Steven Furtick - Do You Have The Stones? (01/27/2026)
This sermon is a call to action and faith, focusing on the annual year-end "Waymaker" offering. Using the story from Joshua 4 where Israelites took stones from the Jordan as a memorial, Pastor Steven Furtick challenges the congregation to be "waymakers" through sacrificial giving. The message emphasizes that faith requires courage and action, not just hearing sermons, and highlights testimonies of God's faithfulness over the church's 12-year journey.
A Sermon You Preach With Your Offering
There is a little bit of a shift today where... there is going to be a sermon. Don't get nervous. But, you're going to preach it. Every week I preach to you and this week you get to preach because in just a few moments, after a little abbreviated not sermon devotion that I plan to share with you, we're going to come forward and we're going to bring our gift to God. It is a journey that we have been on and we do it every year. We always pick one word to end our year on as a church. 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, Mooresville, 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, 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, baptized in this church, or if your daughter got interested in God because of this church, it was because somebody made a way. All I want to do before we have the opportunity to bring our offering, and I would like for you not to take notes today because this is not a sermon about information. This is a sermon about action. 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. 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 see us lift our hands, all of that can be done without love. But you can't really give sacrificially unless it comes from a place of love. What is 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 is part of our expansion offering, but really what expands during this time is your faith.
The Backdrop of Faith: Joshua Chapter 4
I just want to set as a backdrop from Joshua chapter 4. Remember, I'm not going to preach, but here's my Bible, so we might as well read this. It is a little bit of a faith picture. 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 4… Actually, I want to start in chapter 3, verse 17.
If we pick up that verse, then we'll have a running start into chapter 4. It will 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 ground. Touch your neighbor and say, Don't get left behind. When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twelve 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 walk in the way, but you don't make a way for anybody behind you.
And so, keep reading, Furtick. Where are we at? Lord your God. Where was it? What verse was it? Five? Lord your God. 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? 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. This is kind of ridiculous, you know? We already made it through the Jordan. 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. You could be looking at something but not go in, if you don't have the faith to cross over and step into it. That's where we are today, many of us on the edge of believing God. 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.
The Question of Courage
So they cross through the Jordan. God makes the waters 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 had directed Joshua. The people hurried over, and as soon as all of them crossed, the Ark of the Lord and the priests 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 at them in the eye and ask them one question today before we give our offer. Ask them, 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 also. 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 lead us so well. I said, What do you think it takes to be successful as a campus pastor? What's the secret sauce? One of them said communication, and one said competency. Not Chad Hampton. Chad Hampton is up at Lake Norman. He said, Courage. He didn't mention a competency. He didn't mention a communication ability. He said, It takes courage. He said that was the key from his perspective. I tried to get him to change his answer to see how much he really meant it. And I mentioned all the things you have to be good at to be a campus pastor. Management styles and relational skills and charisma. He said, No, no, no. Charisma, not charisma. Courage. You remember this? He would not let up. We made fun of him for months about it. Courage. Every time we'd look at him, we'd point at him and say, Courage. Courageous Chad. He was just convinced. It's courage.
I thought, Is he right? So, I started thinking back. Of course, you can go 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 you need to receive everything 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? If you're getting anything in your hand today, just get this envelope, this one that says Waymaker right here. He said it was courage. I started to evaluate it not only biblically, but when David was putting his successor in place to build the temple, his son Solomon, he told him the same thing. God said to Joshua, Moses' successor, Be strong and courageous, and do the work. It 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. When he says, I'll bless you, do you believe him? That's the question in Joshua chapter 4.
From $1,600 to $1.6 Million
One little story I should probably tell you. 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. I'm kind of a numbers guy. In fact, we're not even officially 12 years old yet. We're just getting our prepubescent first little chest armpit hairs and things like that. One thing I remembered this week, and forgive me for just a moment to kind of remember back to the courage 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. I wanted to instate 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 we were going to start, 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.
I want to play you a clip. This was 12 years ago on October of 2005. We were getting ready for our December offering, like this one. I found a pastor in New Orleans. I'm just going to play you. I can only stand to hear about 25 seconds of this. You will notice that this is my voice, but it doesn't sound like it. Just listen, okay? Let's get through it together. 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 taking a salary. Nobody's benefits are covered. We have a $200,000 pre-launch budget. But what we decided when we came together and talked about it as a core team is, let's be generous now. Let's don't wait until 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. I'm glad you liked it. That was painful for me. Who is that guy? I think they sped up the tape a little bit and hit the southern button accent a little bit.
We sent that pastor in New Orleans that we found $1,600. The offering that week was $1,500 and something dollars. We sent more than we had taken in the week I announced that particular thing, 12 years ago. But the original core team had stones, courage, confidence, faith, and gave when we had great need. Now, just this week I did a little mental calculation. They told me that in outreach this month, 12 years later, we will give away not $1,600, not $160,000. 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. $1,600,000. Y'all don't have it. Y'all aren't 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 was in your checking account you'd say, well, if I told you $1,600,000. you would stand up, rip your shirt off, paint your chest orange, Elevation logo. Praise him. But look at this real quick.
A Thousand Times More
I have 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 for him to have the courage to act on the promise of God, he would shrink back. And he sent twelve spies in the land. And ten came back and said, we can't. And two came back and said, we can't. 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 1. He's remembering back. He says, verse 9, At that time I said to you, you were too heavy a burden for me to carry alone. The Lord your God 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. Then, verse 11, he quantifies it. He says, May the Lord, the God of your fathers, increase you a thousand times and bless you as he has promised. Do you know how much more $1.6 million is than $1,600? 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. Therefore, on Christ the solid rock I stand, all on the ground 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 and say, You're going to be a thousand times better. I mean, just add another zero. God is going to 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 in just a moment, 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.
A Testimony of Stones: Larry's Story
Speaking of OGs, I had to call in the heavy. When I say Larry Bride, watch what the people do. Larry Bride. You see? Legendary. Legendary Larry. Legend Larry. He's Legend Larry. Come up on the stage. I want him to share something with you. Now look, I gave him only a few minutes, but when I told Larry I'm going to start a church, he did not ask. The next thing he said was this, and it's bad grammar, but it's good faith. I said, I'm starting a church. He said, I'm coming with. He didn't even have time to finish the sentence, but he had faith to do it. He said, I'm coming with. Janet wasn't so quick, but Janet was my dental hygienist at the time. 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 in offering. From when we gave $1,600 that we didn't have to a pastor who says today that that was one of the turning points in his ministry, still ministering to that community today. His name was Larry also, wasn't it? Larry McEwen. 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 it's done and what you're enjoying online around the world, 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 passed 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, or 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 how this has made a difference in your family. 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 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 wrote down years ago are now the celebrations of today. Yeah. And then we always wrestle over that. 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 will do. And then eventually it 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 the 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 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 surround at that time. And we had talked to our family and got my sister, brother-in-law, and my niece, Luann, John, and Kaylin, all to come to Charlotte to be a part of Christmas. And now we start focusing on like, all right, we're going to get them 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, well, we sold our house. We've already done our part of somebody else's job now. But we kind of came to the point of saying, we cannot expect new blessings off of old sacrifices.
And so we brought our best gift to God. We just didn't want to believe for it. We wanted to sacrifice toward it. And 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 you. 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 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 begged them. We bribed them into coming to church. And this is a picture of my family, my niece, Kaylin, my sister, Luann, my brother-in-law, John, sitting on the front row at University City. And that night, I had the privilege of leading my niece, Kaylin, 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, Kaylin, 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 her 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. I show up, she goes, 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 Ballantyne. 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 going to 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 moves mountains. Faith parts waters. Faith changes the world. I love it.
Do You Have the Stones?
Do you have the stones? I mean, she's a stone, a testimony, a story. The faithfulness of God. Do you have the stones? It's a story that that little boy right there, you can tell him 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. You better sit down, because we'll start talking about the old days. Dominate campaign, courage, faith. I wonder, 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 feeds where people are living their everyday lives. We are ministering to more people right now on the other side of screens than we are on this side. The potential for what we could do together in the times we live in to represent hope, love, unity, all of the things 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? I came to church. I've got to worry. I'll 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 $1,000 would be a huge sacrifice. One thing that God has been challenging me with as 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 confidence and the courage to give away your. whole emergency fund. 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 than your house was worth? Will 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 and 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 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, 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 with the level of faith that you're giving, would the ministry move forward? 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 15,000, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000. I feel like I should go through every amount and 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 old 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 Columbia and online, our eFam, around the world, we need everybody to be a part of this so that we can 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.