elevatingtohigherlevels

This week’s blog post is going to be from the series The Power Of Same. This sermon is called “The Secret Of Sustainable Success and Pastor Steven is teaching us how to get sustainable success. Pastor Steven opened this sermon up with John 15:4 which is about remaining in God. John 15 talks about fruit, and we are able to get this everlasting fruit by connecting with God and having a relationship with him. Jesus is also making a point in this verse, He is saying that no fruit can be better than the vine that produced it.

In John 15, Jesus talks about success. There is good success and bad success. Good success is not based on results, it is based on deep roots. If you have results without roots, your talent will take you where your character can’t keep you. If your success is in the wrong source, like what others think about you, your success will not last. Do you want success?

To have success, you need to have a constant. A constant is a fixed value that never changes. Pastor Steven used a verse from the message Bible. He used Romans 15:4-6. In verse 4, it tells us how to get success. We can get it by having constant calling, constant connections and constant character.

If you want to have a constant calling, it has to be strong. If its not strong enough to produce a passion in small places then you won’t be successful if God provides opportunities. We each have our own unique calling.

We need to have a constant character. Some examples of constant character are honor, generosity or even courage. To have a constant character, we can not let what others do affect us. For example, you have to choose to be generous and not let friends affect what you do. You either are or your not. We have to bring our first ten percent to God because He is our constant. When we give to God it establishes that God is your source of success. You should start tithing because it triggers trust. Our belief in Christ should reflect our character.

We also need to have constant connections. We all have to follow Jesus, but it is easier with someone else. Your spiritual success will only be as strong as your support system. In Matthew 26:30-33 Jesus had predicted that His disciples were going to leave him once He was arrested and these verses lead us to John 15:4 where He said to remain in Him. We need to start remaining in God’s love for us.

Our constant should be God’s everlasting love for us no matter the situation. We should be focused on having success in our relationship with God forever.

This week, my blog is going to be about the sermon “More Of The Same” from the series The Power of Same. At the beginning of this year, Pastor Steven started the series The Power of Same which is teaching us about how to harness the power of same through God.

Pastor Steven opened up with the point “If you resist the monotonous, you will miss the miraculous.” He also opened up with John 15 which talks about Jesus being the vine and how we are the branches and if we want to have a relationship with him we will stay connected and bear more fruit. Even when your life feels bear, you will bear even more fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control because it is what God is doing on the inside. Most of us do not want a gardener God, we want a gene God, but we do not realize that God will allow us to bear more fruit.

When you start to embrace the power of same, you can not always stay at the surface and expect to grow your relationship with God. God’s word grows in the garden. We all admire someones results, but you can not admire the results and desire the reward if you do not embrace the routine that produces the results. You do not get blessed in your lifetime by a lucky moment. When you see somebody’s life and they make great decisions, they practice that.

If you do not stay the same, people give up so quick. Somethings take a lifetime. It is the process that will create the result  you resist that you long for. God has to prune you and you have got to stay connected. Get into a routine that brings life. Some people have Jesus as their weekly activity and not daily priority and we need to stay connected on a daily priority if we want more fruit. You have to repeat the right things to bear the fruit. Repeat the right things to get a reward.

God wants us to abide in him. We will never reach if we do not remain. If we set a goal based on the routine then we will get a better result. If you make the routine, the result will flow. Sometimes we need to give ourselves a gold star. We need to realize the routine is the reward. You have to read your Bible when you feel like you do not want to, and it will lead to the miraculous. The key to real change, is to abide where God is. Make your home in God. Embrace the pruning process that produces the results. The greatest compliment to say to God is to call him faithful.

We love God because he holds our world together. God will always be the same.

This week my blog is going to be about the sermon “Find Your Flow” from New Years Eve.  Pastor Steven opened up with the verse Gen. 26:12-18 which means God allows tough times to come because he knows he will redeem them with blessings.  Believing God will fulfill his word, is a state of mind, while he brings your flow to you and your circumstances.  Life is better with “flow”.  In John 7:37-38 Jesus references the Holy Spirit flowing through us with His living  water.

Flow can be interrupted by a famine, such as life’s circumstances coming suddenly on us.  God uses famine in our lives in order to force out of our comfort zones. You will always be in the flow even during difficult circumstances if you know how to sow.  You should sow in a place where we are pushed by the enemy.   You should sow forgiveness when we are offended or acceptance when we are rejected.  Life will come and push you where you are complacent  but God will often increase your capacity by allowing confrontation.  If you want God to enlarge an area of your life it will require a confrontation of some sort. As capacity increases so do our challenges.  When we grow we get too big for the place we have settled.  While the enemy is pushing you out God is using that situation to pull you into His purpose for your life. God knows where he is taking you to fulfill your purpose.

Your flow doesn’t always come in places that you are comfortable because that increases focus.  God allows famine in loneliness and darkness He blesses you through it.  If you don’t define the blessing you will call it a burden.  Gen. 26:15 says if you dig the wells out it is reclaiming your land. If we allow the enemy to keep the wells blocked it will make us ineffective.  Foreign objects will block your flow such as fear, rejection or anger we can not allow those thing to replace our flow in the spirt.  The possibility for a miracle is in the well that is blocked.  If you re-dig the foreign objects in your well, God will provide everlasting water into your wells.  It doesn’t matter what we are going through, the Lord can still bless and redeem anything that has been stolen or blocked up. We need to unearth what is blocking our flow because God is bringing new flow from the old wells and we don’t need to dig new ones just yet.

In my blog post for this week, I will be talking about the sermon “God Works In Mysterious Ways.” This sermon is from the series The Hope of Glory. Pastor Steven opened this sermon up with John 11:25. This verse is saying that resurrection is not something that Jesus did, it is what Jesus is.

This sermon was about the woman at the well. This story can be found in John 4:1-30. It begins where Jesus is traveling to Galilee and instead of going around Samaria because he is a Jew, he went through Samaria. His disciples wondered why He was doing this. Jesus was doing this because He will always go out of his way to find people that others will avoid.

When Jesus entered Samaria, he stopped at a well and waited for someone to come. While He was there, a Samaritan woman came with her bucket for water and Jesus asked her to get Him some water. She said “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.” Jesus answered her “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and would have given living water.” If you have Jesus, you have everything you need. She then said “Sir, you have nothing to draw it with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?” Jesus said “Everyone who drinks from this water I give will never thrist. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling to eternal life.” Whoever drinks God’s water will overflow with more.

Jesus is telling us that we do not need buckets for his everlasting water. At times, we want more and more treasures of the world until we satisfy ourselves. How big will your bucket be? It is not about the buckets. How many buckets will you go through until you realize that you are at the wrong well? Some of those wells or buckets can be entertainment, food, relationships and business.

Jesus will show you something but if you will not listen, he will go deeper. Sometimes God will bypass what you hope, to give you what you really need. We need to realize that we have been drilling the wrong wells in all of the wrong places, so that we will have living water in the right place. Why are you still not satisfied? We all need to open our hearts to God and stop wanting to be satisfied. God is the one seeking us and we need to start being satisfied with him before we want more. Jesus comes to dig wells in us. And when he fills us up we really don’t need to go to other wells to fill up our buckets.

In this weeks blog post, I will be talking about a sermon from the series Crash The Chatterbox called God says I am. In the series Crash The Chatterbox, we got to learn about that the voice we respond to determines the future that we experience and we have a choice to listen to that voice we consume. We also have to choose to agree with what God says is true.

In this sermon, Pastor Steven Furtick used the scriptures Psalm 139:14-15 which says: 14 “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” When God says that His works are wonderful, He is talking about us. Verse 15 says: “My frame was not hidden from you. When I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Those verses are telling us that we are worth something and God made us all special.

We normally feel insecure instead of feeling special and we can feel special by having wholeness in your life. The key to having wholeness in your life is the willing to be vulnerable. A scripture in the Bible that relates to this is the story of when God talks to Moses through a burning bush and that can be found in Exodus 3:1-11. In that story, Moses was on a Mountain and he looks over and sees a burning bush that did not actually burn up. Moses went over to the bush and it started talking to Moses and to take off his sandals because he was on Holy ground. Then the bush told Moses that it was God talking with him. Moses hid his face because he was frightened. God asked him to free Pharaoh’s people. Moses asked God “Who am I?” He was confused and did not feel important enough to do this job. We normally ask God who we are which can drive insecurity.

Having insecurity can make us feel unimportant at times. In order to understand someone’s chatter, you have to understand their history. The enemy will use your history to form your insecurity. Most times, we think I am never ________ enough. For example, I am never beautiful enough or I am never smart enough. Our thoughts for I am never enough to change from time to time. The chatterbox talks to us in first person and makes us think I am never enough. We think I’m so dysfunctional or I am so deficient. The definition for deficient is lacking something that you need. You can see and experience God doing remarkable things in your life even though you might be insecure.

God has already been in your future so your past will not continue and you do not need to continue to have insecurity. When you become a Christian, you are taking God’s name. When you say I am never rich enough or I am never good enough, you are taking God’s name in vain. God says that what He, is you are. So when we say that I am so doubtful God will say I am faithful. By believing this about yourself and God’s word then you will not have to suffer in your past insecurity. God says “I AM”.

This sermon that I will be talking about today, comes from the series I Don’t Know What I    Believe and it is called “More Likes”. Pastor Steven Furtick preached about that we as people, strive to get more likes in certain areas of our lives such as when we post a picture on instagram, we make it a competition on who can get more likes. Everyone has tried to get more likes to feel valuable and accepted by friends. That is not how God wants us to live.

Pastor Steven Furtick brought up 2 scripture passages, 2 Timothy 1:9-14 and Matthew 4:4. 2 Timothy 1:9-14 says; 9 He has saved us and called us to a holy life not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus, before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealed the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 11 And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. 12 That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. 13 What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. 14 Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. These verses are telling us that God has called us to live a holy life and sacrifice it to him even when it is hard to and other things might tempt us. Matthew 4:4 says; Jesus answered “It is written: Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. This verse is basically talking about if we want to be liked, we can’t necessarily do it on our own and that we should follow God’s word everyday.

We should try and get constant never ending likes from God and not live in a me first mentality. Everyone, has access to God’s love inside of them and by having that, don’t constantly need to strive for likes from others. Other people will come and go, but God chooses to stay with you for eternity. That “Like” from God is more important than any other and He will never unfriend or block you.

This week I will be discussing a sermon by Pastor Steven Furtick that is from the series #DeathToSelfie. This series was about learning how to not constantly focus about ourselves. The sermon that I will be talking about is called Unexpected Blessings. This sermon was about Jacob being tricked after he had deceived his father. The story can be found in Genesis 29:1-35. Because he deceived his father he himself was deceived. In God’s kingdom, the seeds that you sow is what you will also reap. For example, Jacob deceived his father Isaac and when Jacob got married he was also deceived by his father in law. You might have sown seeds to get someone to love you. Who are you trying to get to love you? Rejection is not always a bad thing if you end up getting rejected. God selects what man rejects. God has his way of selecting. God notices all rejected people. God chose us first before others chose you. We all need to learn to praise God for who he made us to be. People that we are jealous of and want to love us are miserable too. God himself has also been rejected from the world. We should not take shortcuts when it gets hard and feels like we are alone because God is there for us and is never against us. God can not bless who you pretend to be. Rejection is a sign of redirection towards God and better people. Rejection doesn’t appear to be a blessing at first, but it can always be turned to acceptance by God. We need to take time and sow seeds of being ourselves and not fearing rejection from others that causes us to be fabricated like Jacob who feared missing out on his blessing.

Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog. My name is Hannah and I will be sharing and giving my point of view on  sermons from Pastor Steven Furtick from Elevation Church. The reason why I chose this topic is because I would like to encourage people and help them when they are struggling and how I deal with certain situations that are brought up in Pastor Steven Furtick’s sermons.