Do You Have The Stones? | Waymaker | Pastor Steven Furtick

there's a um a little bit of a shift today where there's going to be a sermon don't get nervous but you're going to preach it all right every week i preached to you and this week you get to preach because uh in just a few moments um after a little abbreviated not sermon devotion that i plan to share with you um we're going to come forward and we're going to bring our gift to god [Applause] [Music] it's a journey that we've been on and we do it every year and we always pick one word to end our year on as a church and this year waymaker seemed appropriate it seemed appropriate because god has made so many ways for us and now we get to make a way for others for those of you that are at our concord columbia gaston lake norman matthews melbourne moorsville raleigh roanoke rock hill toronto university city uptown or blakeney campuses today or joining us online on a little iphone or maybe some of you really materialistic people iphone 10 [Applause] the reason that the message is coming to you today is because somebody made a way you say well now god made a way he did it through somebody's faith if you've been blessed by the ministry of this church in any way a facebook clip or if you've been baptized in this church or if your daughter got interested in god because of this church it was because somebody made a way and all i want to do before we have the opportunity to bring our offering and i i would like for you not to take notes today because this is not a sermon about uh information this is a sermon about action and uh sometimes we get so educated that we are educated beyond the level of our obedience and we just hear sermon after sermon after sermon after sermon after sermon but it is faith that creates outcomes it is faith that creates righteous results abraham believed god and it was credited to him as righteousness this is not a state of mind it was a course of action that abraham took and so faith is a course of action someone asked me one time if i'm inviting my friend to church should i do it on the offering weekend i said that would be the best time to do it because if they hear us sing if they if they see us lift our hands all of that can be done without love but you can't you can't really give sacrificially unless it comes from a place of love and what's about to happen in just a few moments is thousands of people across all of our locations and online are going to bring an offering to god it's part of our expansion offering but really what expands during this time is your faith and i just want to set as a backdrop from joshua chapter 4. remember i'm not going to preach but i mean here's my bible and so we might as well we might as well we might as well read this it's a a little bit of a fake picture and uh it talks about what we're about to do but it puts it in the historic context of the children of israel when they were going into the promised land now we possess promises spiritually in christ but joshua was leading the people to possess them physically so the dynamics of faith are common across our spiritual experience and their physical experience look for them here in joshua chapter four actually i want to start in chapter three verse 17. if we pick up that verse then we'll have a running start into chapter four and we'll just would just it just mean so much more the priest who carried the ark of the covenant of the lord stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the jordan while all israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground touch your neighbors say don't get left behind when the whole nation had finished crossing the jordan the lord said to joshua choose 12 men from among the people one from each tribe and tell them to take up 12 stones from the middle of the jordan from right where the priest stood and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight so joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the israelites one from each tribe and said to them go over before the ark of the lord which represented the presence of god go over before the ark of the lord your god is he your personal god your god is he your god or was he grandma's god have you taken ownership of your faith experience because sometimes faith skips a generation sometimes it's possible that somebody made a way for you to believe but then you just you just walk in the way but you don't make a way for anybody behind you and so keep reading further where are we at uh uh lord your god uh where was it what verse was it um before you're in the middle of journey five uh lord you've got oh into the middle we've been preaching about the middle a lot this year we talked about how the miracle is in the middle that place where you really have to trust god to see you through it doesn't take faith once you cross the finish line to talk about how good god is can you stand in the middle and believe god for a miracle [Applause] in the middle of the jordan each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder according to the number of the tribes of the israelites to serve as a sign among you in the future when your children ask you what do these stones mean tell them that the flow of the jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the lord when the ark crossed the jordan the waters of the jordan were cut off god controls the flow and faith moves god to move on your behalf these stones are to be a memorial to the people of israel forever so the israelites did as joshua commanded them they didn't ask a lot of questions about it because it's kind of ridiculous you know we already made it through the jordan we're we're standing at gilgal waiting to go into the promised land we've been waiting 40 years for this moment because moses didn't take us in because his faith waned because you could be looking at something but not go in if you don't have the faith to cross over and step into it and that's where we are today many of us on the edge of believing god and uh but the israelites did as joshua commanded them god doesn't always require understanding just obedience they took 12 stones from the middle of the jordan according to the number of the tribes of the israelites as the lord had told joshua and they carried them over with them to their camp where they put them down joshua set up the 12 stones that had been in the middle of the jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood and they are there to this day so they cross through the jordan god makes the water so that they can walk through on dry ground god says go back into the waters that you just came out of the ones you waited to cross for 40 years and bring out something that will symbolize what i brought you through and set it up in a place where you will never forget what i did for you where you will never forget that my faithfulness endures through all generations and they set up the stones and they are there to this day now the priests who carried the ark remained standing in the middle of the jordan until everything the lord had commanded joshua was done by the people just as moses said directed joshua the people hurried over and as soon as all of them crossed the ark of the lord and the priest came to the other side while the people watched back to verse 9 joshua set up the 12 stones no sermon title today just a question you ready look at your neighbor look them in the eye and ask them my questions one question one question today before we give our offer and ask them to ask them uh do you have the stones in a few moments you will answer that question don't answer it with your mouth because you can honor god with your lips but your heart is far from him but where your treasure is there your heart will be awesome but ask them again check your other neighbor and that way everybody in the church will have accountability ask them do you have the stones i was asking our campus pastors one time we have such lovely campus pastors around the church and they have so much wisdom and they leave us so well i said what do you think it takes to be successful as a campus pastor what's the secret sauce and one of them said communication and one said competency not chad hampton chad hampton's up at lake norman he said courage he didn't mention a competency he didn't mention the communication ability he said it takes courage he said that was the key from his perspective and i tried to get him to change his answer to see how much he really meant it and i mentioned all the things that you have to be good at to be a campus pastor management styles and relational skills and charisma and i think a charisma courage you remember this he just he would not let up we made fun of him for months about it courage every time we'd look at him we'd play him say courage courageous chad and and he was just convinced his courage i thought is he right so i start thinking back and of course you can go back all the way back to joshua when god told him i'm going to give all of this into your hands one requirement be strong and courageous really only one thing that you need to receive everything that i promised the writer of hebrews said don't cast away your confidence because after god promised something to it if you throw away your confidence you won't receive the promise the promise is void without the confidence to see it through janet stop taking notes this is a giving weekend okay just get if you're getting anything in your hand today just get this envelope this thing one that says waymaker right here and he said it was courage i started to evaluate it not only biblically how when david was putting his successor in place to build the temple his son solomon he told him the same thing that god said to joshua moses successor be strong and courageous and do the work seems there's something to this idea that courage is the key confidence in god's promise it is never the promise of god that is in question it is our confidence in that promise so when he says i'll bless you do you believe him that's the question in joshua chapter four um one little story i should probably tell you because you know in our church they had 12 stones 12 tribes well we don't have 12 tribes but we've been in church for 12 years so i'm i'm kind of a numbers um guy in fact we're not even officially 12 years old yet we're just getting our pre-pubescent you know first little chest armpit hairs and things like that but one thing that i remembered this weekend um forgive me for just a moment to to kind of remember back to the courage that the original core team of elevation church had when we were starting before we had sunday morning worship services hurricane katrina had just hit new orleans and we were coming up on the year end and i wanted to instead a tradition that we would end our year putting god first in faith but i felt like rather than us just raise money for the church that we were going to start that we should find someone who had a greater need than us which only left about two churches in the whole world that had a greater need than us i mean we had no money but um i wanna i wanna play you a clip this was 12 years ago on uh october of 2005. yeah and we were getting ready for for our december offering like this one and um i found a pastor in new orleans i'm just gonna play you i can only stand to hear about 25 seconds of this you will notice that uh well this is my voice but it doesn't sound like it just just listen okay let's get through it together um why are we doing this at a stage in our life where we need money we don't own a stitch of sound equipment this isn't even ours yet we're paying rent money to be in here that we don't even have yet nobody's taken a salary nobody's benefits are covered we've got a lot of we have a 200 000 pre-launch budget but what we decided when we came together and talked about it as a court team is let's be generous now let's don't wait till god's got us having buildings and budgets and millions of dollars let's with the little bit that we have right now be the light of the world [Applause] i'm glad you liked it that was painful for me who is that [Music] i guy they sped up the tape a little bit and hit the southern button accent a little bit uh we sent that pastor in new orleans that we found um sixteen hundred dollars the offering that week was 1500 and something dollars we sent more than we had taken in the week that i announced that particular thing okay 12 years ago okay but the original corp team had stones courage confidence faith and gave when we had great need now just this week i did a little mental calculation because they told me that in outreach this month 12 years later we will give away not sixteen hundred dollars not sixteen thousand dollars not a hundred and sixty thousand dollars i'm not talking about what we will take in as a church this month forget about that what we will give away this month one million six hundred thousand dollars [Applause] y'all don't have it y'all are getting it okay okay now all right be seated if you're standing wake up if you're not that's worth standing over if i told you 1.6 million dollars was in your checking account you'd stand up you would stand up rip your shirt off paint your chest orange elevation logo praise him but but but look at this look at this real quick i got to go deuteronomy on you for a moment deuteronomy consists of moses last speech that he made this is not from his early days of ministry this is when moses is old and grumpy and he can't go into the promised land that he led the people to the edge of because when it came time to have courage everybody shot courage when it came time for him to have the courage to act on the promise of god he would shrink back and he sent 12 spies in the land and 10 came back and said we can't and two came back and said we can and he went with the majority report and when you do that when you go with all of your doubts they say that your negative thoughts outnumber your positive ones ten to two when you go with all of those reasons why we can't you will always stand on the outside of something that god has called you into and when he's reflecting on this he's kind of telling the people we missed our shot one generation died in the wilderness and joshua's generation is about to go in in preparing them for this i read a verse this week deuteronomy chapter one yeah he's he's remembering back he says verse nine at that time i said to you you were too heavy burned for me to carry alone ten the lord your god remember how it's personal has increased your numbers so that today you are as many as the stars in the sky that's what he told abraham he would do abraham by faith believed and it was credited to him as righteousness and then verse 11 he quantifies it he says may the lord the god of your fathers increase you listen to the next phrase a thousand times and bless you as he has promised [Applause] do you know how much more 1.6 million dollars is than 1600 it is exactly a thousand times so what i'm saying is god is faithful and can be trusted and his word is true and his promises are sure on christ the solid rock i stand all underground is sinking sand so today when i take my stand when i give my offering i have reason to believe that god will provide for me he has made a way for me touch somebody say you're going to be a thousand times better i mean just add another zero god's gonna bless you oh we're not talking about money by the way we're talking about peace joy purpose fulfillment selflessness righteousness all the stuff you can't buy so when we bring the offering uh in just a moment um our expectation is that our faith makes a way for god to bless us so that we can bless others that's the whole deal and that's what we're doing and somebody did that for you speaking of og's i i had to call in the the heavy the when i say larry bry watch what the people do larry bry [Applause] legendary legendary larry legend larry he's legend larry come up on the stage i want him to i want him to share something with you now look i gave him i gave him only like a few minutes but when when i told larry i'm going to start a church he did not ask the next thing he said was this and his bad grammar but it's good faith he said i said i'm starting at church he said i'm coming with yeah he didn't even have time to finish the sentence but he had faith to do it and he said i'm coming with and um janet wasn't so quick but she uh you got there janet was my dental hygienist at the time yeah that was cool yeah she was working on my teeth i said we're going to start the church she said we are she stuck me down she didn't do that no but he's been a part of every year and offering from from when we gave sixteen hundred dollars that we didn't have yeah to a pastor who says today that that was one of the turning points in his ministry still still ministering to that community today his name was larry also wasn't it larry mcewen and uh even on through the years as it's looked different each year and all of these campuses that you're in today and all the ministry that's done and what you're enjoying online around the world um it was it was people like him who stood in the middle of the jordan a lot of people come through the whole nation came through a lot of people pass through but some people take a stand in the middle and say i want to make a way for others to come through i don't just want to come through i almost called this message come through because that's the question are you just coming through passing through are you going to really come through and allow god to use you and see what god can do through you so he was sharing something with our staff the other day i said take a minute and share with the whole church it's too good regarding uh how this has how this has made a difference in your family yeah my wife and i we've had the privilege of being a part of these since 2005. and every time we come to a year-end offering we kind of wrestle with a couple different things one what's the word because because the word you speak is so powerful it creates an atmosphere you'll experience in the future and we've been doing this thing long enough that the words that we we wrote down years ago are now the celebrations of today yeah and then we we always wrestle the second one is always over the amount it kind of goes through a progression of here's what we could do here's what we should do the word is easy compared to the amount it is it is it's kind of here's what we could should and then here's what we'll do and then eventually gets to here's what god says and it's kind of always that progression but when i think about one of the major celebrations of all the words we've written down it comes from 2012 and at that point when we started at church i need to give you a little context when we started church my family was not a fan of us starting this ministry they actually wanted really nothing to do with the things of god a couple of them thought it was entertaining a couple of the others thought it was the stupidest thing you could ever do with your life so the the thought that they would ever actually come and be a part of this ministry really didn't seem like it could ever really happen but in 2012 we were getting ready for a year-end offering surrounded that time and we had talked to um we had talked to we had talked to our family and got my sister brother-in-law and my niece luanne john and kalyn all to come to charlotte to be a part of christmas and now we start focusing like all right we're going to get him come to church and we're believing god you're going to move in their lives so we began a wrestling match with god and said we are going to give god our biggest offering would have been very easy and tempting for us to say wow we sold our house we've already done our part at somebody else's job now right right but we kind of came to the point of saying we cannot expect new blessings off of old sacrifices [Applause] and so we we brought our best gift to god we just didn't want to believe for it we wanted to sacrifice toward it we brought an offering a significant for us the amount if i were to tell you some of you would laugh because it would be small to others it would be big to you but to us it was significant god always called a significant sacrifice and we brought it and the word that we believed at the end of surround was salvation and this is actually a picture of of the word that we wrote down that's my handwriting in the middle salvation because our family was coming to town i didn't think they ever would and we bar we begged him we bribed him into coming to church and this is a picture of my family my niece kalyn my sister luanne my brother-in-law john sitting on the front row at university city and that night i had the privilege of leading my niece kalyn in a prayer to give her life to jesus that night she gave her life to christ since then my sister's made a decision for christ my mom has made a decision for christ my brother-in-law has made a decision for christ salvation has visited our house and that night i got a chance to give my niece galen a bible and i wrote in the front of it her name and then the date 12 21 14. you may be seated if you're standing at their locations i had a chance to give her a bible that night 12 21 14. i gave it to her she graduates from college a year and a half later and she says uncle larry at the graduation party she's back in minnesota she was i have to show you something i said what she goes i got a tattoo i'm like i'm not sure if that's good or bad i'm like i don't know but then she shows me this picture this tattoo of my handwriting of the day she gave her life to christ tattooed on her wrist she's been so moved by this ministry and that experience she says i got to be a part of it she says although i live in minnesota i'm going to believe in faith i'm going to end up in charlotte and go to college in charlotte just so i can be at elevation church and just so i can be a part of your family and now this morning she's sitting here on the front row of valentine and i'm so thankful for the faithfulness of god who showed up that i could stand here today and celebrate what he's doing in your life what is god gonna do through the word that you believe it will be the story you tell about in years to come of what he did in the past it's unbelievable pastor stephen i can't stop clapping i just get happy when i think about it faith faith moves mountains [Applause] faith parts waters faith changes the world i i love it do you do you have the stones i mean she's she's a stone a testimony a story the faithfulness of god do you have the stones and it's a story that that little boy right there you can tell them when your children ask you in the future what is the meaning of these stones maybe one day because you had the faith to step out your boy can see what it looks like to stand in the middle of the jordan and trust god and to sit beside a miracle so you better sit down because we'll we'll get we'll start talking about the old days dominate campaign courage faith and uh i wonder um are you coming with because this church is headed into our greatest days the greatest opportunity for ministry that we even have today is beyond the walls of our local churches more people participate in this ministry online as the world changes and we have the tools in our position to make a difference in the streams and feats where people are living their everyday lives we're ministering to more people right now on the other side of screens than we are on this side and the potential for what we could do together in the times we live in to represent hope love unity all of the things that the gospel is to a world that is getting darker by the day the potential is unprecedented and unlimited do you want to get in the middle of it or do you want to do what the people did and just hurry through wow and i came to came to church god word be back in three weeks this is a moment for you to take a stone out of the jordan of god's faithfulness in your life and to start to stack your own stones many of you already have this is going to be another stone today for 12 years 12 stones 12 tribes 12 basketfuls of leftovers we preached about last week all representing the faithfulness of god you can't buy that are you saying if i give enough in the offering that god will give me if i put mercedes on my car can i expect god to show up on my doorstep christmas eve this is not santa claus we're not sitting on his lap telling him what we want out of all that he's given to us and who he is to us we're given to him what kind of stones are you going to have in the future i find that a lot of people who have a little bit have an easier time trusting god with it than those who have a lot for someone to give a thousand dollars would be a huge sacrifice one thing that god has been challenging me with is we've written books and received publishing and royalties and different investments that holly and i have had through the years is do you still trust me like you did when you gave me your emergency fund because you had the stones to give away your uh i mean the confidence and the courage to give away your uh your whole emergency fund and i'm not saying that you should do that today but will you still trust god at this level will you still trust at that same level when you gave more toward the offering one year then your house was worth you still trust me like that because then it gets difficult and so then you have people who have little trusting god in big ways some people who have a lot not doing what they could and then the ministry can't move forward it's going to take leadership from everybody that god speaks to it's never been about the the size of the stone it's about the size of the sacrifice and one thing i like to ask myself when we prepare our offering is um if everybody in the church gave like you give would the ministry move forward not the amount because not everybody can give the same amount some can give a lot more and some may be able to give less but if everybody gave but the level of faith that you're giving would the ministry move forward and see that question will cause somebody to give a million dollars and somebody to give a hundred it may cause a kid to give five dollars it may cause somebody to give fifteen thousand twenty thousand fifty thousand a hundred thousand i feel like i should go through every amount maybe one will stand out to you it's not about the amount it's about the attitude of your heart how big is god to you how much does he mean to you i feel like the time has come for us to declare that once again or is our faith going to skip a generation is it just going to be the early core team like oh eric and nicole over there chunks and amy who stood in the middle so this could be here today it's just going to be them or will the faithfulness of god lead us forward you make that decision today who will stand in the middle at all of our locations new locations like colombia and online our ethem around the world we need everybody to be a part of this so that we could be waymakers in the future i just want you to sit in that for a moment i want to declare over your life today that as good as god has been to you you have no reason to doubt him now he never failed you yet and he's not about to start and so this is an act of faith in a moment today

Channel: Elevation Church

Views: 249,065

Rating: 4.8961153 out of 5

Keywords: Elevation Church, Sermon, Pastor, Steven Furtick, Waymaker, Giving, Offering, Trust, Stones, Confidence, Courage, How to trust God, How to make a way for others, Sacrifice, Salvation, Fulfillment, Blessings, Stand in the middle, Generous, God’s faithfulness, The Bible

Id: FuLaUKd0Uik

Length: 31min 25sec (1885 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2017