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>> steven furtick: thank you so much. howyou doin'? >> audience member: love you steven! >> furtick: love you back. i have this thingi love to do when i'm preaching somewhere and i do it at my own church also where duringworship i just like to look at everybody that i'm going to be preaching to. and i don'tknow if this is a little creepy but i make up stuff about them in my mind, and i willwatch people worship or sometimes people who are having a hard time getting into worshipor if they look really emotional. and i'll just start making up scenarios of what theymight be going through and it just helps me get my heart ready so i'm not just speakingto a crowd but i'm speaking to a person. i
really like to do that so i got all kindsof stories i made up about various ones of you today. like that dude used to be on drugsand he's been clean for a year and all kinds of stuff. you don't know who i'm pointingat so it's all good. i just pointed in a general direction. but i'm excited to share something with youtoday. i've got an announcement, it's really less of a message it's more of an announcement.the announcement is this, you're gonna make it. couple weeks left of the semester andyou're gonna make it. i came to tell a senior, you're gonna make it. you absolutely are.you absolute — yeah, you are! you oughta shout, you oughta be happy! you're — touchsomebody next to you and make the announcement,
i don't know if they believe me — tell 'em“you're gonna make it.†you are. you're gonna make it. oh yeah, i almost forgot to tell you! thecoolest thing about the day, i got to, i got to bring my eight-year-old son with me. elijahkillerbee furtick. hey, come here, buddy, real quick, real quick, quick. come, comehere. there he is, come here, come here, come here, come here! his friend gideon lives inlynchburg now and so he didn't want to come hear me preach really he wanted to see gideon— come here, come here, come here, come here, come here — he has something — comehere, come here, come here, come here, come here — i didn't ask permission to do thisbut i'll ask forgiveness — there it is.
he has something he wanted to share with you.since i brought him out of school i thought i should use him for an educational purpose.he's been working on something, he's been working on something and — he’s been,he has been working on something and i think you'll like it. and i won't tell you whatit is, you can just start. >> elijah furtick: “four score and sevenyears ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in libertyand dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. now they are engagedin a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and sodedicated, can long endure. we are met on the great battlefield of that war. we havecome to dedicate a portion of that field as
a final resting place for those who gave theirlives that that nation might live. it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.but in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow thatground. the brave men living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far beyondour poor power to add or detract. the world will little note nor long remember what wesay here, but they can never forget what they did here. it is for us, the living, ratherthan to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which those who fought here have thusfar so nobly advanced, it is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remainingbefore us that from these honored dead there is an increased devotion to that cause forwhich they gave the last full measure of devotion.
that we here highly resolve that these deadshall not have died in vain. that this nation under god shall have a new birth of freedomand the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish on the earth.†>> steven furtick: in jesus' name, amen! allright. god bless you, you're dismissed! fantastic. hey, i want to preach a quick bible storytoo, it's a familiar story. joshua chapter six. anybody know what's in joshua chaptersix? anybody, anybody? joshua fought the battle of... >> audience: jericho. >> steven furtick: what happened to the walls?yes, they did, they came tumbling down. they
didn't just fall down, they came tumbling,tumbling down. i'm excited to be here. this is my third time.i like it here. and the last time i was here i didn't feel like i did a great job so igot extra ready this time. extra ready, extra ready. touch somebody and say, “he's extraready.†that's right. hey, i know that this story about joshua andthe walls of jericho is familiar and preaching on that at a wonderful christian universityfeels a little bit like bringing sand to the beach because i would imagine that most ofyou would be aware of the basic context of the story so i won't spend as much time onthe historical background as i would if perhaps you were at a novice level. i want to pullout some things today about persistence.
when i was in college, what impressed me wasa lot different than what impresses me now as a 34-year-old. and not that i'm so muchfurther along but i used to be really impressed with people who had the faith to start something,that used to really impress me that somebody could just step out and start something. now i tend to be a lot more impressed whenpeople have the fortitude to finish. and that'll happen to you just as years go by as well.how many of you who are you know, 30 or 40 or older than that can testify, the fortitudeto finish is often more impressive than the faith to get started? both are important,you know, you gotta have the faith to get started but the fortitude to finish.
one of my favorite new testament scripturesbefore i read the joshua passage is hebrews 10:36. and i think they have it to put onthe screen. i gave them a lot of scripture because i prepared two different messages,and i was gonna walk in and see what it felt like to see which one. and the first one waskind of a more reflective message but then you all started singing that “great, i amâ€song and justin had it rocking and i was like, “oh no, we gon’ — we gon’ knock downthe walls today! i'm gonna inspire these students today!†but he said in hebrews — the writer of hebrewsis a coffee drinker — sorry. so sorry, so sorry. "you need, you need" — i like this,this has attitude — “you need" — let
me tell you what you need — “you needto persevere so that when you have done the will of god, you will receive what he haspromised." just because god promised something doesn't mean you automatically possess it.god promises a lot of stuff in his word that very few believers possess. peace, joy, hepromises righteousness, but very few of us live in the possession of that. now, i bring up possession because it's thenew testament equivalent to what we're going to read in joshua. joshua is taking land,the first city in what we call the promised land. so we have promises, joshua had a promise.his was real estate; ours is, is stuff on the inside, becoming more like christ andglorifying him and god has made you some promises
in his word. but perseverance is what bringsyou from promise to possession. and i want to read 16 verses to you from joshua chaptersix. i want to give you the title of my messagebut i think i'll give it to you right after i read the passage. it says in joshua chaptersix verse one, "now the gates of jericho were securely barred because of the israelites.no one went out and no one came in. then the lord said to joshua, 'see, i have deliveredjericho into your hands along with its king and its fighting men. march around the cityonce with all the armed men. do this for six days. have seven priests carry trumpets oframs' horns in front of the ark. on the seventh day, march around the city seven times, withthe priests blowing the trumpets. and when
you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpetâ€â€” or the trombone, johnnie moore — “have the whole army give a loud shout, then thewall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in. so joshuason of nun called the priests and said to them 'take up the ark of the covenant of thelord and have seven priests carry trumpets in front of it.' and he ordered the army 'advance!march around the city, with an armed guard going ahead of the ark of the lord.' whenjoshua had spoken to the people. the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets beforethe lord went forward, blowing their trumpets, and the ark of the lord's covenant followedthem. the armed guard marched ahead of the priests who blew the trumpets, and the rearguard followed the ark. all this time the
trumpets were sounding. but joshua had commandedthe army 'do not give a war cry, do not raise your voices, do not say a word until the dayi tell you to shout. then shout.'" >> audience: (shouting) >> steven furtick: i'm afraid that shout ain'tgonna work, you're gonna have to try it again. then shout. >> steven furtick: nice, nice. we're gettingthere. "then shout. so he had the ark of the lord carried around the city circling it once.then the army returned to camp and spent the night there. joshua got up early the nextmorning, the priests took up the ark of the lord. the seven priests carrying the seventrumpets went forward, marching before the
ark of the lord and blowing the trumpets.the armed men went ahead of them and the rear guard followed the ark of the lord while thetrumpets kept sounding. so on the second day, they marched around the city once and returnedto the camp. they did this for six days.†for six days. “and on the seventh dayâ€â€” verse 15 — “they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times inthe same manner, except on that day, they circled the city seven times. the seventhtime around, when the priest sounded the trumpet blast, joshua commanded the army, 'shout!'" >> steven furtick: "for the lord has givenyou the city.'" skip to verse 20. "when the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and atthe sound of the trumpet when the men gave
a loud shout, the wall collapsed, so everyonecharged straight in and they took the city." the title of my message today, and i hopethis is a phrase that can get you through the rest of the semester. and not just getyou through it, but cause you to rise up and succeed in it. and the title of my messageis: “don't stop on six. don’t stop.†i know you don't know what i mean by thatyet, i'll show you in a minute — but don't stop on six. encourage somebody next to you;tell 'em “don't stop on six.†all the way up in the back, find somebody next toyou. don't stop. in fact, find six people sitting around you and say, “don't stopon six; don't stop.†have you noticed a lot of people stop short?a lot of people stop short. a lot of people
get almost there and stop short. i see inthis passage three dynamics at work that might help us understand why a lot of people stopshort. not everybody in here — i said at the beginning of my message, you're gonnamake it but that's kind of a lie cause not everybody in here is gonna make it. like somepeople will stop short, but i'm not here to preach to everybody. i'm here to speak tosomebody who doesn't want to stop short and just settle. not just settle, not just — i’mnot cool with just kind of god saves me i go to heaven. i'm not just going to make itbut i'm gonna make it in a way that brings glory to jesus. now, this is a great passage to talk aboutperseverance because there are some dynamics
here. i'll give you three points if you'dlike to take notes, reasons why we stop short. and the assignment god gave me for the remaining20 minutes today is just to push somebody, to push somebody. you're moving along, you'redoing it, but there's something that seems like it's going to stop you and so i justwant to push you not to stop short. there are three reasons why people stop short — thereare probably a lot more but here's the three i came up with. number one, often we stop short of possessinggod's promise in our lives because our perspective gets blocked. our perspective gets blocked.perspective is absolutely everything. absolutely. if i preach this message to a certain spotin the room, i'll think that nobody's getting
anything out of it. if i go to another spotin the room and i find the right person, i find them lean forward and they're hangingonto every word because they want to hear from god and they don't care who the chapelspeaker was today, and they don't need to hear from a guy from north carolina. oh, actuallyi got a campus in south carolina too, so i got dual citizenship. anybody from the carolinas?and there's some people here who didn't come to hear from a preacher from the carolinasand didn't care who he really announced but i want to hear from god today because mandoes not live on bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of god.so i don't really care who feeds me, i just want to get the bread because i need to bestrengthened because i can't just do this
by myself. and so, so perspective is absolutelyeverything. i didn't know this growing up when i was hearingthe story of joshua and the battle of jericho but jericho is not a very big city. in fact,it only would take about an hour to march around it. but the thing about jericho thatmade it intimidating wasn't the size of it, it was the size of the walls surrounding it.and so, here's an interesting little interplay. i love to look at what seem to be contradictionsin the bible and then figure out how god works in the tension, in the mystery. see in verseone — if we could put it back on the screen — it says "now the gates of jericho weresecurely barred because of the israelites. no one went out and no one came in." — lookat verse two — “then the lord said to
joshua, 'see? i have delivered jericho intoyour hands.'" it's funny ‘cause, ‘cause what we seein verse one is what joshua saw, a city that is tightly shut up and nobody can get in.that's verse one, but then god says in verse two, “see, i have given jericho into yourhands.†now let me ask you a question. raise yourhand if you know what i'm talking about. sometimes what you see looks nothing like what god said,hmmm? raise your hand. sometimes god speaks to me about something, but i see the exactopposite. give you an example, the first time i ever preached here at convocation, at thesame time i was preaching — this was, i wanna say october 12, 2011. the only reasoni remember that, my wife was in charleston,
south carolina with my family that day wherethe doctors diagnosed my dad with als. in fact, every time i preach right now — andi don't know how long i'll do this but i keep in my case here the memorial bulletin frommy dad's memorial service which was this summer. and if any of you have ever had someone whostruggled with als or a disease that is similar that completely takes over your body, youcan imagine what his last days were like. and it was a traumatic experience all aroundbecause — you know, actually i thought about telling you the full story about this todaybut we don't really have time, perhaps i can another time in the future, how i moved mydad to charlotte so i could take care of him and my mom and how he lost his mind becauseof the pain of his disease and began to threaten
my mom's life and had guns in the house andhe had never done anything like this before. he had always had a temper but when he startedthreatening her and threw all of her stuff out in the front yard one day and she leftbecause she didn't feel safe. all of this was in 2012 while i was pastoring a churchand i was up preaching to people about god's wonderful plan for their life and how godcan do anything and god can do the impossible. and in the meantime, i'm having to kick mydad out of the house and he goes and lives in a house by himself with almost no furnitureand during that time it would be the hardest thing in the world to get up and preach becausei was telling people that god can make a way and i was telling people that god can do anythingand i was telling people that nothing was
too hard for god but then i couldn't evenhave a phone conversation with my dad without him cussing me out. he would go into thishigh pitched voice and i've never heard him talk to me that way before until toward theend of his life and he began to — i don't, i don't know what you believe about spiritualwarfare, i don't even know everything that i believe about spiritual warfare but somethingtook over his life during that period. and i remember so many times i would be up preachingto people and yet what i was, what i was saying about what god says looked nothing like whati saw and i wonder: can you relate? it may not be with a parent. see, in my case, i actually saw god make away where i got to lay beside my father as
he took his last breath. we had a gloriousending to our relationship, i was reading him a charles spurgeon sermon called the peculiarsleep of the beloved just before he went to be with jesus. i was on the phone with myfamily, my wife and my kids while he was breathing his last breath. and i was able to hum amazinggrace, i mean, just the kind of stuff that you would pray for. but there was a periodduring all of that where i was holding to god's promise of reconciliation but what isee doesn't match what god says. and maybe the greatest gift a preacher can give yousometimes is just some perspective on your battle. that's why you ought to thank god that theymake you come to convocation because you know
at least a couple times a week, your perspectiveis going to get lifted. don't ever come dragging in here like i've got to sit through convocationbecause what being in here and worshipping does and hearing speakers, i don't care whothey are or what they're talk — it, it lifts your perspective. don't ever be ashamed to praise god, by theway. don't ever be ashamed to lift your hands, don't ever be ashamed to sing out even ifyou can't sing because praise will lift your perspective to see beyond the walls of thecity. see, it says in the scripture that the reasonthe city was tightly shut up was because the people of jericho were so afraid of the israelites.you know, i think a lot of times we have our
perspective backwards. we think the reasonthe devil is fighting us so hard is because we're never going to be able to do what itis that god has called us to do. but what if the reason that the devil is fighting youso hard is because he knows there's no way he can stop you from accomplishing what godhas called you to do? i'm telling you bro, praise will lift yourperspective and sometimes you need to see beyond the walls — our perspective getsblocked and we stop short because what we see doesn't match what god has said. is thatgood, is that helping somebody? ‘cause you're in a situation right now and it's not thatthe situation is too big for god, it's that the walls are too high and you've forgottenhow to look past the walls and see god? all
you can see is the financial aid that youdon't know how it's gonna come in. all you can see is that class that you were gonnaget caught up on during break but something else happened and you didn't and all you cansee is what's coming up at 11:30 today, but god sent a preacher today and god sent a worshipteam and god placed you in a university where your perspective can be lifted, where youcan lift your eyes. i'm screaming now, just like i do it at home.talk to me somebody — where your perspective — in the back of the room, are you there?— where your perspective can be lifted and you can say i lift my eyes to the hills, myhelp comes from the lord, my help comes from him and him alone! come on somebody! gottaget it bumping.
the second reason people stop short — i’mgonna hustle — is because our progress isn't always obvious. our progress isn't alwaysobvious. so i was studying this scripture a bunch ofdifferent ways and i wanted to really understand the intricacies of the miracle because sometimesi think if you know a story, you stop thinking about it and you just fill in the blanks withhow you imagined it went down. i was reading it and i thought the interesting thing was,ok god tells joshua “i want you to march these people around the walls, six days, onetime per day. seventh day seven times. and then on the last time when you shout, thewalls will fall down.†but to me, if i was setting up the miraclei wouldn't have set it up that way. if it
was me, i would have rewarded the israelitesa little bit every time they took a lap by letting them watch the wall fall down justa little bit. do any of y'all remember this game — you won't — do you remember thisgame called tetris? if i would have been setting up the walls of jericho falling down it wouldhave been like tetris. ok ‘cause on tetris when you complete one line that line disappears.wouldn't that be a lot more motivating if you had to march around a city? like you takea lap. doot-doot. take another lap, wall goes down a little more, take another lap. so youcan see, “oh this is working. this is good. god's gonna knock these — every day we comeout here there's a little less wall than there was the day before.†wouldn't that be awesome?
but that's not how god does it. and it's nothow he does it in our lives a lot of times. see, i'm the kind of person, i'm highly motivatedby progress so i don't mind working hard at something as long as i know that it's working.it's when — here’s where i get frustrated, and here's where i want to quit, and here'swhere i want to stop — it’s when i take a lap, and then i look at the wall and itlooks the same as it did when i set out that morning. i don't like this very much. i don'tlike treadmills. in fact, i don't like exercise. in fact, idon't like you if you like exercise. yeah, i said it. make me kinda self-conscious. crossfit,whatever, krispy kreme. whatever. come on, who's with me? and what i can't stand aboutexercise — here’s what i can't stand.
i think it would be awesome to exercise ifmy muscles would grow with every rep. wouldn't that be — that would change the game forme. so while i'm planking, my abs are just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, i'd plank allday! but what bothers me about it is nothing happens while i'm working. and i'm discouragedby that. and life will stop you short because you're taking a lap but nothing is changingin your life. you're, you're doing what you think god told you to do but our progressisn't always obvious. you know what real faith is? real faith isbelieving that just because my progress isn't obvious doesn't mean god isn't working inmy situation. i'm speaking to somebody now. you're taking some laps and i know that i'musing joshua as a metaphor and i understand
the biblical, historical context of joshuais much more than just you showing up for your 8:00 class but i'm using this now tospeak to your life because there's somebody in here and you're walking around this cityand you're walking around these walls but you're not seeing anything changing and you'restuck and you're considering maybe i should just stop ‘cause i'm not seeing any progress. here's what i found out, sometimes god doesn'tallow my situation to work the way i want it to because there's a deeper work he wantsto do in me in the process. and sometimes the times where i feel like it's not workingare the times when god is working most of all.
six, anytime you see it in scripture, is thenumber of man. that's what it always represents. you get the mark of the beast, 666, it's thenumber of man. it's man, man alone, man without god. seven is the number of perfection and completion.it's god's number. sometimes god will make you go all six laps around a situation justso that you can know when the walls fall down it wasn't your effort that made them fall.and sometimes the times that seem the most pointless in your life, and sometimes thetimes where you can't feel god and you can't sense god and it doesn't seem to be producinganything, sometimes those are the times where god says i had to take you around six laps.see god is not always very efficient. it would
have made a lot more sense if god was justgonna knock the walls down anyway. just go ahead and knock 'em down on lap one. why thisexercise? and you know what's even more crazy? if youread the passage carefully — do it, when i'm, when i'm finished, read it carefully,go back and read it tonight — god tells joshua “you're gonna walk around the wallsix days and on the seventh day you're gonna do it seven times and then the walls are gonnafall down,†but guess what? joshua never tells the people this. did you know that?i thought they all knew that on the seventh time the walls were gonna fall down. i alwaysassumed they were just like “if we can just make it one more day, if we can just marchone more day,†but guess what? they had
no idea how many days they had left! so imagine you're one of these warriors andyou set out the first day and god says “i've given jericho into your hands†because godspeaks in past tense about battles that you're currently fighting, that's because he's alreadywon and he's just waiting on you to claim the victory. so you set out the first dayand you're like, “yeah, this it. we're gonna, we're gonna fight today.†and joshua says,“no, i want you to take a walk.†and you walk. like you're getting warmed up, you know,just a little cardio to get ready for the fight. and then joshua says, “thank youvery much. go home. we'll see you back same time, same place tomorrow.†and you go homethat night and your wife says, “so my big,
strong warrior, what did you do today? whodid you kill? whose head did you cut off, come on show me the head, show me the head.†now you gotta explain to your wife, “well,we didn't exactly kill anybody today.†“well what did you do?†“we, uh, walked around the city. tomorrow,tomorrow, tomorrow we'll probably — that was — we just scouting it out.†no, no, scripture says on the second day theydid the same. and they came back home. “so who'd you kill today?†“well, i think joshua really wants us toget comfortable with the terrain because we
did another warm up lap.†and scripturesays they, they did this for six days. but on the seventh day, something was different.on the seventh day, something happened. on the seventh day, god stepped in and the miraclecame to pass. but here's what i want you to know, they didn't know they only have oneday left. what? if they had stopped on the sixth day they would have missed the miraclethat god had planned all along and i came to tell somebody today you're too close toquit now. god didn't bring you to this point to quit now. turn to somebody next to youand say “take another lap.†you've got to take another lap, you've got to take anotherlap cause you never know, this might be the one! this might be the — wouldn’t it bea shame for you to come all this way — wouldn’t
it be a shame for you to be this close forgod to bring you this far and you quit on six?! oh no, you can't stop on six! you can'tstop ‘cause you're tired! you can't stop ‘cause you got your feelings hurt! you can'tstop ‘cause nobody put a ring on your finger yet! you can't stop ‘cause you don't feellike god is using you! you can't stop ‘cause you don't feel chillbumps every time! no,you gotta take another lap! keep walking! keep walking! that's the wordgod gave me for somebody at liberty university today! keep walking! keep walking! i feelthe spirit of finding nemo on me right now, just keep swimming, just keep — oh, i hearyou, dory — just keep walking, just keep walking, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, you'regonna make it, you're gonna do it. he who
began a good work in you will be faithfulto complete it to the day of christ! he won't stop; don't you stop. you've got an unstoppablegod! you've got an unquenchable fire! come on take another lap, don't stop on six! doyou receive it?! come on, jump up on your feet, jump up on your feet. come on, we gon'walk a little bit. come on we gon' walk. we gonna walk. pick 'em up, pick 'em up. comeon walk with me, don't be too cool to walk, come on. you come too far, god's gonna getyou through this. oh i came to inspire you, you're gonna make it. hey, here's my final word for you, walk everylap like it's your last and one day, you'll be right! somebody shout in this place, comeon, we're walking. come on. come on, we're
walking. pick 'em up, pick 'em up, pick 'emup, come on, we walk by faith not by sight! i'm follow jesus wherever he leads me! nowon your way out, find seven people, tell 'em don't stop on six! do it now, god bless youliberty!