Steven Furtick's Blog, page 90

What You Get When You Give It All Up

In each of our lives, there are areas where we struggle to give control over to God. It could be our dreams, our money, our comfort or even our sin. But what happens when we give it up? What happens when we fully surrender ourselves to God? In this clip from our series The Resistance, Pastor Steven explains what God requires from us if we want Him to fully use our life for His glory.

Just Who Is the The Holy Spirit?

Most Christians can probably give you a quick and accurate description of who God and Jesus are. But what about the Holy Spirit? This part of the Trinity is a little more difficult to explain. Is it your conscience? Is it karma? Is it those goosebumps you get during a good worship song? Or is it something much more? In the first part of our series Ghost Stories, Pastor Steven pushes us to stretch our thinking about how we see God and His activity in our lives through the Holy Spirit.

From the Archive: Stephen The Waiter

So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them…They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.

Acts 6:2-3, 5

From beginning to end the book of Acts reads like a chronicle of people used by God to accomplish the seemingly impossible.

Peter preaches at Pentecost and sees 3,000 converted.

The disciples heal so many people that the sick are brought into the streets so that their shadows might fall on them.

Philip teleports after preaching the gospel.

Paul threatens the entire socioeconomic stability of a city with his preaching. Raises a dead kid to life. Survives a stoning. Shipwrecks and survives. And goes to Rome to appear before Caesar. Because he’s Paul.

But then you have Stephen. Who waits on tables for widows.

Doesn’t seem very noteworthy. But never underestimate God’s ability to use small, seemingly insignificant assignments to set the stage for significant impact.

If you read on in the story Stephen begins doing great wonders amongst the people. There’s no indication that he’s vacated his post of waiting on tables. So we can probably assume he’s doing miracles in the midst of his mundane duties. Apparently he’s so powerful that the local officials need to shut him up. So they bring up false charges and make him defend himself. In front of the high priest.

So what does this waiter have to say to the Jewish scholars and powerbrokers of his day? A lot. He ends up preaching the longest recorded sermon in the book of Acts.

Not Peter. Not Paul. Or any of the other apostles. But Stephen the waiter.

He does so well that they kill him. A tragic ending for Stephen, but by far his most significant moment. And that’s because the ensuing persecution that comes from Stephen’s sermon and death forces the church out of Judea and into Samaria and eventually into Gentile territory. Where the Gospel flourishes and becomes a worldwide movement.

That’s exponential impact, but it all started with waiting on tables for widows.

What tables are you waiting on right now? What insignificant assignments are you having to carry out that feel like they’re beneath the destiny that God has for you?

Don’t ever forget that what starts as an insignificant assignment often leads to your most significant moment.

This blog post was originally posted on September 16, 2010

Where You Can Find Your Peace

We have all those days. Days that started well – then spiraled out of control. We are unraveled by bad news and burdened by circumstances that are beyond our capability to fix. In this clip from our series The Highest, Pastor Steven teaches us how to experience the deepest peace, even at our lowest moments.

Elevation Creative: Strike The Water Spoken Word

There is a unique beauty and poetry found throughout the Bible in the words of the scriptures. The psalms of David. The parables of Jesus. The letters of Paul. We are constantly being impressed with flashing lights, slick artistry and explosive special effects. But there is still power in the simplicity of words. To close out our series GREATER, Poet David Bowden uses spoken word to weave the imagery of Elisha striking the waters of the Jordan into a mighty charge for us to take hold of the greater life found only in Christ.

What You Do When Jesus Told You To

It’s not always easy to convince the people in our lives that God knows what He’s doing. Sometimes, it’s hard to convince ourselves. How do we respond when God calls us to give, serve, or forgive when it feels unreasonable? How do we respond when He asks us to take a risk or step out in faith when it doesn’t make sense? In this clip, Pastor Steven challenges us to trust the God who told us to do it, even when the calling seems impossible.

When The Greater Life Meets Real Life

The biblical principles for living a greater life in Christ are easy to read and underline and tweet – but when we close the book, and look at the reality of our lives, it becomes much harder to actually put them into practice. We quickly discover it’s not a neat, perfect formula. For the last part of our series GREATER, we took a look at several real-life stories from within our church. Through stories like the one in this clip, we were able to see firsthand what the greater life could look like in our lives as we begin moving forward in our relationship with God.

From the Archive: The Myth of Wasted Faith

When we pray or have faith for something and it doesn’t happen there’s a tendency to think that the prayers were wasted or that the faith was wasted. And so we don’t even want to ever bother again.

In actuality God never wastes our faith. If you pray for something and that particular thing doesn’t happen, who’s to say God isn’t taking the faith and the prayers that you prayed about that situation and posting them to another account in your life that you’re going to see at a future time?

You may pray that God would sell your house and your house doesn’t sell. But maybe in seven years you get a deal on a house that is life-changing that you never could have imagined at the time. Or maybe you have been unable to have children and you’re praying desperately and faithfully that God will give you a child. In your mind you’re thinking that means that you’ll get pregnant. Nothing happens. But maybe three years later you have the opportunity to adopt and have the child you were praying for so faithfully. Now you can’t imagine your life without that child.

Who’s to say that God did not take the faith that you exerted toward one prayer that He chose not to answer, and apply your faith to answer another prayer that you didn’t even know to pray?

God is not wasting your faith. He has not wasted your prayers. He has something for you. It just might be something you didn’t know you were asking for at the time.

This blog post was originally posted on July 14, 2010

Behind the Song: Nothing Is Wasted

For their upcoming album, Elevation Worship used the 12 different chapters of Pastor Steven’s new book Greater as the source for the themes for 12 new worship songs. The song “Nothing Is Wasted” is written from the chapters of the book about Elisha and the Shunnamite woman in 2 Kings 4. The following is a behind-the-scenes look at this song followed by a clip from our weekend worship experience.

Click here to watch the sermon “Upon Further Review,” also based upon this chapter of Greater.

Click here to buy the Greater Church Challenge Kit.

The Right Way to Wait On God

The Bible tells us that as Christians, we serve a God who answers prayer and who works all things in our lives for good. But that doesn’t mean that God operates on the timetable we’d always like Him to. There will be seasons where we have to faithfully lean into God’s promises and wait on Him. But what’s the best way to wait? And is there something we could be doing in the mean time? In this clip from our series Waiting Room Pastor Steven redefines for us what is means to really wait on God in our lives.