The Key To Processing Failure Steven Furtick - Steven Furtick

You try to get the stuff out of your life

that you don't like, you'll tear out the wheat, the substance.

You'll tear out the thing that God is growing.

Because, see, what would happen if you planted this particular

type of weed, or some versions call it the tares,

the wheat and the tares, it looked the same on

the surface. But where it was really difficult was underground.

where the tears would intermingle with the wheat and the

root systems would get intertwined. And sometimes what God is

doing in your life beneath the surface, the pain is

intertwined with the purpose.

You hear me? The thing that you don't like about yourself.

Is sometimes the thing that God is using We ask

God to use us and we ask God to do

his will in our lives unless we don't like it.

And then we want to root that out. And so

then it's like, well, God, I want you to do this.

But not that.

And what Solomon said is what Jesus said.

You don't know which one is which.

And so we have to be very careful when we

are trying to do our own gardening. Because I don't

know about you, but I am not a horticulturist.

I don't have a lot of agriculture experience.

I was preparing this message and I had this weird

memory of being a little boy and my mom had

this little flower bed outside our house and one day

I decided to be helpful and I came back to

the door and I was so proud. I was like, mom,

and I had my hands full and I said, I

got all the weeds out of your flower bed and

she looked like she wanted to slap me but she

restrained herself.

She said, those were the flowers.

But I didn't know the difference because I was too

immature to know the difference. And sometimes we are spiritually

immature and we are running from things and removing things

and resisting things. And in the process of trying to

pluck out the weeds, you're removing the wheat. If God

answered every prayer you prayed right now, I'm sorry, Bruce

Almighty was a pretty good movie. It would screw up

the universe. It would ruin your training. Look, can I

teach a little bit? All right. So I used to

not be able to do a pull-up. I'm not going

to lie to you. I was 22 years old and

I had never done a pull-up in my life. So

I started training to do pull-ups and I could do

some pull-ups.

One day, This guy.

Told me that I had to do not only pull-ups,

which was a feat of accomplishment for me that I

worked my whole life toward to this point, a culmination

of my entire life's effort in the realm of exercise.

He's like, now I need you to do a negative.

I said, what's a negative? He said, well, there's two

parts to every rep. There's when you're going up and

there's when you're coming down. But there's just as much

benefit in coming down as there is in coming up.

I'm going to give you seven seconds.

Because if that hits you right, you will start to

see that the things in your life right now that

you perceive as negative might be a crucial function in

building your strength. and your stamina and your hope there

are some things about God that you can only learn

going down ask Peter beginning to sink when he felt

the grip of the grace of God through the hand

of Jesus of Nazareth and he said now I.

Know that you're Lord.

It's the blessing of both and you don't know touch

somebody say you don't know You don't know the difference

between wheat and weed. You can't do the angel's job.

Let God sort that out. I heard the Lord say,

keep sowing and stop sorting. S-O-R-T-I-N-G. Keep sowing and stop sorting.

Stop judging the experience.

The moment it happens. Give it some time to see

what it is.

As a matter of fact, I don't know if you

have experienced this, but some of my successes have been

the fruit of my failures. Some of the things that

have produced the most in my life were the things

that honestly at the time I was the most embarrassed about.

Some of the things that have actually produced I know

that most of you in this church know the song, Oh,

Come to the Altar. The song that almost never was.

There were 12 versions of that song. All of them sucked.

All right, write this down. You want a deep revelation?

Success starts with sucks. He says, sow it in the morning,

sow it in the evening, because you don't know. Seeds

can be deceiving. Seeds can look awfully small. Seeds can

look impotent. And they may be dormant for a while,

and when you sow them, they go away for a

little while.

But they didn't go to die. They went to multiply. Why?

Some of the things in.

Your life that you said goodbye to. You need to

say see you later. I'm expecting you to come back

up again. Because I believe in resurrection.

The blessing of both.

Both. I need both in my life. Paul needed both.

I guess I do too. Paul had this thing he

called a thorn. And he kept trying to weed it out.

Ask God three times, take it away. Now, if you've

ever asked God to take something away, that's fine. But

if he doesn't do it, leave it alone. And here's

why you can leave it alone. Because the presence of

weeds will not cancel out the power of the wheat.

What is supposed to grow will grow. Leave it alone

for a little while. And see what it becomes. See

if it will be the fruit. This failure that you're

processing right now, some of you started the business, you

did the thing, you took the step, and you made

a mess out of it.

See if maybe that might be the seed.

Of something that becomes something that people will celebrate in

the future. And you will know, and God will know,

that you almost gave up. And the enemy was there

telling you, stop sowing, it's not working.

But you kept sowing. And you sowed in the morning.

And you sowed in the evening. And you loved anyway.

And you forgave anyway. And you showed up anyway. And

you did it anyway.

And you memorized the scripture and quoted it anyway, even

though it wasn't happening in your life.

But you kept quoting it and you kept sowing and you.

Didn't try to sort it out and you didn't try

to root it up and you didn't get impatient and immature.

But you waited for.

The will of God to come to pass in your life.

Don't you ever stop sowing.

Because you don't know.

Solomon said, you don't know the way that the breath

enters the bones and you don't know the way God

works either.

You don't know. We don't know which sermons God's going

to use to touch people.

Didn't you ever preach one you hated and then everybody

wanted to talk about it for the next year? And

you preached one you loved and nobody ever remembered it?

It'll make you mad. But that's how the breath operates.

So you'll be reminded that you need the spirit of God,

not just structure and skill and some things in your life.

It's going to surprise you because you don't know.

He said one might work and one might not or

both might do equally well. In fact, he said in

the ESV, both may be good. Now that made me

think of Joseph, naturally. Old Testament Joseph. With the coat, Joseph.

The coat that got him beat up. The coat that

got him thrown in a pit. The coat that represented

the favor of his father. The coat that was kind

of loud and obnoxious but he wore it anyway. The

coat that let him know he was chosen even if

people didn't like him.

Remember, you need both.

Everybody's not supposed to like you. If everybody likes you,

you are doing nothing. If everybody likes you, you stand

for nothing. If everybody agrees with you, you are saying nothing.

You don't need everybody to like you. This is spoken

like a true prophet now. Because one time I was

going through some criticism and I asked God to make

it stop. He said, well, if I stop that, then

I got to stop the blessing that created the criticism

to begin with.

Because both grow together. Both grow together.

Oh, I want to be used by God and I

want everybody to agree with all of my decisions and

validate my existence.

Both grow together.

And so when Joseph did get pushed in a pit,

it was no surprise to me that the Ishmaelite caravan.

Was the one that picked him up.

It didn't surprise me at all because that's just like God.

He always uses both.

Ishmael was the son that Abraham had doing it his

own way.

Isaac was the one that he had doing it God's way.

but guess which one god used.

Guess which one god used both you mean god will

use my mistakes to bring about a deliverance in my

future You mean God will use the dumb thing I did?

I'm saying absolutely. If he's sovereign, he will. If it's

his field, if it's his harvest, if it's his job

to superintend your life, even the Ishmaelites serve the purpose.

When David slept with Bathsheba, after the child died, the

next son he had was named Solomon, who was the

wisest man who ever lived, who wrote Ecclesiastes 11. His

dumbest decision led to the world's greatest wisdom.

I'm going to try. I'm going to try.

Because I saw it in my mind like this. I

saw that God is using both in your life right now.

He's using both.

So when Joseph gets thrown in prison, it's not good.

But God uses that to introduce him to somebody who

is going to bring him before Pharaoh. When he comes

before Pharaoh, Pharaoh is telling him about a dream that

means there's going to be a famine in the land. Well,

the famine isn't good, but God is using the famine

to create a position of favor for his people. Now,

when they finally got there, Joseph is standing before his

brothers and he has a revelation that everything that has

happened in his life wasn't good. But everything that happened

in his life has been held in the hand of God.

So God wasn't just using the stuff that felt good

to you. Not just the stuff that you praised him for.

Not just the stuff that you thanked him for. Paul

finally came to the point where he said, I learned

to thank God for my thorn. I learned to thank

him for the things that he is using that I

did not choose for myself. The things that he is

using that tormented me at one time. But the tormentor

was my mentor that transformed me into who I needed

to be So that I would rely on the grace

of God. It's the blessing of both.

It's both.

So when Joseph said. You meant it to harm me.

But God meant it for good. He's not speaking out

of both sides of his mouth. It's both.

They meant it. But God used it. God is going

to use both. I promise you he is. I promise

you he is.

That's what the cross represents after all, is two beams,

one vertical, that's you and God, one horizontal, that's you

and people, it's both. Love the Lord your God with

all your heart, soul, mind, strength, love your neighbor as yourself,

it's both. It's not one or the other, it's both.

I praise God when I feel it. I praise God

when I don't feel it. I praise God when I

sense him. I praise him when it's so distant that

I wonder sometimes, is any of this even real? I

praise him in the good times. I praise him in

the bad times. I praise him when he does what

I ask. I praise him when he runs a little

late to Lazarus funeral because I know even on the fourth.

Day, he can say something. And Joseph said, oh, it's both.

It's pain and purpose. It's both.

And we keep waiting to this day when everything in

our life will be stable and all of our relationships

will be harmonious. And God said, I need you to

learn how to celebrate the wheat, even while you're looking

at the weeds.

Even the enemy.

Serves a purpose. Even the devil works for God. The

devil's not in charge of what happens in my life.

God doesn't do everything that.

Happens to me, but he uses everything that happens to me.

There is nothing that is happening in your life that

will not have to pass through the hand of God

by the time is said and done.

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