotions. I’m talking about who you process with. I’m talking about you making a decision in your life, «I will not process in my head any longer, because every time I edit in my head, every time I try to make sense out of my life in my head, it ends in the death of something I love». You kill relationships because you make edits in your head. «They didn’t do anything for me for Mother’s Day». (I’m getting out ahead of this one, everybody. I’m doing a little prepaid tuition here.) «They didn’t do anything for me for Mother’s Day». Or the other way around, like, «My mom wasn’t [this and that]».
I want you to understand about editing from the disciples. You are always editing, and you need help. The truth of the matter is you need help editing, because every time you make an overgeneralized statement… Imagine the statement the disciples could have made here. They could have said, «This is unfair,» and they would have been right. They could have said, «We have God’s favor,» and they would have been right. What was important about this moment was not the event but the intention of the author. The author is God. So, they understand in this moment, «We have to get into a place where we can process». Your process, a lot of times, and how you deal with the thing that just happened to you is more important than the thing that happened to you. You could have the best thing happen to you, but it can backfire if you process it without God. If you get a promotion, and it turns into pride, pride comes before a fall.
So, you’ll go back and say, «If I had given God more glory for what he did and leaned into him more, then he could have sustained what he started, but I got high and thought I got there without God, and then life had to pull me down, because I got prideful when I got high». Any process that does not start with God is doomed. Any process that does not start with God is dead in the water. That is why they came together in this place to pray, and that is why they reported, «They told us not to preach anymore». What has the Enemy been telling you? He has been telling you, «You’re not good enough to do this». He has been telling you, «You’ve run out of time, and it’s too late for you in your life». He has been telling you, «You will never be free of this thing. Maybe that thing. Not this thing. It’s just what you’re going to pass down to your kids. You did the best you could, but give up now. There’s no need to even try».
What has your Enemy been telling you? I think we need to take the Enemy’s words over your life to the cutting room. Stop saying, «I’m in a bad season». You are in a season, and some days are good and some days are bad. Sixteen hundred hours of footage into two hours. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible, and we get this entire prayer that they prayed. We’re going to look at it right now, because it is going to help you edit. Now, there will always be somebody to help you edit what happens to you in your life. When you start going through your life and saying, «Okay. What am I going to do in this decision? How am I going to respond to this?» you will always have help.
The Devil will always be there to help you, because he has scissors too. The Devil will be there to take out every kind thing, every good thing, every lovely thing, every generous thing. He might even cut away some of the good stuff you did to make you feel like you never do anything right. Have you ever had a good day with your kids, and then the last 30 minutes…? The cutting room. I’m not talking about film editing right now; I’m talking about knives and violence and cutting room and blood and shouting and cursing. A whole good vacation, and then 30 minutes from the house… Then you start thinking, «All of the things I did for you…» (Maybe this is just parental therapy right now, and maybe I should be paying somebody for this time.)
I noticed how sometimes the whole thing can go so well, and then something happens so bad. When I lay me down to sleep, it’s like the Devil wants to turn my bed into a cutting room and just start slicing me with all the stuff that went wrong today, slicing me with all of the ways I failed. Somewhere along the line, I have to stop the slicing and tell the Devil, «You are not here to help me edit. Get under my feet. I said, 'Get under my feet.' You’re not the director. You’re not the author. You are not financing this screenplay. You didn’t make me. You didn’t create me. You didn’t die for me, and you don’t get to drive me crazy. Get your scissors out of my spirit! Get your scissors out of this room! Get your scissors out of my mind»!
So, I need help, because so much is coming at me. I can’t figure out what to focus on. I need help. So much is coming and going. I’m confused. So much is being said. I don’t know what’s important. So many priorities are pulling at me. I need help. Just like the Devil wants to help you edit, so does heaven. So does the Holy Spirit. You thought the Holy Spirit was just a goose bump. You thought the Holy Spirit was just a good feeling. You thought the Holy Spirit was just… That’s all good too, and we get all of it, we do all of it, and we want all of it, but what about when the Holy Spirit brings some scissors? Yeah, get surgical with the Enemy.
Now, I can’t cut out what happened, but I can refuse to make it the definition of my identity. It is not the definition of your identity. It is not. So, we talked about the review, and the fact of the matter is some of the things we say about experience are just not true. We will say to people, «Oh, I’m sorry you’re going through something right now, but don’t you know we grow through what we go through»? No, we don’t. Not automatically.
If that were true, why did you go through it 15,963 times last month? You don’t grow through what you go through. Sometimes you go through something, and then you create something else to go through to keep you distracted from what you went through that you’ve been going through for the last 37 years. Don’t lie to me. If you grew through it, you’d be through with it. Here is what is true. While we do not automatically grow through what we go through, we grow through what we go over with God. That’s the process of review.