Elevation with Steven Furtick - God Has Given Me Everything I Need For The Season I’m In (Holly Furtick)

Episode Date: March 24, 2024

Take inventory of what you already have.  Join Pastor Holly Furtick as she unpacks how to trust God with your now as He prepares you for what’s next. To support this ministry and help us continue to reach people all around the world click here: http://www.elevationchurch.org/giving/ If you’ve just made a decision for Christ, please respond HERE: http://ele.vc/tIepfr To Get Your Copy of "Do The New You," the new book by Pastor Steven Furtick out 2/13, go to http://www.dothenewyou.com.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 fate. Hope it gives you perspective to see God is moving in your life.

Enjoy the message. I am so happy to be worshiping with you on this Palm Sunday. We are gathered together to celebrate and worship our Savior. And I want to tell you that whether you are in a seat, at one of our locations or you're watching online. Guess what? The hard part is over. You're here.

And the easy part is ahead because God is about to speak to you today. Are you ready for another one? Hug a few people on your way to your seat. I'm so excited that I get to be the one to wrap up this series. It has been a great one. We have spent the last seven weeks walking through my husband's new book, Do the New You. And I hope that this series has been special to you. I know that many of you are still reading through the book and discussing it each week with your e-group.

Keep going, keep showing up, keep sharing. I wish that I could ask each one of you which mindset has been your favorite, which chapter of the book has spoken to you the deepest. I know I have my favorite mindset and I have my favorite chapter. and I'm sure you have yours too, but to be able to hold this book in my hands and then to get to wrap up this series, you may not understand, but it is an immeasurably more answer to my personal prayers. I've shared with some of you that at the close of 2019, Stephen and I had a bit of a, I don't know, an argument, you could call it a conversation, and I told him that I believed

that he had given up on writing books and that I thought that there was more in him. And I told him that ministering to people with his words, whether it's through his songs or his sermons and his books, I feel like that's what God put him on earth to do. And the fact that I felt like he was leaving out how God wanted to give people encouragement through him in a written form, I just thought was missing. And so he said that he reminded me he had already written a book a year before, and it was basically rejected. And he said, I'm okay with it, and I've just decided that I'm not a writer. And so there were like a few rounds of wifely encouragement.

And I realized that it wasn't being encouraging anymore. And that I needed to let it go and leave it with God. And I testify before you today. And I say, when you leave something with God, you better get ready for another answered prayer. And here we are, just a little over a year later in this book is in my hand. And how many of you would testify that God has spoken to you through the message of this book? It's amazing. And so I'm so honored and excited that I get to share with you guys today.

Thank you, Lord. I'm so excited. All right. So we got to do a little recap of the mindsets here, because it's our last chance. And I want to go over each one of them one more time before we get to the last one. So let's just say them out loud together. You can repeat after me. We'll start with the first one. Mindset one. I'm not stuck unless I stop. Mindset two. Christ is in me. I am enough. Number three, with God there's always a way. And by faith, I will find it. Number four, God is not against me. He's in it with me. He's working through me. He's fighting for me. Number five is my favorite one.

My joy is my job. And finally, today, we get to talk about the last one. And this is the title of my sermon because it doesn't get any better than the way this mindset is written. So repeat after me. God has given me everything I need for the season I'm in. All right, let's go. Okay. So turn with me in your Bible to Exodus chapter 12, and we're going to start reading in verse 29. You ready? All right. At midnight, the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on the throne to the firstborn prisoner who was in the dungeon and the firstborn of all the livestock

as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was a loud wailing in Egypt, for there was a loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. And during the night, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, Up, leave my people. You and the Israelites, go. Worship the Lord as you have requested. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me. Pharaoh adds that tag. The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. For otherwise, they said, we will all die. So the people took their dough before the yeast was added and carried it on their shoulders in kneading troughs wrapped in clothing. The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the

Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and clothing. The Lord made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people and they gave them what they asked for so they plundered the Egyptians. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you are here with us. You dwell amongst your people. people. You're with the one that's watching in a hospital room, in a living room, and you're with those of us that are gathered here today at all of our locations. And God, we welcome you into this place. We open up our hearts to hear from you. We are eager to hear what you have to say to us today. Encourage us, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Okay. So fun fact about the Ferdig family. not light packers when we travel. We just like to have our stuff with us. So everybody kind of has

their thing. Stephen cannot leave home without at least one Bluetooth speaker, sometimes more than one. Abby likes to travel with her full-sized bottles of cosmetics, and she's 13, so you can imagine how much that is. I have this thing with my feet, so I have to take slippers everywhere I go. And the boys, they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily like heavy packers, but they don't fold their clothes, and so they need bigger bags. And when we go on vacation, we like to go somewhere that we can drive so that we can take everything we want. We take our own pillows, we take our own bikes, we take our own beach chairs, we take our own snacks, and when I start to, when I pack, I start to stress because I just think of all of the things that I'm

might need. Like, what if I want to wear my hair straight? Well, I got to pack my flat iron. What if there's a pool? Okay, so we're going to need bathing suits, flip-flops, sunscreen. What if we run out of sunscreen? So let me pack some extra sunscreen. What if it gets cold? We need jackets. What if it rains? We need rain jackets. What if we can't go outside? Puzzles. What if I decide on vacation that I want to work out? Okay, I need some running shoes. What if someone gets sick? We need a first aid kit. And let me just tell you, my first aid kit. is not just Band-Aids and cold medicine. I have some serious stuff in there, like things that start with a Z, like Z-Fran and a Z-pack, just in case. I brought one of my favorite suitcases to show

you just so you can, like, get a visual. Okay, here it comes, here it comes. This guy has traveled many, many miles with us. It's large and in charge and obnoxious, and you can fit so much stuff in this bag. And I realize that in this confession of mine that all the light packers in the room, like all the carry-on-only families, are judging us. But here's the thing. If you need something, you're going to ask me. I'm the one that brought the extra sunscreen. So this summer, Graham was packing for wrestling camp. And Graham is probably the lightest packer of the furticks. to shove everything he can into like one backpack. And so this particular camp wasn't super organized and I couldn't find a packing list anywhere on their website. So I was doing my typical rundown

for Graham because he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm packed. So I'm like, okay, do you have socks? Do you have underwear? Do you have a toothbrush? Do you have a charger? Do you have a sleeping bag? Do you have a pillow? Do you have a towel? And Graham said, Mom, I don't need a towel. I said, Graham, You know, I don't know what the accommodations are going to be, and I think you should take a towel just to be safe. I think you're staying in the empty college dorms. He was like, fine. So he takes a towel and he like shoves it into his bag. So a couple days later, I'm the mom that goes and does the pickup. And Graham and two other high school wrestlers got into my car. You can imagine what my car smelled like after wrestling camp.

And Graham goes, Mom, I was the only one who brought a towel. I said, what do you mean? You were the only one. And he said, Mom, we all three shared my one towel. And Mom, we showered like three times a day after every session. And Mom, the towel got so wet that it never dried. I swear. And then one of the boys, I was in the car.

He chimes in, he goes, Mrs. Ferdick, it was the grossest thing I've ever experienced. Now, listen, when a 15-year-old boy tells you is the grossest thing ever, we really need to stop and understand how disgusting this towel got. And Graham said, Mom, I hope it's okay. I left the towel. So, look, today I have good news for you. You don't have to pack light. And I want to look at this passage, and I want to show you that even though you, you know,

you don't necessarily get to plan your destinations in life, you do get to decide what you pack. And when you're faced with a situation that you did not originally plan for, if you are a child of God, you never have to go into it unprepared. No matter how unprepared you may feel, if you dig a little deeper, you will find that God has been preparing you for this season all along. You see, God is not trip advisor for your life. You don't get to go on Heaven's website and explore all the exotic destinations and choose where you want to go based on reviews about the accommodations and the restaurants for when you get there. God is the travel agent and God is the pilot and God is the tour guide. and when you sign up for this journey called Life with Jesus, you get to pack your bag and lead where he goes,

follow where he leads. And the backstory of the passage of scripture that I read for you today is that the Israelites have been captive in Egypt for 430 years. And God sent them a deliverer named Moses. And Moses goes to Pharaoh and he says, let my people go. And there's a series of plagues on Egypt. I forget how many there were, there were a lot. There were flies and frogs and the water turned into blood. And the final one that broke the Egyptians was the plague on the firstborn. And Moses goes to Pharaoh and he warns him and he says, if you don't let my people go, God is going to send an angel of death to kill all of the firstborns. And of course, Pharaoh is stubborn and he doesn't listen. And so God does what he says, and he sends the angel of death. But Israel, God's children, they're all protected

by the blood of the lamb that they put over their doors, and the angel passes over them. But the nation of Egypt is wrecked. Every firstborn is killed, even every firstborn animal. The Bible said that not one household went unaffected. And in the night, Pharaoh calls Moses, and he says, go. And so the Israelites find themselves packing in a hurry for the desert. What do you need in the desert? Everything. And they're in a hurry.

So they're like, some of them are gathering their animals, and the Bible tells us that they didn't even have enough time to let the dough rise for their bread. So they took the dough with no yeast, and they wrapped up their kneading boards into their clothes, and they put them on their backs. and then Moses told the people, go and ask the Egyptians for silver and gold and clothing, anything you need. And the Egyptians are so distraught over the deaths that they've experienced, that they give them anything that they ask for. The Bible says that the Israelites plundered the Egyptians. That means they took everything of value that they wanted and that they could carry.

And in large droves, they head out into the wilderness. They're not going to be houses to rent when they get there. they're not going to be grocery stores to stock their pantries with. They have to take everything they can with them. Now, obviously, when they get there, there will be things that they need in the desert. When there's no water, God's going to supply water from the rock. When they run out of food, he's going to send manna from the sky. But there was still preparation required on the part of the children of God. How do you prepare for a wilderness season? You take everything. You can. You don't pack light. God has given you everything you need for the season you're in,

but sometimes he gives it to you in the season before the season. Everything you're going through right now is building something in you for your future. So maybe you lost your job, but you're learning how to manage your money when there's nothing coming in. Maybe you've had your Ideas rejected, but you're learning humility and resilience. Maybe you have young children, and you're in a season of little sleep, but lots of prayer. There's something to be gathered from every situation that you go through. You may learn consistency. You may learn discipline. You may learn love, grace, compassion. If we do it right, all of these things are things that we gain when we choose to grow in what we're going.

through. Israel was going from captivity to wilderness. They were trading one hard place for another hard place. And I want to tell you today, if you feel like your life just goes from one hard thing to the next hard thing, guess what? You are normal. Life is hard. And yes, life is good. And yes, life is good. and life is beautiful, but also life is hard. I remember when my kids were little. I said to this woman who had teenagers that I thought motherhood would get easier when my kids were older. And she looked at me and she smiled.

This is probably the best advice I ever got. She said, it doesn't get easier. It just gets different. And I just want to say, some of us today, we need to stop waiting for easy. and just accept the hard parts of your life. I thought marriage would be easy because we love each other. It's easy and it's hard because you love each other.

I thought parenting would be beautiful because I wanted this baby so bad. I thought my new job would be more fulfilling than this. I didn't expect to get sick. I didn't expect to have a special needs child. I didn't expect to lose my marriage. And the beauty and the difficulty, They're all wrapped up together in the same life, sometimes even in the same day. I remember a couple of Christmases ago, I was having a moment where I was overwhelmed with all the things that were going on.

It was Christmas time, and it's a lot. And there's gifts and parties and programs and meals and out-of-town guests and church. I remember thinking one day, if I could just get through Christmas. Then I was like, wait a minute. Did I just say if I could just get through Christmas, it's the most wonderful to be going to wish it away? Sometimes I let the work keep me from seeing that the point is today. There is joy today. In John 1010, Jesus said the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

But I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. The enemy wants to steal. everything he can from you. And if he can't keep you from your calling, he's going to try and stop you from enjoying it. And Jesus said there is life to be lived to the full in me. Don't let yourself wish away the hard part so much that you miss all the good parts that were sandwiched in between. You've got to learn how to pack.

You've got to learn how to take everything you can, every lesson that you learn the hard way, every joy that you experience from the victories and you pack them up so that you can take them with you from this season into the next. I love how the mindset says that God has given you everything you need. Everything you need is already yours in Christ. Listen to me, you don't need more. to take inventory of what you already have. And then you pack it up and you store it away. What are you learning today that you can use tomorrow? Maybe you're developing right now the habit of leaning into others. You joined a do-the-new-new-you-E group. And you're realizing the power of having other believers in your corner who can encourage you and pray for you and

simply be a place for you to process what God is speaking to you. You've got these mindsets. Remember, we gave to you on Post-it notes? God has given us these phrases, and you can place them on your mirror at your desk and allow God to remind you that he's not against you. He's in it with you, working through you, fighting for you. What else are you packing? Do you ever have songs? Have you ever had God give you a song in a season? I mean, it is your song. It is your song on repeat. It's the one that you put on that stirs your faith and brings you back to the goodness of God when You're just having a moment of doubt. The other day, I came across this Psalm,

and actually it was one that my husband read while he was preaching, and they didn't really talk about it that much, but for some reason, it just, bam, it just really resonated with me. And so I grabbed onto her, I was like, okay, I'm going to print this out, I'm going to start praying this over my family, because God will give you a verse. He'll give you a word for your season, and when he does, you don't let it go.

You don't let it pass. You pack it. You print it. You write it. You get it up so that you can see it in your everyday life. The day that we released the book, Do the New You, Stephen and I hosted a live event to promote the book, and we had some people call in, and this lady called in.

And she asked a question. I think it was about the mindset. I'm not stuck unless I stop. And she basically said something like, but how do I get unstuck when I feel so stuck? you gave her the best advice. I had to pack it away for myself. You told her to make a list of every resource that you do have. You said anything and everything and anyone that could be a resource to you in this season. And that was such great advice because sometimes when you're

packing, you have to make a list so you don't forget what you have. So what's all you have. So what's your list. What has God taught you? What word has He given you? Who has he placed in your life that you can call, that you can lean into in this season? God has given you everything you need. You may need to reach back and look in your suitcase. You may need to take inventory. You may need to say it out loud to a friend because it's not only for here and now, it's for you and your next season. It's for your future. So Israel is packing in a hurry, and Egypt has released them from captivity, but they need to hurry because they're afraid that they're going to change their minds, and rightly so. You probably know the story, but I just want to catch you up a little

bit. God moves Israel towards the Red Sea. So Pharaoh has released them, and God is, it's kind of cool. he's like directing them by a cloud and a fire. And so anyway, he moves them towards the Red Sea because the Bible says that he knows that they're not ready to go to war with the surrounding nations. So he has to move them towards the wilderness where there is no one. And they camp on the banks of the Red Sea. And of course, like you know, Egypt changes their minds. I mean, what are they going to do without their two million slaves? So Pharaoh gathers his men and they hop on their chariots and they ride to get Israel back. And the people are in absolute panic because they're blocked.

They're up against the Red Sea. And here comes Pharaoh and his chariots. But God speaks to their leader, Moses. And he tells him to wave his staff over the Red Sea. And I'm sure you remember the story, the waters part. And the nation of Israel crosses over on dry land with all. You have to imagine how many people this is, because it's, all their flocks, all their herds, all their gear that they've packed up. Not one person or child

is lost out of two million people who are moving across the sea. It's the most epic moment in the history of the children of God up until this point. And Egypt is hot on their tail, and they follow them into the Red Sea, and God closes up the sea as soon as Israel crosses over, and Pharaoh and all his men drowned. And the nation of Israel stands on the other side of the Red Sea, safe from harm, and free for the first time in 400 years. Now I want to look at what they did. So we're going to skip down to Exodus chapter 15. When Pharaoh's horses, chariots, and horsemen went into the sea, The Lord brought the waters of the sea back over them, but Israel walked through the sea on dry ground. Then Miriam, the prophet, Aaron's sister, took her timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her with timbrels.

A timbrel is a tambourine. And Miriam sang to them, sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and the driver he has hurled into the sea. Okay, I don't know. I picked a version that had the wrong word and we wanted to tambourine is what we're going for, okay? So I don't know if you noticed that, but it appears that we have a few overpackers amongst the Israelites because Miriam packed her tambourine. Like, let's just, let's just imagine, let's go back to the moment, speculation here, okay? But let's go back to the moment. Remember, they're packing in a hurry, okay? So maybe they're Somebody quickly writes a list. The list person writes a list. They're like, bread, check. Okay, no yeast, but it's fine. Get the bread bowl. Yes. Clothes, yes. Blankets, yes. Silver and gold,

yes. And the Bible doesn't say if Miriam was married or not, but can we just imagine Aaron, her brother Aaron or brother Moses, looking at her and being like, Miriam, you really need your tambourine? And Miriam looks back at her brothers and she says, oh, I'm on, pack my praise. And when they crossed over on dry land, and they looked across and they saw Pharaoh and his army drown, just go with me here. But I can imagine Miriam, she goes digging into her bag. And she digs past the, I don't know, the sunscreen and the olive oil and the medicinal

herbs. And she pulled out her. It's about a tambourinas. You don't have to have much skill to use it. It is loud, and it gets the people's attention. And when all the what they pack theirs, too, the people with singing and dancing and praising the Lord who had triumphed gloriously in generations.

So my friend Anne Voskamp, she was writing about this story. And this is what she said. She said, they made time to grab their tambourines because they knew that Thanksgiving is what feeds your soul with joy in the wilderness. When you pack your soul with gratitude, it will not miss an opportunity to praise God. And yes, they needed to pack for their physical survival, but they needed to bring something to feed their souls, too. You are packing today what you will have tomorrow. and don't you forget to pack your praise.

Don't forget your hallelujah. God has given you everything you need, and you don't have to pack light when you head into the next season. You take everything you can, and you move forward. So my friend Millie is here today, and Millie and Rick, her husband, they moved here from Chicago several years ago, and they became a part of elevation.

Millie is my hair and makeup artist. So every time I do a Bible study or I preach a sermon, Millie comes and she works her magic and she helps me feel confident every time that I step up to preach. And we have spent a lot of time together and we've gotten to know each other really well. We talk about ponytail and children and everything in between. Because you know, you're close and spending a lot of time together. It's not fast to look. Camera ready. So a while back.

Millie shared with me that when she was a little girl, her older brother tragically died of a burst appendix. And she told me how it obviously changed her family, especially her mom, Mary. And when Mary lost her nine-year-old son, she had to lean into her faith even more than ever. because when a tragedy strikes, you kind of have two choices. You can lean into God or you can go into yourself. And Mary knew that God was the only place that she could turn to cope with such a tragic loss. So Mary became a woman of prayer. And Millie says that it is a memory of her childhood to hear her mother early in the morning pacing the house and praying and speaking out loud and speaking life and faith over her family. Millie says, hearing her mom say, hallelujah, was one of the most familiar sounds of her

childhood. Because Mary became one of those women who refused to speak negatively about a situation, and she decided she was going to be a pillar of faith for her family. So I've got a picture for you, just so you can picture them. This is Millie and her mom, Mary, who is now 67. And about six months ago, Mary suffered a massive stroke while she was here in Charlotte visiting her daughter. And when she woke up, the speech part of her brain was most affected. And I don't really understand how this works scientifically, but basically, no matter what she tried to say, only two phrases would come out of her mouth.

Adios mio, which means, oh, my lord. and the one that she says the most, hallelujah. Millie would say, she'll say to her mom, mom, are you cold? Do you need a blanket? Hallelujah. Mom, do you want to eat? Are you hungry? Hallelujah. Mom, can you get up? Can you try and walk? Hallelujah. Mom, what's my name? She sent me this video of her saying, Mom, what's say? Say Millie. And her mom goes, hallelujah.

Yeah. Here's a picture of Mary just days after her stroke. Even when she was unable to communicate, Mary was leading her family to praise God. She packed her praise so long ago. It was the only thing her mind and her body could do. She had tried, hallelujah, so many times that it is her default. And Millie, we are believing with you and your entire family for Mary's complete healing. But in the meantime, I want to follow Mary's lead. I want to pack a hallelujah so deep in my heart that it's what automatically comes out of my mouth in every season. Don't forget to pack your praise.

So God's people, the nation of Israel, from this point forward in their history, they're going to begin a cycle. It's going to go captivity, wilderness, conquest, harvest, stray from God, back to captivity. And you can read their history from the book of Exodus all the way to the book of Matthew. God's people are going to move from seasons of complete trust in him and seeing him move mightily through them to seasons. of straying and seasons of disobedience. But no matter where they were, I don't know, does that sound familiar to anyone? No matter where they were in the cycle, the nation of Israel was never once not called the children of God. They were always his chosen people that he would bring Jesus

to the earth through. And this is the cycle for us too. No one gets it perfect. But But we, as believers in Jesus, we're covered by His grace. He never leaves us. He's our perfect father who gently guides us back every time we lose our way. He is with you when it gets unexpectedly hard. Whatever kind of hard you face, he is with you. You might be in a hard season because of a poor choice that you made, or you might be in a hard season because of reasons that are beyond your control.

Like everything is hard. Fighting is hard. Harvesting is hard. Captivity is hard. Did you notice that in this series that we've been going through, every Bible character that has been preached about was in a hard place? Think back. Last week we learned about Paul in the prison. The week before that, Jeremiah was in a pit. Before that, Pastor Stephen preached about two men who were born blind. Rich Wilkerson preached the week before that about the woman with the issue of blood. And then week one, Graham was on the treadmill, and his dad turned it up to the hardest level, level 12. God is with you in your heart.

And he's always trying to get a message to you. In the book of Jeremiah, God sent the prophet Jeremiah to warn Israel, because they were in one of those cycles. And basically, it gets too late. And so Jeremiah has to tell them, you're going to be overtaken by Babylon, and most of you are going to die unless you surrender. And the people hate this prophecy and these words so much that that's how Jeremiah ended up in the pit that Pastor Stephen preached about two weeks ago. And in the very end, only a few actually listened to the prophet.

And so only some of them surrendered. And those who did surrender, they were carried off into captivity like their ancestors who were slaves in Egypt. But this was the remnant of people that God was saving so that he could bring them back and raise them up again and finally send them the promised Messiah. And so as they're going off into captivity, God speaks to them one last time through Jeremiah.

And he says this, this is Jeremiah 29, verses 4 and 5. Jeremiah says, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says, to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce. Plant gardens and eat the fruit. Jeremiah is saying to them, hey, you are going into captivity. Go ahead and unpack. And I feel like God sent me here to tell you today that even though your season is temporary, go ahead and unpack. I know this isn't what you thought. I know this isn't what you planned, but this is the season that you are in right now, and you don't have

to live chaotically digging through your unpacked suitcase. Unpack it. Hang the clothes up. Find your tambourine and figure out how to praise even in the waiting, build houses and live in them. he said, and I want you to hear me say today that there can be life in your Babylon, the place where you feel like you were carted off to unfairly, there can be life there. Do not wait for the next season to experience the power and the presence of God in your life. God wants to move in your life right now, right here, no matter how temporary it seems to you. So when Stephen and I married, there was this evangelist who offered Stephen a job. Well, it wasn't a paying job. Anybody ever had offered a non-paying job? It was an opportunity. It was a come and be a part of my ministry,

and I'll recommend for you to speak at any of the events that I can't take, that kind of job. And so we proudly accepted the job. And we've moved to the most random place, Shelby, North Carolina. And I just got my teaching certificate, so I got a job teaching fifth grade. And when we got there, Stephen also secured a paying job leading worship at a local church. Now, we knew before we moved to Shelby that we were called to start a church one day. We knew that when we got married. But we didn't know when, and we figured that we might as well do ministry while we were waiting for God to give us our next direction. The church that had offered Stephen the job, they understood that we were going to plan a church.

It was all clear. And they said, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Just come and minister here while you can. Now, Shelby was not necessarily the town that I had been dreaming of moving to. But when we got there, we found some of the most wonderful people in that town. And Stephen Ferdick went to work. only way that he knows how, he gave that little church everything he had. He built a worship ministry. He found and recruited band members. He went to colleges. He went to high school choirs.

He was having lunch with everybody because he had to build a praise team and a choir, and he needed a drummer, and we got all of us together, and he wrote songs for that church. We recorded two albums in the three years that you were there with no in the three years that we were there you've probably never heard of those albums they were called everlasting and everyone everywhere i'm not sure it's on iTunes um it would be a little their songs are great but they might be a little dated i think i have some footage of the our first recording you go oh look there we are there's me we were boldly wearing yellow and orange and black and the other day stephen and i were on a little road trip, and while he was voice texting back and forth about the songs that we were going to record here at Elevation in the upcoming week, we started somehow talking about Christ's covenant and those songs, and we started listening to some of the songs. And I'm telling you, I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in those songs, just like I can from the ones that are coming from our church today. Just because we weren't going to be in Shelby forever, did it mean,

that there wasn't time to plant and harvest some fruit. It was in Shelby, North Carolina, that we met Chonks and Amy, and we began to dream out loud for the first time about the church that we felt like God was calling us to plant and what it would look like and what we would call it. And one of the names that we were throwing around was church alive because it's worth the drive. Aren't you glad we landed on elevation?

But, you know, I am 100 percent that the fruit of Elevation Church was planted in the soil of Shelby, North Carolina. And I want to tell you, there are seeds that God wants to plant in your situation today. I know it's not permanent. I know this isn't your forever job or your forever home or, whatever. But you don't know how long it's going to be. You don't know. So build the house. Plant the garden. Jeremiah goes on to give Israel one of the most encouraging verses in the entire Bible. Just a couple of verses later, we find Jeremiah 29-11. He says, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. He's saying this over Israel and he's saying this over you. I have plans to

prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. And there are things in your life right now that you didn't plan for, but God is the one who holds the master plans of your life. He has a hope and future for you. You're just the hacker and the planter. He is the planner. So while you wait for the next move, God is saying you today, plant a garden, give it everything you've got. There will be fruit right here in the life that you have right here. Determine right now that you will get everything that God has for you right now. In your situation, in your circumstance, your pain, your disappointment, your transition, your confusion, your confusion. you get out your tambourine and you feed your soul. You stay right here and you plant your feet in the

garden of God's Word and grow because you can know that he's getting you ready for what's next. I ask the worship team to come as we close and lead us in that new song that we've been singing called Always on Time. This song has ministered to me in such a personal way because I've I feel like it's one of those songs that just allows me to reflect on those times in my life where I can look back and I can clearly see that even in my pain and even in my confusion and even in my transitional moments where I felt so frustrated, God was right there with me, even in the moments where I didn't feel it then. He was with me.

He's with you. He's guiding you. every step of the way, and he's with you now in this moment, and you can trust his plan for your life. 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 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. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.