Shut Up And Shine | Holly Furtick | Elevation Church

today is going to be amazing um uh yeah so this is like not my ipad this is like not my ipad cover this is a feminine ipad cover so that can only mean one thing and and the table is even marble so that can only mean one thing holly furnicus bringing the word today come on look at this artesian bible cover that must mean holly furtick is preaching the word look at this hand-drawn bible study philippians come on let's thank god for holly [Music] i'm gonna leave her by herself in a minute last week i preached to her and now you owe me one it's payback time you gotta preach to me so i'm gonna go sit in my seat and i know that you're excited to hear god's word from this woman um you should be because who preaches to you today lives a better sermon than anything that ever comes from her lips trust me i live with her and the stuff that she doesn't show on instagram is the best stuff people say to me i just love holly i'm like no you don't i love holly because i know it and i know how deep her authenticity really is and so i thank god for you but i also want to say this uh rebecca summers uh who where's rebecca i bet she's around the building somewhere doing a chat host or something like that probably praying for somebody or casting out a devil online or something like that doing a digital exorcism she was saying at the rhythm night that that our team has been doing a great job for our youth make sure you subscribe to elevation youth on youtube okay amazing so you can so you can get the word but she was saying i heard them do a panel uh one day and they were saying who's influenced you the most and she said you i think she said a few other people but you were in the top three she said da da da da and holly furtick and i was like if you only knew she's one of these people that the closer that you get the better that she looks some people can impress from a distance but impartation happens up close so right now i want you to take this pulpit and minister to the people i'm excited i got a preview of the word and i'm gonna sit down just the two of us just the one of you let's give it up today everybody say in the chat welcome [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello holly [Music] we're here together worshiping again is what we do every week if this is your first time make sure you come back because we're here over and over again all day today if the message ministers to you share it with someone and tell them hey you can catch it again 9 30 11 30 2 5 10. hey all of them we're here we want to see you and we want to be able to minister to you every week i am just really excited that you have set aside the time today to worship with us i know that god is going to speak to you as you focus your attention on him for just the next few moments that we have together you guys that are in the room and go ahead and be seated this has been a really incredible season of ministry for our church i just every time i get up on the stage i just i'm so proud of our teams and one of the teams at elevation that has really risen to the occasion over the past six months is our e-groups teams this is one of my favorite teams it's a small team they're not nearly as big as our worship team and maybe you've been worshiping with us for a while and you've heard us talk about e-groups but you're not exactly sure what they are e-groups are a way for the people of elevation church to gather together in small groups and just support each other and go through life together and just offer a place for you to continue to grow in your faith and thanks to technology we have people from all over the world who come together each week sometimes they're in homes sometimes they're on zoom and i really want you to be a part of an e-group so if you're a part of an e-group though help me out tell the people in the chat what are they missing out on tell them how amazing your e-group is in just a few words because nobody wants to read a whole lot of stuff you know the bible says that the gates of hell will not prevail against god's church and i believe that we are stronger than ever and so just i just wanted to take a minute because i have the stage and just officially invite you to join an e-group because now is the time because over the six the past six months um i have been working with our teams on a study on the book of philippians isn't it beautiful too um you can get a copy of the study and join us philippians is is the most joyful book in the bible but yet did you know that it was written from a prison cell and so over the next five weeks our groups are going to be setting aside time to read through uh the book of philippians together and just learn we called it philippians the art of contentment because paul how was it possible that paul was able to have so much joy in the midst of a literal lockdown and we're going to study god's word together and we're going to talk about it i believe that god wants to speak to you through e-groups in this season of your life we are not waiting for a virus to go away to have church we are the church the church is not a building the church is just a group of imperfect people coming together on a journey of faith and we're not waiting until we can pack out a building we're going to pack out homes we're going to pack out zoom we have over 1 000 groups signed up to do this study because you were not meant to go through life alone so that's my commercial don't miss out on this opportunity it's only five weeks we have the perfect group for you go to philippianstuddy.com to find out more but don't go right now because i have a message that i want to bring to you that i'm really really excited on because god has laid this one on my heart actually it sparked in my heart years ago while i was leading a need group for married women i was teaching and we were studying and i came across this verse in the bible that said that wives could win their husbands over without words and i was so intrigued by this idea of winning someone over without words because i love words if you know me i am a very talkative person now don't ask me how my weekend was unless you really want to hear every detail of the sleepover that we had this past weekend for graham's 13th birthday and how i had middle school boys and their dirty socks and all over my house i can't help it i like stories i like description i just i like talking i've been this way my my whole life one of the nicest things that anybody ever said to me was i was in the middle of telling a story and they said holly this story is so good do not leave one detail out tell me everything and i was like i love you you're my best friend here we go someone actually said that to me now sometimes i say that to other people because i don't know maybe it doesn't mean that much to people but i love it people have been telling me to stop talking my entire life when i was a child on my report card there was this common theme when i was a kid we the teachers actually hand wrote our report cards and on the back of it there were these little boxes where they could leave some personal thoughts and comments and there was a theme all throughout my childhood that said something like this holly is a bright child who would do better to talk less i can't help it i'm a woman of many words and you know actually sometimes this comes in handy when you have to talk to thousands of people from a practically empty room right but in normal settings i have had to really learn how to rein this in and one of the greatest lessons that i have had to learn in the area of being an over talker is that you don't have to say everything you think this is really hard for me i know it's not i mean some of you may be better at this but i've really had to learn this lesson the hard way one time when we were in college i know my husband's told you how we traveled on a ministry team in this van in the summer time and we traveled all through these small towns in south carolina and one particular day we were driving through this really small town and i just blurted out this town is really trashy looking i would hate to live here and the girl behind me in the seat behind me she just quietly said she was like my whole family's from this town i was like oh can i get the shoe emoji in the chat if you're like me and you put your foot in your mouth a time or two or three or four in your life i i just i talk too much i talk when i get excited i talk when i'm nervous sometimes i talk because i'm bored sometimes i talk because i'm uncomfortable i'm uncomfortable with silence actually i just i don't i don't like silence and so i just will if you don't talk i'm gonna talk and if i'm by myself i even have my earpods in with an audiobook playing because somebody needs to be talking i talk too much my whole life i have been trying to learn how to shut my mouth and think before i talk is there anyone out there who can relate to me please let me know that i'm not alone i'm i i know that no one likes to be around someone who just dominates every space with the sound of their voice and i'm i'm trying to fix that okay working on it the bible actually has a lot to say about talkers um proverbs 18 21 says the power of life and death is in the tongue the psalmist prayed for god to put a guard over his mouth and james one of my favorite bible verses well i wouldn't say favorite but one that i've really had to tell myself over and over again he says be quick to listen and slow to speak i think all of us no matter how talkative we are have experienced these moments where we realize the power of our words have you ever said something that you realize hurt someone deeply maybe unintentional and it's it's not always a direct insult i know we all have a time that we can remember when somebody directly insulted us like you know i don't know lots of people have a story where their father said you're never gonna amount to anything yeah we all have times like that but a lot of times we can hurt those that we love also with what what we don't say or or the the thing the ways that we don't encourage them i remember one particular time um several years ago when my husband's first book was finally finished and they mailed a case of the books to our house and i remember walking into the room and seeing this big box and steven was there he just cut it open and he reached out and he pulled out a copy of sun stands still by steven furnick and i picked up the book and i i fanned through it and i said font's really big huh and i saw my husband's shoulders visibly droop and i was like oh god oh no can i get a rewind i mean it's amazing can i get a do-over because as i thought that's not what i meant to say i realized that i had spent the last 18 months watching this man agonize over every word that was in that book he went through revision after revision he changed the cover 10 times this was his first book this was his story did i say my man you're a published author nope did i say this book is gonna change people's lives nope i just said the first thing that popped into my head the font's kinda big huh words hold weight and what you choose to say and what you choose not to say is important and that's why we have to learn to pay attention to everything that comes out of our mouths can we talk about this today we are living in a time where people do not consider the weight of their words now some of us may be better at not saying everything that we think but what about typing our thumbs can sometimes cause more damage than our tongue solomon wrote the power of life and death is in the is in the tongue but i wonder if he'd lived in 2020 he might have said the power of life and death is in the thumbs there is so much noise going on in the world today and it is hard to separate the truth from the fiction it's hard to know you have a feed coming through and and now we all know that our feed is just feeding us what we want to be fed and and it's so hard to even have a voice when it feels like everyone is just shouting at each other and not listening at all i want to learn how to be part of the solution to the things that are going on around me not just another person who's just adding to the noise so today since our groups are kicking off a study remember you're going to join run philippians.com it's not too late i wanted to preach from paul's words as well god has been speaking to me so much about this topic and and i i'm just really excited to bring it to you today so as we um open up god's word i just want us to all say a prayer together out loud so you don't have to close your eyes we'll just all collectively if you're in your living room or in your car it's okay out loud let's all say this lord speak to me i am listening amen all right if you have a bible look with me at philippians chapter 2 verse 14 because paul has so much that he is going to teach us about our words it says this do everything without grumbling or arguing so that you may become blameless and pure children of god without fault in a warped and crooked generation then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life do everything without grumbling or arguing then you will shine if you're looking if you're sitting with someone i want you to look at them tell them my sermon title say this shut up and shine go ahead and put that in the chat don't worry it comes right from the bible it's okay to say shut up shut up and shine so on the surface here it looks like paul is giving us a pretty impossible command with a promise but it's a promise that we're never going to achieve because how in the world are we supposed to do everything without grumbling or arguing but as we dig into this these three small verses i want to show you that paul is trying to teach us that how the things that he's trying to teach us how the things that you do not say can sometimes have just as much power as the things that you do say he's giving us if you look back at it he's giving us two things to not do and two things to do so he begins by telling us to do everything without grumbling or arguing maybe you're like me and you read it and you're like yeah that's not gonna happen everything like zero tolerance policy this is gonna be hard because sometimes complaining is really fun and sometimes arguing is just necessary can some of the married people give me an amen in the chat when you read the bible though it's important to understand who was writing these words and where was he when he wrote them and who was he writing them to because when you put all of that together the words become more than just commands of do's and don'ts and this and that they have context and they come alive and the book of philippians is a letter written by paul to the people at the church of philippi a church that he planted and a lot of scholars believe based on paul's words and his tone that the people of the church of philippi they were paul's secret favorites these were these were his his true friends the people that he considered almost like family because these people supported him as he traveled around and as he ministered and started churches all over and now he's found himself in a roman prison and the philippians have just sent him a good old-fashioned care basket and a love offering and so he's sending them back a letter and not only is he giving them words and an update on how things are going but he's living out what he's saying to them from a prison cell and really he's warning them he's saying in a way that that you have to to approach a difficult circumstance the way to approach it is not to complain and the way to have lasting arguments is not to argue complaining and arguing are our default responses but they can be extremely counterproductive in our lives you see complaining rarely improves my circumstances now obviously there are times when it's right to make a complaint like i have a friend who hates to bother her landlord like if she has a leak or something's broken she doesn't want to bother her and i'm like that's like the one perk of renting you don't have to fix stuff it's okay to complain to your landlord but someone once gave me a rule of thumb and it's this never complain about a situation to a person who's powerless to change it the kind of complaining that paul is talking about here is the kind that keeps us stuck blaming something that's outside of our control have you ever tried to keep track of every time you complain if you've been through mrs better half you've done this because we have this one week where we um we try to see how much negativity and how much complaining that we're putting out into the world and i stole this little challenge from a book that i had read and because it meant so much to me and you wear a little bracelet or a hair tie or whatever on your wrist and every time you catch yourself complaining you switch the bracelet over to the other hand and every time that i do this challenge which i've done it a lot because i've taught many many rounds of mrs better half i i keep thinking maybe i'm gonna be better at it this time maybe i'll have complain less but i'm always just amazed at how much i complain and i don't even realize it and by the end of the challenge my bracelet is falling apart and i'm starting to like punish myself because i'm so mad and then my wrist is red we say things all day long that we're not even aware of can you help me out if i'm am i alone out here okay let me know in the chat if you have said in the last 24 hours any of the following things just you know give me the little hand raising emoji all right i'm tired i hate the car line at school or some of you are like i wish i i missed the car line at school or did you say wearing a mask is so uncomfortable or it's so hot or it's so cold or what an ugly day my back hurts i have nothing to wear there's nothing to eat why doesn't anyone listen to me in this house i think i said all those this week sometimes i can get really creative with my complaints too i can dress them up make them all nice and cute say something like i just i wish i had more time or it must be young to be able to eat whatever you want or um maybe some of you have said this one this week when is fall going to get here right sometimes i'll take my complaints and i'll focus them on another person i might say something like i just i wish my friend would call me more or i wish my kids were more respectful i found that as i have identified my complaints they didn't really it didn't really make me feel better i felt increasingly worse about my situation like when i wish that my kids were more respectful it actually happened because one of them had a friend over and the friend was all like yes ma'am and mrs furtick where's the garbage can i don't even think my own kids know where the garbage can is in my house and so i'm like i wish my kids were like that you know and now i'm like i'm a terrible mom it's my own fault i mean i'm their mother i pick up their trash and and so it started as wishing that a person in my life was different turned in to making myself out to be a bad mother because complaining will spiral out of control so fast and on the surface it just seems like a statement of the fact but now my focus is on the negative and so is everyone else's that's around me and it's so easy to identify complaining in others it's so easy to be like yeah my husband needs to stop complaining but it's harder to see it when i'm the one that's doing it oh i'm not complaining i'm reviewing i'm not saying that reviews aren't helpful actually they aren't helpful because usually the only people who review products are the people who aren't happy with the product like if you're happy with the product you're not gonna go back and and type out a review we live in a world though where people actually consider themselves professional complainers professional yelpers this is so messed up because negativity slows down your progress it diverts your attention and paul is warning us that complaining is a slippery slope that can distract us from the things that could that we can actually control in our lives like my attitude i can control my attitude but watch how paul doesn't only give us a command but he gives he he leads the way he gives us an example back in chapter 1 paul says this verse 12 philippians 1 verse 12 now i want you to know brothers and sisters that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel as a result it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that i am in chains for christ and because of my chains most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear it blows my mind that nowhere in the book of philippians will you find paul describing his prison conditions nowhere does he say it's cold i'm hungry they're terrible i got whipped the other day he never even asks the philippians to pray for his release he says i must be in chains for christ because revival is breaking out inside of my prison and revival can break out wherever you are if you change your perspective paul gives us throughout the book he weaves in the antidote to complaining you know what that is rejoice 16 times in the book of philippians paul uses the word joy or rejoice he says it over and over again again i will say rejoice rejoice in the lord always again i will say rejoice and if paul can look for the opportunity in a hard place so can i the minute that i catch myself complaining i've got to flip it i have got to find something to rejoice about so now i'm gonna use my over talking for my own benefit if i'm gonna if i'm gonna talk i'm gonna talk about the good things i'm gonna find something i'm gonna call myself back to joy over and over and over again i'm not complaining i'm just saying well you know what if you're just saying if what you're just saying is keeping you stuck then you should probably stop saying stop saying i wish our kids were young again stop saying i wish we had more money stop saying this house is too small stop saying it is what it is no you know the israelites spent so much of their focus complaining about the wilderness and wishing that they were back in egypt that they missed out on the promise that was right in front of them so paul warns us he's got two things complaining and arguing because complaining keeps me stuck in my circumstances and arguing keeps me from experiencing true connection with those that i love can i find another honest person in the chat i'm saying that a lot today because i just i'm kind of burying my soul and i want to make sure that i'm not alone but am i alone am i the only person that likes to have the last word sometimes i feel like i have multiple personalities because on one hand i'm a total people pleaser like i will go to great lengths to avoid conflict but then there are a few people and a few topics then well if you i'm just gonna put my boxing gloves on and my husband is looking at me right now because he knows that i have this one particular trigger like you can talk about politics you could talk about policies you talk about theology and i will cool as a cucumber but if you bring up this one topic and i'm not going to tell you what it is because i'll just go off it's kind of a hot topic anyway and probably shouldn't say it on camera but i'm just saying there's just there's there's certain topics that i can't not argue about and then there's certain people lord knows the three of my favorite people on the planet are elijah graham and abby but those three people they are professional button pushers and i will stoop to their level and i will argue with them and i will lose my cool and i will keep going and going and going because i am the adult and therefore i have the last word the problem is that when i keep doing that i'm not actually proving my authority to them i'm i'm more compromising and i'm down on their level and any time that we need to win an argument with another person we compromise the relationship somehow so what i'm learning is that if my goal is purely to win i lose well i may win the argument i may walk away feeling proud i was right i put them in their place but i have no concern for how the other person feels and in the process of me winning i've lost a small piece of the relationship that i have and over time piece by piece i chip away at the opportunity to have a right relationship with a person in my life that i love you see when you argue with an attacking stance you automatically put the other person in a defensive position and when someone is defending they're most likely not even hearing a word that you say because they are in protection mode they're they're in defense mode james said remember be quick to listen slow to speak this means that while the other person is talking i am paying attention to what they're saying i'm not planning what i'm going to say next i'm actually seeking to understand i'm not just airing out my own opinions and then when i do speak when it's my turn to speak i choose words that are not abrasive or accusing i told you that i have put my foot in my mouth way too many times to count and so years ago i came across this verse and i immediately put it to memory it meant so much to me it's colossians 4 6 and it says let your conversation always be full of grace seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone this verse is talking about how to defend the gospel to those who don't believe and yes we absolutely need to be passionate about the gospel and the values that we have as believers in christ but if you come out the gate accusing and demeaning and come across like you are the enlightened one you're never going to win anyone over put a little salt on those words let the person know that you love them and that you hear them and that you're listening to their side if you are if you do our pastor teaches us this all the time i mean god he has been on fire the last few weeks like absolutely i told him that his message last week is in the top three my top three messages of all times never ever in 20 years of marriage have i suggested that he preach on a passage of scripture and he actually did until last week so that was a win for me and i got my own personal sermon if you miss it you have to go back and watch it because that's not my point my point is that the last several sermons that he have preached have been centered around this idea about the questions that jesus asked and he told us that everything begins with a question and buried deep in my notes as i was flipping through i came across this one line that i had written where he said questions create access questions create access but accusations close hearts if we're going to be quick to listen and slow to speak we must learn how to ask questions and we have to ask good questions for instance what were you thinking that's not a good question just because it has the little punctuation mark doesn't mean that it works because you might as well tack on the word idiot to that what were you thinking you idiot but if you say something like can you help me understand it communicates care it communicates concern it says i want to hear what you have to say and i care more about us than i do about making my point and paul models this again for us back in chapter one let's see he says if you go to philippians chapter 1 verse 17 he's talking about the people who were preaching christ for selfish gain and he doesn't go around crusading after them and putting them all in their places i want you to look at what he says this is verse 17 the former preached christ out of selfish ambition not sincerely supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while i am in chains but what does it matter in every way whether from false motives or true christ is preached and because of this i rejoice there are times where i have to ask myself does this really matter is this argument worth the damage that it might have on our relationship and can i have the humility to let it go in those moments i have to learn to take a second and think quick to listen slow to speak and did you notice what paul did he called himself back to joy he said i'm gonna fix my focus on the things that do matter and what matters is that christ is being preached what matters is the person not my point if the person matters to you because the world does not need another opinion but the world desperately needs some better examples [Applause] paul says do everything without grumbling or arguing so that you may be become blameless and pure children of god without fault in a warped and crooked generation then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life crooked means bent in the wrong direction but the way to redirect someone is not to shout it's to shine see i'm a talkative person but not only am i a talkative person i'm also a really loud talker again this kind of comes in handy in this sort of setting but in day-to-day life it can be really annoying i don't know why i'm a loud talker maybe it's because i'm a middle child and i wanted to be heard in my family maybe it's because i have i actually do have a sister who's hearing impaired and maybe my whole family talks loud i don't know i don't know why and i don't even realize it sometimes i have an out of body experience where i'm like oh god i'm yelling at this person and they're standing right in front of me the thing that i'm learning though is that my life speaks louder than my voice ever can when paul says you will shine like stars in the sky he's referring to a prophecy from the book of daniel somebody sent me this card um this summer and they wrote this bible verse on it and it i i liked it um because we do talk about shining light stars and mrs better half as well and so i put it up on my on my desk and i was sitting at my desk working and i looked up and i read this verse i want to read it to you it's in daniel chapter 12 verse 3. those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever daniel was amongst a people who did not worship god and it was the life that he lived that impacted an entire nation remember he's the one that knelt to pray every day even though the king had made an order prohibiting prayer it was his actions that made an impact not his words have you ever watched a friend go through something maybe a divorce or an illness or maybe watch them try to navigate a difficult situation with their child we all experience difficult situations that we didn't expect that come up along the way but have you ever watched someone just absolutely shine under the hardest circumstances one of my friends she had one of the most horrific years last year i mean we joke about 2020 but she lost her job she had to move across the country away from her home where she had lived for almost 40 years and try to rebuild her life and then about a month after moving she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and every time we talked she was just she was real she would tell me how she was scared she was she was obviously alone in the way that she felt she was she was physically alone because her family was so far away but somehow she would just always bring the conversation back to all the ways that god was working and one day through tears she said holly i i know that god has this i know that i'm gonna get through it everywhere i go i see glimpses of him god spoke to me today through the lady who checks me out at cvs and i i just know i'm gonna make it to the other side of this then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold fast to the word of life how do you shine how do we how do we do this well one you refuse to dwell on the negative and you let go of the need to be right and then you hold firm to the word of life [Music] what is god speaking to you in this season maybe you have no idea you're like i i don't know okay well go back think what was the last thing that god spoke to you maybe he whispered very softly to you about your attitude at work maybe it was something that had to do with doing things for others without having to be noticed maybe it was about focusing on all the things that you have to be grateful for in a season where things just really aren't turning out the way that you thought maybe like daniel he just called you to to spend time praying every day and sometimes what we miss is that the best way to impact the people around you is to make a change in yourself in life the most difficult lesson of all for me has been to understand that at the end of the day the only person that i can really change is me but it's not fun to change me it's easier to try and change others and hope that when others change my life will improve right but when i focus when i place my focus on all the things that everyone else needs to change what happens is i become someone i don't want to be i become a nagging and manipulative woman and then sometimes i give up on the nagging and the manipulation i just become stubborn and withdrawn and then i wonder why i'm never really making any progress in my relationships or in my personal life because when i blame others actions for my problems i can never experience real change in my life i love to tell this story about graham and abby years ago i asked them to go pack their lunches it was the school night and in our house pack your lunch means um grab a juice box and a lunch box and get some prepackaged snacks and then bring it to me and i'll put your sandwich in it okay so no little beautiful little bento boxes or anything like that so on this particular night i said graham and abby go fix your lunch and i hear graham yelling at abby abby pack your lunch abby mom said pack your lunch abby you need to do what mom said i mean it just went on and on and the kids have like the most incredible amount of patience and saying something over and over again while i got tired of it and i said graham come here come into the kitchen and he comes in empty-handed here's a buddy where's your lunch and he goes oh i forgot graham was so busy picking a fight with his sister and telling her what she needed to do that he neglected to pack his own lunch and what i want to tell you today is pack your own lunch you determined to be kind no matter how you're treated you'd be the first one to apologize even if you were only 10 wrong which you probably weren't 10 wrong but you'd be the first one to say i'm sorry what does it matter you determine that i'm going to bow out of a conversation if it gets ugly somehow i'm going to get out of there i'm not going to i'm not going to go there talking about other people you be generous with your time and your money we're expecting nothing in return because god has a work that he wants to do in you and if you stay hyper focused on others and how they need to change and what they need to do you might end up complaining that you don't have any lunch you're gonna be hungry sometimes the greatest impact that you will have on the people of your life will not be with the words that you say it will be with the life that you live so can we just collectively all decide to stop shouting at each other and just start shining brighter i'm not saying that we can't be a voice for the voiceless i'm not saying that we don't speak up against injustice i'm just pointing out first john 3 18. i learned this verse when i was a little girl there was a song i'm not going to sing the song but it says this let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth i told you that last week's sermon was in my top three stephen ferdick sermons of all times and if you missed it it's called just the two of us you have to go back and watch it but he preached about the shunammite woman so i'm hoping that most of you heard it because the shunamite woman she was the epitome of knowing how to keep her mouth shut and go to the one who could fix her son there was only one person who could fix him so you remember the child died and she placed him on the bed the prophet's bed that was in her home and she set out to find elisha and she did not waste time arguing with her husband about how he should have brought the boy to her sooner and this was his fault she did not knock on her neighbor's door and request prayer when elisha's servant came out to her and he asked her if everything was all right she did not complain to him she said i'm fine everything's fine and she kept going where she knew she needed to be but when she reached the prophet the verse says that she actually knelt down and it says she took hold of his feet and she poured out her soul to him to let go of what you cannot fix and you hold firm to what you know then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life she knew that she had to get to the one who had spoken life to her he said you're gonna have a son and that was the promise that she was clinging to he said i was gonna have a son so he did this so he's the only one that can fix it she was quiet when it came to speaking to others but when she got in the presence of the prophet she poured out her soul to him and she refused to leave his presence because when you go to the source you're never alone in your problem no matter how lonely you feel so she stuck with them and as they journeyed back to her home she stayed close and when they got back to her house the prophet went into the room with her child and shut the door i like to think about how she was thought she was going to go in with him and he shut the door and when my husband said that sometimes you have to stand outside the door while god goes in with your problems i knew that that was a picture that i would never forget because i don't know about you but i've had a few times in my life i've had enough times in my life where i've had to stand outside the door and just let god handle my situation and she stood there she was quiet and she was alone because sometimes the things that you go through they're just they're too personal to share in the moment and so she just stood there while the prophet was behind the door with her child and i keep wondering like what what could have possibly been going through her mind because as a woman it's like i can fix this i need to fix this but she couldn't fix it she said to stand outside the door and wait and hold firm to the promise that god had given her because the thing that enables us to shine bright in the darkness it's not only what we don't say because that's a start but it's what we cling to you can cling to the promise that he will never leave you or forsake you you can cling to the promise that the same holy spirit that lives inside of you that he lives inside of the people that you love and he's working on them just like he's working on you he's working on them you can believe that if he speaks to you he can speak to them without your without your mouth he can speak to them and you can cling to that promise i have a friend whose son is is just just doing everything that he wants to do right now and she is clinging to the promise that god has given her about her son you can cling to the promise that he sees every tear that you cry and he hears every prayer that you pray because he does so you cling to that you cling to the promise that you serve a god who really does turn everything for good he does he's done it before he'll do it again he really does turn graves into gardens and the grave part is not fun but the garden part you look back and can only have been god and you cling to that and when you cling to that your life will shine so bright that people can't help but see god glorified in your life so lord we just we open up our hands to you today pray for the person who's watching this alone just whisper to them tell them that they're not pray for the person who has been praying for their child for years and years and years would you just speak to them tell them that you love their child more than they do god we cling to you today which you reveal to us the things that we need to let go of and then would you just remind us like you do of the promises that you have spoken over our lives your promises are good and precious your promises are yes and amen we love you lord i thank you in jesus name i pray [Applause] amen [Music] that sermon i know i'm biased but i think what holly just preached was the most relevant thing that she could have said you know we always talk about how her strength and teaching is bringing the word practically but there was a prophetic element to that message today and god gave her that message months ago and i believe he wanted you to hear right now he wanted us to experience it together in this moment so i pray you received it today and i want to thank you thanks to all of you who support this incredible worldwide thriving ministry that is bearing fruit all over this planet and the bible says that we shouldn't just love in word but indeed action and some of you who who give financially and who pray and share the gospel and and serve you you're just you're the best so thank you i want to thank you for continuing in your generosity in this time and i also wanted to encourage you to stay in touch those of you who attend a local elevation church you know check in with your campus pastor your campus team make sure you're getting updates on in-person worship experiences as more of those become available hopefully in the days ahead and for our epm around the world we're going to be right here for you every step of the way as we uh navigate this moment in time together well you heard the word and now i want to make sure that you're subscribed to the channel and that you share and you comment let us know how this word blesses you we do read the comments uh we skip some of them but and we delete some of them but most of them are such a blessing and we always love to hear from you so uh thank you for your partnership in the gospel

Channel: Elevation Church

Views: 553,839

Keywords: elevation church, holly furtick, shut up and shine, shut up and shine holly furtick, elevation church sermons, pastor steven furtick, holly furtick sermons, steven furtick sermons, steven furtick, 2020 sermons, steven furtick elevation church, preacher, preaching, focus, perspective, your life speaks louder, joy, rejoice, complaining, negativity, promises of God, how to approach your circumstances, shut your mouth, sermons about perspective, philippians

Id: aOnE12a-xuw

Length: 51min 21sec (3081 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020