You Will Make It Through

Focus Keywords: Red Sea breakthrough, divine grace, overcoming embarrassment, faith in failure, green light, spiritual resilience, Steven Furtick, Psalm 23, God’s faithfulness, resource for need

This rewrite summarizes Steven Furtick’s message, “You Will Make It Through,” focusing on the concept of receiving a “green light at the Red Sea”—meaning God provides the authorization and enablement to move forward, even when surrounded by seemingly insurmountable obstacles and haunted by past failures. The sermon challenges the common Christian desire for God to “take the wheel,” emphasizing personal responsibility and the empowering grace given to believers to navigate difficult seasons.

The Green Light Mandate: Go Through, Don’t Stop

The central, prophetic declaration of the message is: “You have green, and you have to go”.

1. Authorization to Advance: The “green light” is the assurance, strength, and calling from God to pass through something you’ve never seen anyone else navigate. The proof that God is leading you is not that the path is easy.
2. The Red Sea Context: The Red Sea represents an impossible situation: deep waters ahead and fierce enemies (the Egyptians) behind. God intentionally brought the Israelites to the Red Sea as the reason they needed to go through, demonstrating that the Egyptians can’t follow them that far.
3. The Walker, Not the Driver: The message challenges the popular sentiment, “Jesus, take the wheel”. God provides the green light, but He is not going to drive the car. Salvation does not remove the believer from experiencing valleys; rather, it provides grace to walk through them. The grace allows the believer to walk by faith, not sight, to pass through the sea.
4. Miracle in the Feet: Though fear may be felt in a difficult season, the miracle is not in the believer’s feelings; it’s in their feet. This movement is walking by faith, not running away from problems or moving geographically (e.g., to Tampa or Atlanta), as the problem is not about geography.

Grace for Your Greatest Embarrassment and Failure

A major theme is the realization that the Red Sea experience is not just about faith, but also about failure and rebellion. God’s glory is often revealed in spite of human failure.

• The Problem of Rebellion: The Israelites almost failed the test of faith “in the parking lot” on their way to the Promised Land. They rebelled by the Red Sea, not just in the wilderness, because “they did not remember” what God had done. When you don’t remember who God is and what Christ has done, your focus shifts solely to the size of the Red Sea in front of you, and the natural inclination is to go back to Egypt.
• The Idols God Kills: God may bring you to the Red Sea to kill off the insecurities, the arrogance, the idols, and the Egyptians. It wouldn’t make sense for God to save you from Egypt, send His Son, and then leave you to die at the Red Sea.
• Rebellion vs. Rebuking: The symmetry of God’s action is that “they rebelled; he rebuked”. God rebuked the Red Sea.
• The Grace of God: God’s intervention is not based on the believer’s “résumé of all of the good things” they did. He saves and helps “for his name’s sake”. He is committed to the believer’s freedom. God specifically wants to give “grace for their greatest embarrassment,” for the thing they won’t talk about, and for their “most spectacular failure” or “idiotic mistake”. This grace is so powerful that their children and grandchildren will live to tell about what God did. Even Moses, who killed an Egyptian, was given grace to deliver his people.

The “GREEN” Strategy for Going Through

The speaker identifies five specific provisions God offers to enable the believer to GO:

1. G is for Grace: Grace for your greatest embarrassment and failure.
2. R is for Resource: Resource for your deepest need. This is not the need you think you have (like more friends), but the one God knows you need (like fixing the internal issue that prevents reaching out to existing friends). If the deepest need is peace, God promises you will have it, even if the valley is dark.
3. E is for Energy: Energy for your most draining relationships. This energy is defined as divine power to demolish strongholds and a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit. God will show you how to “dodge” those draining people to conserve energy.
4. E is for Evidence: Evidence for your most stubborn unbelief. The believer will look back at the Red Sea moment (the current difficult season) as proof of God’s faithfulness that will serve future generations. This evidence proves that God can be trusted.
5. N is for Navigate: Help to navigate your most complicated places.