June 23, 2023 • 16 mins
Expand your expectations.
In “When Fear Keeps You From Hope,” Pastor Steven Furtick teaches us that overcoming disappointment requires us to trust in God’s ability to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, I'm coming to you now from the base, and
this is a special bonus teaching that I recorded just
for you to break it down a little more, to
take it a little deeper. I hope you enjoy this
overflow message. Let me know, let's go. You know, disappointment
(00:24):
can be a disease. It can eat away our ability
to dream, our ability to hope, and hope deferred makes
the heart sick, one proverb, says the King James version.
And when you think about the disease of disappointment is misleading,
(00:45):
meaning that you know, there's never a way that a
disease in my body is a good thing. We don't
ever think of that in a positive sense. Disappointment, while
it's not a positive thing to feel or experience, it is,
in its own way, the necessary flip side of having hope.
(01:11):
If you don't hope, you can't be disappointed. If you
never are willing to risk disappointment, you can't hope. And man,
and my preaching to myself today, because look, I've spent
large chunks of my adult life thinking that I could
(01:33):
figure out a strategy to avoid disappointment and still get
the things I hope to have. Whether that's with people. Man,
they let me down, I'm not going to reach out
to them because these last three times they let me down,
I'm not going to invest in that relationship because look, man,
(01:53):
what did that get me with this person over here?
Or what did that get me last time that I
encouraged them. I'm not saying anything this time. I'm not
going out of my way. It's embarrassing to admit that.
But even in some of the goals that I've reached
that were disappointing, or the things that I tried to
achieve and I didn't get the success that I wanted
and I was disappointed, I developed a strategy and it
(02:18):
was a secret strategy. I never came out and said, hey,
I'm going to set out to avoid disappointment, but I
definitely did that in some major ways in my life.
Still a tempted to do it sometimes, like not going
to go for it, not going to initiate it because
what if it doesn't work out. All of these things
are familiar to us. But you disappointment, hope, defer, a
(02:41):
dream that doesn't come to past, things that don't work
out the way you wanted, disillusionment, wishing life would be
one way and experiencing it another way. Man, if you
don't learn how to recognize that stuff and check it
and treat it and deal with it, process that in
a good way that honors God and involves him and
(03:04):
brings in his spirit to help you interpret it, it
will spread. That unchecked disappointment will spread. It'll spread into
your language, It'll spread into your way of thinking. You know,
it'll spread into sometimes even subconsciously, the way that you
approach your day, way you carry yourself, the way you
(03:28):
treat your body, Like, what's the point in taking care
of yourself? Doesn't ever work out for you anyway you
tried that before. So disappointment is definitely a disease if
left unchecked, but if treated, I actually think it can
be one of the things that God can use to
(03:48):
develop our trust in him, because through being disappointed that's
how God moves us on sometimes, or through being disapp
pointed in something, that's how we see that it was
empty to begin with. All Right, So, as I teach
this today about disappointment, and I think about, well, if
we're going to experience disappointment, if we hope, there's no
(04:11):
there's no potential for hope. Without the risk of disappointment.
That's my basic premise here. There is no put put
that down somewhere, write that down somewhere. There is no
potential for hope without the risk of disappointment. I might
even need to say it more strongly than that. There
(04:32):
is no potential for glory without potential disappointment. And I
don't mean glory for just your own self, your own sake, like, oh,
I want glory, but man, you know, if you don't
show up for the race, you can't win it. If
you don't show up for the fight, there's no crown.
(04:53):
If you don't engage in the struggle, there is no
there is no victory. And to risk disappointment, to risk
that it's gonna feel like it was all for nothing,
to risk that you're going to lose the money, or
to risk that you're gonna waste your time, or to
risk that it's going to be awkward. That's the part
(05:14):
of it what I have found in my life that
made me want to make this video about the antidote.
Antidote maybe good if I knew how to say the
words that I'm teaching about. But again, that's what this
space is for the antidote to disappointment is not to
(05:37):
avoid situations that are potentially disappointing. That's going to guarantee
a deeper disappointment in the end. You know that, right,
That's gonna guarantee that not only are you disappointed in
an event, but you're disappointed in the entire trajectory and
outcome of your life. That's what that's gonna do. If
(05:58):
you try to avoid disappointment, like isolate yourself and never
play unless you know you can win, and never do
anything unless you know somebody's going to do it back
for you. If reciprocation is the entry price for any
good deed that you do, or you have to have
the instant gratification and validation of everything that you put
(06:19):
your heart into working or being accepted or applauded, that
that in itself is a recipe for resentment later in
your life looking back, regret and resentment. Man, I would
rather have doses of disappointment along the way than the
(06:41):
disease of resentment and regret in the end. I would
rather have doses of disappointment along the way. Now I'm
mixing my metaphor here, so I'm not sure where I'm
going with this either, but work with me. I started
out saying, what's the antidote to disappointment? But now I
(07:03):
want to talk about how there are doses of disappointment
that that we have to be willing to go through
in order to avoid ending our life in a state
of regret or resentment. There are moments that we have
to push through a rejection to get to a place
(07:27):
where we are willing to risk so that we can
have true connection and love in our lives. Yeah, and
to me, the key is like how they say, don't
put all your eggs in one basket. I think that
(07:48):
the anti disappointment is don't put all your hopes in
one outcome. That's what the saying means. Don't put all
your eggs in one basket. That's what a money manager
would tell you, Diverse, don't just put your money over
here in US stocks. Put them in international stocks, not
just in small cap large cap, and have some with
(08:09):
bonds and fifteen percent here and twenty percent there and
your real estate. A good financial advisor is not going
to tell you I got a hot tip from my
brother about what Tesla's doing today. Nah, unless you know
what you're doing, most of us. We have to diversify. Now,
I'm not here to get financial wisdom, but in spiritual terms,
(08:30):
diversification of your hopes is really important as an antidote
to disappointment. In order to avoid being ultimately devastated by
the disappointments of life, you got to have a lot
of things going at once. And that does mean that
if you put all your hope on any one thing
(08:54):
other than God, other than Jesus, is coming down eventually.
If it's a number on a scale that you want
to reach, if it is an amount that you want
to reach in your financial life this year or in
ten years, which I think, those things are great as
motivators to move and to incorporate the things you want
(09:15):
in your life to feel progressed. Right, But those things
can't be God, because Paul says in Romans five, we
rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. That
does not disappoint. That's what doesn't disappoint. Now, if my
hope is man, God's going to use this, God's gonna
get me through this, God is working in this, I'm
(09:35):
learning from this, then that's very different. Then I must
have this, I must do that, it must be this
way to Every time I've done that, it's backfired. Every
time that I put all my hopes on one goal,
one way of doing things, one sermon. Oh, this is
gonna be the best ever, one song, one book. Man,
(09:56):
I promise you that even if that thing does well, well,
then what's the next one going to be? So as
I'm making things, creating things, ministering things, developing things, it's
important that I diversify. It's important that if one of
my friends is struggling in their life, I have encouragement
to give them right because I have somebody else that
(10:18):
can encourage me. I can't just be locked into one
person liking me. What if they're having a bad day.
I can't just be locked into one person noticing me.
What if they're distracted by their own drama. So this
is what I wanted to say, and I've been kind
of feeling my way through it, just to work this
idea out and maybe we can straighten it out together.
(10:39):
Maybe this will have more clarity as we wrap around it.
But the antidote to disappointment is diversification. For me. That
means every time I release one sermon and preach it,
I'm already working on another one so that if this
one feels a little disappointing, the next one is coming. Right.
(11:00):
Even as we prepare to release songs, we're releasing songs
that I'm excited about here over the next few weeks
and months. Elevation worship dot Com. Today's post sponsored by
Elevation Worship dot Com. Even as we're getting ready to
release those, I want to be working on some other ones.
And I am I am. I got some that are
(11:22):
going to Spotify and Apple Music. I got some that
are on my phone. Why because I need to know
that if these songs just we're meant to live in church,
or we're meant to live in the hearts of those
who wrote them and experience them together, then that's going
to be okay. Because there's more on the way. That's
the spirit I want you to get right now. That's okay.
(11:44):
There's more on the way. Say it out loud, that's okay.
There's more on the way. There's another one on the way.
That's okay. There's more on the way. And lose a
little money. That's okay. I don't like it. I'm not
gonna try to lose money, but there's more on the way.
God is my supplier. That's okay. You know that person
(12:07):
over there, they're moving, They're going to Argentina. They're not
going to be in your life anymore. Oh well, bless them.
I'm gonna miss them so much. I throw them a
farewell party. I keep up with them some. But man,
I'm not building my life around any one person. And
that's okay. Doesn't take the pain out of when people
leave your life. But they don't like you, that's okay.
There's people that do like me on the way. I
(12:29):
have to tell myself that all the time because I
know there's people who don't really like my ministry. That's okay.
There's more on the way. There's people coming that need help,
and they'll be able to receive what Jesus wants to
speak through me. That's okay. There's more on the way.
And when you know, when Jesus shows up in a situation,
there's more on the way. You know that he's very
(12:51):
capable of turning ceremonial washing jars into wine, big old,
big old wine glasses wine. You know he can. He can.
He can turn a common, ordinary object into something that
holds something very special. He can transform the wine while
it moves across the room. That's okay. There's more on
the way. Oh we're out of wine. Oh we're out
(13:14):
of strength. Oh we're out of ideas. That's okay, there's
more on the way. And that's very different than having
an expectation that you know, this one source that's not
God is going to meet my needs, this one job,
this one stream, this one relationship. Diversify. Divine diversification is
(13:40):
what I'm talking about. Knowing that if the brook dries up,
God's got a widow and Zeraphat, and if you will
meet the next need that God put in front of you.
This is the story of Elijah. I know you were
already there with me, but just in case you weren't tracking.
When you get there and you give her the instruction
(14:00):
so that her family can be fed through the famine,
I'm gonna meet your needs to That's okay. The brook
dried up, there's more on the way. And I feel
that the divine strategy or antidote for disappointment is diversification.
That you know that the Lord has lunches in the
hands of little boys, even if it's a remote place
(14:24):
and it's getting late and the crowds won't go away.
That's okay. There's more on the way. That's okay. There's
more on the way, that mentality, that spirit, not because
I'm so good, but because God is within me and
there are rivers of living water that flow from me.
That's okay. There's more on the way. Easy to say,
(14:46):
harder to live. So let's live it a little bit today.
I'm not talking about not getting your sight set and
focusing on something. Yesterday I talked about focusing. I believe
in focusing. I believe in setting goals and targets. I
believe in insisting on reaching them and not just watering
down what you want to match what you think you
can do. But I also believe that you have to
(15:08):
leave room in there so that God is not in
this box. For God to do what he wants to
do and use you how he wants to use you,
and bring about what he wants to bring about. Hey,
I hope you enjoyed the podcast, and if you did,
make sure to share it and subscribe so we can
get you all of these new messages as soon as
they're available. I also want to take a moment and
(15:30):
thank all of you who are a part of Elevation.
Whether you support us financially, or serve with us, or
just share these messages, it's because of you that we're
able to reach people all around the world. And if
you want more information on how to be a part
of Elevation, click the link in the description. Thanks again
for listening. Make sure to leave a review, share the message,
(15:52):
and subscribe. God bless you.
Hey, I'm coming to you now from the base, and
this is a special bonus teaching that I recorded just
for you to break it down a little more, to
take it a little deeper. I hope you enjoy this
overflow message. Let me know, let's go. You know, disappointment
(00:24):
can be a disease. It can eat away our ability
to dream, our ability to hope, and hope deferred makes
the heart sick, one proverb, says the King James version.
And when you think about the disease of disappointment is misleading,
(00:45):
meaning that you know, there's never a way that a
disease in my body is a good thing. We don't
ever think of that in a positive sense. Disappointment, while
it's not a positive thing to feel or experience, it is,
in its own way, the necessary flip side of having hope.
(01:11):
If you don't hope, you can't be disappointed. If you
never are willing to risk disappointment, you can't hope. And man,
and my preaching to myself today, because look, I've spent
large chunks of my adult life thinking that I could
(01:33):
figure out a strategy to avoid disappointment and still get
the things I hope to have. Whether that's with people. Man,
they let me down, I'm not going to reach out
to them because these last three times they let me down,
I'm not going to invest in that relationship because look, man,
(01:53):
what did that get me with this person over here?
Or what did that get me last time that I
encouraged them. I'm not saying anything this time. I'm not
going out of my way. It's embarrassing to admit that.
But even in some of the goals that I've reached
that were disappointing, or the things that I tried to
achieve and I didn't get the success that I wanted
and I was disappointed, I developed a strategy and it
(02:18):
was a secret strategy. I never came out and said, hey,
I'm going to set out to avoid disappointment, but I
definitely did that in some major ways in my life.
Still a tempted to do it sometimes, like not going
to go for it, not going to initiate it because
what if it doesn't work out. All of these things
are familiar to us. But you disappointment, hope, defer, a
(02:41):
dream that doesn't come to past, things that don't work
out the way you wanted, disillusionment, wishing life would be
one way and experiencing it another way. Man, if you
don't learn how to recognize that stuff and check it
and treat it and deal with it, process that in
a good way that honors God and involves him and
(03:04):
brings in his spirit to help you interpret it, it
will spread. That unchecked disappointment will spread. It'll spread into
your language, It'll spread into your way of thinking. You know,
it'll spread into sometimes even subconsciously, the way that you
approach your day, way you carry yourself, the way you
(03:28):
treat your body, Like, what's the point in taking care
of yourself? Doesn't ever work out for you anyway you
tried that before. So disappointment is definitely a disease if
left unchecked, but if treated, I actually think it can
be one of the things that God can use to
(03:48):
develop our trust in him, because through being disappointed that's
how God moves us on sometimes, or through being disapp
pointed in something, that's how we see that it was
empty to begin with. All Right, So, as I teach
this today about disappointment, and I think about, well, if
we're going to experience disappointment, if we hope, there's no
(04:11):
there's no potential for hope. Without the risk of disappointment.
That's my basic premise here. There is no put put
that down somewhere, write that down somewhere. There is no
potential for hope without the risk of disappointment. I might
even need to say it more strongly than that. There
(04:32):
is no potential for glory without potential disappointment. And I
don't mean glory for just your own self, your own sake, like, oh,
I want glory, but man, you know, if you don't
show up for the race, you can't win it. If
you don't show up for the fight, there's no crown.
(04:53):
If you don't engage in the struggle, there is no
there is no victory. And to risk disappointment, to risk
that it's gonna feel like it was all for nothing,
to risk that you're going to lose the money, or
to risk that you're gonna waste your time, or to
risk that it's going to be awkward. That's the part
(05:14):
of it what I have found in my life that
made me want to make this video about the antidote.
Antidote maybe good if I knew how to say the
words that I'm teaching about. But again, that's what this
space is for the antidote to disappointment is not to
(05:37):
avoid situations that are potentially disappointing. That's going to guarantee
a deeper disappointment in the end. You know that, right,
That's gonna guarantee that not only are you disappointed in
an event, but you're disappointed in the entire trajectory and
outcome of your life. That's what that's gonna do. If
(05:58):
you try to avoid disappointment, like isolate yourself and never
play unless you know you can win, and never do
anything unless you know somebody's going to do it back
for you. If reciprocation is the entry price for any
good deed that you do, or you have to have
the instant gratification and validation of everything that you put
(06:19):
your heart into working or being accepted or applauded, that
that in itself is a recipe for resentment later in
your life looking back, regret and resentment. Man, I would
rather have doses of disappointment along the way than the
(06:41):
disease of resentment and regret in the end. I would
rather have doses of disappointment along the way. Now I'm
mixing my metaphor here, so I'm not sure where I'm
going with this either, but work with me. I started
out saying, what's the antidote to disappointment? But now I
(07:03):
want to talk about how there are doses of disappointment
that that we have to be willing to go through
in order to avoid ending our life in a state
of regret or resentment. There are moments that we have
to push through a rejection to get to a place
(07:27):
where we are willing to risk so that we can
have true connection and love in our lives. Yeah, and
to me, the key is like how they say, don't
put all your eggs in one basket. I think that
(07:48):
the anti disappointment is don't put all your hopes in
one outcome. That's what the saying means. Don't put all
your eggs in one basket. That's what a money manager
would tell you, Diverse, don't just put your money over
here in US stocks. Put them in international stocks, not
just in small cap large cap, and have some with
(08:09):
bonds and fifteen percent here and twenty percent there and
your real estate. A good financial advisor is not going
to tell you I got a hot tip from my
brother about what Tesla's doing today. Nah, unless you know
what you're doing, most of us. We have to diversify. Now,
I'm not here to get financial wisdom, but in spiritual terms,
(08:30):
diversification of your hopes is really important as an antidote
to disappointment. In order to avoid being ultimately devastated by
the disappointments of life, you got to have a lot
of things going at once. And that does mean that
if you put all your hope on any one thing
(08:54):
other than God, other than Jesus, is coming down eventually.
If it's a number on a scale that you want
to reach, if it is an amount that you want
to reach in your financial life this year or in
ten years, which I think, those things are great as
motivators to move and to incorporate the things you want
(09:15):
in your life to feel progressed. Right, But those things
can't be God, because Paul says in Romans five, we
rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. That
does not disappoint. That's what doesn't disappoint. Now, if my
hope is man, God's going to use this, God's gonna
get me through this, God is working in this, I'm
(09:35):
learning from this, then that's very different. Then I must
have this, I must do that, it must be this
way to Every time I've done that, it's backfired. Every
time that I put all my hopes on one goal,
one way of doing things, one sermon. Oh, this is
gonna be the best ever, one song, one book. Man,
(09:56):
I promise you that even if that thing does well, well,
then what's the next one going to be? So as
I'm making things, creating things, ministering things, developing things, it's
important that I diversify. It's important that if one of
my friends is struggling in their life, I have encouragement
to give them right because I have somebody else that
(10:18):
can encourage me. I can't just be locked into one
person liking me. What if they're having a bad day.
I can't just be locked into one person noticing me.
What if they're distracted by their own drama. So this
is what I wanted to say, and I've been kind
of feeling my way through it, just to work this
idea out and maybe we can straighten it out together.
(10:39):
Maybe this will have more clarity as we wrap around it.
But the antidote to disappointment is diversification. For me. That
means every time I release one sermon and preach it,
I'm already working on another one so that if this
one feels a little disappointing, the next one is coming. Right.
(11:00):
Even as we prepare to release songs, we're releasing songs
that I'm excited about here over the next few weeks
and months. Elevation worship dot Com. Today's post sponsored by
Elevation Worship dot Com. Even as we're getting ready to
release those, I want to be working on some other ones.
And I am I am. I got some that are
(11:22):
going to Spotify and Apple Music. I got some that
are on my phone. Why because I need to know
that if these songs just we're meant to live in church,
or we're meant to live in the hearts of those
who wrote them and experience them together, then that's going
to be okay. Because there's more on the way. That's
the spirit I want you to get right now. That's okay.
(11:44):
There's more on the way. Say it out loud, that's okay.
There's more on the way. There's another one on the way.
That's okay. There's more on the way. And lose a
little money. That's okay. I don't like it. I'm not
gonna try to lose money, but there's more on the way.
God is my supplier. That's okay. You know that person
(12:07):
over there, they're moving, They're going to Argentina. They're not
going to be in your life anymore. Oh well, bless them.
I'm gonna miss them so much. I throw them a
farewell party. I keep up with them some. But man,
I'm not building my life around any one person. And
that's okay. Doesn't take the pain out of when people
leave your life. But they don't like you, that's okay.
There's people that do like me on the way. I
(12:29):
have to tell myself that all the time because I
know there's people who don't really like my ministry. That's okay.
There's more on the way. There's people coming that need help,
and they'll be able to receive what Jesus wants to
speak through me. That's okay. There's more on the way.
And when you know, when Jesus shows up in a situation,
there's more on the way. You know that he's very
(12:51):
capable of turning ceremonial washing jars into wine, big old,
big old wine glasses wine. You know he can. He can.
He can turn a common, ordinary object into something that
holds something very special. He can transform the wine while
it moves across the room. That's okay. There's more on
the way. Oh we're out of wine. Oh we're out
(13:14):
of strength. Oh we're out of ideas. That's okay, there's
more on the way. And that's very different than having
an expectation that you know, this one source that's not
God is going to meet my needs, this one job,
this one stream, this one relationship. Diversify. Divine diversification is
(13:40):
what I'm talking about. Knowing that if the brook dries up,
God's got a widow and Zeraphat, and if you will
meet the next need that God put in front of you.
This is the story of Elijah. I know you were
already there with me, but just in case you weren't tracking.
When you get there and you give her the instruction
(14:00):
so that her family can be fed through the famine,
I'm gonna meet your needs to That's okay. The brook
dried up, there's more on the way. And I feel
that the divine strategy or antidote for disappointment is diversification.
That you know that the Lord has lunches in the
hands of little boys, even if it's a remote place
(14:24):
and it's getting late and the crowds won't go away.
That's okay. There's more on the way. That's okay. There's
more on the way, that mentality, that spirit, not because
I'm so good, but because God is within me and
there are rivers of living water that flow from me.
That's okay. There's more on the way. Easy to say,
(14:46):
harder to live. So let's live it a little bit today.
I'm not talking about not getting your sight set and
focusing on something. Yesterday I talked about focusing. I believe
in focusing. I believe in setting goals and targets. I
believe in insisting on reaching them and not just watering
down what you want to match what you think you
can do. But I also believe that you have to
(15:08):
leave room in there so that God is not in
this box. For God to do what he wants to
do and use you how he wants to use you,
and bring about what he wants to bring about. Hey,
I hope you enjoyed the podcast, and if you did,
make sure to share it and subscribe so we can
get you all of these new messages as soon as
they're available. I also want to take a moment and
(15:30):
thank all of you who are a part of Elevation.
Whether you support us financially, or serve with us, or
just share these messages, it's because of you that we're
able to reach people all around the world. And if
you want more information on how to be a part
of Elevation, click the link in the description. Thanks again
for listening. Make sure to leave a review, share the message,
(15:52):
and subscribe. God bless you.
Host
Steven Furtick
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com