Steven Furtick - God Promised You The Victory
Just as contagious as faith is, so is cynicism. If you have cynical people holding up your mirror, you'll always feel small. You'll always feel smaller than your challenge, smaller than your giant, smaller than your addiction, because you're not looking at your God, but when your Maker is your mirror…344, 345, 346… I'm still counting. God is not done yet. His mercies are new with every rising of the sun. He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it. One thing about a mirror is it always shows you the image in reverse. God knows how your situation turns out. God knows how your story ends. God knows what he put in you. When this message flooded into my heart, I was like, "It's going to change somebody's life, because they've been looking in the wrong mirror. They've been looking at their mistakes".
When your mistakes are your mirror, you stay on the outside of Canaan even though you have the strength to go in, not because you are small but because you see small. So, the spies came back, and they were like, "Hey, Moses". Remember, Moses has dealt with rejection his whole life. A lot of times, when people don't accept you it's because they have rejected themselves. Not all the time…a lot of times. This is a really important point: everybody's acceptance is not a blessing, because the majority might be the wrong mirror. Ten out of 12 said, "We can't go in". Ten out of 12 said, "They're too big". This is what they said: "We went to the land, Moses," and they became the mirror for the millions of people who had a promise from God but hadn't possessed it yet.
This is why it's so important who you're around, what you take in, what you look at. You become what you behold. So the people are giving a report, and they're like, "It's a great place. The valleys are fertile. It's a rich land. We brought you back some grapes". The grapes were so big they had to carry them on poles. But then they stopped looking at God, stopped looking at grapes, and started talking about giants. When they looked too much at the giants as their mirror, they saw themselves as grasshoppers. That's what they said. Numbers 13:33. They said, "[There were] the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim)…" "There were giants in the land, big, strong adversaries that we would have to dispossess to take the land". "…and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers…" Not to God. "…we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers…"
Most people see God really big. Even those who barely believe in God see him really big. It's not how big you see God; it's how much you believe that God is in you. "…we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them". Our reflection determined our reality. What got me about it is that they could have seen the exact same situation in reverse. Watch this. They were like, "The giants are too big. God promised us the victory, but I guess we can't go in because of the size of the giants".
Reverse it, because God always shows you the image in reverse. It's like this: God has already promised us the victory, and the giants are so big. If the giants are that big and God has promised us the victory… If what is coming against us is that great, how much greater must God be within me? Greater is he that is within me than he that is in the world. The size of my giant is a proof of the size of my God. Thank you, Lord! If God is letting me experience a challenge this big… See, God is trying to use your enemies to show you how valuable you are in his kingdom. Why would you let your enemies hold your mirror anyway? Who cares what the sons of Anak think you look like? That's what Caleb said. He was like, "Shut up! We can do it". It's in the Bible. Caleb said that. He said, "Shut up"! He silenced the people and said, "If God is with us…"
My Maker is my mirror. I always thought it was funny, because he's like, "Hey, Joshua, I know you're rolling these little lots around on the ground to figure out who lives where, but remember, God gave me a promise that I would live in the high place. I want Hebron". Three thousand feet above sea level. You've been living at "see" level. You've been looking in the wrong mirror. You've been consulting the mirror for your flesh. You put 20 minutes into your makeup today, but you didn't get in this mirror right here. This is a mirror too. You've been struggling over external issues, but what about what's in you? James said something curious. He said if you listen to the Word and don't do it, you're like a man who looks at himself in a mirror… "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God".
My Maker is my mirror. I can't run around to people who are struggling with their own sense of self to determine mine, and I can't use a situation either. That's why I love Caleb. It's almost like he's lying. He's 85, and he's talking about, "I've still got it". What mirror are you looking at? "I've still got it". I'm not talking about the flesh; I'm talking about faith. The wilderness can do one of two things to you. It can kill you or it can make you stronger. Caleb said, "All that I went through… I didn't get bitter. I didn't get the wilderness in me, even though I went through the wilderness. In fact, everything I went through over the last four and a half decades only served to convince me that much more that I've still got it. I mean, if God promised it to me back then and saw me through all this, I don't want to live at the level of feelings". You settle too low. You settle for what you see. You settle for what people say. You settle for old templates. You settle for old scripts. You settle for emotions.
When you are seated in heavenly places with Jesus, you have to settle up. You have to get up above what you see, above what you feel, and above what you've been through. He said, "I want to live where the blessings are. I want to live where the battles are". You can't have a victory without a battle. God is raising you up right now. He's doing it through a process. The level you will settle on is the level that you see yourself. It makes me so sad to think of how many times you and I have gone to the wrong mirrors, so we see a grasshopper when we're really a giant. We see a failure when really it was a lesson. We see what's missing because we can only see through the filter of our fear. God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness". You are not my maker. You will not be my mirror. When God said, "My name is I Am" to Moses, he was trying to get him to see "You are as I am". That's what a mirror does. God says, "I want to see myself in you".
When God sees you, he sees himself. He sees his Son. Christ is the image of the invisible God, and if he is in you, he is more than the world against you. I want to pray for a few hundred people today. You will know who you are if the message resonated with you in a personal way. You've been going to the wrong mirror. You've been consulting physical, natural, relational elements, incomplete, fragmented elements, and you don't know who you are right now. You're stuck between two realities. The message God gave me was your Maker is your mirror. And you know what's beautiful? You're his. He wants to use you to reflect himself to the world, so he's going to give you some stuff. Some of it's going to be giants in front of you. Some of it's going to be giants inside of you.
David was good at killing giants as long as they were standing in front of him. It was the ones within him that took him out. Some of them are going to be short-term. Some of them are going to be long-term. If you go to the wrong mirror, you'll always feel small, but if you will learn how to worship and get in the Word of God and believe the promise that he spoke over your life and get in this mirror… You are not going to win over insecurity looking in the mirror of Instagram. It is only going to show you what you're not, what you can't, and what you won't. But if you get in this mirror, the Word of God can do something for your spirit. It can make you stronger in your spirit than your enemies are in your situation.
Now stand up on your feet. I want to pray with you. I want to prophesy over you. I don't want anyone moving or leaving. The Lord said that this word would hit deep for the ones who needed it, who have been seeing themselves according to past experiences, have been looking in a rearview mirror at something that happened and are about to wreck in the face of their future. He said that today he wanted to give you a different mirror. Caleb said, "I'm not just settling for my lot in life". "I'm not just settling for depression". I was hesitant to preach the message because I thought people would hear it like it was some "God, give me my BMW. God, make me famous". That's not what Caleb said. He said, "I want the challenge. I want the altitude. I want the opportunity to prove God again. I want to live at the high place. I want to be my higher self. I'm still strong. I've still got it. My faith went through testing 45 years and I survived. I've still got it. I'm not ashamed of what I went through. It proves that God was with me. I've still got it"!