Steven Furtick - What Are The Chances? (01/30/2026)
In Mark 14:10-16, Pastor Steven Furtick shares how Jesus challenges our human categories through Judas's betrayal, the common man with the water jar, and the Passover preparations already made. The sermon asks "What are the chances?" to show God works in conflict, the common, and coincidences, revealing His presence where we least expect it and calling us to obedience that uncovers divine preparation.
What Are the Chances? Challenging Our Categories
I've been looking forward to sharing this word with you. Mark, chapter 14, verse 10 through 16. Would you mind standing for the word of God? I know we just sat, but it's good. It's good. I'm helping you exercise your legs, maximizing your time. You're getting a little workout up and down, and exercise your spirit as well.
Okay, Mark, chapter 14, verse 10 says, Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over. Greek paradidomi.
Verse 12. On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus' disciples asked him, Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?
So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, The teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. Would you touch your favorite neighbor and tell them it's already ready? Make preparations for us there. Where? Where? There. There.
Verse 16. The disciples left, went into the city, and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.
Look at your neighbor one more time. I won't make you do it again, but look at him one more time and give him my sermon title. It's really a question that, to me, the text provokes. I want you to look at them and ask them this question, which is also my subject. Ask them this. Say, What are the chances? Please be seated again.
When God Challenges Our Categories
I don't know about you, but I hate personality tests. I think they're useful for certain people. It's just that I can never remember the results of my tests. I also think something about the nature of a personality test seems off to me. Depending on what mood you catch me in, I will answer the questions very differently. Even depending on what five-minute window you catch me in, I have multiple personalities.
I wish you would look at me like you don't. I will follow you home and watch how you act when you're not in church. We will find out that you can be one person in one context and another person in another context.
Yet our minds are always trying to find ways to categorize life as we're experiencing life. It's a good thing that our minds are wired this way. It's really a good thing, because too many things are happening to us all the time for us to process all of them on an individual basis.
What your brain does in an attempt to help you from blowing up is to group different stimuli according to past experiences through the power of association. Your brain is always looking for a way to categorize experience. Your mind is trying to judge at any given moment whether a certain environment is safe or dangerous, positive or negative.
A lot of times this is happening even at a subconscious level. Sometimes you don't even know why you don't like somebody that you just met. You haven't even had a real interaction with them yet, but the way their nose looks is just like your ex-husband, and there's no chance that somebody with that nose could have a good heart. Say amen.
Some people annoy you before you even know them just because they remind you of Bob. Maybe they're not a bad person like Bob was, but they kind of talk like Bob and walk like Bob, and now you hate them and you hadn't even gotten to know them because you've categorized them according to an association.
Yet I have found that our associations are not always accurate and our categories are not always correct. I think one of the first things that God does in our lives when he comes in through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is to challenge our categories.
You see this through the New Testament, that after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, various disputes broke out amongst those who claimed to be his disciples regarding the nature of true faith. It was that the Jewish people could not accept this infusion of Gentiles because to have a Gentile worshiping in a Jewish context did not fit their category of righteousness.
So we've got to kick them out because they don't fit our category. Usually when something comes into your life and you have no pre-existing category for it, you dismiss it by calling it weird. I don't like that song. Why? It's weird.
You find out sometimes that some of the things that you call weird in one stage of your life or that you call bad at one stage of your life or that you call failure in one stage of your life, later you will learn to put it in a completely different category. Because one of the things that Christ does when he comes into our lives is to change our categories.
Jesus as the Ultimate Category Killer
Paul knew this. This is why he said after rising to the top of the religious ranks of his day, that what I used to count gain, I now count as loss. What I thought mattered didn't matter as much as what really matters, but it took some time for me to mature to the point where I could challenge my categories.
Some of the things that we will pray away in one season will be our very praise reports in the next, because we will realize that unless we had been afflicted, we could not have been humbled to the point to really know the presence and power of God in an intimate and real way.
So God challenges our categories. This is why they killed Jesus, by the way, because they could not find a category for who he was, how he taught, or the miracles that he performed. He did not come from their rabbinical schools. He was the carpenter's son. The carpenter's son certainly could not be the Christ.
They could not wrap their minds around the fact that the Savior of the world could be born in the backwoods of Bethlehem. It did not fit their category. They could not understand why he didn't wash his hands like he was supposed to wash his hands. They couldn't understand why he would be comfortable eating with sinners and rebuke the religious elite.
They could not understand why Jesus would, in many ways and in many situations, confront their religious tradition, opposing the very values that they held so dear. So what did they do? They crucified him because they could not categorize him.
A lot of times people will reject you because they can't find a box to put you in because you represent a category-killing God. Your God will not be limited to one economic background, to one race. Your God will not be limited to one way of thinking. Your God will not be limited to one personality type.
And you see this theology entering through the Apostle Paul in the book of Galatians, the third chapter, where he says in Christ, there's no longer Jew nor Gentile. Those old categories don't exist anymore. I don't find my people anymore according to skin color. I don't find my people anymore according to gender. There's no longer male nor female, slave nor free.
It's no longer my position in a certain society that defines my worth. In Christ, we are one. The categories that were existent before he came have now been obliterated by one who is greater. He's a category killer. He's greater than all. His name is above all names.
I wish you'd shout in the back of Ballantyne. I love when people ask me, what kind of church is Elevation? I say, do you have a while? Because I can't give you the categories that you would normally typify a church with.
I can't tell you we're a white church. I can't tell you we're a black church. I can't tell you we're a traditional church. I can't tell you we're a non-traditional church. Well, we're pretty non-traditional. I probably can't tell you that.
Somebody will ask me a question like, is it a spirit-filled church? You know, Christians have all these little labels that we like to put to limit a church according to what we've experienced so that we don't have to open our minds to the fact that God might not exist within our denominational structures, but he might be bigger than all of them.
Where are the Baptists at? You have to shout. Where are the Methodists at? You have to shout. We have to shout together. We're in this thing together. I'm preaching like it's my last chance, you know. I don't know. You never know.
Are you a spirit-filled church? I said, well, some of us are. Sometimes. Depends on what day. And since they could not categorize Jesus, they crucified him. Since he did not fit their concept of who the Christ would be, they missed the opportunity to be impacted by his presence.
He came to his own, and his own received him not because he didn't look like them. He didn't do what they expected him to do.
God in the Conflict – Seeing Betrayal Differently
Elijah broke my heart the other day when he said to me, Daddy, I just don't like rock and roll music. My first thought was, Holly, I need a paternity test. This is not my child. This cannot be my child.
But then I realized it isn't that my son doesn't like rock and roll music. That's impossible. That's impossible. He's highly intelligent. He has good taste. He just hasn't heard the right rock and roll music yet.
So I gave him a tutorial, and Jimi Hendrix taught a class, and Kurt Cobain taught a class. All these dead instructors walked into the room and taught my child to love rock and roll. It's not that you don't love the music. You just haven't heard the right stuff yet.
And for all of you who say, I'm not a religious person, I get it. For all of you who say, I'm not a church person, I get it. But it might not be that you don't like God. It might be that you just haven't seen the real thing yet.
Because when you really see grace incarnate, when you really see the church alive, forcefully advancing, with love and mercy as our banners, you can't help but Bob your head. I like this stuff. It's the real thing.
Jesus came to show us what God was really like, and he changed the categories. I want us to spend a few moments today challenging our categories. I want us to look at the way we have divided our lives into assets and liabilities, gains and losses, problems and opportunities.
I'll do it from Mark, chapter 14, although my first instinct was, I can't preach this text in October. This is an Easter text, because I had it categorized. We want to make Easter three days out of the year, one week. That's cool, but Easter is meant to be a way of life.
In this text, we see Jesus on the verge of doing the very thing he came to do all along, and we notice resistance. In three different areas, we are going to see a challenge of the categorical system of who God is and how he works.
I'd like you to write these down. The first area I want to discuss is conflict. I believe that when God really gets a hold of your life in a surrendered way, he will change the way you see conflict.
I derive this insight from verse 10. Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money.
It's interesting that most of us would see Judas Iscariot who handed Jesus over to be crucified at the hands of Romans because of the impulse of the Jews to rid the earth of him as an enemy. Most of us would see Judas as an enemy.
Isn't it interesting that Jesus chose him as an employee? Why is that? Why would Jesus choose an enemy as an employee?
It took me back to something that Moses said to the Israelites when they were coming into the land God had promised them. He said, you're going to drive out all of the nations who live here so you can possess the land.
He said, but it won't all happen in the first year, because if all of your enemies went away suddenly, the land would be overgrown because you don't know what to do with it yet.
So when God brings you into a place or a promise, he will often leave enemies in the very land where he is settling you, because you are not ready yet for the full extent of freedom. And if he removed your enemies, your heart would be filled with pride.
The Scripture teaches that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So God will use your enemies to create humility so that he can be for you what you can't be for yourself.
I feel like preaching that, but that's not my message. Maybe another time. It said that Judas was looking for an opportunity to hand Jesus over. And while Judas was looking for an opportunity to hand Jesus over, Jesus was looking for an opportunity to die. It was this purpose he came for.
Peter could not understand why Jesus, at the height of his ministry momentum, would go to Jerusalem, the place where they wanted to kill him. In Peter's mind, this would be the end of all of the miracles. In the understanding of Jesus, this was the beginning of the very mission that he came to accomplish.
God has a different way of categorizing conflict than you do. So often in my life I associate God with comfort and the devil with conflict.
Watch me preach this, JJ, because we're going to switch columns today and see that sometimes it is the devil who will make your life comfortable. So you come to the point that you don't think you need God, and it is God that will allow a conflict that will make you fall down on your knees and ask God for the very grace that enables you to rise.
High-five your neighbors and say, I need a fight. I need a conflict. I need an insecurity. I need a giant. I need a Goliath. I need an enemy. I need a battle. That's the only way I can be blessed if I have a battle to fight.
I need discomfort or else I will become despondent. I feel the Spirit of the Lord in this place. I see you going home and relabeling conflict as opportunity.
How dumb would it be if I put down the weights because they got heavy and expected any muscular improvement? We do it all the time. We run from conflict and pray for blessings. We are running from what we're praying for. How can we receive it?
Sometimes we run from relationship to relationship, because once it gets past chemistry, we don't know what to do with conflict. Chemistry can make a baby, but in order to raise a child and to have a family, you better know what to do with conflict.
So Jesus chose within his very ranks… All of y'all over the age of 60, tell me if I'm telling the truth right now. If you don't learn what to do with conflict, it will follow you and wear a different costume into the next relationship you ruin, because you never learned how to deal with the real conflict, which is within.
When you have walked with Jesus a little while, you understand that Judas was on the same payroll as Peter. Jesus called Judas friend and told Peter, Get behind me, Satan.
Set that up. One time when Judas was getting ready to betray Jesus, the gospel writer recorded it this way. He said, What you're going to do? Do it quickly. Let's get this started, because the sooner I die, the sooner I rise.
And if I rise, and if I ascend, I can send the Holy Spirit to be your comforter. Let's go ahead and get this over with. Whatever you have to do, do it. Hit me with your best shot.
I know one thing. When it's all said and done. There will be glory after this.
God in the Common – Finding Christ in Everyday Signs
I am convinced that the sufferings of this present time… I can't preach this point too good, Clemson. I have to get to point number two, which is Jesus changes the way I see the conflict and the way I see the common. The common.
It's interesting to me that Jesus Christ, who spoke stars into their place, who causes the earth to rotate on its axis and revolve around the sun, the source of all life, the one by whom, for whom, and through whom all things were created, would choose something so silly to identify the place of his last meal.
Yet when the time came for him to go to Jerusalem from Bethany, the scripture says it was on the first day, verse 12, of the feast of unleavened bread. This is a festival that the Jewish people would have been familiar with. For us it's arcane.
Its meaning is tucked away in the symbolism of the unleavened bread, which Paul will later describe as being a representation of how when we let a little bit of yeast into a lump, it takes over the whole thing. How when we're not careful about what we allow into our minds and our imaginations, before long we become enslaved by things that we once wanted to escape to.
So the narrative of the people of Israel was this. God brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. One of the ways that he did that was through an event that they commemorated called the Passover.
They took the blood of a lamb and put it on their doorpost so that when the firstborn of the Egyptians went down, all of their children would survive. It was a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the world.
Now each year these people would come in the hundreds of thousands to Jerusalem to eat what was called the Passover meal. This was the time when Jesus chose to die. He did not die on accident. He did not die out of time.
He knew that the moment had come for him to pay the price for your sin and mine. He used Judas' deception to bring him to the place of his destiny, but he did it through something so common as a meal and a cross.
The disciples wanted to know, where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover? Shall we get the sauces ready, the spices and the bitter herbs? Where would you like to eat the Passover? Jewish law commands we eat it within the city. We can't eat it in Bethany. We've got to go to Jerusalem. Where should we go?
Now here's what I love about God. I don't know if you knew this or not. This is not a Halloween message and I'm not endorsing Halloween or any of that stuff because I know how some of y'all are. But God has many costumes.
I need to preach this to you. God has many costumes. A lot of times why we can't find God in our life is he's wearing a costume that we don't recognize.
Check it out in Exodus. The people needed water in a dry and weary land. Water came springing forth out of a rock. What was that rock? Paul said that rock was Jesus Christ in another form, but it looked like a rock. It was God in a costume.
When the people didn't know where to go, God led them with the pillar of cloud. Paul tells us that that cloud was Christ and it represented baptism, but they didn't know it at the time because the cloud was God in a costume.
When it came time for the Savior of the world to be born, he did it like a baby, not like a king and not like Thor. He didn't come down with lightning bolts and flashes in the sky to announce his arrival. He snuck into the earth like a rock, like a cloud, like a child, riding on a donkey, lowly, and humble in a costume.
As a matter of fact, let me blow your mind for real. They were preparing a Passover lamb, and they were talking to the Passover lamb, and they didn't even know that they were talking to the one who wants what they were looking for.
I think sometimes I'm walking right past God, and I don't recognize him because he's dressed up like ordinary.
Jesus said, some of you don't visit those who are in prison, and you don't visit those who are in need, and you don't do anything to help the least of these, but what you fail to recognize is that when you walk by them, you walk by me.
He was the rock. He was the cloud. He was the child. He was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. How can someone as cosmic as God come as something so common as a lamb? That's what John the Baptist said. He said, Look! The Lamb of God!
Why did he have to point him out if he was the Savior of the world? Because he looked so common, he knew that without an announcement he would be missed.
This is so powerful, because if God is in the rock, and God is in the cloud, and God is in the stable, and God is in the Passover meal, and God would use an instruction as simple as find a man with a jar….
Come on. Can't you do better than that, Jesus? Where do you want us to fix your Passover meal? It's cool. I have a place, and I'm going to give you a sign.
Since God is in the cloud, he can make a cloud form over the house where they need to eat, and it can spell out here with an arrow pointing to the house. Go into the city. I know it's crowded.
You have to understand, Jerusalem was packed like Concord on a Nascar Speed Week. It was packed like Coachella.
Jesus sends him in to a city that is not very big, that would be overrun with six times its normal population and says, you'll see a man carrying a water jar. Follow him.
This poor dude with the water jar. You want something? God said, I want it to happen like that. I'm not going to use a spectacular sign. I'm going to give you a simple instruction.
When you see the man with the jar, if you have the faith to follow him in a house you've never been in before, when you get there, you'll find the preparations already made.
See, you got it out of sequence. You keep waiting to obey when God confirms, but God says, I only confirm after you obey. I don't confirm before. I confirm after the fact.
So, go into the city and follow the man, and I'm going to move through what you call coincidence. The coincidence often looks a whole lot like the miracle.
Seeing God's Hand in What We Call Coincidence
Just thinking back over my life, I realize that it has become more difficult for me the longer that I've walked with Christ to really admit that some of the things that I write off as a coincidence were really his hand at work.
Remember when I told you, Eric, that we were driving? It was like a week after I had given my life to Christ. I almost got hit by that car. I don't know if you remember this. I remember it so clearly.
It was the first time I saw, wow, if I had gone when I was supposed to go and if I had not stopped, that car that plowed through that stoplight would have hit me at age 16.
I remember feeling so grateful that just seeing something that could have happened that I guess you could call it a coincidence if you want to, but something in me believes that the reason my car didn't go at that moment… I forgot to tell you this part. The car was old and it wouldn't go. That's why it didn't go.
Why wouldn't the car go? Because my dad bought it at Dick's Auto Shop for $800? Is that why my Chrysler laser wasn't go? Was it a coincidence? Or was it God needed me to be here for a little while longer?
Was that a coincidence? Was it a coincidence that Holly asked me to get her an ACT pre-test and she didn't know she would make all of my babies and carry the fruit of mine?
Well, anyway, she couldn't have known at the time that I would change her name, but was it a coincidence that of all the high school students at Revival, at First Baptist Church Monk's Corner, she chose to walk up to me?
I'm telling you, there was something magnetic on me that day. It wasn't good looks. I didn't have that going for me, but something drew her over. Was it a coincidence?
Was it a coincidence, Amy, that I was sick the first time I met your husband, and I had to ask him, do you know the name of the doctor? He said, I'll call you with the number, and he called me later that afternoon to give me Chris Denning's number because I didn't know anybody because we had just moved to Shelby.
Was it a coincidence that I said, hey, why don't y'all come over to dinner Tuesday? Holly will cook fried rice. We will eat carbs and be fat together.
Was it a coincidence that you and Holly like to shop together on Saturday and spend all of our money so that one day we could start a church, travel the world five continents later?
Was it a coincidence that I had strep throat? Was it a coincidence that you stood in my book line at Liberty University until the very last person had gone and considered walking away because the line was too long?
Was it a coincidence that I never signed books because I feel sometimes like I don't get to spend enough time with people, and it feels a little impersonal for me? Not that I don't want to meet people, but I talk to them for 20 minutes each, and then the whole line gets mad, and they start riots, and it's a bad situation.
Was it a coincidence that that day I did, and was it a coincidence that you were the last one which gave me more time to talk to you and that I wrote GTA, Greater Things Ahead? I didn't know you were from the greater Toronto area and that we would have a campus in Toronto one day.
Was it a coincidence that a wrestler was in my hotel room in Colorado who would visit Africa with me just years later as we preached the gospel?
Was it a coincidence that Adrian Dupre tricked us both into being in that program by describing it to us in a way that wasn't exactly reflective of reality, but God somehow tricked us into that hotel room in Denver, Colorado, so that we could get chased out of Chinese nightclubs together and one day do menace?
Was that a coincidence? Because I imagine from the standpoint of the man who carried the jar of water, this was just a coincidence. But from the standpoint of the disciples, they knew this is something more.
Sometimes I think faith is just as simple as second-guessing what you call coincidence. It may be a coincidence. I'm not suggesting that you turn into one of these people who blames everything on God.
Do you know what I'm talking about? Have you met these people? I have a parking space right at the front of the gym. It was God. That wasn't God. You needed to walk. That's why you went to the gym for exercise. The Devil gave you the spot closest. If it had been God, he would have given you some extra exercise.
Challenge for categories. Was it a coincidence when Holly said, I want to go to this farmer's market? Was it a coincidence that I agreed to do it? That's a miracle.
But we were on vacation at Sullivan's Island. Why not? Was it a coincidence that Addie Mae saw me from her cupcake booth? Was it a coincidence that she walked over and said, I'm sorry to bug you? I can see you with your family, but I listened to your podcast. Can I get a selfie?
Was it a coincidence when she said, I'm going to call my pastor? He's going to be so jealous. Was it a coincidence when she said you should come to revival at my church next week?
And I said, I don't have anything but shorts. I'm on vacation, sweetheart, but you can write down the dates of the revival and I'll put them away and never look at them again because I'm on vacation.
I didn't say that, but I thought it. Was it a coincidence that somehow I kept the piece of paper and something told me to check in on it and I found out that one of the guest speakers had canceled?
Was it a coincidence that Addie Mae had mentioned to me that when she called her pastor, he said that they had invited me to speak at the revival, but my office had told them that I was on vacation that week?
Was it a coincidence when I looked up the number and called him and when he called me back, he said, we just came out of a prayer meeting and we were praying that God would provide a speaker for us tonight and you're the one we originally requested for this night?
Was that a coincidence? Was it a coincidence that they wanted to prepare the lamb and they were sitting with the lamb? Was it a coincidence that in all of Jerusalem, all of the people carrying water jars, all funneled to this one man who had to be in one place at one time so that he could lead them into the room?
You say you don't see any evidence of God's working in your life. What you've been calling coincidence, God calls evidence. That's how you know I was with you.
Was it a coincidence that you came to church today? Was it a coincidence that this is finally the weekend where you said, okay, I'll go to your stupid loud church if you'll leave me alone? Was it a coincidence that I was preaching on coincidence for you to be here?
And I'm not telling you that you always have to tell people that it was God that got you the table at the restaurant and that it was God that put gas in your car. It wasn't God to put gas in your car. You put gas in your car. If you don't put gas in your car, your car will run out of gas. Don't get weird with it.
I'm just saying what Thomas Edison said, he said, coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.
What I think we've got to learn to do in our lives is to see Christ in the coincidence.
Recognizing Divine Appointments in Everyday Life
The next time it happens… It's going to happen this week. It happened to me last week. It happened to me last week that I was walking through the airport, Newark, New Jersey. Praise the Lord for a four-hour layover in Newark. What a blessing.
Might as well go over to this bookstore. Oh, I recognize that book. So-and-so mentioned that book on their podcast. So-and-so happened to be a person I've been in contact with, that I grew up with, and I want to do a special project with this person for our church, but I haven't been able to connect.
When I said so-and-so's name, I walked around the corner, and I saw a little flyer on the window of the bookstore, and it had so-and-so's name on it. I said, that's weird. I was just saying his name, and there he is on that flyer.
Then I saw where it said book signing. I said, well, that's weird. Who does a book signing in an airport? Isn't that crazy? I just said his name, and there's his picture, and there he's doing a book signing in this airport.
I wonder when he's doing it. Wouldn't it be weird if he was doing it today, and he was doing it today? Wouldn't it be weird if he was doing it right now, and he was doing it right now?
Wouldn't it be weird if I texted him, and he texted me back, and we spent an hour together, and we set a date to do the thing we were trying to do? Wouldn't it be weird if all that happened, not when I was trying to make it happen,
What I'm saying, if you have ears to hear it, is that Jesus Christ wants to recategorize some of the things in your life that you saw as a coincidence.
Many of you came to Charlotte against your will. You came because this is where the job brought you. Is it a coincidence that you're in Charlotte, or is it an assignment?
Is it a coincidence that of all the people who could have been carrying a jar at this moment, that jar happened to be at that spot? It's no coincidence.
Before they ever got to the spot where the man carrying the jar was, Jesus had already had a conversation. All you've got to do really to see God move in your life is to keep a room ready for him when he comes.
You will find a large, spacious room already furnished, already prepared, awaiting your obedience. It's already ready, but you won't see it if you miss it in the coincidence.
Tradition holds that this upper room was situated in the highest place in the whole city of Jerusalem. Isn't that cool that Jesus knew the exact place where he wanted to take the Last Supper and institute communion?
Isn't it cool that he prayed his high priestly prayer in John 14 through 17 from the highest place in the city? It couldn't have been just any house. It had to be that house. It had to be that time. It had to be that day.
It's no coincidence. God is in the coincidence. God is in the common. God is in the conflict.
You keep stepping over the rock, and there's water in it. And you keep missing the cloud when it moves, because you're looking down, and you're sitting with the Lamb, and you're missing him.
Closing Prayer – Looking Again with New Eyes
Stand to your feet. I want to pray for your life this week particularly. I would like to pray for those of you who, in one of the three categories that I mentioned at the beginning…
And I want to thank you so much for not leaving when I begin my opening prayer. It makes it so much more effective when we pray, when we don't have a lot of movement, when God is touching people's lives.
And I really appreciate that so much, your willingness to stay with us through this moment.
I want to pray for those of you this week who are going to have Addie Mae at the farmer's market come up to you with a cupcake or are going to be Addie Mae bringing the cupcake over.
God is setting you up to be an answer to a prayer that you don't even know has been prayed. It's no coincidence.
All I want you to do this week is give it a second look. When the conflict comes, look at it a second way. Look at it a second time. Look at it a different way.
Is this a conflict, or is this an opportunity? Is this just a cross, or is this a resurrection? Is this a storm, or is this a stage for God to reveal his glory in my situation?
Is this just a meal, or is this a message? Is this just a coincidence, or is this my calling?
It could be a coincidence, or it can be a miracle. What are the chances that of all of the men in Jerusalem carrying water, this one would be at that place at that time?
What are the chances? I'll tell you the chances. One hundred percent, because when you walk in obedience, the outcome is guaranteed.
This will work. I said it will work. It will happen. It has to happen. If I walk where he told me to walk and do what he told me to do at the right time, it has to happen.
It's no coincidence. God has you here. It's no coincidence. What you went through, it wasn't to destroy you. It was to develop you.
God is in it. God is in the conflict. God is in the common. God is in the diapers. God is in the math homework. God is in the traffic. God is in the layoff.
I'm telling you God is in it. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.
Help us to see it, God. In every season and situation, help us to find living water in dry places.
I thank you for your Spirit, the Comforter who guides us into all truth. I lift up each circumstance represented in this room today online, our family joining us around the world, those watching on television.
I pray that you would change the categorization system by which we have organized our life to prioritize comfort and convenience over calling. We want to look for you.