Steven Furtick's Blog, page 42

Elevation Creative: Christianisms

When you’re young and love and looking for guidance, who do you turn to for advice? Most of us hope to find older couples who have a lasting, loving, Christ-centered relationship. Their experience can be encouraging as we begin our own journey, and their wisdom can help guide us through our relationship questions. But for fun, as we closed out our series Meant to Be, our Creative team put together this humorous look at what might happen when the relationship questions get turned back on us.

How to Build Our Relationships Like Jesus

Married or unmarried, relationships are complicated. As believers, we’re called to keep Christ front and center in our lives. But commitments to our spouses, friends, and family can cause conflicts of interest. How do we build healthy relationships with the people we love, while keeping God as our first priority? Pastor Steven wrapped up our Meant to Be series by explaining the unnecessary complications that sidetrack us, and show us how we can learn what’s truly meant to be in our lives when we put Jesus first.

How to Building Our Relationships Like Jesus

Married or unmarried, relationships are complicated. As believers, we’re called to keep Christ front and center in our lives. But commitments to our spouses, friends, and family can cause conflicts of interest. How do we build healthy relationships with the people we love, while keeping God as our first priority? Pastor Steven wrapped up our Meant to Be series by explaining the unnecessary complications that sidetrack us, and show us how we can learn what’s truly meant to be in our lives when we put Jesus first.

Elevation Creative: Love Song Riff-Off

When it comes to sex, marriage, and being single, there’s something about love songs that can say so much more than words. In this opening element from week 4 of Meant to Be, members of our worship team competed against each other in a live singing battle featuring some of our favorite love songs through the years.

What Our Words Say About Our Love

When we imagine that perfect someone in our lives, we tend to focus on all the things they’d do to make us feel happy and loved. But what if we dreamed, instead, about finding someone we could love the way Christ loved us – unselfishly and unconditionally? In this clip from our 2008 relationship series Visionary Love, Dream Sex, Pastor Steven (yep, that’s him with bleached blonde hair), challenges us to build up the people we love by focusing not on who they are to us, but on who they are in Christ.

Six Ways We Can Improve Our Challenging Relationships

As Christians, when we hit a rough patch in our marriages or relationships, what is our first reaction? Do we blame the other person and spend all our time trying to fix them? Or do we rely on God’s commands to work in our own hearts and change our situation? In part 4 of our series Meant to Be, Pastor Steven, and his wife, Holly, shared personal examples, scriptural insight, and six ways we can allow God to work in our everyday relational challenges.

Elevation Creative: What is Love?

How do we define a word that covers anything from sex to long-term commitment, and everything in-between? The Bible says love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. But, just for fun, our Creative team thought we should gather a few more opinions on the topic. Here’s our serious discussion with some not-so-serious experts answering the question, “What is love?”

The Power Words Have In Our Relationships

We all know that words are powerful. And, once spoken, they can never be taken back. And we can be so quick use our words as a weapon in our relationships. But they can have the inverse effect as well. In this clip from our sermon series Mr. and Mrs. Better Half, Pastor Steven shows us through the story of Abigail what it means to speak life into our situation and bring the hope of Christ into any relationship.

Why Our Marriages Fall Apart

For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health . . . These are the vows we take when we get married – but in our current culture we don’t always understand the depth of the covenant we’re making. In marriage, two are supposed to become one. So why do so many couples struggle with staying together? In part 3 of our series Meant To Be, Pastor Steven explains four ways our life-long relationships are challenged – and shows us how building an anointed marriage begins with the debt-canceling grace of Jesus.

Elevation Creative: Say Something

It’s exciting to get caught up in the thrill of a new relationship. But what happens when a relationship that started so well suddenly gets complicated? How can we weather the ups and downs without losing confidence in who we are in Christ? We opened Week 2 of our sermon series Meant to Be with a cover of A Great Big World’s “Say Something” supported by a short film showing the contrast between the rush of new love and the crush of heartbreak.