Steven Furtick's Blog, page 73

Why You Don’t Have to Be Afraid Anymore

We all have the things we’re afraid of. The things that keep us up at night. The things that make our palms sweat and put a lump in our throat. We’re afraid of being alone. Afraid of what they think of us. Afraid of what the future holds. But when we give our fears priority in our lives, we aren’t able to see them for what they really are. In this clip from our series Room 101 Pastor Steven teaches us how the flip the lens on the way we see our fears by looking at them in relation to who God is.

How to Handle the Discouragement of Others

Most of our frustrations are born out of our own personal experiences not meeting our expectations, but what about when the tables are turned? What do we do when we are the ones not living up to the expectations of others? How do we avoid the weight of disappointment when we don’t measure up? And what should our response be to the negative opinions in our lives? In part 3 of our series The Expectation Gap, Pastor Steven teaches us the proper position to take when the expectations of others get between us and who we are in Christ.

Your greatest weakness. God’s greatest platform.

Few if any of you will ever know what it feels like to be Chuck Close.

A lot of you might not even know who he is.

But all of us have something monumentally important to learn from him.

Chuck Close is one of the greatest portrait artists of our time. If you glanced at his work, you would think you were simply looking at a photograph. In reality, you’re looking at paint. Sometimes pencil. Other times, thread. That’s just how brilliant he is.

But if you knew his backstory, you wouldn’t think it would be possible.

Close can’t remember a single face that he meets. He suffers from prosopagnosia, a condition that leaves him unable to recognize faces. He can create a masterpiece with your face, but he can’t remember it.

You would think that for a person in Close’s situation, creating portraits would be the last thing he’d be doing. After all, faces are his greatest weakness. But it’s just the opposite. It motivates him, even to the point of him saying, “everything in my art is driven by my disability.”

And that’s what makes his work that much more brilliant. It shouldn’t be coming out of him. But it is. His greatest weakness has become the source of his greatest strength. It’s provided a platform where his greatness can be amplified.

Few if any of us will ever have a condition like Close’s.

But we all deal with weakness in one shape or form.

Some of you feel completely inadequate for what God has called you to do.

Some of you feel like your marriage has about a week left before it falls apart.

Some of you have lost your job and you don’t see how you’ll make it.

Some of you are battling cancer and you don’t know how much longer you can fight.

For every person, there is a place in their life where weakness exists. And it’s for that very reason that in every person, a platform exists. An opportunity exists. An opportunity to amplify the greatness of God in a way that your strength alone will never be able to.

Your greatest weakness may actually be God’s greatest platform for showing His power and glory in your life.

Through saving your marriage when all seems lost.

Through using your cancer to shine a spotlight on His sufficiency.

In 2 Corinthians 12:9, Jesus tells us, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God’s power is the perfect counterpart to your weakness. It’s more than enough for you and it’s completely available to you. God isn’t scouring the universe looking for a perfect person through whom He can display His power and glory. He’s looking for the perfect person. And the perfect person is a person whose weakness provides God and His power with an opportunity to make their life unexplainable.

No matter what you’re going through, no matter how weak you feel right now, there’s no reason that can’t be you.

This entry was originally published on January 25, 2011.

Why We Sometimes Struggle Hearing From God

It doesn’t make sense. If scripture tells us that through the Holy Spirit, God will speak to us and impart His ways onto hearts, then why do we seem to struggle hearing from Him? We want to know His will. We want to understand the purpose of our lives and what to do with what He’s given us. But there is a connection issue. And it’s on our end. In this clip from our series Ghost Stories, Pastor Steven explains that the reason we struggle hearing from God has a lot to do with the receptiveness of our hearts.

Elevation Creative: First Date

We have expectations going into most of our experiences. We play the scenarios out in our head, hoping for the best possible outcome. For our series The Expectation Gap, our Creative team designed this fun video showing what happens when our expectations exceed our experiences for something most all of us can relate to – the first date.

How to Break Free from Mediocrity

There are areas in all our lives that didn’t quite end up like we expected. And over time we began to settle. We lowered our expectations and got used to the safety of mediocrity. We allowed “good enough” to become good enough. But Jesus didn’t die for us, bury our sins, and give us the gift of salvation so that we our lives would be ‘good enough.’ In this clip from our series Greater, Pastor Steven explains why we have settled, and what is holding us back from the greater life God planned.

What Do We Do When God Lets Us Down?

Frustration is born when our expectation doesn’t match our experience. But what happens when God is at the center of our expectation – and He doesn’t come through? When our prayers seem to fall flat. When it seems like the God who loves us didn’t provide for us in the way we had hoped. But God doesn’t share our perspective. And His plans won’t always match up with our plans. And in part 2 of our series The Expectation Gap, Pastor Steven teaches us, through the story of Lazurus, how to realign our expectations with a new perspective on who God really is.

Think inside the box

When it comes to our limitations, most people operate out of an if, then mindset.

If I had __________, then I would ___________.

If I could __________, then I would ___________.

So…

If I had more money, then I would buy a nicer house.

If I could sing, then I would be a musician.

If my children were in a different stage of life, then I would move.

If my church had a state of the art facility, then we would grow.

You encounter this same kind of thinking in the corporate world. It’s called thinking outside the box:

What would you do if you had unlimited money? Could sing? Had children who were at a different stage? Had a state of the art facility?

Sounds nice, but this mindset is a breeding ground for frustration. Why?

Because you don’t have unlimited money.

You can’t sing.

Your children aren’t in a different stage of life.

And your church still has the same building.

In other words, for now you’re stuck with your limitations. And while it might be liberating to think about life as if you didn’t have them, they’re still there and you have to work with them.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t plan ahead or that you shouldn’t dream. Of course you should. But your box is never going to expand to the place where you’re thinking outside of it until you learn to live in it.

I would challenge you to think inside the box. Stop waiting for what you want and work what you’ve got. How much money do you have? What talents has God given you? How can you maximize your church or corporation with the assets and resources you currently have in place?

Your greatest limitation is God’s greatest opportunity.

If He wanted you to have ________, He would have provided it to you.

If He wanted you to do ________, He would have made you able.

But He didn’t.

So there must be something greater in mind that He wants to do through your limitation. He must have something in mind He wants to do with what you actually have and actually can do.

Most of us are so focused on what we don’t have that we’re blinded to what we do have. If you had what you think you needed you wouldn’t be able to use what God’s actually put inside of you.

And what He has put inside of you is all you need to accomplish all that He’s called you to do. It’s all He needs too.

Even if it seems limited to you.

This entry was originally published February 24, 2011.

Where Is God Taking You?

As believers in Christ, God always wants to take us somewhere. He wants to stretch us, move us out of comfort and into the calling He has placed on our lives. But we struggle and fight it because it’s unknown and unfamiliar and sometimes we’d rather just stay where we are and tread water and float in our complacency. But God has more in store for us, and in the clip from the sermon Blessed and Broken, Pastor Steven teaches us that no matter how uncertain we are about the destination, if God is taking us, we’re in the right hands.

Elevation Creative: The Expectation Gap Ensemble

The frustration and disappointment we feel when our expectations don’t measure up to our experiences can be pretty painful. Expect when you set it to music. To kick off our series The Expectation Gap, our Creative and Worship teams got together for this light-hearted element highlighting a few of the frustrating experiences where many of us have found ourselves.