Preach 'Em Now

i shared a teaching with our staff about twomonths ago. i came in and taught this teaching calledthree habits of a healthy heart. several of them said, "you need to share thatwith the church," and i couldn't find a good weekend to share it because of all of thescheduling. well, when i realized we would have to postponeour series for a week, i thought, "this is the time." this is the window for me to share this withyou. 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 todaythree habits of a healthy heart, how many know real lasting change has to happen inyour heart? it can't just be in your behavior. you really have to fundamentally change yourbelief. that's what the psalmist is talking aboutin psalm 119:112. there aren't many chapters in the bible thathave 112 verses. i think psalm 119 is on record as the longestchapter in the bible.

it's constructed grammatically in a specificway that we won't go into in this class. i want to teach a little bit today, if that'sall right. is it all right if i don't even shout or holleror anything? if you wanted to hear me holler, you shouldhave come to the praise party. we had an amazing time saying, "good morning,midnight." we welcomed not only a new year but we alsowelcomed our challenges this year, knowing that often our calling is contained in ourchallenges, if we learn how to see it correctly. everything begins with perspective. the perspective of the psalmist in psalm 119is kind of all over the place.

i think he's dealing with some inner issues. getting beyond the grammar of the psalm, wecan know a little bit of the intention of it. the psalmist says in verse 112, "i inclinemy heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end." i want this to last. i don't just want to see some changes in mylife for a few weeks in january. i didn't hand them my gym membership and signup for a year just to be eating chocolate by valentine's day.

i want to see some lasting change in my lifethis year. the psalmist said, "i incline my heart." it has to happen within. not just the behavior, but the belief thatdrives 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 inclinemy heart. that's an interesting choice of words.

if you incline something, that means it wasnaturally not in that position. that means you had to act upon it in orderto orient it in a different direction. right? we don't incline something that's alreadyupright. it must have meant his heart was declined. the problem with a lot of us is we go throughlife 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 tothem. he said, "i'm setting my heart in the directionof heaven." i wonder, is your heart set in a divine directiontoday? incline my heart. i don't think this is something you do onetime. you just inclined your heart to god when youwere 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 showtimerotisserie oven? the man said, "set it and forget it." that's how i want my heart to be, like thatinfomercial. set it and forget it. i want my heart to just stay there, you know. "hey, i went to church the first sunday injanuary. that ought to get me by.

i set it." the psalmist said it's not enough to set itand forget it. he said it's more like you set it, you checkit, 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 discouragementor 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 issuesof life flow from. before we can get the windows working, wehave to get our hearts open. hey man, the doctor was fussing at me a coupleof months ago about my cholesterol. it lets me know i'm getting on up there inage. i've never had a conversation like this witha 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 throughto me, because he took a really drastic turn. he said, "hey! i don't want you to be one of those guys wholooks 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 degreesthat 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 oncardio." he said, "you can be blocked on the insideand look good on the outside." you can be successful and fall over, be sexyand fall over, be married and fall over, get a promotion and fall over, be religious andfall over. it has to happen in the heart. but it doesn't start with the heart; it startswith the habits. your habits create the condition of your heart. i feel like god is going to help somebodyset your heart on things above, get your heart

set in the right direction, but it's goingto require some habits. they're all right there in the psalm. i want to read you the next two verses, becausemy 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 yourlaw." i don't think we should go on until we talkabout that.

he said, "i hate this. i hate the double-minded." that's not a person i hate; it's i hate thecondition of double-mindedness. i hate it. see, the thing about hate is hate is the mostpowerful motivation to change, not love. before you start with wanting to reach yourgoals, maybe the first thing for you to do is to make a decision about some things youhate. it's going to be complicated, because forme, 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 joabcame to him and said, "your son is dead," and david started weeping. joab was mad, because absalom was trying totake the throne from david. absalom had become david's enemy, but david'sheart was connected to absalom, so he was crying. joab said, "you need to get it together. you hate those who love you, and you lovethose who hate you. you hate what's trying to deliver you, andyou love what's trying to destroy you."

i feel that way about certain things in mylife, certain actions, certain behaviors in my life. i love how they feel for a minute, but i hatethe crash. certain things in my life, i hate how theyfeel 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 toexercise." you can go back and watch my sermon videosfrom three years ago. i would stand on the stage and say, "i hateto 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 defaultattitude toward anything. i incline my heart. the moment of realization for me was wheni was paying my tailor $450 to come over to my house and let my pants out. 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 youhave 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 feelsgood 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 knowwhat to hate. i love what it does for me, but i hate whatit 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 callon anybody else, i could call on chocolate. so i love it. 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 peopleto 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 andputs me in a state of turmoil. it's complicated. it's a complicated relationship that i havewith 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'tsay it doesn't feel good. it feels really good to complain. it feels like a choice morsel going down asit's coming out of your mouth. just to unload on them. when somebody says, "how are you doing?" justlet them know for five minutes every ache, every pain, every disappointment, every struggle.

but guess what? the next time they see you coming, they'regoing 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 onsunday when i'm watching back my sermon, "furtick, don't say stuff like that.

people put it on youtube and use it againstyou as a weapon." i just have to tell you i love... it makes me feel really good about my dysfunctionto 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 getyou down here, then i feel like i'm right here. the only problem is i'm setting myself upfor decline. now the next time i see you i can't treatyou better than i talk about you, so it ruins

my relationships. i love what it does for me. come on, how many will admit it does somethingfor you to talk about what henry did and what suzie wore and what they should have doneand what their kids are like? but by the same measure you judge you willbe judged. i love the taste, but i hate the outcome. the problem with a lot of our resolutionsfor 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 meto 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 againstthe 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 withoutseeing myself from up there, just wondering, "is this guy going to break my face?" holly said to me the other day, "i hate beinglate." 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 lovehitting "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'd rather make a bad decision than make nodecision. i hate procrastination. i did it a lot, but i finally got to the pointwhere 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 aweek and finding out what works for me, i think i'm one of those people i used to rollmy 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 havebeen on the decline, but god brought you to church on the first weekend of the year, andyou're setting your heart in a different direction.

you're going to love the presence of god thisyear. you're going to love the word of god thisyear. you're going to love the right things thisyear. train your brain to hate it. i know that's what my dad was trying to dowhen 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 onthat plate." my brother and i took turns causing diversionswhile the other one stuffed our pockets.

we walked out of ryan's with pockets fullof 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 getso low: so i'll hate it, so i will despise egypt, because if i didn't despise it i wouldbe tempted to go back. "i hate the double-minded, and i love yourlaw." i know what to hate, and (this is healthyhabit #2) i know where to hide. do you know where to hide?

you'd better. the attacks are going to come and the missilesare going to fly and the doubts and discouraging thoughts are going to try to set your hearton the decline, get you off track, take you back where you've been, keep you stuck frommoving forward. do you know where to hide when discouragementcomes flying past your head, or do you run to the same enemy that is attacking you inan effort to hide? i'm not talking about physical places. the hiding places we create that destroy usare 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 thisyear isn't because i won't be attacked. it's because i know what to run to when iam. the expectation of no attack is a setup fordisappointment, but the psalmist said, "i

set myself up for success, because i designatedin advance where i would hide when the attack came." you can't find the place to hide once the attackstarts. i'm going to teach more on this in the weeksto come. are you coming back for the series? when i say this series is something worthcanceling your life to make sure you don't miss, i mean it. what god has shown me is so explosive i thinkit might even be my next book.

i don't even want to write another book, butit's so strong i think i might have to. i'm going to teach you in this about the powerof 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 enemyi'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 realprotection, 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 seemedsafe. it was far away from jezebel, and she wasthreatening his very life. this is an old testament story that's worthreading if you haven't read it. the whisper of god came into the cave as elijahran from his calling. are you running from the conflict or are yourunning 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 yourrefuge, 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, andthe 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 placethat 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 trustin the goodness of god.

"i will see the goodness of the lord in theland 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 teachingwhen i taught it to the staff (and to be honest with you, i'm teaching it better to you thani 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 needto 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 wantto embarrass you, and you might be a first-time guest. i had them turn to each other and say whattheir 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 saidthat, but they all had a hiding place. everybody in here has a hiding place. in fact, you have multiple hiding places.

something goes wrong. "well, if the kids hadn't... well, if the car hadn't..." blame. it's a convenient hiding place, because itwill shield you from the inconvenience of change. if it's somebody else who needs to change... it's a convenient hiding place...for a littlewhile, but it's a papier mã¢chã© 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 stickwith 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-heartedinterior life. we hide ourselves from even those closestto us. we hide ourselves, because if i hide behindan image i present, i don't have to deal with who i am. the call of god is coming forth like the voiceof the lord went into the cave. the voice of the lord is coming into yourheart 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 shadowof 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 thismessage.

this is going to open your heart. what good will it do for the windows of heavento be opened if your heart is blocked? you have to know where to hide or you'll berunning, doing your thing this year, and just collapse, the doctor said, because you didn'tknow where to hide. i know where to hide. i don't always do it, but i know where, andthat's a start. 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'rehiding, but you end up locking yourself... you can lock yourself in a pattern and anattitude in an effort to escape something, and what you get locked in is worse than whatyou were running from. you need a better hiding place. you have to hide somewhere. so memorize some songs, the little songs youlike, 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 inclineyour 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 foryourself? are you going to hide in enemy-held territoryand expect to be safe there? i know how to say, "i love you, lord, andi lift my voice to worship you, o my soul, rejoice. take joy, my king..." this is an old song, but it will still workto 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 yourprogress, and you hit "reset." the psalmist said, "i know where to go toreset my heart. it's not that the missiles never fly. i've just learned how to duck, and i knowwhere to hide. i've pointed my heart in the direction ofmy 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 wehave this hope.

i hope everybody at every location is standingup because you have hope. the psalmist doesn't say in this particularinstance, "i have hope." he says, "i hope." i'm not sure if i learned this in third-gradeenglish or fourth, but when he says, "i hope" instead of saying, "i have hope," that makesit a verb and not a noun. can any english teachers verify what i justsaid? it's not just something i have; it's somethingi do. it's an active hope. you cannot go into another year of your lifehoping 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 thinkhope is just... when we say, "i hope in your word," that'snot a bookmark in your bible that you look at every once in a while, or something onyour 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 hopingfor? "faith is the substance of things hoped forand the evidence of things not seen." god wants to open your heart this new yearto 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 lessonabout church growth and hope. some of my campuses have to be closed, soit 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 aregoing to be full. my hope is that god is going to show up andspeak to whoever comes." that's how i hope.

i don't hope it's not cold; i put on a coatand 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 inthe promise. the path can look like this, but i'm stillheaded to the promise. "i hope in your word." how many received something from the lordtoday? 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 theseries this time: work your window. but i feel like today was a little wd-40 onthe 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 lordto 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 areour hearts. we won't be blocked. we've set our hearts, and we'll set them againand again and again.

"i will bless the lord at all times, and hispraise shall continually be in my mouth."

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