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iHeart Podcast
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:06]
Lowes Advertiser
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America's Christian Credit Union Representative
You ever felt uneasy about how traditional banks are using your money or worried about getting debanked? You're not alone. More and more Americans are taking a stand in choosing financial institutions that actually reflect their values. America's Christian Credit Union is an easy to use financial institution built on faith based principles providing trustworthy, secure banking options that align with what matters most to you and your family. America's Christian Credit Union is member focused. That means better rates, lower fees and service that actually puts you first. Whether it's checking, savings, loans or more. America's Christian Credit Union is a partner you can count on. So take back control of your finances and support an institution that shares your values. Visit americaschristiancu.com today to learn more and become a member. That's americaschristiancu.com it's time to take a stand and choose a financial institution that actually reflect your values. America's Christian Credit Union America's Christian Credit Union is federally insured by the ncua.
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Steven Furtick
This message comes from Greenlight. Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely and invest with your guardrails in place. With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on what your kids are spending with real time notifications. Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get started risk free@greenlight.com iheart hey this is Steven Furtick.
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I'm the pastor of Elevation Church and this is our podcast. I wanted to thank you for joining us today. Hope this inspires you. Hope it builds your faith. Hope it gives you perspective to see God is moving in your life. Enjoy the message. Now I want to share the Word of God with you. I wanted to ask you something. Would you be terribly inconvenienced if I spent just one more week talking about functional faith? I promise you this will be the last week after this. I will never bother you with the subject of functional faith again. But I want to use one verse today that I think is appropriate for what we've been singing about and what we're experiencing right now. It is in the book of Revelation, chapter 4, verse 1. Give me just a moment while I set up my office. Maybe you want to open your Bible and get ready to receive the word of God. How many of you are blessed just to be in church today? How many of you are blessed to have your sins forgiven? I said, how many are blessed to have your sins forgiven? Me too. I'm always blessed by Mike and Brian. Good to see you guys. I love those guys. They stand out head and shoulders above the rest. Look at this verse real quick. Just one verse, but very powerful, very powerful. John says, after this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, come up here and I will show you what must take place after this. That's the only verse I want to read you today. So I'm going to. I'm going to double down on it and read it again just to make sure we've got it. Because this thing has really been blessing to me. I have really been praying about what God wanted me to give you today. He said to tell you after this. I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, come up here and I will show you what must take place after this. In this final installment of Functional Faith Praying About It, God said he wanted to give you an overview of your future. Are you ready? God said he wanted to speak to you today very specifically and give you an overview of your future. Now I need you to nudge your neighbor and tell them I'm getting ready for something. God is preparing me for something today. God wants to give you an overview of your future. I need you to hear me in Rock Hill. Because Jeremiah said he knows the plans he has for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and. And a future. Paul said, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. And neither life nor death, nor angels, nor demons, neither the past, the present, nor any other shall be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
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Jesus Christ himself said, in the world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.
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So God wants to give you an overview of your future. Would you hug seven people and tell them it gets Better from here. It gets better from here. It gets better from here. You may be seated. Thank you. I feel like the atmosphere of our hearts is ready. The word can be deposited. Let's go to the Book of Revelation, chapter 4, verse 1. Some of you are expecting me to bring out my charts of the end times, because the Book of Revelation is, of course, an apocalyptic book. This is the genre to which the Book of Revelation, written by John the Beloved, belongs. It is an apocalyptic book, not an apocryphal book. You know what? I'm not really an apocalyptic guy. I tend to be more on the practical side. So I guess you could call this not an apocalyptic but an apracalyptic message. Amen. My wife can't stand to hear people preach about the Book of Revelation and act like they know which president represents which beast. I'm kind of with her. My oldest son, he's pretty sharp in a lot of ways. I wonder where he gets it from. I'm just kidding. He's in a Christian school. So he asked me the other day, do you understand the Book of Revelation, Daddy? I said, no. I said, nobody does, Elijah. I said, it's really a symbolic book in a lot of ways. A lot of what they write, what's written there is poetic, so some of it is not meant to be taken literally. It's a very. It's a very serious book. He said, well, one of my friends in the class said his dad understands the Book of Revelation and he's not even a preacher. I said, all right. Okay. Well, if it's like that, let me give you an overview of the Book of Revelation. We win. Come on, somebody. I need you to look at the person next to you and summarize the outcome of their current battle. Look them in the eye like you know what you're talking about. Look like you're Marty McFly coming with a sports almanac from another year.
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Look at them and say, I don't know what you're going through, but you win in the end.
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I did take a seminary course on the Book of Revelation. The professor said, after studying the Book of revelation for over 40 years, I have come to this. Evil is real and God is greater. I said, man, because he told us this at the end of the whole class. I said, we sat here for three and a half months. I paid tuition for that. You could have tweeted that, but we didn't have Twitter back then. Now, what I want to do today is a little bit different than telling you everything that it means I would like to use this model whereby John saw a vision of God and use it to help us approach God in our own lives in a way that he might become real and relevant to us within the book of Revelation. There are several lessons for us to learn, but I just want to go not necessarily to what John saw. I want to talk first about how he saw it. I'd like you to write down a few key thoughts today. The first one is attention. Attention. John says in Revelation chapter 4, watch this. After this, I looked. It's interesting because everything that happens after that wouldn't have happened without that. Everything John saw after this would not have been revealed if he didn't pay attention. I bring it up because sometimes we're asking God to reveal his presence in our lives, his provision in our lives, his purpose in our lives. Sometimes we even pray about it. And we pray like we're trying to get God's attention. I've come to believe that prayer rightly done is less about me getting God's attention and more about him getting mine. I live my life from the foundational belief that I already have heaven's attention. If I didn't have heaven's attention, the Son of God certainly wouldn't have stepped down the spiral staircase of time and been wrapped in flesh made in the appearance of a sinful man to be a sin offering. So I could approach God boldly and come before his throne with confidence because of a drop of blood on the mercy seat, to make a way of access into the presence of God.
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So when I come before God, when I worship God, when I need God.
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When I call on God, I'm not trying to get his attention. I'm not trying to get him to notice me. Maybe as I go through my life, a better question question isn't, is God paying attention to me?
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The question might be, am I paying attention to Him? Help me out today. Shake your neighbor awake and say, pay attention.
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Maybe the same reason we don't experience God sometimes in our lives is the same reason we flunked the math test in seventh grade. The same reason for that fender bender on Tyvola. Maybe it's the same reason we burned the dinner. Maybe the reason we don't experience God's presence. Maybe it's the same reason we didn't see our kids were hanging out with bad influences until it was a little too late because we weren't paying.
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Attention.
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John says, after this, I looked, and there before me was a door. It was open in heaven. I want you to know today that you Have a standing invitation to experience God's presence. But you have to pay attention, because attention creates access. Let me teach you a little bit. Attention creates access. If negative emotions have access into your heart, it's because you gave those emotions your attention. If memories of pain and hurt dominate your thought life, it's because those memories have your attention. How can a memory hurt you? It already happened. It can only hurt you if it has your preaching. Good. There are some things you've been giving your attention to that if you would turn your attention from them, you would take the power of them. God wants to know today what has your attention?
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John said, after this. I looked, and there before me was a door.
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It was there all along, but I saw it when I looked. John could have been looking at a lot of things. I mean, the guy was an exile on a little tiny island called Patmos. He had been sent there because of his testimony of the word of God. He calls himself a fellow sufferer and a patient endurer in the kingdom of God. It's interesting to me that God gave the greatest revelation of himself to a man who was in exile. I want to stop for a moment and announce that God is a God of access. He is a God of access in exile. It means that even if you feel like you're on a little island today all by yourself, you still have access to the presence of God. There is nowhere life can take you that God's presence cannot reach you. There is nothing people can do to you to keep God from getting to you. So we see a pattern in Scripture that God is a God of access in exile. Ask Moses. He was in Midian in exile, running from his act of murder. But when he turned aside and saw the bush, when he turned aside and gave the bush his attention, he heard an announcement. And God said, I've come down to deliver my people. I know you've been in this desert a long time.
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I know you've been on this island by yourself. I know you feel like nobody hears you. But I am the God of access in exile. You're not alone. You're never alone. The God who was and is and is to come is with you.
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In this moment. Ask Daniel. He was a Babylonian exile and he saw a revelation of.
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Of Jesus Christ before Jesus Christ was born.
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Daniel saw him and he saw him in exile. I thought that might encourage somebody to know you have access. Even in exile. You have to pay attention. He said, after this, I looked and there was a door. After this, I looked and there was a door there was a door. The door represents the revelation God gave him. After this, I looked and there was a door. I think it's important what the door means, but I also think it's important where the door was. Come on, y'.
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All.
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He did not say put the verse up. After this, I looked and there behind me was a door. See, the open door is never behind you. Who is this for? You've been stuck in regret. You've been stuck in what happened. You've been stuck in what was John said. After this I looked and there before me was a door. The open door is always before you. It's before you. Look unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising his shame. The open door is before you. The open door is not in 10 years ago the opportunity that was missed. I know there's some stuff behind you that you can't get back. I know there are some things that happened to you that weren't for you.
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But you're not going to get access by giving your attention to what happened back there.
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The open door is before you.
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It's in front of you. Your best days are not behind you. What God has for you is in front of you. Look ahead. Help me preach. Find three people say, look ahead.
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It's right in front of you. It's right in front of you.
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Maybe we've been at the baseball field.
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Too much, Coach Dave, because I keep.
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Telling Graham what I hear.
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You tell him. You always tell him, keep it in front of you. This is what Coach Dave tells Graham because he coaches some 8 year olds. 8 year olds don't have the best attention span. They'll be standing out there in the field in the fifth inning acting like the ball is not going to come to them. So then when the ball does come, they have to come back like this. But Coach Dave said, I want you on your toes. So when they hit the ball. Not every pastor can do a lateral movement with that velocity. You ought to feel blessed. You come to church here. Can I do it again? He said, I want you to be ready because you have a better chance.
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To stop the ball if you keep.
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It in front of you.
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You know, you have a better chance to have joy and a better chance to have success and a better chance to have hope if you keep it.
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In front of you.
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That's what Coach Dave said. I heard the Lord say, where one door shuts, another door opens. They might have you on an island called Patmos, but you're not stuck here because if you can't find a way out, God will give you a way up. Come on, touch somebody and say, we're going higher. We're going higher. We're going higher. We're going higher. We're going higher. We're going higher. I might be down here on this island in my body. I might be down here on this job I don't like in my body. I might be in a bad situation in my bank account. But you can't chain my mind to the ground. I'm coming up higher. So let's talk about altitude. Altitude.
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The invitation is to see the open door before you. I heard the voice. Your life is moving in the direction of your vision and your voices. It's always what you see and what.
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America's Christian Credit Union Representative
You hear.
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Steven Furtick
That determines how high you go. John's revelation is interesting because in apocryphal apocalyptic literature, when they saw a vision of God, they had to go through an arduous journey to get to Him. If you read some of the Old Testament revelations of God, usually in the apocryphal, which is not the Old Testament, but in some of the books we have of the prophetic imagination of the past, they would have to make a difficult journey to get to God. John's vision is a little different because he says, I didn't get there by effort. I got there by invitation. The invitation goes like this. It was a voice like a trumpet making an announcement. It said, come up here and I will show you what must take place after this act. Once I was in the spirit, do you know how quickly God can lift you if you let him? I mean, he really can. John didn't say he went into a trance for 43 minutes. I'm doing some practical work on my life right now. I'm just trying to be a better person, not a better preacher. I mean, I want to be a better preacher too, but I think a better person makes a better preacher. So I'm just working on things because I'm a little on the grumpy side by nature, especially before, let's say, 9:45am I do not feel saved, sanctified and spirit filled until about 9:45am Eastern Standard Time. Another thing is not only do I kind of start my day sometimes in that grumpy place, but I notice I end my day in an anxious place just observing my patterns lately, I figured that can't be the best way to wake up and go into my day, then end my day. So I'm working on that. I'D like you to work on it too. Because your altitude is going to determine your access. Where you start your day is kind of important. Where you start your day really does matter. You have to start your day with some caffeine. The Lord said you could. I shouldn't tell you this, but I drink a cup of coffee every morning. That's not the part I shouldn't tell you. The part I shouldn't tell you is I chase it with a Diet Mountain Dew because I like the contrast of the warmth and the cold carbonation. It blesses my soul. Don't judge me. Go away. It helps me think about higher things anyway then I've been practicing the voices I pay attention to early in the morning. Can we talk not apocalyptic. Let's talk apractolictic. It's really easy to get excited about Jesus comes on a horse and wipes out the world. But what about until he gets here?
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What about until that happens?
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Because he left us here in the meantime. So we can't do his work if we're at the wrong level. So I have to get up in the morning. Even if I'm mumbling when I first start, even if I have that stuff in the corner of my eye, I have to flick it out when I get out of bed. I have to flick that stuff on the devil's head and say, I'm awake. You should have killed me in my sleep. I'm awake and I'm blessed.
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I'm awake and I'm a blessing. I'm awake and I'm a river. I'm awake and I'm a giver. I'm awake and I'm alive. I'm awake. I'm redeemed. I'm awake. My eyes are open. I'm awake. My heart is open. I'm awake. My soul is ready. I've just been trying to get myself up to a higher level because I need some Runway. I don't know what I'm going to run into when the day gets started. I don't know what kind of crazy person is going to be driving in traffic trying to cut me off. If I'm at the wrong level. I might not pray for them.
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So I have to get a little Runway.
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I've got to come on up higher. Isn't that what the announcement said? Come on up here to a higher place?
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I know we don't have the same invitation. John had to see the unfolding of end time events and the history of the world before it happens.
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But we do have a standing invitation in heaven that anytime we want to lift our eyes to the hills, we can look to our help. We can look to our God. I'm going to stop screaming in a minute. You have to understand, I'm just excited about the invitation God has given me to come up higher. Come on up. When I was a boy, they used.
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To have a show called Price is Right. They still have a version of it, but it's not Bob Barker, so it's not the real show. Can I get a witness? Bob Barker had that skinny little mic when Bob Barker would throw it to Rod Roddy. Y' all remember Rod Roddy and Rod Roddy? All these people are in the audience. The difference of Price is Right is at any moment, you might go from.
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The crowd to the front.
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If they call your name, you might win a washing machine. You might win a vacation trip for two, four nights, all expenses paid to Cancun.
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You might win. Win a new car. So when Rod Roddy grabs the mic.
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People listen and they lean forward.
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Rod Roddy had this thing he used to say. I don't know if they say it anymore, but Rod Roddy used to announce a name, and he would say, steven Furtick, come on down. You're the next contestant on the Price is Right. Now, Rod Roddy wasn't available for church.
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Today, but the spirit of God is here.
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And I hear him saying, if you want to listen at Providence, if you want to listen at Matthews, if you want to listen at Butler High School, if you want to listen at Blakeney, if you want to listen at Lake Norman, you might want to jump up on your feet for what's next. Because I hear the spirit say, child of God, come on up. Come on up. This is Rod Roddy in reverse. Come on up. Come on up. Where the peace is. Come on up. Where the blessing is. Come on up. You see that sunrise? My mercies are new with every rising of the sun. And I want to let you know you can come on up. Somebody shout, I'm coming up. No, you got to shout it like a trumpet. I'm coming up. So I'm going to start my day.
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At the right altitude.
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And. And everybody say. And touch them say, but wait, there's more.
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Yeah, God said he wants. He wanted to talk to you today about your future. He said he wanted to give you an overview of your future. He said, come up here and then I'll show you what happens next. I want to give you an overview of your future. I don't want you to look at your day through the lens of everything that might go wrong. I want you to get up high. See, sometimes when we travel, we take these little planes. We probably shouldn't take them. They're probably not safe. But sometimes we have to get somewhere really quick and we take a little plane. When we take that little plane, I always know if the weather is too bad, they're going to cancel the flight because the plane isn't big enough to get me above the weather. But when I fly with Delta or US Air, I might have to go through security and I might have to shove my bag in the overhead bin. But there's one good thing about a big plane. No matter what storm comes, no matter what turbulence we encounter, no matter how cloudy it is in the sky, I'm.
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In something that can get above it. I need to let you know the size of the plane doesn't change the weather, but it gets me above it. Now, I need you to know that the size of your faith might not change the weather, but it will get you above. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. And I saw a vision of him who is and was and is to come. And I see my future from heaven's perspective. Take 15 seconds and praise him for your future. Come on, praise Him. Come on. You ought to praise Him. Concord, you ought to praise Him. You ought to praise him uptown. Come on, praise Him. Blakely, let's get up higher. Let's lift him up. He said, if I be lifted up, I'll draw men. Lift him up. Lift him up. I see the Lord seated on a throne.
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The train of his robe fills the temple. Let's get practical. I want to start my day at the right altitude. And I want to finish my day on a note of praise. See, I figured the way I start my day will determine how I experience my day. And the way I end my day will determine the way I start the next one. Sit down. I have to show you something. Everybody say, practice. This takes practice. Because we are used to living at a low altitude. We're not used to coming up. We're not used to the air up there. We're not used to interpreting people through the idea of grace. We're not used to coming up. We're used to having our stomachs all tied up in knots. We've learned to depend on it. Anxiety is like our needle. We need it at the end of the day. We almost put the welcome mat out for the devil to just take over the next one. Okay, Going to bed, thinking about everything that went wrong. So I just had enough of it. A little while back, I saw in the kitchen this little notebook. My mother in law gave me like five of them and they were just sitting around. I picked up this orange one because it's the color of God. It says she got this notebook for $7.49. It was originally priced at $9.99. But what I've been putting in here is priceless because I put on the front of it, I put G. Gratitude practice. I decided to start ending my day on a high note. It only takes me like five minutes and it's not fancy. You might not be very impressed, but it has really been blessing me at the end of my day to fill up just one page. I picked a small notebook so it wouldn't be very intimidating. Just one page on this little notebook. How many of you are already planning your trip to Target or Walmart because you need one of these at night? I've been doing this. It's been helping me a lot. That's why I thought I'd share it with you. I write at the top of the page. Gratitude practice just to remind myself that I don't have to feel grateful to be grateful. Sometimes the pen doesn't start writing real quick. Sometimes it takes me all of the first five minutes to even get the pen moving. But it's amazing, once I get the pen moving, what I remember from that day, it's amazing. It's like giving me a different overview. I go to bed so focused on what might happen tomorrow, what didn't get done today. But it has just been helping me. If you want to try it, you can then put your picture on social media and I'll see your little journal and we talk about it. And you can hashtag it, you can hashtag it. Come on up. You can hashtag it, you can hashtag it. Overview. When I'm looking my day over, I want to look at it from the perspective of all the things I might have missed and didn't pay attention to that day that God did for me. What that's going to do is when I start tomorrow, I'm not going to start down here. I'm going to start it up higher now. If I start tomorrow here, maybe I can end here. Maybe if I end that day here, I can start the next one up there. He's taking me from strength to strength and glory to glory. So I just write down little dumb stuff. It's nothing fancy, it's nothing poetic, it's nothing. They're going to publish If I die, it's nothing anybody is going to read at my funeral. Just little old dumb stuff. Just stuff that wouldn't mean much to you. Just stuff I remember from the day. Open doors, ways that God made moments. I had a car wreck, I didn't get in. All the stuff that didn't happen sometimes is a good reason to praise God too.
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Just little stuff.
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Christy brought me a coffee yesterday before I preached. I thank God for the coffee. I thank God for a new season of a show I wanted to watch. Well, why not thank him for it?
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Why not?
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I can praise him over Netflix. You don't have to, but I can. Every good and perfect gift comes from above. Maybe that's a stretch. I put down a. This sounds kind of cute. Some shells in the ocean that my kids brought.
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Amen.
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That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that awe. Because I might have missed that. I might not be paying attention.
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Just to.
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To remember that your kids are healthy and they played on the beach today.
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While I'm at it, why don't I thank God for the ocean? You know, the ocean was there before I got there.
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It's going to be there when I'm gone.
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While I'm at it, why don't I.
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Thank God that he's bigger than me?
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Why don't I thank God that I have windows?
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I just thank God for whatever you can think of.
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If you sit there and try to.
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Make it too fancy, it won't work. I thank thee, thou, Lord God, that Thou didst create the heavens and the stars, and by Thy mercy was the firmament.
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No, none of that.
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I thank God for my new book I read. It's called Shoe Dog, about Phil Knight from Nike. I enjoyed it, so I put it in the notebook because I wanted to remember something good that happened that day.
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Amen.
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I could just go through this notebook. I'm not beating the devil with some big rocket grenade launcher. I'm just going to beat him with some paper cuts. I'm going to beat depression with some paper cuts.
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I'm going to beat despair. I'm going to make my way up a little bit at a time. I'm going to increase my altitude one thought at a time. I'm going to do it one night at a time, one day at a time. Touch somebody say, I'm coming up. I'm coming up. I'm coming up higher. I'm coming up higher. I'm not going to end my day as a victim. I'm going to end it as a victor. I have an overview. I have a place in heaven around the throne of God.
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I see my situation from above. When I see it from up here, I notice something. I notice something about authority. After this, I looked, and there before me was a door. Do you have nine minutes? That's all I need to tell you about authority standing open in heaven. The voice I had first heard speaking to me was still speaking to me. The door that was open for John is still open for you. Jesus Christ opened the heavens. They haven't shut. Abbey came to me the other day and said, daddy, this door is broken. We were at a store and it had automatic doors. She said, the door is broken. She's five. So I had to explain to her, baby, the door isn't broken. You just didn't get close enough to open it. There are some sensors up here, and you stopped five feet short of where you had to stand and the doors.
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Would have opened after this.
- [40:11]
I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I first heard said, come on up and I will show you what must take place after this. He saw a door because he looked ahead. He heard a voice because he got above. Preach my sermon to your neighbor. Tell them, look ahead from above as you look at your future. Look at it from God's perspective. Even as you think about November. Think about November from God's perspective. I'm preaching to all of you Fox News junkies and msnbc, too, because the next thing John saw will set your heart free from anxiety. Can I give it to you? We're down to seven minutes, so we'll have to work quickly. He said, I saw a door, I heard a voice, and at once I was in the spirit. And there before me, before me was a throne in heaven. I wish I had time to tell you about this throne, man. I don't have time to tell you because there's a whole other group that's coming to church. I would tell you about everything that's around the throne. There is a rainbow around the throne of God that encircles the throne to represent his brilliance. I would tell you about the 24 elders who sit on 24 thrones around the throne. Little lowercase T thrones around the capital, T big throne. And how they have crowns of gold and gold represents dignity. And they wear robes of white which represent purity because the Lamb has washed us clean. I would tell you, if I had time, about the four living creatures who were sitting around heaven one day, and one of them Looks like an ox, and one of them looks like a lion. And one of them has a face like a man. And one of them has wings. In fact, all of them have wings. They have six wings each, and they're covered with eyes because they can see God perfectly. And their job is to get around the throne. They wrote a song for God one day, and it said, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Then one of them said, I don't think that's good enough. We should do Holy. Holy is the Lord God Almighty. If we say it twice, it'll get the point across because it says God we're speaking about. They sang that for a couple thousand years. Then eventually one of them said, I don't think we're doing it right. Because he's not just holy, holy. He's holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. He is and was and is to come see.
- [43:02]
He is holy he was holy.
- [43:05]
He will be holy.
- [43:06]
He's holy, holy, holy.
- [43:09]
He is the God who stands in your future redeeming your past from your present.
- [43:14]
He is holy, holy, holy.
- [43:17]
The Lord God Almighty.
- [43:19]
I wish I had time to tell.
- [43:20]
You about the throne. I would tell you about the seven lampstands that are before the throne that represent the seven spirits of God that have gone out into the earth.
- [43:28]
I tell you about the sea of.
- [43:30]
Crystal that's before the throne. Clear as crystal. Because God sees everything that happens on earth from his vantage point in heaven. There's no tear you cried he hasn't seen. There's no heartbreak you've suffered that he didn't witness. There's nothing you're going through he's not aware of. He sees it from the throne.
- [43:47]
I wish I had time to tell you about 10,000 times. 10,000 angels. You'd be so excited if you could see those angels. They're not stressed out in heaven. They're looking at the future. And they know that God is on the throne. I wish I could tell you about the throne. Is anybody grateful that there's still a throne? Come on. I need you to thank God for the throne. Where mercy reigns, where love rules.
- [44:19]
I'll tell you about the throne. I would tell you about how from the throne of God, John heard the peals of an earthquake and the flashing of lightning and the rumble of thunder that came from the throne. Because that lets me know God is awesome. And when he stomps his foot and when he puts his foot down, the earth shakes. John said, I saw the future from the throne, and it changed the way I thought about it. Now, I would like for you to stand because I'm closing my message and I'm closing my series. But I want to tell you my favorite thing about the throne. This is for all of you who have anxiety in your heart about your future. What's going to happen to you? What's going to happen? Faith is anticipation minus anxiety. Faith gives me the ability to say, whatever is next, I'm ready. If it's Hillary, if it's Bernie, if it's Donald, I'm ready. They might sit behind the desk, but they don't sit on the throne.
- [45:57]
Come on, Church. We don't watch the polls, we watch the throne. Get your eyes up. Look ahead. Get your eyes up. Get them.
- [46:11]
The last thing I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you. Look ahead, get above and step aside. John said, I saw a throne. And watch this. This is my favorite part. This is my message. This is my message. This is my message. Ready? Verse two. I saw a throne with someone sitting on it.
- [46:36]
Here's the good news.
- [46:38]
There is a throne. Someone is on it and it's not you.
- [46:49]
I thought you'd clap over that. You've been staying up late worrying about how it's going to happen. But God just gave you an overview. He wanted to let you know about your future. I rule, I reign. I am. I rule. I reign. I am. I was, I am, and I will be forevermore.
- [47:15]
There is a throne. I'm not on it. And whatever is on the throne of heaven needs to be in enthroned in my heart. So if Christ is enthroned in heaven and nothing that happens on earth happens without his permission and his purpose, then that means there are some things on the throne of my heart that have to go. So look at fear. How long has fear been on the throne in your life? You need to make an announcement to fear and you need to do it today. Get off the throne. This seat is taken. You got it. Don't ask nicely. This seat belongs to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
- [48:20]
Come on, lift your hands. His presence is here. Enthrone him in your praise. Some of you need to look at failure. You've been dominated too long by what's behind you. God brought you here to give you an overview of your future.
- [48:32]
I hope you're standing.
- [48:34]
The King is here. I hope you got your hands lifted. I hope you got your hopes high. The King is here. We enthrone you on our praise. Feelings. Get off the throne. Selfishness. Get off the throne. He who is and was and is to come is seated on the throne and we crown him now. Come on crown him now.
- [49:13]
Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry. It's because of you that this ministry is possible. You can click the link in the description to Give now or visit elevationchurch.orgpodcast for more information and if you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe. You can share it with your friends. You can click the Share button, take a screenshot and share it on your social stories and tag us LevationChurch. Thanks again for listening. God bless you.
- [49:45]
iHeart Podcast
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Steven Furtick
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Jana Kramer
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Steven Furtick
Minute cycle based on 27 inch combos based on using a super speed cycle only with a 10 pound doe load cotton 50% plus polyester 50%. Individual results may vary based on actual load content.
- [51:40]
iHeart Podcast
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