Passion & Panthers (featuring Steve Smith)
Part 3 of the current series, Sticks & Stones from Elevation Church’s Pastor Steven Furtick.
Only King Forever – Elevation Worship
His Work, His Way
We need a fundamental mindset change in how we view our work. For to long, Christ followers have segregated work from worship. Sunday being for God and the other 6 days for man. I call that being religious and walked that path for many years.
Sometime during the winter of 2007-2008 I realized I was doing things my way, not just in the secular work I had, but in my walk and ministry. I had become ‘religious’. My first step was to ask God for forgiveness, my second step was to apologize to those I had harmed in any way through my preaching. Yes, 7 years into my walk, I found the real love of our Lord.
The Purpose of Crucibles
I use to really hate tests. I was not a very good student, probably because I wouldn’t focus on my studies. I mean after all, there were cars, hot rodding, girls, sports, work, friends and a whole lot of other stuff I thought was way more important than learning about geometry and grammar and all that other stuff. I found out later it would all boiled down to passion, I didn’t have any for school and a lot for everything else!
It took me a while, but I finally got down to understanding how important it was to study for tests. Not in high school, but school in the military. I had a passion to learn about airplanes. Once I started receiving consistently high scores, it fed on itself. Being prepared became my norm.
Competition in the Kingdom
Many of you know we operate our business under very different principles from those of the world’s. We help as many as we can understand how to stream live events. Most business people would say this is a foolish practice. Given our background and understanding of event webcasting, we could easily dominate our small part of the world for a long time. There’s only one problem with that mentality, it doesn’t meet the purpose we started Dragstory.com and Motormaniatv.com, ‘to gain sportsman drag racing the world wide exposure they deserve.’
The world views others in the same business as competitors. Our club is so small, we have banded together to help each other, I like to say we are co conspirators. If their heart is the same as ours, we will help them. There is plenty of work to go around. More importantly, the Lord has already designated our portion so there is no need to hoard anything.
Strings and Slings
This is part 2 of the Sticks & Stones series by Pastor Steven Furtick from Elevation Church.
Recognizing Our Source
Pride is a very dangerous commodity for Christ followers. While we can be proud of what we have accomplished, the glory is always His.
It was early 2007, I had just finished my first year as a bi-vocational minister work with a friends business. 2006 was the first year I streamed drag racing. It was also a time of wilderness wandering. For the first time in my life, I was not sure of my direction or even who I was suppose to be. I attended a pastors teaching conference in Phoenix, AZ. Lots of prayer, spirit filled praise and worship and listening to some of the best speakers in Christendom at the time, TD Jakes, Brian Houston and Joyce Meyers to name a few. I left the conference filled with hope, but little direction.