Elevation with Steven Furtick - God Has Given Me Everything I Need For The Season I'm In.

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

I’ve got what I need for now. In Mindset MasterClass Session 6, New York Times bestselling author Pastor Steven Furtick sits down with Brendon Burchard to teach us how to embrace now so we can prepare to steward the blessing of what comes next.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. I want to get this in your heart as we close this mindset masterclass, not as we close this process, because it is a daily decision that you have to make. Which me will I be? you will you do? You're not done choosing. It's not a one-time event. I want to give you this last little nugget for the seasons where you're struggling. It may not even just be one rep. It may not even be just one day. It may not even be just one month. You may go through long stretches of time. Yeah, with a little reprieve, but you might say, this is mostly a struggle. The stage of life my

kids are at right now. This business challenge relative to my end, history, this rhythm of my life that feels completely unsustainable. And while I don't always think that we should seek out more struggle, I think we have to know that when we struggle, God gives strength. If you can know that in those moments and say to God, the greatest three-word prayer that I never heard, help me fail, I don't ask God to help me fail. I want him to help me win, help me succeed, Help me crush, help me kill, help me destroy, you know, like, I don't want to win.

You're saying help me stretch. Help me grow. Help me grow. You know, for those who are like an aversion to fail, but I think it is important that you realize that. Well, I chose the language. Help me fail because it's inevitable that you are going to feel like you're failing, but maybe you're not. That's what I think is so interesting about you being a success coach, is that some people go, well, a success coach, is that really scriptural to success? Well, first of all, God told Joshua, I'll give you good success.

The kind of success that God gives a good success where you make a difference for him and you don't rip your life apart. I mean, you wrote a whole book called High Performance Habits about people who are not just succeeding over here and then making a mess of their relationships or destroying their health. God wants to bring all these things to integration in our life. But I think just as important as what's our definition of success is the question, what's your definition of failure? Who said it failed? Right. We talked in an earlier master class about disappointment,

and disappointment is relative to time. And when you remove the element of time, you don't have to be disappointed because it's going to happen and it's in God's hands. Yeah. So what do you walk people through when they're experiencing what they perceive to be failure, but you know as a coach,

this is a growth moment. This is a growth season. Yeah. I think the first part is always, as I said earlier, just remove the surprise from people. It's like they're so shocked that they had a bad performance. I was like, you've been on tour for three years. You didn't think one of them you were going to suck or just remove, like, the struggle and the failure, it is going to be there. And it is a personal definition.

You thought you failed, but 15,000 people chanted. You thought you failed, but you weren't arrested the next day. You thought, you mean, we have these cataclysmic things about failure. We always realize failure is a personal definition. So first I want to go, why were you surprised? Second, what is your definition? Tell me, what does that mean that you failed? And what's interesting, when people use the terminology of failure,

they drop into the fixed mindset right away because they believe that the failure stopped something. I failed. And it's just like this defined event, and their progress stopped, and their growth will stop. And so their definition of failure often comes with it like a stop sign. And I have to say, oh, there's no stop sign. That was an incident in life.

Tomorrow there's going to be 40 other incidents. That was one struggle. You're going to have another thousand. So there was no stop sign. It was something that occurred, but it occurred in the stream of life. And now you're downstream of that difficulty. And now you're going to face another boulder that's similar. Okay, how are you going to navigate this one?

because that's what that gave you. That difficulty gave you navigation instructions. It wasn't a failure. It was a navigation instruction manual. It was like, hey, okay, you hit this thing. It didn't go right. That boulder is going to appear in the stream again. Probably a lot of times until you learn, right?

So now you know the boulder's coming up. Well, let me skill up. Let me learn how to navigate that. Let me learn how to use my oar and snap my hip in the kayak to pop around that boulder. Yeah. Let me skill up. So next time I face it, I'm a little stronger.

Yeah. I'm a little smarter. I'm a little more wise. And so that's a developmental standpoint. It doesn't say, I stop there, it's forever fixed. I'm always going to be ruined here. It says, that's probably going to come up again. Let me teach myself, how would the best self deal with it?

How would I skill up to deal with it better? It's taking a struggle that's inevitable. And it's equipping ourselves. for the future. And maybe what came out of that struggle is I'm going to quit myself to be kinder next time. I'm going to equip myself to be more patient. I'm going to equip myself to develop a skill that I can do this or that. So it doesn't feel so harsh or surprising or awful next time. Because that's maturity as we get better at things. Like you do as a speaker, right? My metaphor for that would be I trained myself to speak to a small group

and then a slightly bigger group and a slightly bigger group. The problem was I was, you know, probably level of a thousand people, I still felt like I wanted to throw up before going out there. Yeah. And I had to say,

I need to train myself to be in a good place to handle life's challenges. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that's what I want people to hear is like the struggles are inevitable. Train yourself to be in a good place,

learning from your past lessons, and preparing yourself now for the struggle that you're in. Because the season that you're in, which is why I love the chapter title here, it's like the season that you're in, you're equipped, you're emboldened, you got backing,

and you have to step in faith and stay in motion and not hit the stop sign. Step in faith because the struggle is not a stop sign. It's a strength builder. It's a struggle build strength. So write these two down. Struggle build strength. Not all struggle.

Some struggle, you're struggling because you're stubborn. Like, you're not supposed to still be struggling with this. You're supposed to apologize. Quit trying to prove you're right. But when the struggle is something that God is taking you through and leading you through, it's going to build strength. Don't put a stop sign on the struggle.

Don't put a stop sign on the struggle. Especially when it's bad and you didn't want it. I mean, people, I know you minister to people who've their struggle or their challenge and this season and they lost a child. And when you tell them, well, just be strong. strong through it. It sounds so flippant. But sometimes when you say there will be strength, you'll be provided for, but also don't stop there. You know, don't forget you do have maybe

another child or don't forget that your life doesn't have to stop because they were called. And so I think it's a matter of when our struggles hurt us and there's no growth from them is when we put that stop sign and we think that ended our life, that ended our progress. that ended our reputation. And so when I say, don't put a stop sign on a struggle, it's not trying to say that anyone ever wanted

those terrible things that happened to us that are our struggles and problems. It's saying when you have that terrible thing and that awful thing, and you can't find the strength. When they hear guys like I say, well, there's strength there. And they're like, I can't find,

there's no strength that came from this awful, I lost my dad. There's no strength from that, Brandon. I go, yeah, it doesn't feel like it. And you might be right, but don't stop living. Because your dad didn't want you to stop living. He doesn't want you to stop living.

And so the most important thing, when you say that there's a season for everything and that God is with you there is don't put stop signs on the struggle. Well, I don't preach to the people in my church in those moments. They preach to me. You know, it becomes a role reversal because I love that. I have seen amazing faith from people in our church who have gone through the most agonizing situations over and over again. and in those moments they become the messenger to me.

And it's almost like they take the pulpit in their life, and I learn. I become the parishioner. And for some reason, I feel compelled to share this, and I never thought that this master class session would go to this place, but I feel like it's supposed to. Of one of my favorite church members, his name is literally Tom Lehman.

You know, we have like ministers and layman. Laman. He's literally layman. So I always tell me he's my favorite layman. And one night they were at church, and his oldest son died in a car wreck while he sat in church. And his phone was off, and he didn't find out until he left church. And after his son had gone to heaven, and after we had done the funeral and everything, I watched him. And I wondered, will he still want to pray? Will he still want to come to church? Would I? If I was in church and my son wasn't drunk, my son wasn't doing anything wrong. My son was a good kid.

But what he did was was he preached a whole life message back to me through his decisions because before his son died, his son had wanted to start a fishing club. And they loved to fish together. And he never got to do it. And when Riley died, Tom decided

we're going to start the fishing club. but it's not just going to be fishing for fish, it's going to be fishing for men. Like Jesus said, I will make you fishers of men. It's beautiful. And, man, they started this club called Riley's Catch, and not only seen 100 kids come to Christ through the club because they actually not just give them these amazing experiences,

but they share the gospel with them. But I've told his story to our church with his permission, and it's better than me being up there saying, there's strength in the struggle. Right. Like this isn't Pinterest from the pulpit that we're trying to give people today. I've seen it.

I've seen that the strength that Tom and Lisa Lehman, and we could name a lot more, the strength that they needed for the season that they never would have chosen, was there. I don't know how. I don't know how the spotter helped them when they felt like I probably can't take another breath, and then they did.

I don't know if I can put on my face and smile at people today at church when my son is no longer here, and we were in church trying to be a good family. But when you see that from my point of view as a pastor, it's what lets me know that what we preach and teach is more than platitudes and cliches. These are the words of God for you, because when you get into that season, if you're in that season right now, whether it's the loss of someone or whether it's, you know, something within yourself that you lost, you lost your compass, you lost your joy, you lost your direction, you lost your enthusiasm. We're not here to qualify whose loss is deeper. When you're

in it, it feels deep. I want you to remember the Bible story, and it's crazy how this session is coming together, I feel like it must be really anointed for somebody to hear because we planned on talking about Peter, who was a fisherman in the Bible. And Peter, man, the dude had a lot of strengths, but he was stupid. I mean, he was. He run up on somebody and cut off their ear trying to defend Jesus. And Jesus is like, I am trying to go to the cross. They came here to do what they're supposed to do. Let them pass. Jesus puts the ear back on. He put up with so much out of Peter. But you know what? When Jesus was starting his ministry and he needed a boat to preach from,

he looked at Peter's boat and said, I want to use his boat. And Peter's like, cool, you can preach from my boat. You need somewhere to stand. You need somewhere to push out where you can get away from the crowds and your voice will echo over the water. Sure, use my boat. And that was his first decision. It's like, you can get in my boat.

Now he had no idea at that point that he was going to go all around the sea of Galilee and see Jesus heal. blind eyes, see Jesus cause those who could not speak to utter their first words. See Jesus, feed people off of a, do you have Captain D's or Long John Silver's or any of those little fish restaurants back in Montana? You know, he's multiplying food and he's performing miracles and he's healing people that others wouldn't touch, all because Peter let him in his boat. And I think that's a significant moment when you say, God, I don't know what's ahead for me, but you can get in. the boat with me. You can have my life, my gifts, my skills. And I don't know what my potential is for you.

In fact, sometimes I feel like it's not like these other people. But if you're calling me, you're speaking to me, if you gave me this to do, if you put me in this season, this assignment, come on in. And then when Jesus goes to the cross, Peter doesn't do so well. And Jesus told Peter he wasn't going to do so well. He said, Peter, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. And Peter's probably thinking, you told him he couldn't, right? Like, he's going to tempt you and test you. But Jesus said, yeah, you're going to deny that you know me. You're going to have a moment of failure. You're going to fail. But Simon, I prayed for you, because his name was Simon before it was Peter. Jesus changed his name like he does for all of us. He gives you a new nature. And he said, I prayed for you

that when you fail, that your faith would not fail. And that when you return, you'll strengthen your brothers. So now fast forward, Jesus has died on the cross. He's risen from the grave. Peter has seen that Jesus is alive, but he doesn't really know what's next for him. And that might be you right now. Like, I just don't know what's next for me. Remember, everything that is next in your life is connected to what you do right now. God has given you everything you need for the season that you're in. So Peter says something in the scripture.

He goes, I'm going fishing. And I've heard preachers say, you know, Peter was backsliding. He was going back to his old life and going fishing. No, he needed dinner. He's trying to feed everybody. Jesus being risen from the dead didn't mean that they didn't need nutrition. So he's going back fishing,

doing what he knows to do. And I got to wonder, Brendan, also, was he going back to the last place where he knew that God could use him? That's where he had connected before. Was he going back to that same Sea of Galilee, that area called Copernum, where he had dropped Jesus off to teach a little bit

and heal a little bit and multiply those bread of it. in loaves, was he running from Jesus or was he looking for Jesus? I remember when he called me on the lake. I remember when he got in my boat. I remember when he walked toward me on the water. And you got to think like the memories are going through his mind and maybe if I just get back out here and I fish. And suddenly, at the moment of his failure after he fished all night and caught nothing, which is exactly what happened the first time Jesus used his boat, he's like full circle with this failure, because we never stop going through moments and nights and situations

and relationships and opportunities and ventures where it doesn't work out like we wanted it to. But the Bible says that a voice called out saying, friends, do you have any fish? And Peter recognized something. That's Jesus. And he jumped in that water and swam toward Jesus because he was impulsive. He could have stayed in the boat, probably got there quicker. Yeah. But he was so excited to have another.

chance. And he realized the truth that I want to leave you with as we close out this session together. He realized in that moment that God brought me through that season of my failure, and he is bringing me in to a season of even greater effectiveness. Because remember, Peter started out as a fisherman, but Jesus called him to feed his sheep. He told him, turned him from a fisherman, a fisher of men, into a shepherd. And he went on to influence the church like few people in history. All that from letting Jesus in his boat. All that on the other side of his embarrassment, on the other side of his betrayal. And I just want you to get to the other side. I know this session isn't quite as practical. And I know we haven't given five steps for moving

through failure and we're kind of moving in the realm of images right now. But I just feel like this is where we want to leave this message in your heart is that God has already chosen you. With your unique abilities, with your unique background, with your small town or big city self, with your tall self, short self, with your loud self, quiet self, with your introverted, extraverted self, God chose you. The question is, will you choose you? Will you choose the you that God knew before you were ever born? The you that is capable of making a difference. The you that is capable of moving through generational patterns that held your mom back and your dad back. I think that is available to you right now in this moment and in every moment.

And this is the decision, knowing that God chose me, that I don't need to be somebody else. That if I need to have it, God will bring it. That if I need to be good at it, I can grow into it. That God will send me people that I need to teach me what I need to know, people to help that I'm supposed to help, people to link up with who are strong where I'm weak. God will supply all my needs according to his glorious riches in Christ. And I'm sorry I'm preaching, Brendan, but this is my life message. This is what I believe for each and every one of you, that there is a shepherd in you. There is a next level of what God wants to do through your life.

And it may not look like more followers on Instagram, or it may. And it may not look like, you know, starting 17 companies. or it may. But I know one thing, I know that God chose you for something that you are the perfect person for. And if you can anchor that belief, no matter what stormy sees you're tossed on, no matter what failure seasons you go through, no matter what mistakes you have to go back and correct, I promise you this much, you will have the grace you need, you will have the gift you need. It's in you right now. You're not on the treadmill chase and future you. Peter was Peter. while he was still calling himself Simon.

Peter was a shepherd while he was still catching fish. Peter was a fisher of men even when his nets were empty. Peter was a preacher even when he was cursing and denying Christ. It's in you right now. God has given me everything I need for the season I'm in. So expect growth, expect stages, expect there to be some times where the seed is underground and you don't see anything happening. that's okay. God is often doing the most when we see the least. Expect harvest, expect blessings, expect things to be grateful for, expect a testimony from your experience, from these scriptures

getting in your heart. Expect for the truth to take root and bear fruit in your life. But while you're waiting for it, just believe I'm planted in the soil of God's purpose for me. And nothing can pluck me out of his hand. 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. Podcasts. Guaranteed human.