I shared a teaching with our staff about two
months ago. I came in and taught this teaching called
Three Habits of a Healthy Heart. Several of them said, "You need to share that
with the church," and I couldn't find a good weekend to share it because of all of the
scheduling. Well, when I realized we would have to postpone
our series for a week, I thought, "This is the time." This is the window for me to share this with
you.
So I want to teach you a little bit today. This
teaching is going to require your full attention, and I don't just mean with your mind. I mean your emotional attention. While I get set up here to teach you today
Three Habits of a Healthy Heart, how many know real lasting change has to happen in
your heart? It can't just be in your behavior.
You really have to fundamentally change your
belief. That's what the psalmist is talking about
in Psalm 119:112. There aren't many chapters in the Bible that
have 112 verses. I think Psalm 119 is on record as the longest
chapter in the Bible.
It's constructed grammatically in a specific
way that we won't go into in this class. I want to teach a little bit today, if that's
all right. Is it all right if I don't even shout or holler
or anything? If you wanted to hear me holler, you should
have come to the praise party. We had an amazing time saying, "Good morning,
midnight." We welcomed not only a new year but we also
welcomed our challenges this year, knowing that often our calling is contained in our
challenges, if we learn how to see it correctly.
Everything begins with perspective. The perspective of the psalmist in Psalm 119
is kind of all over the place. I think he's dealing with some inner issues. Getting beyond the grammar of the psalm, we
can know a little bit of the intention of it.
The psalmist says in verse 112, "I incline
my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end." I want this to last. I don't just want to see some changes in my
life for a few weeks in January. I didn't hand them my gym membership and sign
up for a year just to be eating chocolate by Valentine's Day. I want to see some lasting change in my life
this year.
The psalmist said, "I incline my heart." It has to happen within. Not just the behavior, but the belief that
drives the behavior has to change or the change won't stay. We've found this out over and over again. Every new year we learn it again.
Lasting change is what I'm after, and I incline
my heart. That's an interesting choice of words. If you incline something, that means it was
naturally not in that position. That means you had to act upon it in order
to orient it in a different direction.
Right? We don't incline something that's already
upright. It must have meant his heart was declined. The problem with a lot of us is we go through
life reclined. However we wake up, that's how we stay.
However we feel, that's how we act. The psalmist said, "I act upon my attitude,
and I incline my heart." Did you know you're in charge of your heart? Quit saying people broke your heart. They can't break it if you don't give it to
them. He said, "I'm setting my heart in the direction
of heaven." I wonder, is your heart set in a divine direction
today? Incline my heart.
I don't think this is something you do one
time. You just inclined your heart to God when you
were 12 at summer Bible camp and you never were tempted again. I think we want it to be that way. I want it to be like the infomercial.
Do you remember the infomercial with the Showtime
rotisserie oven? The man said, "Set it and forget it." That's how I want my heart to be, like that
infomercial. Set it and forget it. I want my heart to just stay there, you know. "Hey, I went to church the first Sunday in
January.
That ought to get me by. I set it." The psalmist said it's not enough to set it
and forget it. He said it's more like you set it, you check
it, you reset it, you check it, because all through your day and all through your year,
your heart is going to be tempted to decline to a default position. Maybe it's a default position of discouragement
or despair or dysfunction, but when you take charge of your heart...
That's what the writer of Proverbs said. It's not just the psalmist who did it. The writer of Proverbs said, "Guard your heart." It's your heart, and that's where the issues
of life flow from. Before we can get the windows working, we
have to get our hearts open.
Hey man, the doctor was fussing at me a couple
of months ago about my cholesterol. It lets me know I'm getting on up there in
age. I've never had a conversation like this with
a doctor before. He's just talking and talking.
Blah, blah, blah. LDL, HDL, triglycerides, all this stuff. I know he could tell he wasn't getting through
to me, because he took a really drastic turn. He said, "Hey! I don't want you to be one of those guys who
looks really fit on the outside," which made me feel happy that he said that about me,
"but then one day you're just outside running and you just fall over of a heart attack.
You need to listen to me." I corrected him. I said, "Doctor, I know you have some degrees
that I don't have and all that, but you're wrong about that. I don't run. So if I fall over, it's not going to be on
cardio." He said, "You can be blocked on the inside
and look good on the outside." You can be successful and fall over, be sexy
and fall over, be married and fall over, get a promotion and fall over, be religious and
fall over.
It has to happen in the heart. But it doesn't start with the heart; it starts
with the habits. Your habits create the condition of your heart. I feel like God is going to help somebody
set your heart on things above, get your heart set in the right direction, but it's going
to require some habits.
They're all right there in the psalm. I want to read you the next two verses, because
my three habits are right there in the verses. "I set my heart to perform your statutes forever,
to the end. I hate..." What's that word doing in the Bible? I thought we were supposed to love everything.
"I hate the double-minded, but I love your
law." I don't think we should go on until we talk
about that. He said, "I hate this. I hate the double-minded." That's not a person I hate; it's I hate the
condition of double-mindedness. I hate it.
See, the thing about hate is hate is the most
powerful motivation to change, not love. Before you start with wanting to reach your
goals, maybe the first thing for you to do is to make a decision about some things you
hate. It's going to be complicated, because for
me, I have a love/hate relationship with some of the things. I feel kind of like David.
One time David's son Absalom died, and Joab
came to him and said, "Your son is dead," and David started weeping. Joab was mad, because Absalom was trying to
take the throne from David. Absalom had become David's enemy, but David's
heart was connected to Absalom, so he was crying. Joab said, "You need to get it together.
You hate those who love you, and you love
those who hate you. You hate what's trying to deliver you, and
you love what's trying to destroy you." I feel that way about certain things in my
life, certain actions, certain behaviors in my life. I love how they feel for a minute, but I hate
the crash. Certain things in my life, I hate how they
feel when I'm doing them.
I hate the plank. Exhibit A. For years, I was one of these people... I would tell you to your face, "I hate to
exercise." You can go back and watch my sermon videos
from three years ago.
I would stand on the stage and say, "I hate
to exercise." Do you know why I hated it? Because it wasn't a habit. I didn't do it enough to love it. I hated it. But you don't have to accept your default
attitude toward anything.
I incline my heart. The moment of realization for me was when
I was paying my tailor $450 to come over to my house and let my pants out. I hated it. I looked at him and said, "I hate this, man.
I could be using this money to buy new clothes,
and I'm paying it to you to make my clothes bigger. I hate this." He said, "Hey, keep eating. It's job security for me." That's what my tailor said. I said, "No, man.
I hate this. I hate this feeling." Sometimes before you can make a change you
have to be motivated by... I know it's a strong word. It's not very pastoral.
You have to hate it. You have to hate self-pity. The problem with hating self-pity is it feels
good like a bag of Doritos on your tongue. See, it's not that I hate the taste of Doritos.
I just hated what it did to my waist. He said, "I hate the double-minded. I love your law." Before I can do what I love, I have to know
what to hate. I hate this.
I love what it does for me, but I hate what
it does to me. It's a complicated relationship. A bag of Doritos does something for me. It might not do anything for you.
It does something for me. I have a long-standing relationship with carbohydrates. They have been there for me. In the midnight hour, when I couldn't call
on anybody else, I could call on chocolate.
So I love it. I love what it does for me, but I hate what
it does to me. I hate all this. I hate anger.
It makes me feel good. It even gets me some results. I have a complicated relationship with anger. If you get mad enough, you can get people
to do what you want, but then you're all alone after they do it.
Nobody wants to be with you. I hate being angry, because I hate being alone. I hate the outcome of this and that. I hate what it does to my marriage.
I hate what it does to my relationships. I hate how it disturbs my inner peace and
puts me in a state of turmoil. It's complicated. It's a complicated relationship that I have
with complaining.
I love to complain. Ooh, I love to tell somebody. You can look at me. "Well, the Bible says don't do it." The Bible says don't do it, but it doesn't
say it doesn't feel good.
It feels really good to complain. It feels like a choice morsel going down as
it's coming out of your mouth. Just to unload on them. When somebody says, "How are you doing?" Just
let them know for five minutes every ache, every pain, every disappointment, every struggle.
But guess what? The next time they see you coming, they're
going the other way. It's the law of diminishing returns. It gets you high for a minute. I love to talk bad about people.
I do. I shouldn't say these things. I tell myself every week after I finish on
Sunday when I'm watching back my sermon, "Furtick, don't say stuff like that. People put it on YouTube and use it against
you as a weapon." I just have to tell you I love...
It makes me feel really good about my dysfunction
to spend a little time discussing yours. I love to talk about other people's dumb decisions. I love it. It's a natural high, because if I can get
you down here, then I feel like I'm right here.
The only problem is I'm setting myself up
for decline. Now the next time I see you I can't treat
you better than I talk about you, so it ruins my relationships. I love what it does for me. It does something for me.
Come on, how many will admit it does something
for you to talk about what Henry did and what Suzie wore and what they should have done
and what their kids are like? But by the same measure you judge you will
be judged. I love the taste, but I hate the outcome. I hate it. The problem with a lot of our resolutions
for change is that they are not motivated by a healthy kind of hate.
There is a healthy way to hate. I hate racism. I hate poverty. That's the only thing that will motivate me
to do anything about it.
I have to hate it. I hate bullying. I was bullied. Tony Wigfall jacked me up against the wall.
I still remember my head cracking against
the wall and my friend Hamilton looking at me, saying, "Don't look at me, man." I still remember the view from up there. I can't see somebody being picked on without
seeing myself from up there, just wondering, "Is this guy going to break my face?" I hate it. Holly said to me the other day, "I hate being
late." Notice she didn't say, "I love being early,"
because she doesn't. You have to get to the point...
We were going to see somebody. She said, "I don't want to walk in like that." Until you hate being late more than you love
hitting "snooze," you won't make the change. Get that thing on your mind, that bag of Doritos,
and say, "I hate it." I hate the double-minded. I hate indecision.
I hate it. I'd rather make a bad decision than make no
decision. I hate procrastination. I did it a lot, but I finally got to the point
where I hate it.
I hate the discipline of preparation too,
but I hate the pain of procrastination more than I hate... I actually said to somebody the other day,
"I never thought I'd hear myself say this, and I used to hate people who said this. I think I like exercise. After three years of doing it five days a
week and finding out what works for me, I.
Think I'm one of those people I used to roll
my eyes at. I think I like to exercise. I think I've reset my heart." I declare reset. There are some things in your life that have
been on the decline, but God brought you to church on the first weekend of the year, and
you're setting your heart in a different direction.
You're going to love the presence of God this
year. You're going to love the Word of God this
year. You're going to love the right things this
year. Train your brain to hate it.
I know that's what my dad was trying to do
when he made us eat all the food on our plate when we overfilled it at Ryan's Buffet. Vacation memories. He said, "You're going to eat every bite on
that plate." My brother and I took turns causing diversions
while the other one stuffed our pockets. We walked out of Ryan's with pockets full
of food.
I'll never forget it. He wanted me to have an association. He said, "I want you to hate waste." Maybe that's why sometimes God lets us get
so low: so I'll hate it, so I will despise Egypt, because if I didn't despise it I would
be tempted to go back. "I hate the double-minded, and I love your
law." I know what to hate, and (this is healthy
habit #2) I know where to hide.
Do you know where to hide? You'd better. The attacks are going to come and the missiles
are going to fly and the doubts and discouraging thoughts are going to try to set your heart
on the decline, get you off track, take you back where you've been, keep you stuck from
moving forward. Do you know where to hide when discouragement
comes flying past your head, or do you run to the same enemy that is attacking you in
an effort to hide? I'm not talking about physical places. The hiding places we create that destroy us
are usually the ones in our hearts, emotional states.
He said, "You are my hiding place, Lord. You are my shield." That's a powerful thought. Look at what he says. "You are my hiding place and my shield..." When attacks come, I've learned where to run.
The reason I'm moving forward in my life this
year isn't because I won't be attacked. It's because I know what to run to when I
am. The expectation of no attack is a setup for
disappointment, but the psalmist said, "I. Set myself up for success, because I designated
in advance where I would hide when the attack came." You can't find the place to hide once the attack
starts.
I'm going to teach more on this in the weeks
to come. Are you coming back for the series? When I say this series is something worth
canceling your life to make sure you don't miss, I mean it. What God has shown me is so explosive I think
it might even be my next book. I don't even want to write another book, but
it's so strong I think I might have to.
I'm going to teach you in this about the power
of making decisions and sticking with them. I'm not going back there. I'm not running to that. I can't ask God to protect me from the enemy
I'm running to.
Where do you hide when it gets hard? You'd better set it up in advance. I'm running to the places where there's real
protection, not the illusion of protection. Some of us hide in places that seem safe. He said, "You are my hiding place." Elijah went and hid in a cave because it seemed
safe.
It was far away from Jezebel, and she was
threatening his very life. This is an Old Testament story that's worth
reading if you haven't read it. The whisper of God came into the cave as Elijah
ran from his calling. Are you running from the conflict or are you
running into the conflict? The place of conflict is the place of calling,
but you have to be comfortable hiding in the midst of hardships to know that God is your
refuge, your strong tower in the battle, not from it.
Elijah ran south as far as he could go. He went in a cave and spent the night, and
the voice of the Lord went in the cave and said, "What are you doing here, Elijah? Why are you hiding here? Why would you choose to hide in the place
that would keep you confined when your calling is out there? Did I not protect you on Mount Carmel? Did I not send down fire from heaven?" You can hide in plain sight when you trust
in the goodness of God. "I will see the goodness of the Lord in the
land of the living," but I won't experience life in dead places. I have to know where to hide.
One of the staff members who heard this teaching
when I taught it to the staff (and to be honest with you, I'm teaching it better to you than
I taught it to them; I've had some practice now)... She said her hiding place is blame. She said, "When I'm confronted with a need
to change, I hide behind blame." When we were picturing our hiding places,
because I had all of the staff members... I could have you do this, but I don't want
to embarrass you, and you might be a first-time guest.
I had them turn to each other and say what
their hiding place was, and they went deep. Some of them said, "Porn." Some of them said, "Eating." Some of them said, "Destructive thought patterns." Some of them said this, and some of them said
that, but they all had a hiding place. Everybody in here has a hiding place. In fact, you have multiple hiding places.
She said her hiding place is blame. Something goes wrong. "Well, if the kids hadn't... Well, if the car hadn't..." Blame.
It's a convenient hiding place, because it
will shield you from the inconvenience of change. If it's somebody else who needs to change... It's a convenient hiding place...For a little
while, but it's a papier mch shield. It can only keep you from so much.
She said, "I blame. I blame everybody. I blame everything. I blame the way I was raised.
I blame my parents for being too hard on me,
and then I blame them for being too easy on me. I blame them if they would have made me stick
with piano lessons, and then I blame them that they made me show up to choir practice." "I blame what I did get. I blame what I didn't get." Blame was her hiding place. What's yours? Elijah had a cave.
She had blame. I wonder, do you hide behind low expectations? This one is really common. If you don't expect much, you can't be disappointed. You learn how to hide behind this fake smile.
You don't really have a whole heart. You have a fake smile to cover up your half-hearted
interior life. We hide ourselves from even those closest
to us. We hide ourselves, because if I hide behind
an image I present, I don't have to deal with who I am.
The call of God is coming forth like the voice
of the Lord went into the cave. The voice of the Lord is coming into your
heart today, saying, "Come out. Come out of hiding. Come out of fear.
Come out of low expectations. Come out of hypocrisy. Come out from this fake spirituality. Come out, come out wherever you are." When you hide in the shadow of the Most High, you can abide under the shadow
of the Almighty.
I have a shelter. I don't have to hide behind anything but God. I'm glad it snowed so I could preach this
message. This is going to open your heart.
What good will it do for the windows of heaven
to be opened if your heart is blocked? You have to know where to hide or you'll be
running, doing your thing this year, and just collapse, the doctor said, because you didn't
know where to hide. I know where to hide. I don't always do it, but I know where, and
that's a start. I know where to hide.
My kids were playing hide-and-seek one time,
and they got locked in the crawl space. That's what you don't want to do. Sometimes it's like that. You're running from something, thinking you're
hiding, but you end up locking yourself...
You can lock yourself in a pattern and an
attitude in an effort to escape something, and what you get locked in is worse than what
you were running from. You need a better hiding place. You have to hide somewhere. So memorize some songs, the little songs you
like, the little songs we sing in the church.
You can sing them other than Sunday. "The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into it." You might have to sing in the shower to incline
your heart to keep his commands. You might have to hide in a different place.
Where else are you going to hide? Are you going to hide in feeling sorry for
yourself? Are you going to hide in enemy-held territory
and expect to be safe there? I know where to hide. I know how to say, "I love you, Lord, and
I lift my voice to worship you, O my soul, rejoice. Take joy, my King..." This is an old song, but it will still work
to run the Devil off when he starts messing with you in the middle of the night. "...In what you hear.
May it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear." I can sing when I'm squeezed. I can sing when I'm pressed. I can rejoice, hit reset on my heart. "I set my heart to keep your commands." We're hitting reset.
I want you to picture yourself playing Nintendo,
and you hit "Reset." You're about to have to start over all your
progress, and you hit "Reset." The psalmist said, "I know where to go to
reset my heart. It's not that the missiles never fly. I've just learned how to duck, and I know
where to hide. I've pointed my heart in the direction of
my destiny.
I know where to hide, I know what to hate,
and my heart knows how to hope." I want you to stand up if you have hope. It's good to have hope. I preached a whole Christmas sermon on we
have this hope. I hope everybody at every location is standing
up because you have hope.
The psalmist doesn't say in this particular
instance, "I have hope." He says, "I hope." I'm not sure if I learned this in third-grade
English or fourth, but when he says, "I hope" instead of saying, "I have hope," that makes
it a verb and not a noun. Can any English teachers verify what I just
said? It's not just something I have; it's something
I do. It's an active hope. You cannot go into another year of your life
hoping it gets better.
Like the lady I sat next to on the plane. She said, "Here's my philosophy. Hope for the best; expect the worst." That's clever, but it's crap. Hope doesn't just wish it would.
I tell you what. If you don't know how to hope, if you think
hope is just... When we say, "I hope in your word," that's
not a bookmark in your Bible that you look at every once in a while, or something on
your coffee mug. It is a way of living.
I hope. Not just I wish; I hope. What does hope do? Hope puts its hand to work. Hope, not just in my heart.
Have you put your hand to what you're hoping
for? "Faith is the substance of things hoped for
and the evidence of things not seen." God wants to open your heart this new year
to possibility, but you're going to have to put your hand to what you're hoping for. In other words, you have to work your window. I don't hope it's not cold. I wear a coat.
When I was leaving for church this weekend,
Elijah said, "Daddy, it's going to be great." He said, "It's going to be record attendance." I said, "No, it's not." He said, "Yes, it is, Daddy. Have a little faith. Practice what you preach." I said, "Boy, let me teach you a little lesson
about church growth and hope. Some of my campuses have to be closed, so
it can't be record attendance, and Charlotte people are kind of crazy anyway." Not y'all, but some people watching online.
I said, "My hope isn't that the rooms are
going to be full. My hope is that God is going to show up and
speak to whoever comes." That's how I hope. I don't hope it's not cold; I put on a coat
and go outside anyway. I don't hope it's not hard; I charge the hill.
My hope is not in the path; my hope is in
the promise. The path can look like this, but I'm still
headed to the promise. "I hope in your word." How many received something from the Lord
today? Do you feel your heart opening up? You can feel it. You can feel God doing something.
This is going to be an amazing year, church. If I were you, I wouldn't miss the window. Next weekend, I'm really going to start the
series this time: Work Your Window. But I feel like today was a little WD-40 on
the hinges.
We have the window cracked. We have our hearts open. If you feel comfortable... I don't know if you do or not.
Would you just lift your hands to the Lord
to receive what he has for you? Hope in your word. Hope in your promise. Thank you for your presence, Lord. I thank you for the expectation of change.
We incline our hearts. We're set up for success. The windows of heaven are open, and so are
our hearts. We won't be blocked.
We've set our hearts, and we'll set them again
and again and again. "I will bless the Lord at all times, and his
praise shall continually be in my mouth.".
