Steven Furtick - Fix Your Focus
Thank you so much for coming today. It has been a great couple of weeks for me. I've been traveling maybe more than I remember traveling in a long time to preach, preaching my little head off, and God has been faithful. I've been in the last four weeks to Sydney, Australia, preaching and London, England, preaching and this week Seattle, Washington, preaching and New York City or actually I was in Brooklyn. I don't want to be offensive, because if you say it wrong people get all upset. I was in Brooklyn, technically speaking. It has been crazy, but God has been faithful. You haven't even missed me. I've been here every single week, jet-lagged and all. God is good.
I feel so energized about this new teaching series called The Other Half. We're going to talk about your relationships. How many are excited to talk about your relationships? Take a moment, if you would, and pity me. Would you pity me? Because how would you like to speak about relationships to a room this diverse? Would you enjoy that? Do you want to trade places? I know I've been doing this a while now. I know I look 23, but I've been doing this for a minute. I know everybody has different kinds of reactions. We're going to talk about relationships four weeks. Some people say, "Well, I'll see you in five. I'm not sitting through that". Really they do.
Some people have been through terribly painful relationship situations and you almost think you can predict what the preacher might have to say about relationships before he even says it. Single people are already judging me before I even start my sermon. "Here we go. Great. You're going to tell me to wait. Wait for the one. You know, if he hasn't come in my life yet, I'm not ready. My roommate was totally less ready than me. You're going to tell me not to have sex. If I have sex I'm going to get a disease and go to hell when I die". What I'm going to do is go straight to the Bible, and then if you don't like what I have to say you can take it up with my boss. Turn in your Bible to Matthew, chapter 6, verse 31. We want to get into this series today called The Other Half.
If I were to ask you the question, "Are you in a relationship"? and your hand didn't go up, you would misunderstand the very nature of what we intend to communicate. This series is for everyone. Would you touch your neighbor and say, "This is totally for you"? When we do it we'll talk a little bit about if you're married. That's important, but there is half of the church that isn't married. Statistics say half of marriages end in divorce. Let's be honest. If we don't have our relationship with God right, our relationship with ourselves right, we're never going to have our relationship with others right. So I hope you'll just listen with an open mind today.
Let me pick up in Matthew, chapter 6, verse 31. I'm probably partial to this Scripture. My dad loved the Sermon on the Mount and he would read it every morning, so he challenged me to memorize it. I memorized some of it, but he memorized the whole thing. I didn't memorize the whole thing, but I like this part in Matthew, chapter 6, verse 31. I never really saw it as a relationship Scripture, but now that I read it in this season of my life I see that it's nothing if not a relationship Scripture. It is all about intimacy and provision. You'll see what I mean.
Jesus says, "So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans [people who don't even know God] run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them". Somebody say, "God knows what I need". Tell your neighbor too, in case they've been staying up stressing about things that are outside of their control. Tell them, "God knows what you need". God knows what you need. That's a good thing to say anytime in your life you feel like you don't have enough or you don't have what you want or you don't have what others have. Just remind yourself over and over again, "God knows what I need".
Sometimes the reason we can't receive his provision in some areas of our lives is because we don't have our priorities aligned. Sometimes what we interpret as a lack of provision on God's part is a lack of prioritization on ours. Can I go further? He says in verse 33, "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well". God says, "When you align your heart with my heart and your plans with my purposes, I will give you the things the rest of the world has to grasp for. I will give you the peace that millionaires can't buy. I will give you…"
Every good and perfect gift comes from above, and because I'm in relationship with God I have access to everything I need to be who he has called me to be, to do what he has called me to do. Knowing these things, I seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these other factors will be taken care of by my Father. "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has trouble of its own". The people who wrote the Scriptures didn't put a chapter marker here, so I'm going to keep going into chapter 7. It says here that this is a new chapter, but to me it's the same thought. This verse comes next. This is the verse everybody who smokes weed likes to quote.
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother [or your wife, your husband, your boss, your kids], 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Do not give dogs what is sacred…"
I'm speaking to somebody right now who is selling yourself short and lowering and compromising your standard. Jesus said, "Do not throw your pearls to pigs". Maybe you need to send a text to that guy before you leave church today and say, "Give me my pearls back". Don't even explain it or put a verse by it, but you'll know what it means. "If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces". I'll finish with verse 7, because we have to stop somewhere. "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you".
I want to call this message Fix Your Focus. I believe the only thing you are ever always in control of is your focus. So many factors in your life are beyond your control, but one thing you can always control, if you learn how to do it and if you're committed to it, is your focus. I think many relationships fail not because of a loss of love but because of a loss of focus. That would be one of the reasons a church fails as well, while we're at it. You lose your focus. When you stop caring about what God cares about, God will no longer back you in your endeavor.
Sometimes what we call failure is really just broken focus. It's the reason the passion that exists in some parts of relationships when it's getting started tends to leak and you wonder where it went. It wasn't necessarily that you lost the love; you lost the focus. It's very difficult to keep that first love focus in any relationship. I think Jesus is calling us back to focus. If you'll notice the bread on the sandwich from the little passage we just read, both of them start with seeking. "Seek first his kingdom. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find". On both ends of this passage, where Jesus is speaking on several different subjects, is this idea of focus.
Especially in our culture, I think the focus when it comes to our relationships tends to be a little broken. When I say it's broken I mean it's misplaced and misleading. Sometimes we're so focused on falling in love that we are very uneducated about the process of staying in love. There's a romantic notion that is reinforced with every romantic comedy that the falling part is where the excitement is. I was looking at an article, getting ready for this series, where the author said, "There's a reason fairy tales end in marriage: because nobody wants to see what happens next". Nobody wants to talk about the other half.
So today as I open this series (and it really will get better every week; I hope you'll bear with me today as I lay a sort of foundation) I want to talk about four decisions of focus that you are making every area in your life. I know some of you should be teaching the marriage seminar, all of you patron saints of marriage. You've been doing it 30 and 40 years and all of that. I'm not quite on your level yet. I just celebrated my fourteenth year. While somebody is clapping for that, somebody else is like, "Pfft, that ain't nothing. I've been married longer than you've been alive, boy. I'm not going to let some whippersnapper in some skinny motocross jeans talk to me about… Tight jeans up here trying to tell me how to be married".
Regardless of the stage of the relationship, it requires a certain kind of focus. That's all I want to talk about today. I want to lay out four areas. I want you to take notes. Everybody write something down. If your neighbor isn't writing anything down it's because they don't love God and don't care about his Word. Now watch this. The first area you have to decide… You have to decide your focus, because you can always decide your focus. You can't always decide about all the factors. You can't always decide if somebody is going to stay with you or leave you. You can't always decide if somebody is going to ask you out. You can't always decide if they're going to text you back, but you can always decide your focus.
Is your focus on finding or becoming? Jesus said, "Seek first the kingdom and the other stuff will move into position, but if you seek first the other stuff, then you will have no center of gravity for the stuff to revolve around". I've been teaching this for years. I used to go around to youth camps and I would teach a dating seminar and I would say… It's not an original quote from me, but I would say it all the time, because I think it's true. "Happiness isn't finding the right person; happiness is being the right person".
I'll take it further since your applause is so tepid. If you find the right person and you are not the right person, what do you think you're going to do to that poor right person? Please. I'm not suggesting that if you're not married or something like that it's because you're not ready yet. All we have to do to disprove that stupid theory is to look at some of the people who are married. Married doesn't equal ready. I could offer you many examples of that, starting with myself.
What I am saying is that it is important to God that you have the right people in your life, but the only way you're going to have the right people in your life is if you will be the right person in your heart. That's the only way you're even going to attract them to begin with and that's the only thing you can control. I can't always control whether this person comes into my life, but I can control the kind of person I am. You know how you have little memories from your childhood that are so random you wonder how they're still up there from all these years and you kind of wish you could delete them because, honestly, you need that space for more important things, like your children's names and stuff that you forget sometimes.
I have memory… I don't know why. I remember in sixth grade they gave us the Berkeley County writing test. I remember the prompt of the Berkeley County writing test when I was in the sixth grade almost word for word. "Pretend that you are on an adventure or journey with your friends, and on this adventure or journey you come across a valuable unusual object. Describe the object". A couple of weeks later, the teacher walked in with all of our writing tests and made an announcement. She said, "I've never had this happen before in however many years of teaching, but every single one of you failed the Berkeley County writing test". We laughed. She said, "It's not a joke".
She said, "You wrote beautiful essays. You went into great detail elaborating on the journey with your friends, but that was not the writing prompt. The writing prompt was not to describe the journey. The writing prompt was to describe the object. All of you wrote essays about walking through the woods with your friends. Some of you traveled across the seas with your friends. Some of you flew through space with your friends. It was highly entertaining, but none of you described the object".
The object of relationship, the object of love is not that somebody else would complete you. I'm sorry, Renee Zellweger, but you got it wrong. Your line was touching; it just wasn't true. Jerry didn't complete you. Touch your neighbor and say, "You can't complete me". We teach this stuff. No wonder single people have their fists up ready to fight me when I want to preach about marriage. The way we preach it and teach it… We teach it like until you get married your life hasn't started. I only have one question to ask you. If that's true, how can you worship Jesus? We worship a guy who stayed single till they killed him. I'm not saying you have to stay single and be like Jesus. I'd be a hypocrite to say that. I'm saying if Paul would have waited to fulfill his purpose until he had somebody to complete him, we wouldn't have 23 percent of the New Testament. We teach it wrong. I've taught it wrong.
In the book of Genesis God is describing marriage. He's talking about Adam and Eve and he says, "The man shall leave his father and mother and go be with his wife," and it says, "The two will become one". Let me tell you what it doesn't say. It doesn't say, "The halves will become whole". Yet we teach it and we treat it and we expect it like the halves are going to become whole. I found out if you go into a marriage half, the two halves are going to make hell, not whole. So what is your focus?
My best friend in the world is here. I mean, Holly is my best friend, but my best friend who's a guy…other than my sons. One of my friends, Eric, is here. He has been my buddy since high school, really since middle school. We got in trouble together, and Eric is still saved most days. He came over to my house the other day. We were going to work out and he was all grumpy and sluggish and everything. I said, "What's wrong with you, man"? He said, "I've been up since 4:00 a.m". I said, "Why"? He said, "These kids, these punk kids in my neighborhood. They've been ringing my doorbell in the middle of the night. They've done it 10 times". He said, "I'm going to catch them, though. I'm going to catch them. I added a camera on my doorbell. I put a camera in my doorbell and I'm going to catch them, but these kids are smart. They're smart punks. They came up and covered the camera on the doorbell from the side. I'm going to catch them".
I stopped and asked him a question. I think it's a good question. I said, "And what will you do when you catch them"? Isn't that a good question if somebody is looking for a woman or looking for a man? What will you do if you catch them? We are so focused on the catching that we don't even pay attention to the commitment that is required. So what is your focus? Is it what you can control, which is what God is doing in your life, or is it finding? You have to find a woman. Then you have to find a ring. Then you have to find some money. Then you have to find a date to get married and a place to get married that everybody can come to all on the same day, working out different continents, people coming together from all these different places in the world.
You have to find the dresses for the bridesmaids, something they'll all wear and won't complain about that it doesn't look good against their skin tone. Then you have to find a house and find a job. Finding, finding, finding. Do you see the pattern here? God said while all of that has its place, if you will focus on becoming… Remember he said, "The two will become one". That's the focus. What are you becoming? It's a good question to ask. Another thing Jesus mentions is our tendency to live in another time. Let me ask my second focus question. Are you focused on then or now? He said, "Don't worry about tomorrow". Not because you don't have the tendency to or not because it isn't reasonable to. Just because it doesn't work.
You know the Corrie ten Boom quote. You may not know that she said it, but she said, "Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it only empties today of its strength". I believe that. While we've talked so much about the importance of not living in your past and the danger of living in yesterday, I certainly think a lot of relationships are sabotaged by things that happened before they ever began that weren't dealt with. We project onto other people trust issues that were developed because of another person's actions and start saying things to somebody we just met like, "Who's texting you"? It's not that you ever caught him doing anything. It's just that it has been done to you before. So now you're worried.
You're bringing the past into the present. That's dangerous. You have to deal with that stuff. However, because my text led me here, I was a little bit more fascinated with this idea of how many of us live not in the past but in the future. Jesus said, "Don't worry about tomorrow". It is equally important that we don't wish away today waiting for tomorrow to come. Tomorrow is a sexy place to vacation in your mind, because it's totally imaginary. Tomorrow is a wonderful place to visit in your mind. It brings hope into the present. I think it's cool to have a vision for the future. I think it's cool to think ahead, plan ahead, IRAs and all of that. I'm a big fan. I do think at the same time you can't live there. It's so nice to, you know. It's so freeing from the constraints of my current struggle, which is so real, to just shuttle myself to "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow…"
See how good it sounds? "I love you tomorrow…" You never hear anybody saying, "Today…" It doesn't even sound as good, does it? It doesn't even have the same cadence. "Today, today, I hate you, today; I wish you would go away". "But tomorrow, tomorrow, it's going to be better tomorrow, because my kids aren't going to be in diapers tomorrow. My kids are going to be out of high school tomorrow. I'm going to be an empty nester tomorrow, and I've built my identity around my kids tomorrow. I don't even know my spouse anymore tomorrow…" It's about focus. The only way to tomorrow is through today, so you have to live there. You can't do it like, "Well, if I had a man…" I know that's easy for me to say, but it's kind of easy for you single people to tell us what marriage is like too.
So we can all have a decent conversation. By the way, I would just put it out there to any of us who are married or single. Let's talk within the realm of what we know, not in the realm of what we think somebody… Have you ever noticed how easy it is for you to give advice when you're looking at what's in somebody else's eye? Jesus shifts gears in this teaching. He's going from comfort to challenge. God is good at both, so he says, "Hey, I've got you. I know what you need. You don't need somebody to complete you. You are already the total package. You don't need clothes or food, any of these things. I know what you need and you're good in my sight. Your life doesn't begin when the next stage starts; it starts right now. So don't worry about it. Now don't judge".
Just out of nowhere. What's your focus? Is your focus on what is not or what you've got? Everything I've preached to you has been leading up to this point, so it's about to get good. I want to show you real quick the two most important tools in any relationship. This is incidentally the only time you will ever see me carrying one of these, for illustrative purposes. One time Elijah saw me… He was about 7 and he saw me pull out my little toolbox about that big and he said, "Daddy, you have one of those"? It was a blow to my masculinity. I would say right now when you think about your intimate relationships… Intimate relationship can be with a parent. It can be with whatever. You do your own application. I can't do everything for you. I can put the food on the plate. I can't chew it.
When you think about that, the first tool you have in any relationship is the ability to magnify whatever you choose to magnify. Jesus said, "When you make that little speck that's in somebody else's eye some huge thing…" Now let's break this down, because if you're going to see a speck in somebody's eye… What do you have to be to see a speck in somebody else's eye? That's not something you see from a distance, right? You could have eye boogers all up in your eye. I can't see it from the stage. If I'm noticing a speck in your eye, that means we're close.
A lot of people fear intimacy, because I don't want you to see into me. I keep people at a distance. If I can stay up on the stage and only let you meet my representative but not see my reality, then maybe you'll stay in love with me. I'm scared to let you get up close, because I have this speck. People do the craziest thing. When you're first in a relationship with somebody you magnify all of the amazing things about them. "Wow! Look how funny she is". "Look how laid back he is". You don't know that laid back is really code for lazy, but you will if you marry him. It's amazing what you will magnify in the beginning of a relationship that will make you love somebody that you will take for granted when you get into the relationship and get close.
In any relationship or in any season of your life you choose what you magnify. I hear single people talking about they're lonely. I hear married people talking about they're lonely. I heard a married couple the other day talk about having no friends and it brought them to tears. Well, there was a time where they would have said to each other, "All I need is you". Then you get with them and you realize, "Well, they're not a savior, and if I'm going to be happy in this season of my life I have to choose what I magnify, what I make bigger".
What you magnify you get more of. Focus. I'm deciding any given moment in a relationship what I'm focusing on. I was so mad at my dad. I was so mad at that man, because he was impossible. In the last two years of his life he was impossible. He wouldn't let us take care of him, so he moved away. He went to go live by himself. He was dying, but he wouldn't let my mom take care of him. He wouldn't let us take care of him. Anytime we'd try to put a plan together he would just blow it up. I was so mad at him. It got to the point where anytime I would try to talk to him on the phone, we couldn't have a conversation. This went on for months. When we would get on the phone, he would go into a rage within two minutes. It would start here and it would quickly escalate.
I was so mad at him. I would send people I would pay for to go and take care of him and he would fire them. He fired four people I sent to take care of him because he wouldn't stay here and let us take care of him. I couldn't see at the time that he wasn't responding out of his own will; he was responding out of his pain. When you're in something like that, you don't see the person's intentions or you don't see the place it's coming from. You only feel how it's affecting you. I was so mad at him and I just decided, "Well, fine. If he has to die and we can't speak… I can't have somebody treat me like this".
I was so mad about it. In the middle of being so mad about it, my father-in-law said something to me that made me so upset, because the last thing you want to hear when you're upset is something like this. He said, "Well, try to remember the good times. He did a lot of things right". "Well, shut up". This is the one time you're not allowed to say amen while I'm preaching. It was Father's Day of 2012 or 2013. Forgive me for being imprecise on the date. My memory of it is that I was driving home from vacation with the family on Father's Day, feeling bad that I couldn't do anything with my dad, with my father-in-law's voice in my head. "He did a lot of things right".
I came to an idea, and I asked Holly if we could pull over and switch and she could drive, because we were going through the town where I grew up, where my dad was living by himself. I had the idea, "Write down one memory for every year that he was your dad and take it to the house and give it to him. One good memory from every year he was your dad". Man, I'm telling you, when I first started making that list my pen was moving so slowly. It was all I could do to get a letter on the page I was so mad at him. I was so mad at him because all I could see was how he was treating me right now.
When I started writing, I started remembering. The first thing I remembered was when I played on the Pirates and he was my coach and we sucked. We sucked so bad he wouldn't let any of us swing at the plate. He made us all bunt every time we were at bat for the whole season. So I wrote that down: "Bunting". It was my first word. It got me started. Then I remembered at about age 14 that he couldn't find a way to connect with me because I was into music and he was into fishing. He took me to a punk rock concert in Ladson, South Carolina. The worst music you've ever heard in your life was played in that VW hall that day, but he took me and sat with me. I wrote down, "Punk rock concert, Ladson".
Then I started remembering how after he gave his life to Christ he wanted me to go to church with him. One of his customers in his barbershop had invited him to their church revival. This was not like a Code Orange Revival that's uplifting. This was like a hellfire and brimstone revival. The preacher was preaching so hard. We went out to this little country church and my dad and I wondered, "What have we gotten ourselves into"? They seated us on the front row. We were there on the front row in this independent fundamentalist Baptist church. All the women are in dresses and everything. We're in tee shirts and we're sitting there in the church not knowing what we're getting ourselves into. The preacher got so fired up at one point this little boy stood up and shouted, but he didn't say, "Amen," "Praise the Lord," or "Preach, Preacher".
Here's what the little boy said. He said, "Let the wild hog eat"! I never heard that shout before. So I wrote down, "Let the wild hog eat". I got to the house and knocked on the door and handed him the list. I said, "Here". I didn't even hug him. I said, "Here, I made you a list, 32 things". He said, "How did you remember this stuff"? Because you choose what you magnify. Our story had a happy ending. We reconciled. Not right at that moment. At that moment I handed him the list and walked out. I didn't want to see him. But it started something. I know reconciliation is not always possible on that level, and I'm not even saying that it's always preferable.
What I am saying is that whatever you've lost, if you choose to magnify it, you're going to live in what you lost. Whatever they're doing to you right now, if you want to magnify that… You can forget the thousand nice things they said because of the one text they sent that said that one thing they weren't even thinking about, and in your mind you will begin to magnify. Man, we should use these more in dating, because we don't look for any warning signs in dating. We don't ask any questions about their bank account. "Well, they love God". Yes, but do they have grocery money? You need one of these in a dating relationship. You need to see as many specks as you can see. Then you have to use it for a different purpose in marriage. You have to use it in a close relationship where you're committed.
If you come to this church looking for crap to get mad about, let me save you a whole lot of time and searching effort. You will find what you look for. "Seek and you will find". Isn't that what Jesus said? That applies to the good things and the bad things. This is one thing my wife is really good at. I don't know if we understand the power we have to magnify things in other people that we can bring out of them, the good stuff. I don't know if we understand the power we have. I told you at the beginning of my sermon that I've been traveling a lot lately and preaching. When I do that, I always feel like I'm cheating home. No matter how much I try… I'm probably not doing as bad of a job as I think I am, but I tend to be really hard on myself.
Wherever I'm giving, I'm feeling guilty about where I'm not giving. Are you like that? It's like it's never enough, so I'm sitting there feeling bad. One Saturday morning, I had all of my notes for the sermon that weekend spread out on the table. I'd been gone somewhere else preaching all week, so I'm feeling kind of behind and just a little bit distracted. The kids are all around me. They're trying to get my attention. I'm paying them no attention. They're screaming my name and I'm not listening. I know I'm not listening and I kind of don't care because I have to get this sermon ready, but I kind of feel awful about it. I'm just feeling that thing like I'm stretched apart.
If you don't have a lot of little kids around, maybe this wouldn't apply to you, but I think everybody has felt this way at some point. "I can't give enough to anybody anywhere". I was feeling really like a failure. It was a very mild level, but I felt it. I was feeling uptight and all that stuff. I need to be a good dad, but I also need to be a good pastor, and I don't know how to be both at the same time. I'm sitting there feeling all this and the kids are yelling and I'm kind of mad at them and annoyed with them, but it's not their fault. I'm the one who has been gone. Holly speaks up and she goes, "Kids! Your dad is a great man. I hope when you grow up that you grow up to be a hard worker like your dad. He has been gone all week preaching, doing what God called him to do and providing for our family, and now look at him. He has these notes spread out all over this kitchen table".
Let me tell you something. In just one little speech she made me bigger. I'm telling you, ladies, you can make a man bigger. You can. You can make him stronger. You can make him bring in more groceries from the car. Just tell him how strong he is. I don't know where she learned this, but when we first got married, I was carrying in the groceries from the car one day. (I don't do that anymore. That's what I had kids for.) I was carrying in the groceries one day and I had a couple of bags, you know, bags around my arms, bags everywhere. I'm coming in the house and Holly said, "How do you do that"? I said, "Well, it's easy. It's easy for me".
I started curling the grocery bags. I put a grocery bag in my teeth. I put one around my neck. Why? Because she magnified something so small. You magnify the little thing and it gets bigger. You magnify what you don't have and it gets bigger in your mind until all you can see is what you don't have. Do you magnify what they're not or do you magnify what they've got? I think this makes all the difference. So what is your focus? Jesus said you can look at the speck or you can look at the plank. It's interesting to me, because knowing very little about carpentry I do realize the sawdust comes from the same material the plank is made of.
Usually when I see something in someone else that makes me angry or offended it's because it represents something that's in me. I told you there were two tools (and there are) when it comes to the relationships that matter the most and when it comes to the things that offend us in other people, because everybody has issues and most of us have a subscription. Do you know what a great dating conversation would be? "What kind of crazy are you? I can't tell from this distance, but if I get close to you…" All these issues… You have to decide, "Am I going to focus on theirs or mine"?
I think the key to this thing of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves… Sometimes you have to put down this and pick up this and just ask God, "So, Lord, what is it that you're trying to teach me or what is it that I can change? I tried changing Charlie and Charlie won't change. So here I am, Lord". In the words of the King of Pop, if you want to make the world a better place, where are you going to start? Sometimes you have to start with your own self. God says you can't even help the people you love when you're infected with the very issue you're trying to solve. It's "Love the Lord your God". That's one half, but it's also, "Love your neighbor as yourself". That's the other half.
You can't have this half right and not have this half right. You can't treat people like garbage and worship God at the same time. You can't get this right, though, until you get this right. You can't treat people well if you don't know God loves you, and you can't love God until you have received his love freely. That's what makes it a cross. That's what makes it complete. It's this and it's this. One thing I never noticed, though… Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength". We go around trying to love people and we're not even whole within ourselves. The other thing is that he said, "Love your neighbor as yourself".
I've always known that was a command, but it's also just an observation. The way you love your neighbor is the way you love yourself. If you haven't received God's acceptance of you, you won't be able to accept anybody else as they are, because you don't even love yourself. A lot of times it starts there. It starts with saying, "God, I can't go into these relationships anymore half empty and needing people". Sometimes I'm so needy. I was asking God the other day to help me not be so hard on others, and God said, "Well, first you're going to have to not be so hard on you". What starts here flows here, flows here, flows here. I just wanted to begin this series today asking you, "Where is your focus"?
If another person is at the center of your focus and they're responsible for the fulfillment of your joy, you're going to always be miserable. If you're trying to do God's job in fixing somebody else and you have a focus on what they need to become, let me tell you something. There is no worse strategy for your own personal satisfaction in your life than to place that responsibility in someone else's hands. For all of us who have been saying, "I need someone to complete me," or "I need you to complete me," or "I need this," the message I think God has for us today is, "Give me my job back. I'm a good God. I'm a good Father. I know what you need". Here's the difference between God and everybody else in your life. Not only does he know what you need; he has what you need, and he's the only one who has what you need.
I want you to stand up on your feet at every location. I want to pray for you. We're going to get into this over the next several weeks. We're going to get into it so deeply there's going to be healing that's going to happen in your heart. God is going to open… He said if you would knock the door would be opened. If you would seek you would find. Where is your focus? Let's take a moment before we rush out of here and honk at people in the parking lot after we worship God. Let's close our eyes and just lift our hands to heaven. Would you do that? Some of you have never done it before. Just go ahead and do it right now. Just lift your hands to your Father. I want you to begin to magnify the Lord and all of the good things he has placed in your life.
Some of you are lonely today. I understand and God understands. It's okay to be lonely. It's a part of the human experience. Jesus went through a loneliness so severe he prayed the cup would be passed from him. The ones who should have been there for him abandoned him in his hour of need. He knew what it was like to be lonely. He knows what it's like to be lonely, and he wants to stand up on the inside of you right now and remind you that he is your completion, your satisfaction, and your fulfillment.
Father, I thank you today for every person you brought to church. I thank you for the work you're doing in our lives. I thank you that we are full and complete in Jesus Christ, that we have all that we need in him. All we need is in him. All we need to be good husbands, to be good wives, all we need to fulfill your purpose in a season of singleness, all we need to be good parents, all we need to forgive people we need to forgive…all we need is in you. So our focus now is not on what we're not but who you are. We thank you, God. Let's begin to clap our hands for the awesome God that you are, for the amazing God that you are, for the strong God that you are, for the capable God that you are. Come on and praise him! When you praise him, when you magnify him, it releases his presence in your life. Thank you, Lord!