Elevation with Steven Furtick - Christ Is In Me. I Am Enough.

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

I have all I need because God is all I need. In Mindset MasterClass Session 2, New York Times bestselling author Pastor Steven Furtick sits down with Brendon Burchard to discuss practical tools that can help us gain a new perspective on the things God has already placed in our hands.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, this is Stephen Ferdick. 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. Until my identity in Christ starts affecting how I interpret my life, I really still don't get it yet. And if I see myself just as somebody that God loves, because, well, Jesus died on the cross, and there's a group insurance plan, and I got in on it because I accepted Jesus, and now God kind of has to include me with all of my pre-existing conditions.

Then I have missed the point of what it means to say that I am a masterpiece made by God. I am, and the Greek it literally says a poem, like God's poem. And the idea that Christ is in me means more than just, he died for me 2,000 years ago. That is huge. I'm not downplaying that at all. I'm just saying that the fact of Christ being in you has to do more with your everyday life than you might think.

Because as long as we look at God as being out there somewhere, you know, I'm throwing up a prayer to the big man upstairs or, man, I'm looking for God to kind of come down and fix this situation. Yeah. And don't shift it to the internal. then we're basically living our life with no agency, right? We're living our life, if I understand my basic psychological terms correctly, we're living our lives at the mercy of our impulses, stimulus, response, and no Christ in the middle to say, wait a minute, I'm a child of God, wait a minute, I belong to God, I have faith, I have the grace of God. I get to appropriate God's power in this situation as I surrender to him, right?

So good, so good. Yeah, the way I think about it is often a lot. lot of the trouble we have in our mindset is we go to identity first. And, you know, in what I love about faith and religions of the world, it says, actually, interpret things through the word, interpret things through him and what he intended versus just how you feel and who you think you are. Yeah. Because if I ran my entire life based on identity, who I think I am and how I'm feeling and how I identify in these groups versus a higher moral ethic, versus spiritual guidance, we'd be a hot mess.

And I think this is one of the things we struggle with in the world right now. That's why we have a, I always say we have a selfie culture versus a service culture. We have a selfie culture because we're all focused so much on identity

and we're sometimes missing the higher calling, the higher service that if we interpreted life in a different way through faith, through spirituality, we'd probably act differently.

And so it sounds like when I say, you know, mindset, is interpretation than identity. Sometimes people think that's, oh, that's a negative thing because you're saying impulse and then self. But I'm often saying, too,

interpretation is connecting to a higher cause, a higher moral ethic, higher spirituality. And I'm within that. I am within, like Christ is in me. That's where it starts. But I am, you know, part of this. This is a bigger thing than just me.

And I think that's actually empowering because I can understand I'm enough because I'm, you know, he's in me, but I'm external too. Since you're already there, I think we should just dive on down a little deeper into this, because I know you wonder about this too sometimes self-esteem, like self-worth, like, I'm enough. It's sometimes just so flippant, right? And yet I know me.

I know the dark parts of me. I know I know not only the mistakes I'm. make, but the mistakes that I want to make that I hold myself back from that are even worse than the ones that I make. And knowing all of that about me, I once shared with our church, and I share it a little bit in the book, that accepting Jesus wasn't that hard for me. Like we have this phrase, accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior, receiving Christ. Well, accepting him, I get forgiven, loved, get to go to heaven. Great. Sign me up. I'm accepting Jesus. He has to.

the way that I should live, he has all wisdom, all power, I'm accepting Jesus. That took me, you know, just opening my heart and accepting him. But accepting Stephen, that's a little harder. And I have a real passion to help you with this because I think it's possible for you to accept Jesus and not accept you. In fact, this mindset in the book goes with an action step they each do, and this action step is accept yourself. And I put it with a capital S, not because you're God and God is you. I don't believe that.

I believe that. Basically, the self that God wants you to accept is your spirit, which is made perfect and complete in him, which is cleansed, and then it's covered up by all of this other stuff. So I want to know as you've studied it because, man, you've looked into this from every different angle and the terms that we throw around sometimes about self-worth and self-esteem and identity, sometimes it's a moving target. It's not like I just either accept myself or I don't. It kind of depends on the time of day or what just happened or what stimulus I just ran into. So talk to me about how that self-worth, self-esteem thing can be a moving target for us.

I think you nailed this in the book. This, you know, I am enough. It comes back, down to recognizing that we are more than what limits us, and we are more than what's missing. As you say in the first part of the chapter, you say, you're more than just what's missing. That sometimes the reason it feels like a moving target is because in every given situation, we go, am I capable to handle this?

At that moment, that's what we were saying, am I enough? Am I capable of handling this? Then we say, oh, am I doing it right? am I perfect? And we consider perfect enough. And then we say, do I have as much or am I as good as them? That makes me enough because I compare well. So we usually say, am I capable? Am I perfect? Am I comparing well? Well, those are the three moving targets. And you're never going to hit all three of them. So you're never going to feel enough. Because if that's how you equate enough,

you're in trouble. So in all of psychology, always comes back down to definitions, right? So what does it mean for you to be enough? And that's what we'll start in coaching sometimes. What does it mean for you to be enough? Maybe you put that in the chat. Yeah. What is enough? Yeah, because most people say,

what does it mean to be enough? Well, I've got to be perfect. I've got to be capable to handle all the complexity of this new business or this new challenge or this new issue I'm facing. And, oh, yeah, I've got to compare well next to my neighbor. Well, if that's what enough to you is, you're never going to achieve it. You'll never get near it

because those three things are always moving in every given new situation. So at some point, just like happiness in our life, we discern what is happiness to me? And in this case, we have to say,

well, what is enough to me? Is me being enough? Is that mean I'm confident? Is it mean I feel capable? Does it mean I'm worthy? Like, what does it mean? And people often only explore that once they get to the point

where it feel like, oh wait, I am doing life kind of good. I am measuring up pretty well with the Joneses. You know, you taught something one time. I think it really fits with this mindset. I would love for you to hear this game-changing teaching that Brendan has on integrating your wins. Now, I've shared some of this before, but I can't share it the way you do. And I realize that maybe part of the reason I can't share it is because I'm scared sometimes. to give myself any credit because it's like, no, it was all God. I like the joke that sometimes we'll tell a singer in church, you know, wow, you really did great today singing.

And they'll go, no, it wasn't me. It was all God. To which I always want to say, no, it wasn't all God. It wasn't that good. It was a lot better. It was a lot better. It was good. You did good.

And this idea of integrating your wins. Yeah. Talk about that because I think a lot of us are confused and we're like, like, well, I don't want to have pride. Well, no, you don't want to have pride. But this idea that I can never really feel good about what I did that doesn't please God either. So give this teaching. I love this.

Yeah. It's kind of like, if you think about, are you enough? It's kind of like a gas tank a little bit. You know, it's either full or it's not. And for what most – what's happened for most people on their journey of life is they've depleted it over and over and over and over in terms of not giving themselves credit. And so they never integrate the win. every time they screw something up, they take such a huge chunk out of themselves.

They're just like demoralizing themselves. They're just like self-hatred. They're angry at themselves. They have guilt and shame. And every time something goes bad, it's just like they take something out of themselves. They drain the tank. And people who finally feel more confident, more fulfilled, more capable, more than enough, they're able to see all the times they did okay.

They didn't screw up. They managed things well. They became resilient. They bounced back. They were a good person. They got the award. They did achieve something. They did feel good at the end of the day.

And they integrate that into who they are. I am enough. I did these things and they added up inside the character. They added up inside to strength. And there's a stacking that happens in our psychology after enough integrating of the winds. Because I work with athletes who've lost their confidence. They lost their, like they're literally top of the game. Yeah.

You know, their top 0.05 of the world. And they've lost their confidence. So they'll have me come in. I'll just sit down with them talking 30 minutes. And I'll realize they're telling me everything they have done wrong. Lost that game, dropped that ball, sparked over here, got this fine. I mean, they're telling me everything that went wrong. And they're not saying anything about what they're doing right.

And so their self-talk is always diminishing versus additive or recognizing their strength. So integrating the win means What if at the end of each day you thought about the things you did do well, the things that did turn out okay, the things that you were proud of, the character you showed, the patience you showed,

the love that you showed, the resilience you showed, and you said, oh, that's part of me. And you just kind of, and you allowed yourself to take some peace in the goodness of who you were that day. And if day after day,

year after a year, you allow yourself to take some peace in of the goodness that you did and the goodness that you are, suddenly one day you feel more full. Now you can feel more fulfilled. You can feel like you're enough because you're adding in versus taking out all the time.

I love this. And most people have never integrated the good things they've done in their life into their identity. So they still feel deficient like they were a 15-year-old kid who beats themselves up and doesn't think they fit in.

But you're talking about a 30- or 40-year-old woman or a man who has, has not yet ever breathed in the good that they did. So their confidence is of a high schooler versus a 30 or 40 or 50 year old person because they never integrated those wins. I think of it, isn't that such a beautiful picture, man? And that practice alone would change your life. If you sat with God at the end of the day or you're laying down,

it doesn't have to be at a prayer bench. It can be. It doesn't have to be with the journal. It can be. But even if there was just some time for you to pray, process with your heavenly father, I actually was thinking while you were talking about the other night when Graham, my middle son came to me right before I was falling asleep, and he had had a really good match a few hours earlier. And he started asking me questions about the match,

like, when did you know I had it under control? And did you think I wasn't going to come back from that bad call? And I really... realized about third question what he was doing. He was processing with his father what had happened, the victory that he had won, the struggle that he went through to get there, almost as if to say to me, walk back through this with me and help me feel my win. Nice. And what a beautiful thing to pray to God like, God, help me feel that win because, you know, when you're going through it, you don't feel like enough ever. You feel like I'm stretched. If you have faith, you're always going to be in a place that makes you feel a little bit outside of your comfort zone.

And so then what do you do? You get through it. You show up anyway. You show up messy. You show up scared. You show up with your hands shaking. Your mouth dry. Not enough sleep.

Not enough resource. And you do it. But you didn't feel it while you did it because you were doing it. So then when you fall asleep that night or at the end of the week or however you do it, you sit with God, and that's important because I don't believe I'm sitting by myself going, wasn't I amazing, I worship me? I'm going, God, wasn't that crazy how we did that? I mean, I even started praying a prayer recently to get into this Christ as in me, I am enough mindset, more in my heart that before I go to preach or to do something like this, or even if it's not a

spiritual activity the way we qualify spirituality, I'll pray, God, at the end of this day, I want to feel good about the work that you and I did together. And what it helps me to do is, first of all, Christ is in me. He's working with me, and we're going to talk about that in a later mindset, how God is always working through us. But the big thing about it is that I'm not processing this. Not only am I not processing only the defeats of the day, but I'm integrating the very. victories, giving praise to God, and allowing him to solidify it in my heart. I think that's a life-changing practice. And I think it's different than just, oh, be grateful. Because a lot of people

could hear this and say, yeah, yeah, I'm grateful for my blessings and all of this. No, you're saying something deeper, you're going, have you taken the time for the blessings that God gave you and the victories that he gave you and really making that a part of yourself in the future? Yeah, that's so huge. We see it in winning teams all the time. is like win after win after win after win. You know, if you get to hang out with them in the bus afterwards or whatever, you see as the season goes on, they actually talk more about the wins. They still got a job to do, but they want to debrief it like Graham did.

And I think a lot of people, they never debrief the good in their life. They bemoaned the bad. And so when you take a walk with your wife in the morning, if you would, just talk about the good things that are happening and give praise. It's so simple. We all know we should do it, but so few people actually verbalize it. And so more people you're around, if you can talk about the good, talk about the good, talk about the good, talk about the good, give praise. Suddenly you start to feel like life is enough because sometimes you don't feel like enough because you feel like life isn't enough. Our house isn't big enough. I'm not enough. You know, the company's not doing well enough, so I'm not enough.

and we equate these external things so often to am I enough. But if you can start giving glory and recognizing the good things, and I love what you shared, that you're doing it together, now you solve two problems. It's not only you feel enough because good things are happening, but you also don't feel alone anymore. What resonated with me and where I found my own personal faith in my life was that I wasn't alone.

because I had been a suicidal kid and had a car accident and had this really dramatic moment where I was standing on the hood of a car after escaping the car after we'd wrecked. And I was bleeding out and I thought I was going to die. And I realized I didn't want to die. And I happened to look up and there was a full moon that night and that was my moment of connection with God.

And I remember, feeling like I wasn't alone anymore. Amazing. In one second. Yeah. And I think what I like about what you did in this chapter is you started, you didn't say, it's not a chapter that says, I'm enough. It says, Christ is in me.

Yeah. Christ is in me, so I'm enough. That's really powerful because it means we're not alone. And once you realize you're not alone and you're doing something together like you said and you can share in the glory of it, that just feels different, different quality of life. Yeah, it does. it changes the way that you see your starting point. If I'm always starting from not enough, trying to get to enough, like you said, it's based in comparison, it's based in competency.

And there was a third one. Competency, am I competent? How do I compare to others? And there was one right in the middle. Am I perfect? Well, Jesus is perfect, and he's in me and he died for me. So he solves all of that, right? Yeah. And then we move into this one specific section that I want to mention from this mindset, and I really think this is going to help you. It's a way of looking at life that comes from abundance. And so just put this in the comments right now. I'm coming from abundance. And for me, I'm coming from abundance means that God spoke and the world existed,

and I exist from the same God who created the world. So if he did all of that and he did me, then as I do the world, then as I do the world, the new me, I know that I'm coming from abundance, meaning that God doesn't run out of patience for me. God doesn't run out of ideas. God doesn't run out of ways to provide. God doesn't run out of strength to use me. So this fear of running out, I want to hit on it, because I think at the heart of not enough is you got FOMO, fear missing out. I always talk about Foro, fear of running out. And I like to preach all the Bible passages. This is why we're good together because I have all these metaphors, right? And I go crazy with metaphors. Well, it can come to a point where we got to get beyond the metaphor into the mindset, into the mechanics of how to bring that into my life. And what I wonder is for the fear of running out specifically, the fear that not only am I not going to have enough money, but I'm not going to have enough people there to support me. I'm not going to have enough energy so I don't commit to anything. And I start calculating all of that rather than realizing I'm coming from abundance. Get real practical about this coming from.

abundance mindset and walk me through how you take somebody like me who, scarcity Steve, you know, when I'm in my old self, not doing the new me, get me from there to a coming from abundance. I come from God and he is enough for every need. Kind of walk me through that. Coach me a little bit. Yeah. Well, the first question is always, have you ever not had enough? Have you ever been a place where you didn't have enough? I'd like to say, categorically no, but I've definitely had moments where I thought that the energy was going to be there for me, and I felt like either I fell short or it failed me, or maybe I thought I was going to have the thing that I needed to say, and I've fallen short. I don't know if that's the same as

not having enough. I know there's always been grace there, and I know that I've always had another day, and I know that God's always made a way, so I'm not quite sure. I think you're setting me up a little bit. I'm not quite sure. No, it's a question I ask. money. It's like, if you're so scared about scarcity, the first question is, have you ever faced it before? And if you face scarcity before, and there was a Monday after that, you start to realize scarcity is not so bad. And that sounds terrible to tell people like, no, tell them scarcity is evil and scarcity's bad. I'm like, no. If scarcity is evil and scarcity is bad, then we got a problem because most of the population is in scarcity. And so what we have to realize is that scarcity is not terrifying.

there's still a Monday after to improve, to earn, to build, to make a difference. You don't stop at the scarcity, just like we talked in the last session. You kind of keep going. And so what happens is when people have scarcity, it's very easy to feel like there's nothing out there for me. And I understand why. It's because so many people fear scarcity. And I say, don't fear scarcity. It's funny, when you fear something, you focus on it.

you tend to get more of it. And part of the reason that the conversation pushes towards faith and towards spirit is to recognize there is a higher abundance. There is more for us. And when we can tap into, oh, there's more for us. I can change. I can shift. Because I don't believe in that idea that, oh, hey, you're in scarcity right now. Let me just, you know, let me just change your mind.

There's tons. There's people with jets and, you know what? You could become wealthy and you could have all these things. sometimes, you know what, it sucks and it takes a really long time to get out of scarcity financially. Or scarcity, you know, you feel there's scarcity, there's no one for you to love. And you might be single for five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years. So the question is, can you acknowledge that there are scarcity in parts of our life, in the material parts of our lives? But tap into Christ inside that there is a forever abundance there.

And it is a mindset trick. It's hard for people to acknowledge that scarcity is real, but it doesn't have to be feared because there is something more than that. Thank you for joining us. Special thanks to those of you who give generously to this ministry is because of you that this ministry is possible. You can click the link in the description to give now

or visit elevationchurch.org slash podcast 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 at Elevation Church. Thanks again for listening. God bless you.

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