Steven Furtick's Blog, page 77

The Best Way to Overcome Your Fears

We’re all afraid of something. For some, it’s physical fears – spiders, snakes, heights. For others though, the fears are deeper and more internal – the fear of not being accepted, not having control, not know the future. No matter the fear, they can paralyze us from moving forward in the life God has planned for us. And in this clip from our series Room 101, Pastor Steven teaches us that the best way we can overcome fear is by feeding our faith.

What Does God Want Me to Do With My Life?

When we become Christians and accept Christ as Savior, we make the single most important decision of our lives. But once we make that choice, we open ourselves up to a seemingly endless amount of new decisions, all centering on one over-arching question – what does God want us to do with our lives? Trying to decipher the will of God can be a frustrating prison of fear and second-guessing. But in the first part of our new series, Pastor Steven explains a life-altering perspective shift that changes the way we approach our place in God’s will.

God’s Will Is Whatever

Which job should I take? How do I know if he’s the one? What am I supposed to do with my life? All our greatest questions are rooted in the same desire – to understand the will of God. We don’t want to make a bad choice or the wrong decision. We just want to know what God wants us to do and where God wants us to go. So how can we know? And are we even asking the right questions?

Join us for our new series, God’s Will Is Whatever as we take a closer look at the will of God – and how we fit into it all.

Click here to plan your own visit. And if you don’t live close to one of our physical locations, join us live every weekend on the Elevation Network.

You Matter More Than You Think You Do

It didn’t work. Our efforts went unnoticed. Our prayers fell short. Through the up’s and down’s of our lives, we will all hear this thought creep into our subconscious – “You don’t matter.” And on the surface it may appear that way. We shared our faith, but our friend didn’t accept Christ. We prayed for our children, but they seem to be moving further from God. But don’t lose heart. In this clip from The Most Encouraging Sermon You Never Heard, Pastor Steven reminds us that our faith, our efforts, and our prayer matter far more than we may ever know.

So God Sent A Savior

A recent Super Bowl commercial used Paul Harvey’s 1978 speech entitled ‘So God Made A Farmer’ as a backdrop to sell pick-up trucks. Inspired by that piece, Pastor Steven closed this year’s Easter Worship Experiences with his own spoken word journey through some of the Bible’s greatest stories, shining a spotlight on the Savior at the center of it all.

Special thanks to Amena Brown for her help on this piece.

Why You Can’t Do it On Your Own

No matter how hard we try. No matter how much effort we put forth. No matter how determined we are – there is a clear limit to what we can accomplish by ourselves. We will fail, fall, and exhaust ourselves with our own efforts. But as Christians we have access to more. There is a power apart from our own strength that exists, if we’d only recognize it and take hold. In this clip from our series Grapes & Giants, Pastor Steven helps us understand what we leave on the table when we choose not to appropriate the power found in Christ.

The Greatest Story Forever Told

All the best stories have it. The right setting. The climactic action. The memorable characters. And the greatest story forever told is no exception.

For our Easter Worship experiences, we closed out our IN•FIN•8 series by looking throughout scripture – from Genesis to the Gospels to the book of Revelation – using worship, creativity, and preaching, and connected the dots of a plot of weaved together from the dawn of time. A story centered around one perfect character and one climactic event – the death and resurrection of Jesus.

And as a church, we celebrated and thanked God for His faithfulness and mercy as over 1,600 people accepted Christ as their Savior this Easter weekend.

Pitying Jesus

And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

Mark 15:39

This isn’t exactly what you would expect out of someone who had just watched Jesus brutally die. You would think they would respond with revulsion. Maybe sadness. Probably a sense of pity.

But the centurion worshipped Him.

This is the opposite of how many people respond to Jesus’ death.

The crucifixion of Jesus makes us feel sad and horrible. We often feel pity for Him.

But we really shouldn’t.

Partly because the cross wasn’t the Jews or the Romans’ idea. It was Jesus’ (Acts 4:27-28). But mainly because pity isn’t how Jesus wants us to respond to His death. Jesus didn’t die so that we could feel sorry for Him because he’s pitiful, but so that we would worship Him because he’s so powerful.

Worship is the exact opposite of feeling sorry for someone.

You can feel sorry for someone and not feel compelled to submit your life to them.

You can feel sorry for someone and actually think lower of them.

And that’s not what Jesus wants.

Jesus didn’t die to evoke your pity. He died to consume your life.

Pity has no place at the cross. Worship and submission does.

This entry was originally posted on July 13, 2011.

The Only Thing Keeping Us From Forgiveness

If we don’t have a relationship with Jesus, we fall into one of two camps. Perhaps we’re on the side that believes that we don’t need Jesus; that we’re good enough and our lives are just fine without Him. Or maybe we’re on the other side that sees ourselves as condemned, too far gone to be worthy of the salvation Jesus offers. But in this clip from Seven Mile Miracle, Pastor Steven teaches us that no matter which side we fall under, there is only one thing keeping us from the forgiveness found in Jesus.

To learn about the curriculum from the Seven Mile Miracle series, visit SevenMileMiracle.com. You can also find resources from other past Elevation Easter series at Resources.ElevationChurch.org.

Elevation Creative: The Prodigal Son

During our series IN•FIN•8, we’re looking back at eight of the greatest stories forever told. To introduce each week’s sermon, our Creative Team retells one of these stories from a different perspective, in an attempt to recapture the power and impact of hearing it for the first time. For part seven, we used a Rube Goldberg Machine to creatively tell Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son.