Pastor Steven Furtick Sermon God How Do I Handle This: “What if” is a phrase pastor Steven furtick refers to as fear’s greatest hit how many things in your life did you not do because what if? How many things in your life did you do that you shouldn’t have done because what if, how many nights could you have slept but what if kept you awake?
How many mornings did you wake up anxious because what if was your alarm clock? Moses wants to know, “What if
It’s a good question, “What if?” and it’s where many of us wonder and wander our whole lives. “What if they? What if they laugh at me? What if they don’t accept me?” Now on one hand, Moses is in a hypothetical situation, because he hasn’t even done anything yet, but he’s just playing out the possible after effects of his obedience.
“What if they?” On the other hand, it’s not hypothetical at all; it’s historical, Moses is afraid of the same rejection he experienced 40 years earlier recurring. Forty years earlier, Moses had killed an Egyptian in defense of his people, and because he did the right thing the wrong way, he ended up on the run.
There’s something about when you’ve tried to do the right thing and put your heart in something, but you did it the wrong way, that you don’t even want to try again. So now Moses is asking something that’s hypothetical, but it’s based out of what is historical.
He’s projecting his past into his potential, and it’s his limiting factor, but God wants him to know, “That staff in your hand, To us, a staff is a shepherding instrument, and Moses was using it to tend his father-in-law’s sheep, but to Moses the staff represented a whole lot more than his vocation. It represented his mistakes, because if he had never killed the Egyptian and ended up a fugitive on the run from Egypt, where he was adopted into royalty, he never would have had the staff in his hand.
So when God asks him, “What’s in your hand?” it causes Moses to have to reckon with the mistakes he has made that landed him in the position he’s in. When God speaks to you about your potential, he will cause you to confront your past.
He asks, what’s that in your hand? To Moses it’s a staff, but it’s also his past. It’s also his instrument, the thing he has to do what he’s doing. So there’s a whole lot happening in this staff, and yet God says, what you have is what you need.
God wanted to say that to a single mom today, What you have is what you need, He put enough in you to raise that child, He foresaw that you would be in this situation, and he compensated for what others didn’t give you by putting a resolve and a grit and a determination in you that’s more than enough. Everything you need is within reach, so leave your list of what you don’t have alone today.
The wisdom you need is probably in a book on your shelf that you haven’t read. What are we even going to talk about? You know, sometimes when you pray and ask God to download information about a decision, “God, how should I handle it?” he’s like, “Did you even read the Book? “We’ve never lived in a time where the information that is in the Word of God has been more accessible to us. we must ensure we realise that every single thing we need, God has already given to us.