Steven Furtick — How to Turn Your Sorrow Into Strength?
And I came to speak to somebody today, who has some triumph in your life, but you've also got some trouble. You've got some joy in your life, but you've also got some sadness. Along life's way, along this journey that we're on, God does not promise that it will all be good. Now he did say in Romans 8:28 that he works all things together for the good of those, who love Him and are called according to His purpose. But, based on the construct of that sentence, I take it to mean, that if He has to work all things together for the good, that assumes that everything is not good before, He gets ahold of it. That means there must be some stuff that's good, some stuff that's not, and what He does, is He takes what's living and what's dying, and He makes it all work together for the good to bring forth His purpose in your life, say amen to that.
If you've lived a little while, if you've ever lost anything, if you've ever been hurting, but had to smile, if you've ever had something to celebrate about, and if you wait until it's all good in your life to give God praise and to be happy and to celebrate victories and to have peace in your heart and to enjoy what God has given you - you never will, because it's never all good always in our lives. There's something being born, there's something dying, I have to accept as the pastor of a church, there are always gonna be new people coming in and some people live in. God bless them both, because God knows the ecosystem of his intention for my life, and He knows how to make certain things leave and certain things come, but He'll never leave me alone. That's one thing I can count on, that whether something's dying or whether something's being born, God is superintending my life. And he sees every loss, and he sees every gain, and he measures all my pain, and he catches every tear, and he knows what to give to me, and he knows when to give it to me, and he knows what he's assigned me, and he knows when to fulfill the order that he's placed on my life.