Elevation with Steven Furtick - With God There Is Always A Way, And By Faith I Will Find It

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

With God, there is always a way, and by faith, you will find it. In Mindset Masterclass Session 3, New York Times bestselling author Pastor Steven Furtick sits down with Brendon Burchard to unpack practical ways we can activate our faith in seasons when we can't see the outcome.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 think when you said to me, if you remove the element of time, it takes away disappointment. It took me five minutes to realize how powerful. it was what you said, because think about it, we're going, I thought God was going to make a way, but he didn't. How do you know yet? Right. How do you know that wasn't the way? Right. You know, we won't stay on the path. We just want to get off on the next exit. And what does that mean? Because, again, a metaphor, a metaphor. Well, when I say path and exit, I'm talking about moving forward in the last thing that God spoke to you to do, or continuing to sow seeds in the place

God has planted you, whether that means your prayers, your kindness, you're showing up, your discipline, your diligence, whatever that means for you, the mindset to get out of this mentality that says, if I don't see the way right away, then I'm going to turn around and try something else. It's the enemy of your faith, and I'm not coming to you on this saying that I've never done it before. I have. I've felt so frustrated. It's a temptation for me to want to judge the success of something based on the immediate impact that it makes, based on the immediate feeling that it gives me, or whether I can quantify it. That's why I loved my little corny wordplay about suck seeds.

It's like the seed goes down into the ground, breaks apart, goes through trauma, and comes back up after water and light and fertilizer. And so our faith is like that. That's the way God germinates the things that he puts in our life. Yeah. And then what we do is we get in trouble because we start saying, well, what if this turns out and it's negative, and I want to jump back in that because I think we usually add three things that really ruin it for everybody,

which is the first one is associated with our fear of loss pain. Well, what if I do this and I lose prestige? I lose status. I lose the respect. I lose money. I lose time. And so we start saying, well, what if I do this and I lose this and I lose it now? And it's black or white thinking.

What if I do it and it's loss? And they're not thinking, well, what if I do it and it's a gain? What if I do it and it is planting that seed? What if I do it and it has a positive impact? What if I do it and I gain money, wealth, all the other external things people think that they want? It really does change the brain. So if you hear yourself saying, what if negative and it's lack, challenge yourself to balance your thinking. This is a lot of part of maturity as you learn to balance thinking.

And when you're younger, it's black away. And when you get older, you can apply nuance. And you can say, oh, what if this turns out terrible? It might. Okay, could I handle it? Well, what if it turns out well? Well, I'd like it. And so the first thing is when you say, what if loss?

The second thing is, wait, what if hardship? What if I can't handle this? What if it's years of difficulty? What if, you know, I don't survive this? What if I go through this? And it's so painful. And instead to say, well, what if? I grow through this?

What if it's not just hardship? What if it's challenge and character building? What if it's strengthening me? What if it's making me sharp? What if it's difficult? But that's the thing that makes me stand out later again with time. And the last one is, what if the outcome is bad? Like, you know, you said to Graham,

well, what if we drive all this way and just a long line? And you have to say, what if we drive all this way, and it's a short line? And you have to change it and flip it, as you said earlier, but also what if the outcome is good, but it's good in five years. What if it's, what I'm trying to encourage people is a lot of the mindset is the decision to start the journey,

hoping and trusting and having faith that things turn out well later. That's beautiful. Not on Monday. Like you start lifting, if I start lifting tomorrow, I don't look like him tomorrow. You know what I'm saying? It's like you have to give your, this time. And I think that's where a lot of our pain and all of our mindset destroys us

is we want it so fast that we won't begin the longer journeys that have the bigger payoffs. We won't begin the longer journeys that have the bigger payoffs. Yeah. Because I'm so focused on what's right in front of me or I'm holding on to something that was. And don't you think a lot of times what keeps us from seeing the way God is making is the way he did it last time. Right. And so we're holding on to the way God used to do it. And I'll give an example of this.

Or we thought he did it. Oh yeah. We can go there too. Which one should I go with? Let's see. I like yours better. The way that we thought he did it. We have so many misconceptions about what God needs to use to bless us or what we need to move

forward, right? like, okay, I need a team, someone might say, and then I'll start this thing, or I need somebody to come along and support me or back me or finance me or I need this perfect church or we get all this list of what we think we need for God to do it, right? And so we're holding on to that. Don't you think that a lot of what keeps us from moving forward is what we won't let go of? Our idea of how it should be, our idea of the way we thought God was going to make, I thought I'd be married and I'm 25 and I was planning to get married at 22. Well, that's the way I thought God was going to make.

So I love what you said, like not only what God did in the past, but what I thought he was supposed to do. Right. And now I can't go forward. So let's have a little therapeutic coaching. I know you're not an is, a psychologist or a nutritionist. You know, I know that you're a coach. So let's coach somebody in faith who won't let go of something that they thought was

supposed to happen. in order to go forward into the way God is making, they can't even see right now. Yeah. I think too often our vision becomes myopic on what was, and we're operating from here. What we should be operating from is our potential and into our future and the best of who we are.

And so I always tell people, never limit your vision for who you can be based on your past stories or your current circumstances. Because every great successful person, there was that part of their story where they were broke, down and out, struggling, and they just didn't choose to live there. They choose to work through it

because they believe something good would happen. And so I think the first part is going, where is your vision and where are you operating from? Are you operating from the past time zone or the current struggle time zone? Or are you living into and being the best of who you can be for the future you, which is what your book is about? Yeah.

And that's really powerful. Where are you operating? and where's your vision? And then we also have to set up these rhythms in our life where we choose to release the tension and the disappointment. I love that. Rhythms where we choose to release our tension and disappointment. What are your rhythms of release?

Write that down in the comments. Rhythms of release. Yeah, because what happens is, you know, inevitably stuff builds up and we get disappointed, we get angry, we get hurt. And if we never release that, it's like, a pressure cooker and one day it will release and it will release in a pipe burst. It will release in an inappropriate way for people. That's why therapy is so powerful. You go every week or you talk to a coach. You talk to them every week. It's a place that you go to release your thoughts and your

concepts and your frustrations and your plans. But it can't just be releasing. It has to be what I was called. You release the tension of that and you set the intention for what's next. So I'm somebody, I have to do this every hour. I'm easily. distracted. I'm so enthusiastic. I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to do this. And I know this about myself. So every hour, no matter what's happening, when I'm working at my desk, every hour, a little timer goes off, I have next to my computer, press it, start, 55 minutes, stops. And I push back, close my eyes, and I just start breathing, and I release the tension in my body. And I just repeat this little mantra to myself, release, release, release, release. I might only do this for two, four, five minutes.

Just release, trying to release all thoughts, all feelings, all emotions, and tension in my body. Once I feel like I'm in a good place, open my eyes and I ask, okay, what's my intention for this next hour? And I learned that in helping a lot of people through grief and trauma. Sometimes we think our vision has to be this huge new thing. But when you're really struggling, what's the intention for the next hour? You know what? I'm going to go pick up the kids and I'm going to share some love with them. That's the intention for the next hour.

But I don't want to go pick up the kids carrying all that stuff. So I always say before every significant interaction with somebody, if you can just release the tension, I teach people all the time. If you're the one who goes to work and you come home to your partner or your spouse with the kids, when you pull up at that house, tell you what, put the chair back, close your eyes, do a release meditation for about five minutes and say, what's my intention? Oh, my intention is go be a good dad, go be a good mom, go be a good provider, go be a good servant, whatever it is. And these little moments that you're just releasing all this frustration and this tension, because people carry a lot of tension, and they get lost in the tension.

Unless you release that, you know, you can use the metaphor of releasing baggage, but I don't like that metaphor as much. But it's just releasing the tension and setting an intention. It's a constant recalibration into the future and into your faith. And when you can recalibrate into my future, into my faith, then I can survive this moment now. What I love about this is how you broke it down and shrunk it. Because sometimes when we talk about letting go of the past, moving forward into the future, which is a lot of what this mindset is about with God, there's always a way. By faith, I will find it.

We set that finder so far out in the future. Five years from now I want to be here. And sometimes what we really need to release happen five minutes ago, not five years ago. And I love that you use the word rhythm because I like music so much that I thought, well, that's brilliant, because I've thought of letting go of what was as something I do maybe once. Like, I'll let it go, God. How they hurt me, I'll let it go, God. But when you put it in the term of a rhythm, that's not a rhythm unless I do. That.

That. Right. That. So letting it go isn't letting it go unless I let it go every time it comes back up. Yeah. The stuff that your parents did or something that frustrates you, it's going to come up over and over. And you let it go over and over. You've got to let it go over and over.

So this belief that one day you're completely spiritually free of all pain and problems and the past, maybe some people have that. but for most people, the difficulties of life happen on a recurring basis. There's a rhythm to that too. And so when it comes up again, oh, you know what, that's my old demons. They're fighting me again. Oh, you know what? That's that old behavior. I used to do that because he taught me to do that or she said that.

And so as it comes up again, it's an active release process. You're actively releasing. But here's the thing. If you just release it and you don't set intention for what's next, you'll keep following. praying prey, it will keep pulling you back in. You have to set an intention that is higher or part of something that is higher. And that is where I meant by, you have to set intention to your future and your faith over and over and over. It's like recalibrating back into him, back into spirit, because these things, often, they're dispiriting. And you've got to connect to the spirit again.

And so release the dispiriting things, tap back in to the spirited thing. and when you teach yourself to this over and over and over, you suddenly realize, I got a pretty good mindset. Yeah, because if our brain is operating off of the neuropathways that have created our thought pattern and our mindset is to think a different way, then we can basically say that seeing the way that God is making

is a product of thinking the way God thinks. So we're possibly looking at something right now that would be an opportunity, or you could reconcile, or you could actually have love in your life, or support in your life, right? And you're telling yourself you can't. And the reason you're telling yourself that you can't right now is because the way that you are thinking, I like how we call God a waymaker, but there are also God blockers in our life. Like, think about if God is the waymaker, there are God blockers. Those are the thoughts. the thoughts that cause us to say, well, if it would have happened five years ago, I believe it,

but it would have happened by now if it was going to happen. Or things like that don't happen to me. They don't happen for me. They happen for others. Or maybe somebody told you. Like, I remember my dad was, we both shared about our dads today, and I learned a little bit more about your dad. And I didn't tell you much about my dad. We just realized our dads both went to heaven when we were about the same age, about 32 or 33 years old. And, you know, my dad was, he was a passionate guy. One time somebody was telling me, you'll never be able to go to college. You won't be able to afford it.

And they were saying, I didn't go to college. And so you're not going to go to college and you need to make peace with it. It sounds like a weird thing for somebody to tell a kid, right? And it kind of was. I was only like 10 or 11. Oh, wow. And I don't even know why they were saying that, but my dad goes, shut your stupid mouth to this other person.

And this is not probably recommended parental advice. He said, if I have to kill somebody to get the money to send that boy to college, if he makes good grades and wants to go to college, he'll go to college. And I got scholarship instead, so I went to college. He didn't have to kill anybody. The story doesn't have a weird ending where, and that's the day my dad died. The point of it was that he wasn't going to have me limited. We've talked in the previous mindsets, and I want you to go back and watch all of them,

because we talked about I'm not stuck unless I stop. We talk about coming from abundance in the mindset, Christ is in me, I'm enough. But now we're moving deeper into this to say, are your thoughts the result of seeds that someone planted and that someone wasn't God? And if they were, can you go back by faith and uproot those through the process? Well, what does that look like? I love Brendan's handles. Release the tension, set the intention.

The intention of what? The intention of your future and your faith. With God, there's always a way by faith, I will find it. And maybe that's why you haven't found it yet, right? Because you're not looking by faith. Right. You're looking by sight, and so I don't see it, and I've never seen it, and I've never been it, and I've never done it. But this mindset is by faith, I will find it.

So how does faith open up your eyes to possibilities that were there all along? And how do you tap into it practically? Because a lot of people will say, so I'm just supposed to, what, lift my hands? I'm just supposed to quote a Bible verse? Well, yeah, oh, that's good. Yeah. But there's an actual way to activate faith, too, that's practically. Yeah, I think you began, if you are looking backwards, look backwards and notice that all the big moves in your life and all the big random things that look so random, they happened when you were in motion.

You were in motion and serendipity happened. You were in motion and you met this person who gave you this lesson that helped open this door later. It's like Steve Jobs said, you never connect the dots until you look back. And I think that when you do look backwards, you start to realizing, oh, wait, wow, God's grace was right there. I never thought about that. Huh, God opened the door right there. I didn't know. And what happens is you start to realize that all these things have already opened for you, but they always happen when you were in motion. You made a decision, you went for it, you tried something. And some big lesson or a failure or a pivotal point happened, but they always happened when you're in motion.

And so when you trust in that, you say, interesting, doors, looking backwards, I can see doors open when I was in motion. Let me get in motion now because I want new doors to open. I want new doors to open for me, so I have to be in motion. I have this belief, I have this desire, I have this dream, move. And you write so eloquently about this in the book. It's like, move. Because when you move, the doors are open or you're going to blast through them and discover something. But for the most often, I think that what people discover is, wow, when I get in motion,

amazing things start happening. These random people come into my life. That's when I met my wife or that's when I met this business partner or that's when I got that first sale that led to this sale and they can start connect that forward again with that trust and a faith. That will happen again. I think coming from that standpoint, it's like it's evidence-based. There's a lot of evidence that great things happen when you were in motion and a lot of

things when you were stopping yourself, fearing yourself, you know, laying on the couch week after week in self-pity, that wasn't nothing happening. None was happening. You were in the 17th bag of Cheetos, nothing happened. But when you got in motion, oh, okay, you got tired of sitting around and you tried something, something opened. So I think first stepping into that truth. Even the smallest motion. Small motion. Get out of the house today. Get the shower today. I didn't tell you this story. but I'll give it to you now, and maybe I've shared it publicly, but I don't think that I have. I feel like I should, though, when it was time for me to write this book, and I felt like

you're either going to do this now and write this, because the message was coming alive in me, but I had become pretty discouraged about the writing process. You know, going from the spoken word, which I'm more comfortable with, and I have a lot of muscle memory with, to the written word, and the way I would judge it, and I would think, this is not very literary. So everything in me was telling me you're not, you're not an author. You know, back to the identity, Christ is in me. I am enough arguing for your limitations. All of these mindsets build on each other, right? Which is really why I want you to share every session and read the book.

But the book actually was completely stalled out in my mind. I tried to write another book. And I remember the day that I had a blank afternoon on my calendar. and something told me that today was the day to set the book in motion. And when you said motion, something jumped in me because I wanted to say this for the person who is like, I know that there's something that God has put out in front of me in my future, but I am completely paralyzed by what I feel. And here's what I did that day.

I went in my closet. I put on a suit. I never wear suits, but I put on a suit. And I drove to my office, and I called my literary agent. And I stood there in a suit, not on a Zoom call, a phone call. So why am I wearing a suit to set it in motion? It was my way of saying to myself, I mean business. And this wasn't when I was 23 just starting out in ministry.

This is recently that I had to do this for myself. Yes. To let myself know, we mean business. And the series of meetings that were set up on that day standing there in a suit that was, by the way, a little too tight because I hadn't put it on in a couple of years. And as the suit squeezed the blood out of me, the faith began to blow. And one of the reasons that the book is here today is because, like I said, instead of sitting and waiting for God to deliver away or make it obvious, I, I choose. shows motion. And I think set it in motion is a great thing to add to this mindset. It's not just the mindset, but it's setting that mindset in motion that even the smallest step of putting on a

suit, even the smallest step of setting up a call, even the smallest step of flushing it and telling somebody to ask you about that addiction and asking somebody to check in on you, did you set up the meeting with the therapist that you've been saying you're going to do. Whatever that move is, a lot of times I think the paralysis of the entire path blocks us from the next step. Yes. Because if I'm looking that far out to see, well, God's going to make a way and then it's going to lead to this and this and this and this. We are essentially trying to calculate the next five ways that God is going to make when all

we really need to do is step through the door that's open right in front of us. 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. This is an IHeart podcast.

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