Elevation with Steven Furtick - Save Your Strength Pt. 1

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

We all feel weak sometimes. So where can we find strength when we need it most? Learn how to increase your strength by starting at the source. If you’ve just made a decision for Christ, please respond HERE: ele.vc/tIepfr To support this ministry and help us continue to reach people all around the world click here: www.elevationchurch.org/giving/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 thought I would take a moment and just illustrate how sometimes where something shows up is not where it started. But this sermon that you hear today came from a note that I made last year. And sometimes where something shows up isn't where it starts. By the time you hear the sermon, it's already been hopefully in the process of me thinking about it for a long time. Because I don't want to just think of something Saturday and say it on Sunday. I even realize that about your life. You showed up today.

and I'll see you, but I don't really see what it took for you to get here or, you know, what is affecting your mind as I preach. Sometimes people will say, that's the best sermon you ever preached. I'll say, that's just the best you ever listened. It wasn't that good. But the sermon starts before it starts. I always tell the parking team, like, hey, help me out. When people are coming in, smile at them, wave at them, put them in a good mood. It'll make my job easier because the sermon starts before it starts.

It starts before it starts. It starts checking in your kids. So make sure that you get as good of a start as possible. And this time of year, we're so focused on new beginnings. But the longer you live, the less you really believe in new beginnings. And the cliches don't really comfort you in the same way or inspire you at the same level anymore. New year, new you. No.

No. I didn't grow three inches. You can't really get a new start to your story. What you can do is change the ending. And the only real way for you to affect the ending is to understand a starting place. It's very important that we understand the scripture that I read in the context of the times because there would have been an outside gate, the outer wall of the city, with a gate for entrance, an inner gate as a line of defense.

And then this space between the gate where justice was supposed to be served. Negotiations happened and people would buy and sell. And that was the space between the gates where the negotiations of life and the deliberations took place between the gates. The realm of your decisions. The realm of your thought process. The space between what you see with your eyes and what you do in your life. what you hear with your ears and how you act when you go home. That's space.

That's where the battle is won and lost. Now, by the time the battle is won, there has already been significant work done. Nobody wins the Olympics at the race. They won the Olympics in the dark at 4.30. Where their success showed up is not where their success started. Usually, if you see an issue in somebody's life, where it showed up is a lot. not where it started. It's the same with victories that it is with defeat. I told a story last week about my dad, and the reason I like to tell so many stories about my dad is because he's

not here to correct them. I can tell him how I want to tell him. The one I told him about him last week made him sound kind of bad, but I thought I would tell a good one about him. My dad was a good dad, especially if you compare him to the standard that he didn't have a dad to show him how to do it, and he was making it up when he was doing it. But he was just kind of, he was winging it. And I have mad respect for that, because it's hard enough to be a dad when you've seen a dad, but he had to make it up. And so some of his tactics were not FDA approved.

Some of his tactics were kind of street tactics. One time I told my mom I wanted to kill him. Yeah, not my finest moment. I'll kill him. I don't want to kill him. And when he picked me up from school that day, early days. early dismissal pick me up from school

and said he had two guns in the back of the truck I was going to get one and he was going to get one because he heard I wanted to kill him and if I didn't shoot he was going to that is not necessarily the type of parenting you hear about on focus on the family but he was doing best he could and he didn't actually do it he let me cry for 10 minutes and think that he was going to do it but I never said it again

one of his finest moments though I don't know where he got the idea to do this was when he began to talk to me about addiction. He began to talk to me about addiction because his father committed suicide and had been a very mean drunk. His father's father had been an alcoholic. And somewhere along the line, he made the decision that I can't go back and rewrite how this story started in our bloodline, but I'm going to impart a vision to my son so that he might be the one to write a different ending. You can't create a new beginning, but you can write a new ending. That's what I'm trying to

say. You can't change who wasn't there for you. But you can write a new ending. And maybe we should start this year, not as an expectation of new beginnings, but new endings. That from this point forward, I said, from this point forward, Paul said, I pressed toward the mark this one thing I do for getting what is behind me. There is no strength in what's behind me. I stretch. I'm towards what's ahead. And so my dad, he would pull me aside, even from like a really young age, like I was eight years old and he would pull me aside and start talking to me about the dangers of alcoholism. Eight years old. And he would tell me, my dad was a drunk and his dad was a drunk, and his dad was drunk. He said, you could be the first verdict that wasn't an alcoholic.

He put it out there like a challenge to me. Like you could go to the moon. You could be the first verdict. I kind of like that. I was only eight. I was eight. I don't know what he thought the kids were bringing to school in their juice boxes. Like what temptation he thought I was under. You could be the first verdict. And it got through to me even when I got a little older. I could be the first verdict. This is not a sermon about don't drink, by the way, okay?

I said, I want you to get all nervous like that, like I'm one of those preachers. Because I have noticed a lot of the preach don't drink are 80 pounds overweight, so apparently they skipped all the verses about gluttony. Okay, okay. You didn't come for all that. Let's get back to the scripture. Isaiah said that he will be, is anybody leaving? I can't see very well back here. So they're okay.

A source of strength to him who turns back the battle at the gate. In other words, God will strengthen the will of the one who makes the decision. It stops here. I'm taking my place in the gate to say that I can cannot affect how the story started. But my dad said, if you really want to be the first verdict to beat this, you've got to beat it in your blood. Because if you taste it, you're going to like it. So I want to challenge you, just don't ever fight it.

He was trying to get me to see that sometimes the best place to fight the battle is before it ever begins. to draw a line and say, I'm not even going there. I'm not even playing with this. This is not going to be a part of my children's legacy. I can't control what it's been until now. But from this day forward, by the grace of God, I am a new creation in Christ, and I'm going to beat it in the bloodline.

I'm going to make a stand for the next generation. There are going to be some changes at the gate. The place to beat it is before it begins. Because if you let it in, you've already let it win. It's like this in marriage. By the time you let resentment in, you've already let bitterness win. It's like this in our thought process. By the time we let worry in, we've already let anxiety win.

And this is the year we no longer fight the devil on his level. Because Isaiah said there is a strategy. You can turn back the battle at the gate. It's a powerful thought. Sometimes people make fun of me and we go out to eat. They say, oh yeah, I forgot. You don't drink. Fine.

I'm judging you. Drink what you want to drink. I drink 14 Diet Mountain Dews a day. I got no judgment for your liquid consumption. I just got a different drug. What I'm saying is this is a decision I made. It's a standard that I have set. And the problem in Isaiah's day is that the leaders who should have been setting the standard

for the people have lowered the standard and let the people vulnerable. This has no relevance to our modern day, of course. The Bible is an ancient book. In fact, Isaiah says he gives a picture of it. He says that the leaders who are supposed to be sitting in their seat of judgment rendering decisions of virtue and justice. 7, he says, they stagger from wine and reel from beer. The priest and the prophets, wouldn't this make church more interesting? The priest and the prophets stagger from beer and are befuddled

with wine. Y'all, I have a hard enough time making sense when I'm up here sober. Can you imagine what I would sound like if I had a few? He said, they stagger when seeing visions. They cannot see correctly, so how can they lead correctly? They stumble when rendering decisions. They are the ones who are supposed to calibrate the calling of the nation. And yet they are so drunk. Maybe it's a metaphor. Maybe it's not just that they're drunk on alcohol.

Maybe they're drunk on pride. Maybe they're intoxicated with power. Maybe a self-aggrandizement that has caused the leaders of this day to begin to weigh self-interest in a different scale than the best interest of the people. And yet Isaiah says something that rings true today, that God will be a source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. Notice he says that no matter who sits in the gate, God is still the source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate.

it would be worth answering the question, who is the source of your strength? If you haven't decided it, by now you need to decide it really quickly because if the source of your strength is who you're sitting beside, you will live a very disappointed life. If the source of your strength is a number at the bottom of your balance sheet, something will hit your life so hard that you can't buy your way out of it. You will find out really quickly that net worth is a terrible place to put your sense of self-value. If the source of your strength is how people look at you or treat you or think about you, if the source of your strength on any given day is the condition of your health, you will always be susceptible to the elements. And so Isaiah says he will be a spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment and a source of strength of those who turn back the battle at the gate. To make God the source of your strength means that you depend on him.

As one psalma has said, you lift your eyes to the hills, from whence cometh your help, your help cometh from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, and he will not suffer your foot to be moved. The Lord, which keepeth thee will not slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade upon your right hand. And the sun will not smite me by day nor the moon by night. He will preserve your soul even forevermore.

To know that all your help comes from God, that all your hope is in Jesus, that all of your help comes not from the right, not from the left, not from the north, not from the south, not from the economy, not from the job. Touch somebody, say, not you. God is my source. Now go ahead and clap right now if you know God's got your bet. In fact, stand up on your feet and shout about it. If God is your source in every season of your life, in every famine I have a friend named Jesus. He is my source. I am so tempted to preach on this part of the verse that I almost forgot what came before it.

Isaiah said in that day, the Lord Almighty will be a glorious crown, a beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people. Now, what is a wreath and what is a remnant? Besides a Christmas decoration, a wreath symbolizes victory. And he is preaching victory to people who are about to experience defeat. He's preaching, of course, about the impending Assyrian evasion. to the northern territory of Samaria, the crown jewel of the northern kingdom of Israel, set on a fertile valley. He's speaking to them about their potential.

He's telling them how their protection is gone, and so now they're going to face a season of defeat. In the same breath that he promises to be a source of strength, he warns them of a coming defeat. But yet he speaks about victory in the context of defeat. He says, in that day the Lord Almighty will be a glorious. A glorious crown, a beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people. God said he will be a wreath for the remnant. The wreath symbolizes victory.

The remnant represents what's left. God always has a remnant. No matter what you've lost in your life or who walked away from you, God always leaves a remnant. No matter how wicked this world gets or how dark the times that we live in may seem to be. God always has a remnant. In every office, God has a remnant.

In every church, God has a remnant. In every city and every generation, God has a remnant. God always has a remnant. There's always a little bit of oil in the house, even if you feel like you're starving to death. God always has a remnant. There's always a little boy with a lunch. If you call him for it and put it in the hands of the master, it will multiply because God always has a remnant.

No matter how many leave Gideon, there will always be 300, and God is able to win with the remnant. God said, I'm going to bless what's left. I will not be limited by what you lost. I will be a wreath for the remnant. I'm going to bless what's left. I'm going to bless what's left. Stop weeping over what's lost.

I'm going to bless what's left. I want you to shout right now over what you've got left. I want you to shout right now over the gift you have, the strength you have, the friends you have, the opportunities you have, the time you have. God said, I'm going to bless what you got left. If you will not stay stuck in what walked away, I'm going to bless what you got left. You can win with what you got left. I feel like preaching.

I feel like preaching to the remnant. Where's the remnant at? Where are the ones who went through the fire and came out on bound? I'm going to bless what's left. No matter what happens at the leadership level, I'm looking for someone who will turn back the battle at the gate. And in that day, the Lord Almighty will be a glorious crown, a beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people. Then he mentions two different spirits. Watch this in verse six. Can we study the Bible? He will be a spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment.

That's the first one. And a source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. So you've got the spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment. and the source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. I studied that text all week, and I thought I was talking about two different things. But the more I read it, the more I realized that this is two functions of the same spirit. He will be a spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment, a source of strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate. The first part of the verse is about standards.

He will be a spirit of justice He will decide what is wrong and right To the one who sits in judgment He will be a spirit of justice And a source of strength to the one who turns back The battle at the gate So the same God That is the source of our strength

Is to also be the source of our standards And here's the question that I came to ask today How can I expect God's strength if I do not embrace God's standards. I'm about to throw this mic, brother. See, how can I call God the source of my strength if I have not made him the source of my standards? He will be a spirit of justice to the one who sits in judgment.

Now, if I have let that seat open and I have left culture to tell me what's right and wrong, how can I look to culture for my standards and then look to God for my strength? How can I look for the world to tell me how to live and then expect God to give me strength for a standard that was not his? How can I call God the source of my strength if he is not the source of my standards? How can I expect his strength and resist his standards? It's good, right? That's why I feel weak sometimes.

I'm asking God to strengthen me, but I have given away my strength because I have lowered my standard. And then the enemy comes in like a flood, but I don't have a standard. Then I ask God to give me joy. You know, in your presence of follows the joy. Joy of the Lord is my strength. And I want his strength. I want his joy.

But if I have not applied his standard to my thought life, and I have not applied his standard, and And I let my mind think whatever it wants to think. And I go to God for strength, but I did not go to him for standards. I am asking him to violate the very nature of our relationship. How can he be the source of my strength if I won't let him be the source of my standards? Who set your standards? Who set your standards? Was it God that set your standards?

I was talking to one guy the other day. It became very apparent to me pretty quickly that he sets his own standards for right and wrong. And I admire him for that because I don't trust myself that much. I mean, he must be really perfect to have his own standard for right and wrong. See, I need a God. I need a God who's bigger than me, wiser than me, who's been around longer than me. I need a God who can see around the next corner and know how this decision is. is going to affect my destiny.

I don't want to occupy that seat. I need a God. And sometimes we're so crazy as Christians, we will allow the world to set our standards as a church. And tell us what the church ought to be and not be. And put us in a box and call us by a denomination. But I will not be standardized by a dysfunctional world. I have a higher standard. We are a chosen people.

a royal priesthood, a holy nation to declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness. Like preaching, preaching like this might be my last time. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.