How To Be Content Steven Furtick - Steven Furtick

Thou shalt remember to rejoice. That staff member who took

the offering at Ballantyne.

Said he was forgetful.

I don't know if you heard him. He said, I

tend to be forgetful. I forget my keys. I forget

my wallet. That's not the worst thing you can forget, Zach.

The worst thing you can forget is what he's done

for you and how he's blessed you and how he's

kept you. Y'all look kind of forgetful today. Sometimes you

come to church and you remember to brush your teeth,

but you forget to bring your praise.

You forget to stir.

Up your spirit. And that's what the worship leaders do.

The team does it. They say, come on, let's lift

our hands. They're reminding you that God is worthy of

your surrender. Real maturity, real contentment comes when nobody has

to remind you to rejoice. I didn't tell them this

last night, but y'all are deeper. He just told them,

rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice.

Why'd you say it again?

Because it's crazy how quick you forget. It's interesting how

selective your memory is. But a selective memory can actually

work to your advantage if you remember.

in order to rejoice.

So when you evaluate any given day or any given

period of time in your life, when you evaluate a year,

if you come to the end of one year and

the beginning of the next, you will make a movie

in your mind of how this year went.

Some scenes you will delete. Some scenes you will enhance.

God has given you editing software in your spirit to choose, Jeremiah,

what you call to your mind. And what you recall

to your mind determines the revelation that you will have

and the faith that you can walk in and the

contentment that you will enjoy.

Where are my rejoicers?

Do you understand the power of this? In Hollywood, they

call it final cut. It means you can shoot the scenes,

but somebody has to decide which ones go on the

big screen. And I want to tell you, God has

given you final cut over your life when you open.

Your mouth and bless.

The Lord at all times. I'm not blessing him in

spite of the battles. I'm blessing him because of the battles.

That's what gave me proof and assurance of his spirit.

Lock it down. Lock it down.

Oh yeah, Paul said, thanks for the gift. Almost forgot.

Thanks for the gift. I want you to watch because

Paul is awesome at theology, but he is terrible at

thank you notes.

His mom raised him right in a lot of ways.

You know, tribe of.

Benjamin, Pharisee of Pharisees, sent him off to study with Gamaliel,

all that. But the boy, he needs some help on

this thank you note. Now, let's just, I mean, he's

a human, right? He's not Jesus Christ, right? And I

know it's the Bible, but come on, Paul, listen to this.

How would you like to receive this thank you note?

I rejoice greatly in the Lord that at last you

sent me a little something.

No, it's cool, it's cool, it's cool. I mean, I know.

Watch this.

He said, indeed, you were concerned, but you had no

opportunity to show it.

See what he did?

There was a period of silence where the people who

should have been helping Paul weren't helping Paul. And he

could have interpreted that in one of two ways. They

don't care about me. Nobody cares about me. Nobody is

there for me. And I loaned them money. And now

I need some money. You know these little things you

tell yourself. The interpretation.

The assumption. How do you interpret silence?

Silence. How do you interpret the times? Here's the key

to contentment. It's the second key. You've got to refuse

to resent. I don't know whether Paul was in prison

in Caesarea or whether he was in prison in Rome,

but I can tell you what prison he refused to

live in, the prison of resentment. There is no prison

like the prison of resentment.

There are no windows, only bars. When you lock.

Yourself into your situation, I'm looking at some of you

right now and I know enough about you to know

that you could have resented your situation. That's the good

thing about being the pastor of the church and not

some little guest speaker.

I know what some of you.

Could interpret your situation to mean.

Or, Paul said, I.

Choose to assume that you wanted to help me.

But you couldn't.

That's a decision, and it is a key to contentment.

If you don't resist and refuse resentment on every level,

you will be locked inside a prison of your mind's

own design.

Look, this isn't just people.

Sometimes in life you're making decisions about how to view

the support you were not given at a young age.

There are two ways to view it. You can live

in resentment or you can live in contentment. Those are

your choices. You can say to yourself, you know, it

wasn't right that I didn't have, and it wasn't cool

that I didn't get, and I could be so much

further along, but that is a prison called resentment. God

wants his children free. You can look at your brothers

like Joseph and say, it doesn't matter why you threw

me in the pit. God got me to Egypt anyway,

and now I'm here to save your life because I'm free!

The only one really free was the one who was

in prison.

He sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives. That's

what Jesus said. What does that mean?

I will not live another day in my life resenting

what they did, what they said, what they didn't do,

who I'm not, what I can't be.

It's over.

I refuse to live in resentment when Christ died to

set me free.

I'm done with this prison. Okay? Thou shalt... What's the

first one?

Thou shalt remember to rejoice, refuse to resent, and you're

going to love this one. Thou shalt appreciate all seasons.

A little technical nuance. When he says, you renewed your

concern for me, it doesn't give the image.

That is behind the language.

The Koine Greek is an expression here that says you

caused your concern to bloom.

Or blossom again.

So what Paul is doing, he's saying there are seasons

to life, and I made it through winter, and I'm

grateful that spring is finally here. Do you see how

important this is to discern the seasons of your life

if you are going to live in a state of contentment?

I had to learn this early as a pastor because

there are certain seasons that Jesus could preach and attendance

would be down in church. Church attendance is seasonal. Well,

the first year I didn't know that. The first year

I thought the church was falling apart, but it was

really just summer vacation. We love you, pastor, but we're

going to Disney World, and we will be back.

It'll come back around. This is what Paul learned. But

you have to live through.

Enough seasons, especially some losing seasons. In sports, they call

it a rebuilding year. It's code for we suck right now,

but we're trying to do something about it. And some seasons,

let me put it in a real profound way, some

seasons just suck. When you know it's just a season,

When you know that, yes, right now, the nights are

long and the days are short. Right now, I'm lonely

and I feel barren, but touch somebody.

And say, it's just a season.

It's just a season. It's just a season. Now, the

worst thing you can do is to get stuck in

a season in your mind that God is trying to

bring you out of in your life.

So Paul says it was.

A long winter. Perhaps Paul wondered, do they care about me?

Do they remember what I did for them?

Do they have any loyalty whatsoever?

But he chooses to see it as a season.

And to everything there is a season.

.

It's a season thing. I know how to have plenty.

And I know how to be pruned.

Both are growth.

And the key is to be as content in one

season as the other. I often wonder, does stuff really

make you more content or does it just make you

more insatiable?

Quieter it gets, the more accurate the teaching.

It's kind of weird because it's easier sometimes to be

content when you don't have something that you want and

you think you're going to get it one day because

in that season you can tell yourself, I'll be content when.

But what about when you got it and the contentment

Didn't come with the package.

Just thinking with you here.

I think the key is you've got to, if you're

going to survive the seasons of winter while waiting on spring.

To come and live in contentment.

I think you've got to keep, here's number four, thou

shalt keep a secret stash.

Paul says, I got your gift. Finally! Finally! Thanks for

the gift. It's about time. No, I'm good. It's okay.

I know you didn't have a chance. I know there

was something that was keeping you from it. I choose

to believe the best about you. Verse 11. And I'm

not saying this because I'm in need. This thank you

note just gets worse and worse and worse.

I got your gift. It took a while. I didn't

really need it.

I think what he's saying is, I had my own

to live off of, and I wasn't waiting for you

to give me something. This is the best thing you

can do if you go over to somebody's house for

the first time and they're feeding you and you don't

know about their culinary ability.

Pre-eat. Pre-eat.

It's just a way to make sure that whatever they

serve ….

So you ought to come to church full.

That way, no matter who preaches or what they say,

I ain't before I came.

Oh, come on, magnify the Lord with me.

Let us exalt his name together. I got what you

said and I appreciate it, but I didn't need it.

Don't somebody say it's nice, but I.

Don't need it.

It's nice to be appreciated but i don't need to

be appreciated to serve god i got my own stuff

i get high on my own supply help me somebody

that hasn't been in church.

53 years got a secret stash.

I got some scriptures I can preach to myself.

I got some.

Songs I can sing all by myself.

I got some truth I.

Know down in my soul.

I can do all.

Things through Christ who strengthens me.

It's not from me, but it's in me. I got

a secret stash. Hey, thank you for watching.

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