The God Of Answers | Holly Furtick | Elevation Church

TL;DR Summary

Holly Furtick delivers an insightful message on the nature of divine answers, focusing on the theme of waiting on God. She draws parallels between personal experiences and biblical narratives to illustrate the frustration and growth that occur during periods of waiting. The sermon encourages believers to trust in God’s timing and wisdom, even when answers seem delayed or unclear, emphasizing that faith often requires embracing the mystery of God’s plans.

The sermon is grounded in Acts 1, where Jesus instructs his disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit. Holly explains that the disciples were eager for a political restoration of Israel, but Jesus redirected their focus to a spiritual mission. This passage highlights the difference between human expectations and divine plans, teaching that God’s answers may not always align with our desires. Holly also references Deuteronomy 29:29 to remind listeners that some things are meant to remain mysteries, underscoring the importance of faith in the unseen.

Listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own lives and recognize the areas where they are waiting for answers. Holly challenges them to trust in God’s goodness and timing, suggesting that unanswered questions are opportunities for spiritual growth. She emphasizes the importance of community and faith in navigating life’s uncertainties, urging believers to focus on what God has already revealed. The message concludes with a call to worship and trust in God, celebrating His faithfulness and the assurance that He is the God of answers.

Full Sermon Transcript

Earlier this fall we had our annual ladies event here at Elevation. It’s called Reflect. A lot of the ladies were here from all of our campuses. We joined together and online, and it was incredible. I got to share a word with the ladies of our church that really ministered, and as Stephen and I were talking, we decided that I needed to share from that same passage with you today. Are you ready for the word? All right, I’m so excited. God really spoke to me through this passage, and I’m really excited to share it with you today. Would you turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 1, and we’re going to jump right in with the first verse.

It says this: In my first book, I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit. During the 40 days after he suffered and died, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive, and he talked to them about the kingdom of God. Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” And he replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go.”

Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, a distance of half a mile. When they arrived, they went to the upstairs room of the house where they were staying. Let’s pray one more time. Lord, would you bless this word today? Would you speak through me now? We want to hear from you. In Jesus’ name, we pray, amen.

I’m not sure if it’s just me, but has anyone else noticed how it is getting increasingly hard to speak with a customer service representative, like an actual person? Okay, good, I’m not alone. So as many of you know, we sent our son off to college this fall. We filled out the applications, and we submitted all the required information, and Elijah received his acceptance letter. Well, at the beginning of June, I got an email from the university saying that they had not yet received his high school transcripts, and I thought that was strange because he got accepted into the school. I thought I had taken care of everything, but I just found the transcript, submitted it, and went on about our summer.

Well, about a month later, beginning of July, I got another email saying the exact same thing. It was obviously an automated email, and it was stating that they had not received Elijah’s transcripts. So I thought, well, I must have submitted it in the wrong format, and so I sent it again. But this time, when I submitted it, I wrote a little note and said, “Can somebody please confirm that you have received this information?” I’m a busy person, you know, and I’m one of those people that once I send it, it’s kind of like done, so I forgot all about it.

Then August came around. Now remember, we’re dropping him off in two weeks, and I get the email again. So now I realized I need to speak to a customer service representative here. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to call an admissions office two weeks before school starts, but I don’t recommend it. So I waited for 30 minutes for someone to answer, only to tell me, “Oh, hello, Mrs. Okay, let me look that up.” She says, “Oh, well, what appears to have happened is that the form that you have submitted doesn’t confirm that he has actually graduated from high school.” She said, “So you need to call his school and have them submit the transcript that confirms that he graduated.”

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to call a school two weeks before school starts. I don’t recommend it, especially if your child graduated from a very large virtual high school. So I knew it was going to be a few minutes, and I called, and I just settled in. I put my phone on speakerphone, and I’m like deleting emails and cleaning up my office. Thirty minutes went by, and the automated message that was on repeat like every three minutes was really starting to grate on me. So you can imagine my state of mind when one hour later, I swear to you every bit of this story is true, a very young girl answered, and she heard me out and said, “Let me transfer you to our such and such department.” Click.

I was like, oh God. So here comes the automated message again. Twenty minutes later, I’m not sure if you’re adding all this up, I’ve been on the phone for an hour and 50 minutes. I unleashed on this poor young man that answered me. Today, I want to talk to the person who feels like they are on hold with Heaven. You need to know why, you need to know when, you need to know which or how, and you feel like you’ve emailed Heaven, you feel like you’ve called, you feel like you’ve listened to the worship music while you’re waiting, and you have tried so hard to be patient, but you’ve been on hold for a really, really long time, and you need someone to answer you. You ever been there?

This summer, our pastor brought us the most incredible spontaneous series. Do you remember it? I think the first message that he taught about was the God of also, and then we got the God of again, and then we got the God of after, and the Holy Spirit was just gushing out of him every week. He kept going. He gave us the God of already and the God of a way. If you missed this series, you have to go back and watch it. It was powerful for our church.

So today, I was wondering if you would let me be fashionably late to the sermon series because I want to talk to you about the God of answers. When I was a little girl in Sunday school, I remember learning that when you ask God for something, he always answers one of three ways. He says yes, no, or wait. Was anybody else taught this? And I get the sentiment, I understand the concept, but I think I took it too literally because as an adult, when I started to process that, I was like, wait a minute, the God of the universe who created every language, he has a very vast vocabulary, and it is certainly not limited to three words when we come to him with a question.

So I want to get practical, and I want to look at this story that we just read, and I want to show you how to evaluate your own situation when you feel like you are waiting on an answer from God. In our passage that we’ve just read, we’re coming to the very end of Jesus’s ministry on Earth. Jesus has died on the cross, he’s raised from the dead, and over the past 40 days or so, he’s been appearing to the disciples, and they don’t know it, but this is actually their last time on Earth with Jesus. Jesus is giving them some really important instructions, but they don’t know how important it is because they’ve taken his presence for granted, and they don’t know that this is their last in-person conversation with him.

Look at what he tells them. He says, this is verse four: “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Have you ever tried to give someone some really important instructions, but that person didn’t see the importance of the instructions? Okay, not to compare myself to Jesus, but I did finally get everything squared away with the admissions department with the university, and in August, we dropped Elijah off at college, and we were helping him move into his dorm room, and I was making his bed.

You can judge me if you want, but putting sheets on his bed was not one of his chores at home. So here I was, hours before leaving him, and I’m trying to show him how to make a bed. You know, I’m like, okay, Elijah, this is the mattress cover, and it goes on first, and then this is the—you see the one with the—this is the fitted sheet, and he doesn’t care. He’s way more engrossed with a much more important task, which is setting up his speakers. And I wanted to say, hey, you’re going to need this later, but I didn’t want to—you know, we’re trying to keep a good vibe in the room and, you know, like trying to make sure this ends well.

So I made the bed, and I decided to let him figure it out on his own should he even decide to change his sheets. I kid you not, this boy FaceTimed me two weeks later because all the sheets and covers had fallen off of his bed, and he was trying to remake it, and he couldn’t remember how to do it. I sent him a YouTube video. I wonder if the disciples would have listened more closely if they had known that this was their last time seeing Jesus face to face. Like, would Peter have maybe taken notes, you know? Okay, okay, don’t leave Jerusalem, got it, Holy Spirit coming, okay.

And then maybe they would have asked better questions like, Jesus, what does the Holy Spirit look like? Do we need to do anything to prepare? Should we get everybody together? But the disciples were caught up on this one question that they had been asking Jesus for the past three years, and Jesus had still not answered it the way that they wanted, so they kept asking. Essentially, it was this: When will you restore the Kingdom of Israel? This was the thing that they had been wanting to know because they thought, based on ancient prophecies about Israel, that Jesus was going to have a physical takeover of the Kingdom of Israel, that Jesus would overthrow the Roman government, and he was going to establish himself as the earthly king.

The disciples thought they were going to be his government leaders. That’s why they were always arguing about who would be first in the Kingdom. They weren’t talking about the Kingdom of Heaven; they were talking about Earth, and they wanted to know, hey Jesus, when you become president, who are you going to pick for your vice president? Who are you going to put in the cabinet seats? And so this is their last conversation with Jesus, and look at verse six: So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” They kept asking him like little kids on a road trip, “Are we there yet, Jesus? Is it time yet, Jesus?”

One version that I read said every time they were gathered together, they asked Jesus this. And here’s the thing that I’ve noticed in my life: God is always speaking to me, but a lot of times what I equate as feeling blocked is actually me not wanting to hear what he is saying to me. And I miss the message or I ignore the instructions because I’m so focused on the answer I want him to give me. I remember when I was in middle school, I wanted my mom to drop me off at the mall alone with my friends so we could walk around, and I asked her over and over and over. I was trying to wear her down, and my mom was not having it.

She was like, absolutely not. She did not care that everyone else’s moms were dropping them off, which probably wasn’t true. She did not care that I was missing out on all the fun. Over her dead body was she going to drop my 13-year-old self at Dadeland Mall in Miami, Florida. And I was so mad. I hit her with everything: “You don’t trust me, you don’t think I can handle it.” I came at her with every angle, and she would not budge. And I remember saying to her, “Why won’t you answer me?” And she replied, “I have answered you, you just don’t like my answer.”

And listen, I don’t want to diminish anything that you’re going through, and I want to make it very clear to you that as God’s child, you can and you should ask him for everything that you want. You can and you should have the faith to believe that God can heal you, God can save your marriage, God can provide for your every need, God can give you the job, the man, the baby. God desires to give you the desires of your heart. He is a good, good father, and he loves to give good gifts to his children. And sometimes you need to have the faith to keep asking, to keep visualizing the thing that you are believing God for in your life. Be persistent. God hears you.

But when you feel like he’s not answering you, when you feel like he’s keeping you on hold, know that he’s not ignoring you, but as a good father, he is considering so much more than what you want. Sometimes he’s making sure the timing is right. Sometimes he has to say no or not now because, as all the parents in the room would agree, just like my mom who would not drop me off at the mall, the mark of a good father is not how happy his children are. The mark of a good father is that he knows what is best for his child at the time.

And sometimes you have to wait because there’s something that God needs to put in you before he gives you what you’re asking for. Sometimes there’s something that he needs to work out of you first. Sometimes he has something better down the road than you could ever ask or imagine. And look what Jesus says back to the disciples. He says, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

I told you that God can say a lot more than yes, no, and wait. And in this case, perhaps one of the hardest answers to receive from God is “not for you to know.” Stephen was preaching about this verse one time, and he said that Jesus was inviting them into the mystery of God. This might not be the message that you came to church to hear today, but if you’ve been waiting on God for an answer about something, especially if your question starts with why or when or how much longer, God’s answer to you today might be, “This is not for you to know.”

So here’s my question for you: If God answered all of your questions, when would you need to have faith? I know you want to know. I want to know too, but I’m learning that not knowing is the faith part. If you’re taking notes, write this down: What if I’m not supposed to know? Earlier this year in our Bible reading club—remember I got initiated into the Bible reading club—and I came in in Deuteronomy, which by the way, it is so awesome to be in a Bible reading club with Stephen Furtick. And I came across this verse in Deuteronomy, and I have to show it to you. It’s Deuteronomy 29:29. It says this: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

God has secrets. There are things about God, there are things about this world, there are things about the Bible that we are simply not meant to know the answers to. If we understood everything, that would make us God. And I’m learning to accept that there are things in life that on this side of Heaven, I will never understand. And a huge part of walking in a relationship with God is learning to trust him when you don’t understand. I know that you want answers, but can you accept an invitation to mystery? Can you stand firm on the belief that our God is a good God, and if he’s not answering you, can you trust that he has a reason?

When you feel like God has you on hold, you’ve got to change your question. Will you give me faith, Lord? Show the verse again: “The secret things belong to God, but the revealed things belong to us.” Yes, God has secrets, and we ask him for the faith to accept the things that we don’t understand, but he has revealed a lot of things to us. And sometimes I get so caught up in the things that he hasn’t revealed that I miss what is right in front of me. And the revealed things are the things that enable us to do. They’re the things that enable us to live out. The revealed things are the directions.

So sometimes you got to look for the “but.” The ladies at Reflect really liked this point. Let’s go back to what Jesus said to the disciples and look for the “but.” He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” He’s giving them the answer. The disciples wanted positions, but God wanted to give them a different kind of power. They wanted to overthrow Rome, but Jesus wanted them to change the world, literally the entire world, to the ends of the earth.

The disciples today are not men that we may or may not learn about in world history class if we’re paying attention. These are men that we are still talking about and learning from. They powerful God-breathed Holy Spirit writings 2,000 years later. Where’s your “but”? I have a friend, her name is Brandy, and she thought that she would be married to the same man her whole life, but now she has a ministry to divorced women all over the country. She’s a coach. I have another friend who thought that he would be a youth minister, but God has given him a ministry in corporate America to bankers.

You thought you’d be married by now. You thought you’d have kids by now. You thought you’d have a certain career by now. When you aren’t getting the answer you hoped for, can you have the faith to find your “but”? Okay, watch what happens next. After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. And as they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. “Men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go.”

Jesus gets taken up into heaven right before their eyes, and rightfully so, let’s give them a little bit of credit. They stand there shining and staring like when you were a little kid. Did you ever release a balloon into the air? I know that’s bad for the planet now, but we didn’t know in the ’80s. And I remember, I have a very vivid memory of letting go of a balloon and telling myself, I’m going to watch it until it goes away. I’m going to see where it goes. And I watched it become a speck and then disappear. And this is what the disciples are doing, only it’s not a balloon, it’s Jesus.

And I would do it too. If a man went up into heaven, I’d stand there and I’d be like waiting, is he coming back? You know, what’s happening? And so God sends a couple of angels, and the angels go, snap out of it, guys. Jesus is gone to heaven, and he is going to return someday. And the disciples look around, and I can just imagine that they’re all like, what are we doing now? Next, like what did Jesus say to us? And what if Peter had really taken notes, and he pulled out his notebook, and he was like, do not leave Jerusalem, guys, we got to go back to Jerusalem.

And I’m not an angel in a white robe, but I wonder if God sent me to tell you today, stop staring. Stop waiting for the pain to go away. Stop waiting for an explanation. Go back to the last thing he told you. What was the last thing that God spoke to you? Good. I know it’s complicated when we as Christians talk about God speaking to us, and God doesn’t speak to me in an out loud voice, and I know that some of you are waiting on God to speak to you about your specific situation, but might I suggest that while you’re waiting on an answer, think back and do the last thing that he told you to do.

The secret things, remember the secret things? The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may—what? Do you remember what it said? That we may do the words of his law. What has God revealed to you? I told the ladies at Reflect that Jesus had already given the disciples so many answers right here in just these verses that we read. He gave them a place to be, right? He said in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Everything God was going to do through them had to start in Jerusalem, a familiar place.

So if you’re wondering what the next thing is you’re supposed to do, what is your Jerusalem? What is the place where you need to go and wait? Because I believe that God does want to do a new thing in your life, but I think he wants to do it in the same old place. He didn’t send them to a new place because I don’t think they could have handled it. It would have been too much new. He sent them back to a familiar place. So maybe what you need to do is go back to the place where you have been assigned until you receive further instructions.

So the job that you have now, today, is the place where God wants you to be. Serve him there with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. The marriage that you’re in, the one that you’re in right now, the family you’re in right now, the neighborhood you live in right now—I know you want to move, okay, I know your house is on the market, but the neighborhood you live in right now, your church—the power of the Holy Spirit is coming to you there. The last place God told you to be, everything launches from that place. So get yourself back in position and serve God there with 100% of your heart.

He gave them a place to be. He also gave them a person to become. He said, “You will be my witnesses.” Who is God calling you to become? I was reading this book about anxiety and teens—of course I was—and I don’t know if you ever read parenting books. To all the parents out there, I don’t recommend them. I hate them because every time I read them, I get overwhelmed, and I feel like, oh, I did—I did every—I have screwed up my kids. It’s too late, and I don’t know, it’s too late for me. I shouldn’t even be reading. But this book actually had a line that really helped me. It said this: “The best thing that you can do for your child’s anxiety is handle your own.”

Wow. And I think so many times I get everything backwards. I want to focus on who God is calling them to become. Oh, I have so many ideas on who God is calling Stephen Furtick to become. I have so many thoughts on who God is calling Elijah, Graham, and Abby to become because when I think about them, I don’t have to face me. And sometimes I get caught up on them. Sometimes I get caught up on what God wants me to do, the parts of me that I can see, the parts of me that I can manipulate. And so I focus on my position, or maybe you focus on your character or your title, your appearance, and those things are not bad, but they are not nearly as important as who God is calling you to become.

It’s not about what God’s calling you; it’s about who God’s calling you to become. Because if you don’t have the who, when you get to the what, you won’t be able to keep it up. The parts inside of me that are unseen—you change what you see by giving attention to what you don’t see. And Jesus was moving the disciples from a seen relationship with him to an unseen relationship, and that was going to require a different level of faith. It was one thing for the disciples to believe in Jesus when he was multiplying bread and calming storms, but now they’re moving into another level where they’re going to see the Holy Spirit do miracles with their own hands.

So they’re moving from observation—look at what Jesus did—to experience—look at what the Holy Spirit did through me. So who is God calling you to become? He also gave them partners to believe with. God never intended for you to walk out your faith alone. Let me say that again one more time: God never intended for you to walk out your faith alone. He took the disciples, he gathered them together, he spent three years with them developing a community among them because he knew he was going to leave, and they were going to need each other. And I want to tell you today, he has a community for you as well.

Now, you do need to find ones that are headed in the same direction that you’re headed in, and I’ll give you a hint: they might be in this room. So the more you come back to this room, the more you’re going to find those people. And then when you have those people in your life, you got to be patient because they have their own stuff, they have their own people, and their own drama, and their own questions. But when you allow others in your life into your questions, you will find a strength that you didn’t realize that you were missing out on all along. I don’t care how old you are. I mean, we all know that our teenagers need positive influences. You need positive influences too.

Jesus never intended for you to give up on having partners to believe with. Can I show you one more Bible passage? I want to back up all the way to Matthew 11. Here in Acts 1, we’ve been talking about—we’re seeing the final days of Jesus’s ministry on Earth, but in Matthew 11, Jesus was in the thick of his ministry. John the Baptist, his cousin, had baptized him and prepared the way and introduced Jesus to the world, and now Jesus’s ministry is in full effect. He’s healing people, he’s preaching in the synagogues, he’s calming the storms, and meanwhile, somewhere in the middle of all of this, John the Baptist has been thrown into jail, and he’s waiting.

He’s waiting to see what’s next for him while everyone else, it seems like, is experiencing the full effect of Jesus’s ministry. John is rotting away in a prison cell, and he doesn’t know how long he’s going to be there, and he is having major FOMO. So he sends his disciples to ask Jesus a question, and I want to show you what John the Baptist asked of Jesus. It says this in verse two: When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he heard what Jesus was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” Can’t you just—you can feel the question coming out of his soul.

And Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and what you see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” And while John’s disciples leave and go back to him with the message, Jesus keeps talking to the crowd, and he says, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John.” He’s saying John is as good as they come, yet even John still had questions.

And I told you earlier that if God answered all your questions, there wouldn’t be a need for faith, but I want to close by letting you know that having questions doesn’t mean that you don’t have faith. If you read in the New Testament, you constantly find people coming up to Jesus with questions and faith at the same time, right? They’re asking him for something with faith. Sometimes he immediately responds to their requests, sometimes he says no, sometimes he gave them more than what they were asking for. He forgives them of their sins, and then he heals them. Sometimes he answers them with a parable that didn’t really seem to answer their question at all.

And I love what Jesus replies to John through his disciples because he wanted to turn John’s attention to what he had already revealed. He said, “Report back to him: The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear. Don’t stumble because you feel like you’ve been put on hold. Look around you. God is alive and present in your situation, and he has been so good to you. Don’t allow yourself to be imprisoned by your unanswered questions. Focus your attention on what he’s already revealed to you.”

For the past several months, we’ve been singing a song here at church called “Trust in God.” How many of you love that song? I love that song. Aren’t you grateful to be a part of a church where our pastor works so closely with our worship team to write songs that are biblical and relevant? I mean, the scripture is just right there in this song. And every time that we get to the part where we say it comes from Psalm 34, “I sought the Lord, and he heard and he answered,” I don’t know about you, but the Holy Spirit just takes over whenever that part, and my mind just gets flooded with the memories of how many times in my life that God has answered me.

I stand right down there in my seat, and I think about all the times that I’ve come to church feeling weighed down, feeling burdened, and all the times over the years that God has answered whatever it was that I came in here worried about. And I think about how far I’ve come. I think about the ways that he’s provided for me. I think about the ways that he’s protected me. I think about the things that I was so worried about that he was taken care of. And when I focus on those things, I find that my faith is renewed and refreshed, and I remember that even though I still have questions, I’m worshiping the God of answers.

So as we close, we’re going to stand and we’re going to sing this song as a declaration of faith for the questions that we are still waiting on answers for. I want you to sing this song with all of your heart and let God remind you of his faithfulness. So God, we come to you right now. We thank you that you are the God of answers, that you have proven yourself time and time again. God, you are worth the wait. We love you. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Hey, thank you for watching the Elevation Church YouTube. I want you to subscribe, that way you can know when we go live and post new content. Make sure to leave me a comment, let me know what spoke to you today, where you’re watching from, and what we can pray for you about. And if you’d like to support the ministry financially, you can click the give button now and help us continue reaching people around the world for Jesus Christ. Thanks again. I’ll see you next time.