Steven Furtick's Blog, page 69

The Life Your Fears Keep You From Living

Fear can be paralyzing. And not necessarily just the fears you’d expect – like snakes and bears and spiders. But what about the fears that can derail the calling God has placed on our lives? Like fear of failure or rejection or the unknown. How do we respond when these fears show up like a roadblock, right in the middle of what God is impressing on our hearts to do? In this clip from our series Room 101, Pastor Steven shows what is really at the bottom of our fears that is able to propel us forward into the life God planned for us.

Student Takeover

At Elevation Church, we don’t have a student ministry, we are a student ministry. We ask our students to participate in the local church the same way as their parents – by serving, giving, inviting, and growing in their own relationship in Christ. One of our favorite times to celebrate our students each year is a weekend we call Student Takeover. Our creative team put together this video promoting this year’s Student Takeover, taking place August 9-11.

Sign-up for Student Takeover 2013 ends Friday, Aug 2. Click here to find out more information.

What We Really Say When We Complain

As much as we’d all like every day to be the best day of our lives, filled with sunshine and green lights, there will be days when that simply isn’t the case. When the pains and trials of real life cloud our perspective of who God is. And the result is usually the same – we complain. Why me? Why today? Why can’t things just be easier? And sometimes, things get so bad we feel justified in our complaints. But in this clip from our series The Joy Genome, Pastor Steven shows us what we really say about God when we complain about our circumstances.

What God Really Means When We Hear Him Say “No”

Most non-believers see Christianity as a burdensome religion, leaving its people bound with rules and regulations. And for good reason. Throughout scripture, God gives extensive commands for His people to follow. And often times, it’s these rules that many people use as their proof that God is a punishing taskmaster. So how do we reconcile the freedom that Christ promises, with a God who seems to say ‘No’ so much? In part two of our series ‘This is Your Permission Slip,’ Pastor Steven shows us the deeper response God gives when He commands ‘Thou shalt not’ and what this reveals about His heart for us.

Fences Bring Freedom

Nobody likes boundaries. Fences.

They’re constraining. They give us a line we can’t cross. They cut against the grain of our culture that says the best life is one in which we can say whatever we want. Have sex with whomever we want. Cheat whomever we want. Essentially, do whatever we want. As long as it makes us happy.

Basically, we feel like boundaries limit our freedom. And freedom is everything.

It seems to make sense. And on the face of it, it is kind of true: boundaries constrict us. But this viewpoint also ignores an ironic, but essential truth:

Fences bring freedom.

This is obvious enough in real life. A few years back we put a fence in our backyard for Elijah and Graham. The purpose wasn’t to keep them in. It was actually to keep what could harm them out. Did the fence set a boundary they couldn’t go past? Yes. But it also gave them the freedom to play in the yard and enjoy what was theirs.

In the same way, boundaries give us the ability to enjoy the blessings of God in our lives. A lot of times we think that God puts fences up in our lives and puts things off limits in order to keep us captive. He just wants to limit our happiness. But in effect, He is giving us the ability to enjoy what He has given us. He is actually trying to put us in a position where we can be happy.

For example, the reason God doesn’t want us to have sex before marriage isn’t because He doesn’t want us to experience pleasure. It’s because He wants us to experience the unique pleasure of completely giving ourselves over to another person in purity.

I think the reason we have a problem with boundaries is that our operating mindset is “how far can I go?” rather than “how free can I be?” The first mindset has its eyes on getting as close to the border of God’s blessings as possible. The second mindset has its eyes on actually enjoying them.

We claim we want freedom, but we don’t. Freedom isn’t having the ability to do anything you want. Freedom is being able to enjoy what you have.

God has already given us everything we need to be happy in this life. We’ve got a bigger yard than anyone else in the world. The fences are just there to make sure we have something to enjoy.

Boundaries are a blessing, because what we value, we protect.

So stop focusing on and resenting the fences that God has put around you.

And start doing what they’re there to enable you to do:

Play in the yard.

This entry was originally published on May 16th, 2011

The Truth About The Lies of Condemnation

“We suck.” “We are terrible Christians.” “We embarrass God.” These are the types of lies that condemnation will whisper in our ears when we think we’ve fallen short of who God called us to be. And often times, we believe it. But when we entertain these words, and allow them to seep into our lives, they drive a wedge between who we think we are and who God really says we are in Christ. In this clip from our series Christ Alone Pastor Steven teaches us about the danger we can find ourselves in when we allow condemnation to speak when God has already spoken.

Love Week 2013

At Elevation Church, Love Week is one of our greatest opportunities as a church to love, serve, and share the heart of Jesus with our city. For Love Week 2013, we saw over 10,000 volunteers join with 150 different outreach partners to serve over 50,000 hours and give away over $400,000. In this video recap, hear from different volunteers, outreach partners, and city officials, as they share how Love Week not only affects the people of our city, but their own lives as well.

How to Free Yourself From Your Greatest Burden

Many us have a view of God that is actually contrary to who He really is. We see Him as a burden on our lives, looking over us with a laundry list of things we can’t or shouldn’t do. We see His presence in our lives as a burden that weighs us down from living the life we want. But a life in Christ doesn’t mean carrying around more. In this clip from our series Hebrews 12, Pastor Steven teaches about the true freedom found only in Jesus, and the burdens He actually relieves from our lives.

The End of the Rules of Religion

If we ask the average non-believer what a relationship with God looks like, what would they say? For many, a life in Christ looks like a life of restriction. Rules. Regulations. “Here’s a list of the fun things you can’t do anymore – welcome to Christianity.” But this is not the heart of Jesus. He did not leave heaven and come to earth to enforce limitations – he came to liberate. To rescue us from ourselves and our sinful state. In part one of our series This Is Your Permission Slip, Pastor Steven introduces a paradigm-shifting concept about the true purpose of scripture and how Jesus changed the way we approach God.

Have you filled your city?

Acts 5:28

“We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said.

“Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”

That’s what I’m talking about.

If you’re going to accuse us of something, accuse us of that:

You have filled your city with the teaching of Jesus.

Church, let’s fill our cities with the good news of Christ.

Let’s fill the places of poverty with our generosity.

Let’s fill our schools with students who are not ashamed of the Gospel.

The future of our cities is empty and desolate without the power and the presence of God.

Let’s keep preaching, reaching, and giving until our cities overflow and can’t deny it:

You have filled this city with Jesus.

This entry was originally published January 14, 2010.