Steven Furtick — An Overview of Your Future
So if Christ is enthroned in Heaven and nothing that happens on earth happens without his permission and that means there are some things that are on the throne of my heart that have to go. Look at fear, how long has fear been on the throne in your life?
You need to make an announcement to fear today and tell fear, get off the throne, this seat is taken. This seat belongs to the King of kings I want to use one verse today, and it is in the book of Revelation 4:1: "After this I looked and there before me was a door standing open in Heaven and the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said come up here and I will show you what must take place after this."
I want you to know today that you have a standing invitation to experience God's presence, but you have to pay attention, because Now I know we don't have the same invitation John had to see the unfolding of end time events and the history of the world before it happens, but we do have a standing invitation in heaven that any time we want to lift our eyes to the hills we can look to our help, we can look to our God.
I'm going to stop screaming in a minute. You got to understand, I'm just excited about the invitation that God has given me to come up higher. Touch somebody, say, come on up. When I was a boy they used to have a show called "Price is Right," now they still have a version of it but it's not Bob Barker, so it's not the real show. Can I get a witness?
Bob Barker had that skinny little mic, and when Bob Barker would through it to Rod Roddy... Do y'all remember Rod Roddy?... and Rod Roddy, all these people were in the audience, and the difference of "Price is Right" is at any moment, you might go from the crowd to the front, and if they call your name, you might win a washing machine, you might win a vacation trip for two, four nights, all expenses paid to Cancun, you might win a car.
So when Rod Roddy grabs the mic, people listen, and they lean forward, and Rod Roddy had this thing he used to say, I don't know if they say it anymore, but Rod Roddy used to announce a name and he would say "Steven Furtick, come on down! You're the next contestant on The Price is Right."
Now Rod Roddy wasn't available for church today, but the spirit of God is here, and I hear him saying, if you want to listen to providence, if you want to listen in Matthews, if you want to listen at Butler High School, if you want to listen at Blakeney, if you want to listen at Lake Mormon, you might want to jump up on your feet for what's next, because I hear the spirit say, sound of God, come on up, come on up, this is Rod Roddy in reverse, come on up, come on up.
Where the peace is. Come on up. Where the blessing is. Come on up. You see that sun rise, my mercies are new with every rising of the sun and I want to let you know, you can come on up. Somebody shout, I'm coming up. No you got to shout it like a trumpet, I'm coming up. So I'm going to start my day at the right altitude.
Yeah, God said He wanted to talk to you today about your future, He said He wanted to give you an overview of your future. He said come up here and then I'll show you what happens next. I want to give you an overview of your future. I don't want you to look at your day through the lens of everything that might go wrong. I want you to get out high.
See sometimes when we travel we take these little planes, we probably shouldn't take them, they're probably not safe, but sometimes we got to get somewhere real quick and we take a little plane, and when we take that little plane I always note that if the weather is real bad, they're going to cancel the flight because the plane isn't big enough to get me above the weather.
But when I fly with Delta or US Air, I might have to go through security and I might have to shove my bag in the overhead bin, but there's one good thing about a big plane: no matter what storm comes, no matter what turbulence we encounter, no matter how cloudy it is in the sky, I'm in something that can get above it.
Now I need to let you know, that the size of the plane doesn't change the weather, but it gets me above it. Now I kneed to let you know, that the size of your faith might not change the weather, but it will get you above it. I will send the spirit on the Lord's day and I saw a vision of him who is and was and is to come, and I see my future from heaven's perspective.
Take 15 seconds and praise them for your future. Come on, praise. Come on you ought to praise Him Concord. You ought to praise him. You ought to praise him Uptown. Come on praise him Blakeney. Let's get up higher. Let's lift them up. He said, if I be lifted up I will draw them in. Lift him up. Lift him up. I see the Lord seated on a throne. The train of his robe fills the temple. Let's get practical.
I want to start my day at the right altitude and I want to finish my day on the note of praise. 'Cause see I figured that the way I start my day will determine how I experience my day, and the way I end my day, will determine the way I start the next one. Sit down, I got to show you something. Everybody say "practice." This takes practice, because we are used to living at a low altitude, we're not used to coming up, we're not used to the air out there.
We're not used to interpreting people through the idea of grace. We're not used to coming up. We're used to having our stomachs all tied up in knots. We've learned to depend on it. The anxiety is like our needle. We need it. We need it.
We almost at the end of the day we almost put the welcome mat out for the devil to just take over the next one, OK, going to bed, thinking about everything that went wrong, so I just had enough of it and a little while back I saw in the kitchen this little notebook my mother-in-law gave me, she gave me like five of them, and they were just sitting around, and I picked up this orange one, because that's the color of God, and it says that she got this notebook for $7.49, it was originally priced at $9.99.
But what I've been putting in here is priceless, because I put on the front of it, I put GP, gratitude practice, and I decided to start ending my day on a high note. But it only takes me like five minutes and it's not fancy, so you might not be very impressed but it's just, it's really been blessing me to at the end of the day to fill up just one page, and I picked a small notebook so it wouldn't be very intimidating, just one page on this little notebook.
How many of you are already planning your trip to Target or Walmart because you need one of these, you need one of these. At night, I've been doing this, it's been helping me a lot, and that's why I thought I'd share it with you, it's just, I write at the top of the page "gratitude practice" just to remind myself that I don't have to feel grateful to be grateful. And sometimes the pen doesn't start writing real quick. Sometimes it takes me all of the first five minutes to even get the pen moving.
But it's amazing once I get the pen moving what I remember from that day. It's amazing, it's like giving me a different overview, because I go to bed so focused on what might happen tomorrow, what didn't get done today, but it's just been helping me if you want to try it you can, and then put your picture on social media and I'll see your little journal, we talked about it, you can hashtag it, you can hashtag it come on up, you can hashtag it, you can hashtag it overview, because when I'm looking my day over I want to look at it from the perspective of all the things that I might have missed and didn't pay attention to that day, that God did for me.
Because what that's going to do is when I start tomorrow, I'm not going to start down here, I'ma start it up higher. Now if I start tomorrow here maybe I can end here and maybe if I end that day here I can start the next one up there. He's taking me from strength to strength and glory to glory, so I just write down little fun stuff.
It's nothing fancy. It's nothing poetic. It's nothing they're going to publish if I die. It's nothing that anybody's going to read at my funeral. Just little old dumb stuff. Just stuff that wouldn't mean much to you. Just stuff that I remember from the day, open doors, ways that God made, moments that I had, a car wreck that I didn't get in.
You know, all the stuff that didn't happen sometimes is a good reason to praise God too. Just little stuff. Christy brought me a coffee yesterday before I preached. I thank God for the coffee. I thank God for a new season of shows that I wanted to watch. Well, why not thank Him for it? Why not? I can praise him over Netflix, you don't have to, but I can. Every good and perfect gift comes from the book. Maybe that's a stretch.
This sounds kind of cute... some shells in the ocean that my kids brought, amen, that's what I'm looking for, I'm looking for that "aw" because I might have missed that, I might not be paying attention just to remember that your kids are healthy and they played on the beach today and while I'm at it, why don't I thank God for the ocean, you know the ocean was there before I got there, it's going to be there when I'm gone, and while I'm at it, why don't I thank God that He's bigger than me and why don't I thank God that I have windows, I just thank God for whatever you can think of, if you sit there and try to make it too fancy it won't work.
I thank thee thou Lord God that thou didst create the Heavens and the stars and by thy mercy was the firmament... no, none of that. I thank God for my new book that I read, it's called "Shoe Dog" about a film night from Nike, I enjoyed it, so I put it in the notebook, because I wanted to remember something good that happened that day. Amen.
I could just go through this notebook and I'm not beating the devil with some big rocket grenade launcher, you know, I'm just going to beat him with some paper cuts. I'm gunna beat depression with some paper cuts, I'ma beat despair, I'ma make my way up a little bit at a time, I'ma increase my altitude one thought at a time, I'ma do it one night at a time, one day at a time, touch somebody and say, I'm coming up.
I'm coming up. I'm coming up higher. I'm coming up higher, I'm not going to end my day as a victim, I'm going to end it as a victor. I got an overview. I got a place in Heaven around the throne of God. I see my situation. I see my situation from above. And when I see it from up here I notice something. I notice something about authority.
After this I look and there before me was a door. You've got nine minutes. And that's all I need to tell you about authority. Standing open in heaven and the voice I had first heard speaking to me was still speaking to me and the door that was opened for John is still open for you.
Jesus Christ opened the heavens, the heavens shook. Abby came to me the other day and said, Daddy, this door is broken, we were at a store, and they had automatic doors, and she said, the door is broken. She's five, so I had to explain to her, baby, the door isn't broken, you just didn't get close enough to open it. There's some sensors up here and you stopped five feet short of where you had to stand and the doors would have opened.
After this I looked and there before me was a door standing open in heaven, and the voice I first heard said, come on up, and I will show you what must take place after this. He saw a door, because I looked ahead. He heard a voice because he got above.
So preach my sermon to your neighbor, tell them, look ahead from above, as you look at your future, look at it from God's perspective. Even as you think about November, think about November from God's perspective. I'm preaching to all of you Fox News junkies, MSNBC too, because the next think that John saw was set your heart free from anxiety.
Can I give it to you? We're down to seven minutes, so we have to work quickly, but he said, I saw a door and I heard a voice, and that once I was in the spirit and there before me, before me was a throne in Heaven. I wish I had time to tell you about this throne man. I know I have time to tell you, because there's a whole other group that's coming to church. I would tell you about everything that's around the throne. There is a rainbow around the throne of God that is surface the throne to represent His brilliance.
I would tell you about the 24 elders who sit on the 24 thrones around The Throne, little lowercase "t" thrones around the capital "T" big throne, and how they have crowns of gold, and gold represents dignity, and they wear robes of white, which represent purity, because the lamb has washed us clean, and I would tell you if I had time about the four living creatures who are sitting around Heaven one day and one of them looks like an ox and one of them looks like a lion, and one of them has a face like a man, and one of them has wings, but in fact all of them have wings.
They have six wings each, and they're covered with eyes because they can see God perfectly and their job is to get around the throne and they wrote a song for God one day and they said, holy is the Lord God Almighty and then one of them said, I don't think that's good enough, we should do, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
Because if we say it twice we get the point across, because it's God we're speaking about and they sang that for like a couple of thousand years and then eventually one of them said, I don't think we're doing it right because He's not just holy, holy, He's holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, He is and was and is to come, see He is holy, He was holy, He will be holy, He's holy, holy, holy, He's the God who stands in your future redeeming your past from your present.
He is holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty, I wish I had time to tell you about the throne, I would tell you about the seven lamp stands that are before the throne that represent the seven spirits of God that have gone out into the earth, I'd tell you about the sea of crystal that's before the throne, clear as crystal, because God sees everything that happens on earth from his vantage point in Heaven.
There's no tear you cried He hasn't seen, there's no heartbreak you've suffered that has hasn't witnessed, there's nothing you're going through He's not aware of, He sees it from the throne. I wish I had time to tell you about 10,000 times 10,000 angels. You'd be so excited if you could see those angels. They're not stressed out in Heaven, they're looking at the future and they know that God is on the throne.
I wish I could tell you about the throne. Is anybody grateful that there's still a throne? Come on, I need you to thank God for the throne, where mercy reigns, where love rules. I'll tell you about the throne, I would tell you about how from the throne of God, John heard the peels of an earthquake and the flashing of lightning, and the rumble of thunder that came from the throne, because that lets me know that God is awesome, and when He stomps his foot and when He puts his foot down the earth shakes.
John said, I saw the future from the throne and it changed the way I thought about Heaven. And now I'd like for you to stand because I'm closing my message and I'm closing my series, but I want to tell you my favorite thing about the throne, and this is for all of you who have anxiety in your heart about the future, OK, what's going to happen to you, what's going to happen.
Faith is anticipation minus anxiety. Faith gives me the ability to say whatever's next I'm ready. Look ahead, get above, and step aside.