Steven Furtick - Control Is Costing You Peace
This is an excerpt from: All You've Got To Do Is Don't
So, I want to preach about what to do in don’t season. When you feel the presence of God, that is a wonderful time to praise God, but I want to preach about the season when you don’t, when you don’t believe the words that are coming up on the screen, but you sing them like he saved you to believe them not just feel them. I want to preach about don’t season today. Don’t season, when she’s got a ring and you don’t. I want to preach to empty ring fingers today. I want to preach to don’t season. I want to preach to when people call them and ask them to go to parties, and they don’t call you because you are trying to live differently.
I want to preach about don’t season. The reason we don’t preach about don’t season is because it doesn’t clip good for TikTok. Nobody wants to hear that the same God who will bring you into a due season will walk you through a don’t season. There are some things (God, help me preach) that can only be learned about God in the don’t season, when I don’t feel encouraged; when I don’t feel hopeful; when I don’t know what to do, but I do the last thing he said; when I don’t doubt in the darkness what he showed me in the light. There are 500 of you who are in a don’t season today, but you did what you did when you came to church because God is who he is whether he does or he doesn’t do what you thought he was going to do when you thought he was going to do it. Oh, I feel it.
Somebody shout, «This is my season to do it when he doesn’t». I thank God for the times I stand up to preach to you and I feel like he’s given me a word and I know what he told me to speak. Those are wonderful times. They are cotton candy and licorice and Blow Pops and Jolly Ranchers. Oh, how sweet it is to know that God spoke to me, but I’ve still got to do it when I don’t. You’ve got to do it when you don’t, bro. I’m going to say it real nice. Forget your feelings. Stop sowing to the flesh. Sow to the Spirit. That’s Galatians 6:8. Because if we sow to the flesh, we from the flesh reap corruption, but if we sow to the Spirit, we will from the Spirit reap life. By the way, what you sow to is where you reap from. So, whenever you’re doing good, do it to people, but not for people, because if you do good for people, then you’ve got to get good from people, but if you do good for God, then whether people do good back to you or not, you will reap from the Spirit. I wanted to tell you something Jesus said, but I want to give it to you in three points.
Now, you’re going to have something to write down today so you will have proof that you went to church. Number one, the thing I hear the Lord saying for everybody who is in a don’t season of your life is don’t hold too tight. Or maybe grammatically it should be tightly, but you can either write it down how it sounds cool or how it’s correct. The cool way to say it is «Don’t hold too tight». How many times was I worried and so I was weary? I thought it was the work, but it was the worry. Now, Galatians 6:9 says due time is God’s job. God will give you the strength to do your job, but not his. God will give you the strength to do good. He said, «Don’t grow weary of doing good». God will give you the strength to do good, but he will not give you the strength to do God.
So, one enemy of kairos in your life, when God aligns things in your life… If one enemy is comparison to somebody else’s kairos, another enemy of that is control. If the metaphor of this is sowing a seed… He says, «Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season that seed will become a harvest, and you will reap if you don’t give up». If that is the metaphor, then the seed is not effective without release. So, there is an element of control of timing. We all want to put God on our chronos. We want God to do his kairos in our chronos, to do his stuff on our schedule. Now, I preach about this all the time, because our deadlines kill our kairos. That’s why he said you’ve got to understand due season. God does stuff. How many agree with that? I should make a point and put that on the screen. God does stuff. God does stuff on his schedule. How many agree with that?
So it’s due season. Don’t hold too tight. Don’t strangle a seed. Don’t hold too tight. When I first started lifting real heavy weights (and, y’all, I can lift pretty heavy weights), I got an injury in my elbows, and I came to Chunks, who is our executive pastor of the church. He used to be a physical therapist. I said, «I guess I’m going to have to stop lifting so heavy. I’m lifting so heavy my elbows are hurting». And he looked at me like he had seen this a thousand times. He goes, «You’re not lifting too heavy. You’re not lifting too heavy. You’re gripping too tight». He said, «You’re holding those dumbbells…» At the time, I was bench-pressing 95-pound dumbbells on an incline bench. Yeah, some heavy weight. (He hasn’t been excited all day. I’ve been talking about the Lord, and that’s the first clap I got out of him right there. I’ll take it, brother.)
Do you remember when I shared this back when COVID first started, LB? He said, «You can lift more if you would fix your grip. You can lift that weight if you would change the way you lift it». So, one of the things I have to come back to again and again in my life is «Am I weary because of the work…» Because sometimes you have to narrow things down. «…or am I weary because I’m worrying about the work»? Which leads me to point number two: don’t time travel. Don’t time travel. Jesus said clearly in Matthew 6:34, «Do not worry about tomorrow…» Time travel. «…for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own». So, am I tired because of my to-do list or am I tired because of my tomorrow list? Remember the first time I went to Australia to preach? I was so jet-lagged, because when you go to Australia, it’s like a 14-hour time difference. You cross over the International Date Line, so you are literally in tomorrow. Your body comes from yesterday into tomorrow. That’s what happens. And nobody told me how bad the jet lag was, so I flew in the same day I had to preach the first session.
So, this is my first time preaching on the continent. Right? I’m just landing, and back home it’s, like, 7:00 p.m. and in Australia it’s 9:00 a.m. So I figured I’d freak the kids out. Holly was putting them to bed and I FaceTimed. I opened the blinds, and the sun was, of course, shining brightly because it was 9:00 a.m. in Australia and it was 7:00 p.m. where they were, so it was dark outside. They were so confused. «How is the sun up»? They were very young, you understand. They’re much more sophisticated now. They understand the solar system in all of its complexities and sophistication. «How is the sun up over there when you’re in Australia»? So I told them, «I’m in tomorrow». «I’m in tomorrow». They thought that was so cool. Just before we hung up the call, because I had to go preach and they had to go to sleep, one of them looked at me and said, «Hey, Daddy, before you go, can you tell us what happens tomorrow»?
Isn’t that a powerful thing to have a father who’s already in your future? Come on. Isn’t that a powerful thing that Jesus said, «The pagans run after all these things…what to wear, what to drink, what to eat,» all of the things we put on our to-do list. But Jesus summarizes all of those worries down, all of those worries that have you so weary and running around and now can’t sleep even when you have time to sleep, because when you should be sleeping you’re scrolling, and you’re scrolling when you should be sleeping because you’re trying to see something that will soothe something from trying to control something that is outside of your control. So now, not only am I gripping too tight, but I am trying to do today from tomorrow. I am worried about tomorrow, but tomorrow has somebody already in it who controls it, if I’m a Christian.
If I believe in God, if I believe in Jesus, then I have a father who is already in the future. There are some of us who are spiritually jet-lagged because we get to tomorrow too soon. You keep crossing over the International Date Line. You are not only thinking about tomorrow; you are thinking about ten thousand tomorrows from now. Why am I tired? Why am I weary of doing good? Because I am no longer only focused on the good that God has given me to do today. I am focused on the good I am concerned he will not do for me tomorrow. But if he was good to me yesterday, and if he’s good today… If God is good, then all the time… I will bless the Lord at all times, and his praise will continually be in my mouth. So, I can plan for tomorrow, but the part I can’t plan for I can pray about, and the part I can’t pray about I can praise about, because even when I don’t know what to pray, God is already in tomorrow doing what he needs to do. Do season. Do season.
Sometimes you’ve got to say, «God, you do it. I can’t. It’s do season. It’s time for you to do something about this, God. I’ve tried everything I know to try. I’ve said everything I know to say. I’ve wished everything I’ve learned to wish. I’ve followed everybody I thought to follow. I’ve asked everybody whose number is in my phone, but I need to call on somebody who’s not in my phone. I need a father who’s in my future who knows I need these things, so I can seek first the kingdom». You keep talking to yourself about tomorrow, and you’re not in it, so now you’ve got jet lag, because you’re trying to go to tomorrow with today’s strength. I told you your to-do list just got shorter. You can put your plan for next month on there. We all have to keep calendars. We all have to do chronos, but kairos can swallow chronos like that. I was meeting with some pastors a couple weeks ago, and the Lord told me to tell them this.
«Some of you are worried that the time you took to be at this meeting is going to cost too much and you have too much to do to be here, but you flew in and you sacrificed to be here, and God can do something in one moment that will make six months of meetings unnecessary when you get back home». Do you believe that? Or you might have to have the meeting, which gives me my third point. Don’t hold too tight. Don’t time travel. Don’t time travel to tomorrow, and don’t time travel to the past either. Do you think you got a DeLorean up in this church? You think you’re Marty McFly up in this church?