When Your Plans Stop Working

Focus Keywords: divine presence, overcoming setbacks, Elisha and the lost axe head, faith over plans, spiritual momentum, God’s willingness to help, Steven Furtick, small miracles

This comprehensive rewrite summarizes Steven Furtick’s message, “When Your Plans Stop Working,” delivered as the first sermon of the new year. The message emphasizes a crucial shift in perspective: God’s presence is the most reliable plan for navigating a life where meticulously designed strategies inevitably fail. Drawing on the minor biblical miracle of Elisha recovering a lost axe head (2 Kings 6:1–7), the sermon highlights God’s commitment to intervening in the small, everyday struggles that often derail spiritual momentum.

The Shift: Plan A is Presence

The message challenges the “control freaks” mentality that assumes a perfectly designed life plan will succeed without divine interruption. Instead of relying on human planning, the focus must shift to God.

• The Problem with Faith in Faith: Believers often put their faith in the “faith rather than the God who gave the faith”. This leads to the spiritual exhaustion where one can maintain effort for three days, but on the fourth day, everything falls apart, causing the believer to conclude that faith didn’t work.
• Presence as the Plan: For the upcoming year, the only necessary plan is “his presence”. This presence is the “Plan B”. If a believer finds themselves in the wilderness, God will be their water; in a hard place, He will be their pillow; in a sickbed, He will be their physician.
• The Great I Am is Plan B: God, the great I AM, is the ultimate Plan B. When a believer encounters an unplanned Red Sea moment, they realize they need God to be a “parter of the waters”—a need they couldn’t have predicted. God promises: “I’ll be what you need me to be when you step your foot where you’re going with an awareness of my presence”.
• Unchanging Fulfillment: God’s presence is the guarantee that He will neither leave nor forsake the believer “until everything he spoke concerning his purpose for my life has been fulfilled”. This presence is with the believer through the fire, the storm, on the boat, and in the “boughels of the furnace”.

Expanding the Meeting Place

The story of the school of the prophets approaching Elisha sets the stage for shifting the perception of where God resides.

• Perception of Confinement: The prophets complained that the place where they met with Elisha was “too small”. This was true, but not just physically. Their perception of where they could meet with God was too small.
• God is with You as You Build: God doesn’t wait to appear only “when you build it”; He wants to be with the believer “as you build”. The believer must move the church outside of a physical location—into their car, their home, or their “unchangeable situation”.
• Practical Presence: The message advocates for inviting God into every difficult situation: into a divorce, an addiction, a crippling state, an argument, or a specific text thread. Believers should acknowledge their limitations, saying, “I can’t walk in this house without you. And God, I can’t get on this Zoom without you”.

The Miracle in the Mundane: The Lost Axe Head

The central biblical illustration is the recovery of the lost axe head, which serves as a paradigm for God’s involvement in the small struggles of life.

• Not Just Giants and Seas: The sermon begins with this “boring story” because momentum is often lost not due to major crises like a Red Sea, a Goliath, or a burning bush, but because the “little moments with God… are the ones that are slipping away”.
• The Loss of Momentum: The young prophets had permission to expand and were making progress (“let’s go”) by cutting down trees. But as one was cutting, the iron axe head flew off the stick and fell into the Jordan River. The progress went from “let’s go” to “oh no”.
• Borrowing and Consequences: The young man’s immediate cry was, “Oh no, my Lord… It was borrowed”. This highlights a real-world consequence: some people are in situations where they “can’t afford to waste another day” or year. The problem was critical because iron (which makes progress on wood) is not supposed to be in water.
• God Cares About Everything: The believer should “stop telling people that God doesn’t care about this and God doesn’t care about that”. God cares about everything pertaining to His child, even small losses. Elisha, the powerful prophet who could turn the tide of wars, took the time to help a boy get a small tool back. God wants to help the believer recover joy, integrity, character, commitment, and vision this year.

The Power of Invitation and Asking

A critical element in activating God’s presence is the simple act of asking.

• Willingness, Not Ability: The issue is not God’s ability, but the believer’s willingness to involve Him. The prophet Elisha didn’t impose himself; he was “waiting to be asked”. The prophets asked Elisha, “Will you come?”.
• “I’ll Be in the Car”: The speaker uses an analogy of his son, Elijah, who wanted to see a movie, placing his shoes at his father’s feet as a silent, persuasive invitation. The son’s final line was, “I’ll be in the car if you change your mind”. This illustrates the attitude of audacious faith: “Bring God his shoes”.
• Action Proves Expectation: The believer should demonstrate their faith through corresponding action—being in their seat, going to therapy, or working on a project—declaring, “I’mma be working on this. Will you come?”. “You’d be surprised what God would say yes to if you’d get in the vehicle”.