Desperate and Disappointed Pastor Steven Furtick

And I've noticed that when people get desperate, they start

doing things they wouldn't normally do. Have you noticed this

about yourself? That when you get desperate, you get edgy.

You get touchy.

And sometimes you're lashing out at people. And it's not

about the people. Like I had to explain to the

kids about my road rage. It's not really about the driving.

It has nothing to do with the driving. It's just

that dad finds this a convenient place to be shielded

and anonymous where I can let some stuff fly that's

been building up.

Y'all don't want a real preacher. JJ, you preach next week.

Fake them out.

It's a whole thing because they came together to quarrel.

And what they didn't know, couldn't know.

Is that they were on the border of Canaan, the

land that God had promised them was just a few

short months away. But in a time when they should

have been preparing to conquer, the enemy had them in

a state of conflict.

Don't you understand that the.

Reason that you've been fighting like you've been fighting, and

even the reason sometimes that the devil will get you

focused on fighting against people is because God is trying

to bring you into what he spoke over your life?

And the promise of his inheritance in the saints.

And now the closer you get to that promise, the greater.

The conflict is going to be.

I think one of the reasons that our church gets

so divided is because the enemy knows that if we

would ever stop fighting and focus on the mission that

we were given by our captain and the savior of

our souls we would be dangerous to the kingdom of

darkness but we can't come together because we quarrel too

much it never stops we never quit finding new things

to fight about It's not only that Christians fight against

other religions. We can subdivide on a multiplicity of different

levels of Christianity. And we can get into little groups

so that we no longer come together to lift up

the name of the Lord and to take.

This message to the ends of the earth.

But now we're fighting over a translation of the Bible.

Or we're fighting over what you wear to worship.

Or we're fighting over what specific nuance you believe about

the Holy Spirit. But I didn't come to quarrel, so

I don't need to fight with you. I came to conquer,

and I need you in my corner. And I don't

have energy to spend fighting against the people God called me.

To fight with.

So if you're black, fight with me. If you're Hispanic,

fight with me. If you're a woman, fight with me.

If you're young, fight with me. Let's get together, old heads,

young people. Let's fight this fight together.

And there's no water in the wilderness.

And when there is no water, when there is a deficit,

you start reacting.

Instead of responding. I'm going to preach this message, Holly.

I feel it happening right now.

Because what I want to say is forget about the

budget deficit. We got a whole lot more than a

budget deficit in our nation today. And it's a different

deficit than they faced. It's not a lack of water.

I feel like in our world today, we are severely

lacking in our ability to empathize with others because we've

got a surplus of opinions and a deficit of empathy.

Let me try another one. They didn't like that very much.

We have a surplus of information and A deficit of wisdom.

Because if we don't have insight into information, we will

get caught up in highlights and headlines and highlights and

headlines and highlights and headlines and highlights and headlines.

And I've been noticing about myself.

Maybe this is why I wanted to preach the series

that I'm having a hard time focusing.

Because you know, the devil's devices.

I think it's, I think I'm no neurologist, but I

think when it's getting hard for me to read three

sentences in a book and now I'm trying to swipe paper.

When I reached up to swipe a book the other day.

I thought I got to take my mind back.

It's a deficit, a deficit.

Where we have more ways to communicate. And we're connecting

less than ever. I think that's what the skyrocketing porn

rates are about. I think that's what the skyrocketing sleep

deprivation rates are about.

We are desperate to connect.

And we call ourselves connected and nothing could be further

from the truth. And it's too much. Costa called it

too much to live with, too little to live for.

It's a deficit. A deficit of meaning. A deficit of insight.

And when a deficit is left unaddressed, you know what

happens next. Disappointment sets in. Because I'm looking at how

the Israelites are talking to Moses, right?

And I get it.

I get it because when you don't have what you

need to live, you start doing things that you would

not normally do. And it's not even you, and you

always want to explain to people sometimes, I don't even

know who that was.

I'm so sorry. Can we take back the last five minutes?

And sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can't undo it.

And what the Israelites said to Moses here, apparently hit

that button. Now, everybody has a button. All of you

who are calm, we just haven't found yours yet. Really,

everybody has a boiling point. Everybody has something that if

you hit that, you will see a different version of them.

And you will completely change their Enneagram number if you

hit the right button. They'll go from a seven to

a two, a peacemaker to a shooter, and it can

happen so quick. Moses, the man of God, is violently

striking a rock when God is trying.

To show his people grace.

But the reason he did it, and this is why

I can't figure out Sometimes in my own life where

it comes from. Because I find things coming out of me.

And I'm confused about where it came from. Because I

know I'm not mad about what I'm mad about. Because

it's not a big enough deal to make me as

mad as I am about what I'm mad about.

Please help me preach to you. In this together.

And they just got done telling him they wanted to die.

And it's his fault.

Because anytime you are facing a deficit in your own life.

You start looking for. Someone to blame.

Anytime you are confronted with your own barrenness or brokenness,

you want to find somebody else or something else whose

fault it can be. And the first thing we do

when we run out of resource is to look for

someone else to take responsibility. If only we had died

when our brothers fell dead before the Lord. Why did

you bring the Lord's community?

Why didn't my mom? Why wasn't my dad around?

All these are reasonable things to say, but they don't

really help the situation. They only make it worse. Why

did you bring us out here into this wilderness.

That we should die here? They weren't actually about to die.

God wasn't going to let them die. They were on

the edge of destiny, about to take the land that

God had promised for generations, and they want to die

at the edge of destiny. Why did you bring us

up out of Egypt to this terrible place? There we

had figs. There we had grapevines. There we had pomegranates.

There we had grains. I forget to mention the whips.

They forget to mention the mud and the straw. And

they begin to glamorize a past that really didn't even exist.

Well, the good old days. I get it, man. This is.

It's tempting to go back there in your mind, just

as long as you know is.

Your version of the past is just as imaginary as

your version of the future. Back in Egypt, the place

that you were praying God to get you out of. Oh,

I never forget this. One time a lady came to me.

She said, you need to change some things in the

church very early in the church.

And I was, I was cocky. I was 28.

So what I said next, don't hold me responsible.

There's statute of limitations.

She listed everything she wanted me to change in the church.

Change this and change that and change this and change that.

And either the Lord or the devil prompted me to

say what follows.

I said, so you want me to recreate the church

that you left to.

Come to this one? I didn't mean it how it

came out. I meant to say I'll pray about it.

I am but a servant in a vessel. Just gushed out,

came out. Frustration.

See, understand that frustration operates when your experience is different

than your expectation so when you are frustrated it is

not your life that you're frustrated with it's your life

compared to your expectation of your life.

That's what makes you frustrated.

It's that it normally takes me 13 minutes to get there.

And today it took me 30 and I didn't plan

for that. And so since I was already at a

time deficit and a sleep deficit, and I didn't put

margin on this trip.

Now I find myself frustrated. I'm not really frustrated at

how long it's taking.

I'm frustrated about how long it's taken compared to how

long I thought.

It was going to take.

And one of the best things we can do for

our peace of mind is to crucify our expectations of others.

I mean really, just put it up there on the

cross and get to the place where we no longer

have an expectation of people to meet our needs because

we understand that our water flows from a different rock.

That our joy flows from a different place.

Come on, Ephraim, shout at the.

Phone that I don't depend on people to provide for

me what God has promised. Hey, thanks for watching. Make

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