Steven Furtick - Start With What God Said
This is an excerpt from: Reverse the Ripple
A rock in the hands of a shepherd should not bring down a nine-foot giant, but you can’t tell the size of the ripple from the size of this rock if it’s in God’s hands. So, we came to remind the Devil today, «My rock might be little, but a little rock can make a big ripple if God gets ahold of it». Let’s switch this thing around. Let’s stop looking at the size of our resource, the size of our strength, the size of our knowledge, the scope of our understanding to determine what God can do. Let’s stop letting the waves of unbelief block us from the reality of the ocean of God’s provision.
Let’s reverse the ripple. What I mean when I say, «Reverse the ripple…» Well, I mean a few things. Let me break it down a little bit. The first thing I mean by «Reverse the ripple» is instead of starting with what you see, start with what God has said. That’s life-changing right there, if you would start with what God said. Many times, we, like the nation of Israel in Joshua, chapter 4, come to places in our own lives where we need God to do something that if he doesn’t do it… This is not like, «I need God to help me wake up on time».
You can set an alarm clock for that. This is something different. One of the things I respect about the Bible is it will repeat something over and over again, because we learn through repetition. If you look at Joshua, chapter 4, there are several times that God tells Joshua, «Take these stones out of the water». Kind of like they’re building an altar. (Holly preached at Reflect on the altar. Go on her YouTube and watch that message, and wear your steel-toed boots, because she was stepping on our toes, but she did it so sweetly. She did it in ballet flats. It was unbelievable.) The Lord is telling Joshua, «Before you get to your first fight, I want you to approach it from a place of thinking about your future».
Now this is marvelous. Frame the fight you’re facing from a place of future faith. That is often very hard because we’re just in the moment. Remember, it’s like that rock and that ripple. Knowing in the moment what the ripple is going to be… It’s not always predictable in the spirit, is it? You came to church because she was cute and asked you to come. Then you messed around and got too close to the boat, and Jesus hooked you and pulled you in, and now you’re one of us. Boy, God is tricky with that ripple. You didn’t even know. «I was just going to get her to shut up, and now I’m bringing people. I don’t know what happened». Tell your neighbor, «It’s the ripple».
God will drop something. God will just put you somewhere. God will drop you somewhere. You will think you’re there because it’s a new job, and then you meet Gene. Gene is going through chemotherapy, and you went through chemotherapy. So now you minister to Gene out of what you went through so you can comfort him with the comfort by which you have been comforted. This is the ripple. By the way, what if we did that more often? What if we started asking, «God, what do you want to do not just for me but through me? God, who can I touch? You touched me. Who can I help? You healed me. Who can I be a blessing to? You blessed me». When are you going to hand somebody a $50 bill one time instead of waiting on one? When will you be the ripple?
Now, this is not my message so pace yourself. I’m just setting up this idea of Reverse the Ripple. I have learned in my life that if I do not consider causes, I will spend my life chasing consequences. Consider the cause or you will spend the rest of your life managing consequences. Consider the cause or you can spend the rest of your life looking for tips on TikTok for how to be more peaceful. But after you have done everything TikTok told you to do… I mean, you could do everything. You could walk backward barefoot on the grass, sipping a protein smoothie with collagens in the smoothie. You could do all of that. You could do red light, blue light, black light, strobe light. You can do all of the lights on your face. You can do all of it. You can meditate. You can pontificate. You can bloviate. You can hyperventilate. You are not getting peace until you consider the source. You can get all of the tips you want, but until you get the truth, you will not come through this Jordan.
Here’s what I’m trying to say. You can’t fix the ripple until you find the rock. I think a lot of religion is ripple management, behavior modification, empty tradition. «God, I promise I’ll never do it again until 3:30, and it’s 3:25 right now». That’s ripple management. That’s white knuckling, not worship. Ripple management cannot bring you to a place of restoration. It can only bring you to a place of relief temporarily. So, what are the areas in your life right now where you are trying to fix ripples, but you don’t even know what rock was dropped that caused it to begin with? This is like quoting Bible verses on top of trauma you won’t deal with.
This is like switching friend groups every time they see what’s really secret and hidden in you and call it out and confront it. It’s going to get quieter and quieter. It’s going to be a reverse ripple today. Usually we start small and get big. We’re going the other way today. We’re reversing the ripple today until we get down to what is the thing that was dropped that caused you to do it. «What was dropped that caused me to do it? Why did I lose my temper»? «Because they’re annoying». Really? The people at work were annoying, but you didn’t go off on them because you knew you couldn’t get away with it. You went off on them at home not because they’re annoying but because you know they’ll forgive you. The real rock that made you do it was the fact that you don’t take responsibility for it. Until we get real about this stuff, we will spend our entire lives riding the waves of our ripples, going, «I’m so anxious. I’m so anxious. I’m so anxious».
Well, cut your thumb off. Jesus said it’d be better to lose your whole hand than go to hell. I’d rather fix it where the rock dropped than live the rest of my life frustrated by the ripples of it. You say, «This is just an Old Testament story». Are you absolutely crazy, out of your mind, ridiculous? Do you not understand this is the entire thread of the New Testament? It is law versus grace. It is us never really understanding… I hope to come back to this in a moment if this sermon comes full circle. Speaking of full circle, there is a place called Gilgal in Joshua, chapter 4. If you’ve never heard of it, you can be forgiven, but the word Gilgal actually means circle. Isn’t it interesting in a passage that demonstrates the power of «The Lord spoke to Joshua, Joshua spoke to the priests, the priests spoke to the people, the people did what God told them, and it was a demonstration to the nations that didn’t even know God…»
Isn’t it interesting that circle after circle after circle after concentric circles…? Let us not forget about the circle of the generation that isn’t even old enough to ask the question yet that is being affected by their faith or lack thereof. Which brings us back to the Red Sea, which was the central motif of Israel’s identity. Now, Brueggemann says it is the… I think his exact wording is the primal narrative, but I like to simplify things, so core story. Is that better? Primal narrative. It sounds like you have to pay to hear about something like that, and you didn’t pay anything to get in here today. So core story. When God brought them through the Red Sea was their core story. In fact, even when Joshua says, «Go get some rocks to tell your kids what God did…»
Why would he think like this? Surely you have more important things to do. Namely, when they get to Gilgal, they have to cut off everybody’s foreskin, because none of these people had been circumcised yet. I’m not going to illustrate how this whole text is circular. This all has to happen at Gilgal, but before you get to Gilgal, before you go to Jericho, before you even get to the place of cutting away that’s going to happen before you go in, get some rocks to tell your kids what God did. I like that. And you’re going to tell them what God did, not what you did. All you did was walk. Y’all, we take too much credit sometimes. I saw you hustle and grind on Instagram, but I also saw you hide and grumble and groan and grieve. I saw all of that too. The real testimony of it from my life is what God did.
I want to thank our creative team for the video they showed earlier in the service of the ripple effect of this ministry. Thank you. That was excellent. That was well done. It wasn’t bragging on us, but it was showing the people that all the way from Ballantyne to Boise to Botswana… I’m going to show you something that’s going to blow your mind. I got teary on the front row. I said, «Furtick, keep it together. Save your emotion for when you get up there. Do not leak this thing out on the front row». I’m like, «But, God, this is touching me right now». He said, «Stuff it down and share it with them». So here’s what it is. You said «Woo»! when I said, «Boise, » and there was somebody on the video who said they were from Botswana, and we’re here at Ballantyne.
It took me back to just yesterday, a story I was telling my son on the second row because he asked me something about the early days of this church. He asked me something about the phase when we were just moving here and we only had our core team. He asked me something about the way it is now and the way it was then and going out to minister to people all over the world and the reach and the ripple of the ministry. He didn’t say «ripple, » but that’s what we were talking about. I was sitting there talking to him, and I said, «I’m sorry. I have to compose myself for a minute, because this conversation takes me back to how before I would come out to our team and tell them, 'We’re going to reach the world. We’re going to touch the world. God is going to use us. God is going to do something. It’s going to be amazing…'»
It takes me back to how before I would go and boldly speak to them, I would sneak into the bathroom and lock myself in the stall, and I would fight back my own reflex to walk out, because how could I walk out and tell them this when I was wondering, «Did I mislead all of them? Can we really do this»? I stood at a Jordan and I thought God spoke, but sometimes you think it and don’t feel it when it comes time to do it. I locked that stall, and I said, «God, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to have to be you. When I tell my kids one day from Ballantyne what you did all the way to Boise, what you did all the way to Botswana… When I tell my children what a faithful God you’ve been…»
Truer words have never been spoken. My stones will tell my story. My sleepless nights will give way to a new day, and my stones will tell my story. We’ll shout at Ballantyne, we’ll shout in Boise, we’ll shout in Botswana, and we’ll shout until you get the breakthrough! We’re going to turn this thing around right now. You keep talking about how big these Amalekites are, how big these Canaanites are. We need to reverse this ripple. It doesn’t start with the size of the Canaanites; it starts with the size of the God you serve. I have a big God. I have a good God. I keep telling God how big it is. I want to tell it how big… If you saw my God, you’d understand my shout. Shout now like you need a wall to fall!