Steven Furtick - Trust God's Timing
This is an excerpt from: "Not Now" Is Not "No"
How many of you have something in your life right now that's taking longer than it should if God is big? Okay. How many of you have something in your life right now that you feel like, "God must be telling me no"? He might. One time in the Bible, King David wanted to build a temple for God. Who better to do it? He wrote all of the songs. Why not build the house that would house the songs he wrote for God? But he didn't get to do it. In fact, the prophet told him, "Go ahead. Do it, man. That sounds good," and God stopped the prophet in his tracks.
The prophet had to pivot and turn back and say, "David, I went home and prayed about that thing. Dude, I love you so much, and you are so amazing, and you are so incredible as a leader. I thought surely God would let you do it and God would say yes to you. I mean, you want to build God a temple. Why wouldn't God get behind that? It's a good thing in your heart. But the Lord said… Well, he didn't say 'no'; he said, 'not you.'" That's hard to hear. "Not you". He said, "Your son Solomon is going to do it. You have too much blood on your hands. But I'm still going to do it through you". David spent the rest of his life storing up the materials to hand over for a project he would never personally receive the benefit from.
This is the part of the sermon that you leave out if your goal is a shout, but my goal is not to just give you a shout in church. If you shout, what do you have? A sore throat. What we have to learn to do is realize that Jesus is a miracle worker. Yes. Jesus is the Savior who paid for our sins on the cross, and that is the purpose he came for: to rise from the grave, to have dominion over death so we could call on his name and be saved. Yes. He is also a teacher, and a good teacher knows when to go slow. Maybe he is going slow because he wants to show you something. I hired a guy to teach me guitar years ago, and I went to one lesson. He seemed more interested in impressing me with how fast he could play it than showing me how I could.
I thought, "This won't work. If your whole goal is showing me how much you can shred, I leave knowing nothing, and you feel good about yourself. The proof that you are good at this is that you can slow it down enough so I can watch and say, 'Huh. So I do third fret, fourth fret, sixth fret, first fret.'" I mean, if he really wanted to teach me, he had to slow it down. We ask Jesus to teach us things, and we're surprised when he slows it down. We ask him to teach us to be more loving. We are surprised when he slows it down. We ask him to give us patience. Bad idea. You have seven days of traffic to look forward to, the worst traffic of your life. You are going to have Atlanta, Georgia, traffic in Waxhaw if you pray for patience.
God will stack the deck to give you what you asked for, and he'll slow it down. When I was in high school, I had some friends on the step team. I thought that looked really cool. I said, "Teach me just a simple thing on the step team". So they went really fast. They went something like this. See how fast I did that? It took about four months. I can just do it now. It has been, like, 30 years now, but I swear we were going… Not because they couldn't do it…because I couldn't do it. God is not going slow because he can't do it. Somebody who knows what I'm talking about… Let's get into this. God didn't say "no" because he can't; God said "slow" because you can't…yet. But if we can do it… I still remember this after all of those years because they slowed it down for me.
"You've got to go slow for Steven. Steven can't do all that really quick. He has a good heart, but he needs it really slow". Peter is really slow. John is kind of slow. Nathanael is kind of slow. The disciples are kind of slow. How many are willing to admit "It may take God slowing this down in my life, and he might not be giving it to me when I want it out of kindness"? God making it convenient isn't always kind. I think it would be amazing if he said, "Okay. Y'all are out of wine"? Mary says, "They're out of wine," and Jesus says, "I already have that taken care of. I found the well". Y'all picture this miracle like they had a water hose. This water was not ionized. There was no faucet. Picture the miracle. They said, "We're out of wine". Not, "We're running out of wine". Not, "We're going to be out of wine in a couple of hours. Let's do something about it now".
We're out of wine…when? Now. We need wine…when? Now. This is what's frustrating about this kind of preaching. Right? It's like, "Wonderful. Awesome. Glorious. Great. You're doing steps on the stage, but I'm struggling through things that are real in my life, and I don't have time for that right now". Well, maybe there is something Jesus wants to do in the process that will teach you where to go back when you need it again. I'm thinking he would have the power to go out to the well, wherever they're getting the water from. I need to slow this down one more time just to get my point across. "Jesus, they have no more wine". "What does that have to do with me"?
We have a request, a refusal, and then a revelation. What's the revelation? Of course, he is the new wine. There's an old covenant represented by the water. There's a new covenant that will be made in his blood and ratified by his death. He's showing us that. To be filled with his Spirit… All of that is symbolized in the text. Simply put, it would have taken a while to do what he told them to do. I love what Mary said in verse 5. "Do whatever he tells you". Maybe that's the lesson he has been trying to teach us. We've been doing all kinds of math in our lives about this and that. "This needs to happen, and that needs to happen". Mary goes, "Do whatever he tells you". That's the math.
A few months ago, we were online talking about girl math. Do you remember that? Then Holly showed me one the other day called mom math. It's when you're calculating all of the times… "We need to be there at 7:00, so we need to have our shoes on by 6:15, so that means we need to wake up by…" It was hilarious. I saw it. I said, "Oh. Well, this week I'm preaching about Mary math". Mary math goes like this: "We have no wine and a lot of people. Do whatever he tells you". Stop letting the math distract you. "I don't have enough time. I don't have enough years yet. I'm not old enough to do that. I'm not young enough to do that". Don't let the math distract you.
As we will see, five loaves and two fish can feed 5,000 if you do what he says. Now, if you don't do what he says, you're on your own. Get your calculator and good luck. But if you do what he says in each moment, if you'll get attuned to the process instead of just being a consumer, you will not need God to give you something external to produce something wonderful. The Bible says when Mary activated the presence of Jesus… What changed? "They're out of wine". "That has nothing to do with me. My hour has not yet come". When he says, "My hour," he's talking about his death. He's not saying, "I won't do it because it's not time yet". He's reestablishing the big picture.
There's a request, a refusal… That's where some of you are today: the refusal. "Well, life won't let me. Well, they won't let me. Well, I tried that. I've been trying that for years". The refusal. Then there is a reset. He reminds her, "My hour has not yet come. This is not my ultimate destination". Then she realizes there's nothing she needs to convince him to do. All she has to do is convince them to do what he says. The moment she says, "Do whatever he tells you…" It's like me with Graham and wrestling. She doesn't know much, but she's coaching good. Do you hear me? You don't have to know that much. You just have to get going in the next thing he tells you to do, which meant for this miracle, for this moment, for this occasion, they had to go out and get the water from the well.
Why did Jesus not just bless the well and everything that came out of it was wine? Why are we taking bucket after bucket after bucket, putting it down in the well, drawing it out of the well, carrying it into the house, finding the jars, and dumping the bucket? Do you know how big these buckets were? Two gallons. Do you remember how big the jars were? Thirty. That's like… Let me do some preacher math really quickly. What's that like? Fifteen-ish. Yeah. It's 20 to 30 gallons, so there's some variance, but… Now I have to do this two gallons at a time, but that seems pointless.
If you're Jesus, go out, bless the well, and then we'll just take it in. But the real revelation to me was in this. I think you missed this when I read it. While they were going out to the well and back and forth, there wasn't just a two-gallon bucket, 30 gallons, 15 fillings, which would have taken a while. The Bible says in verse 7, "Jesus said to the servants…" Watch this very carefully.
Now I'm coming to the point of the message that I preached all the way here to get you to, because I see you in your life struggling with some stuff. I see you in your life dealing with some things. I see you in your life going through a process that maybe, at this intersection of your life, seems a little pointless. The Bible says, "Jesus said to the servants, 'Fill the jars with water'; so they filled them to the brim". Read it again. He said, "Fill the jars with water". So they filled them to the brim.
Verse 8: "Then he told them, 'Now draw some out…'" "What's your point, Pastor? You're really slowing down here. Do you have a purpose or are you struggling on how to close? Do you just want the parking lot to be chaotic between services today? Are you sadistic"? Nuh-uh. I'm slowing it down to show you something. Verse 7: "Jesus said to the servants, 'Fill the jars with water'; so they filled them to the brim". That's fine, but this is an emergency. We have no wine and a lot of people. In this culture, that was the ultimate shame. I know what some of you are thinking. "It was probably good that the alcohol got cut off at this point in the weeklong wedding. Maybe that was God making them run out of wine".
It's symbolic. It's a culture of honor, so there is shame present. Jesus is stepping in not to deal with their alcoholic consumption situation; he's dealing with their shame. One thing that feels really bad… I don't know about you, but I hate the feeling in life like I've fallen behind, the embarrassment of thinking, "I should know how to do that by now, and I don't"; the embarrassment of feeling like, "I should have my family here by now, and I don't"; the embarrassment of going, "I should have whipped this six years ago, and I didn't".
Now the fear of falling behind has been combined with the reality of being at the bottom. There is no wine. This is an emergency. This is urgent. So why wouldn't Jesus let them fill one jar and start distributing it? Read the text. It says they had to draw out the water and fill them to the brim. That means they had to fill all six before anything changed. It wasn't as if they poured the water and the water became wine, because that would have made sense, and if it made sense, then maybe they would have been addicted to it instead of believing in him. So, they're pouring water. Water doesn't turn to wine. I don't care how much of it you pour. There are no grapes in this situation. There is nothing to suggest this is going to work.
So, the servants are pouring and pouring and sweating and pouring and sweating and pouring and checking. "Has anything happened yet? Did he bring the wine? Not yet". So now imagine. They get the first jar full. That's 15 buckets full. That's plenty to demonstrate that I take you seriously. The head server comes over and says, "Jesus, can we take some over to the people now and kind of get them calmed down a little bit, because there's no wine? Can we just take one over there? We'll keep filling up the other ones". He said, "No, no, no. Not now. Fill the next one". "But can we take this one"? "No. Not now". It was not until every jar was filled to the brim and the water was drawn out of the last filled jar that it became wine.
Why did God make every jar have to be filled? Why has God allowed you to pray about this for so long? Why has God not just waved his wand over our situation? Why did he reset in order to reveal? It is only after the jars are filled. I'm telling you what I know from my life. It is only after you have done it and done it and done it. I can't speak for everybody in the room, but somebody online needs to hear this. It is sometimes when I am almost done trying. At that moment in time, that's when God says, "Now". It's not when I'm fresh. It's not when I feel like, "I've got this". It's not when it makes sense. It's not when it should have happened on a human schedule. It's at that moment where I'm like, "If I have to pour one more two-gallon bucket…" "If I have to do this one more time…"
Nothing is happening, but everything is changing in your life, for every time you pour, when your eyes can't perceive, it is a building of your faith that is producing within you the strength to know where your help comes from. The strength to know where grace comes from. The strength to know that there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins. Now you can take it. Some of the things that you thought in your life were rejection were not rejection; you just weren't ready.