In “God Won’t Leave You Broken,” Pastor Steven Furtick teaches us how to hold onto God’s truth, reject false beliefs, and embrace the identity God has for us. This is an excerpt from “Permission To Quit” To watch the full message from @elevationchurch, click here: 
• Permission To Quit | Pastor Steven Fu… #faith #peace #hope #broken #elevationchurch Chapters: 0:00 – God Won’t Leave You Broken 2:08 – Don’t Give Yourself Over 5:19 – Struggling With Sin? 7:06 – That’s Not Me… Not Now 9:33 – How To Get Free 12:00 – Put Off Your Old Self Scripture References: Ephesians 4, verses 19-24
Isn’t that what happens to us in our
lives? We get broken in relationships,
broken through experience, broken through trials,
broken through temptations we can’t overcome,
and then there is a hardness, if it is
not reset correctly, that keeps us from
receiving from God what he wants to give
us to grow us into who he made us to be.
But God is not going to leave you broken.
God is not going to leave you with the bone
broken and reset so that your heart is
harder. He is going to bring you through
this brokenness better than when you went
into the brokenness. He is going to bring
you through this brokenness. “I’m going to
be better after I was broken. I’m going to
be better after they fired me. I’m going to
learn things from this failed relationship.
When God resets me, the God of resurrection is
going to call me forth into a glorious future
for the praise of his name, because
I’m growing to become.” So, he says,
“Don’t live like these Gentiles who…”
Verse 19: “Having lost all sensitivity,
they have given themselves over to sensuality
so as to indulge in every kind of impurity…”
Do y’all ever look around and think just when
you think they can’t invent any new sins,
they make a new one? You know, they had
the industrial revolution. I feel like
we are living right now, in this time, in
the impurity revolution. We are making new
ways to be screwed up. It’s all the lust of the
flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,
but the flavors of it, y’all… We
have some creative flavors of sin.
I’d better get back to the Bible. Y’all are
looking at me strange. Maybe not in your zip code.
It’s fine. It’s just something I’ve been noticing.
He says they give themselves over to it. Now
follow me. When he says they give themselves over
to it, that is very different than saying they get
caught up in it. There’s a big difference between
giving yourself over and getting caught up.
Everybody can get caught up. If you haven’t seen
the person sitting next to you get caught up in
sin, you just haven’t followed them to the right
places yet. You haven’t seen them in the right
moments yet. They just haven’t shown you yet. We
can all get caught up in different ways, different
varieties, different prescriptions, but there’s
a big difference between getting caught up…
“Oh, why did I say that?” Because you’re
human! There is grace for your humanity.
There is grace for the moments. “Why
did I explode on my wife five minutes
after church?” You’re human! But
do not let your humanness and the
grace God gives for your humanness
become an excuse for your hypocrisy.
Just because I struggle with it doesn’t
mean I have to surrender to it. There’s
a big difference. I mean, there are
some big guys in this room right now,
and I’m sure many of them, if they took me and
dragged me off this stage, could get me off the
stage, but that’s a big difference than me
getting on their back piggyback, isn’t it?
Is there a big guy? We should illustrate
this. I need somebody bigger than me. I’m
about 170 so you have to at least have
me by 30 pounds. Come on. I need a big
guy. Mait is here? Where’s Mait? Get
Mait up here. That’s a great idea. Mait
the Great. It’s not my fault he bench presses
505 pounds. He has that 24-year-old anointing.
Are you too injured to do this illustration?
I don’t want to hurt you. He just went through
an injury. We can’t hurt him. But imagine
this. (I’m not even going to do the full
illustration. I care more about you than
my illustration. I’m selfless.) If he
wanted to drag me off the stage, he could
do it. It would just be a matter of time.
That’s really different than if I jump
up in his arms. I just want you to see
that. (It would have been cool if I could
have done it, but I don’t want to do it. I
don’t want to hurt him.) When you look at
what God is doing… I really haven’t read
the Scripture I want to preach from yet,
but that whole thing right there helps me
make a critical distinction in my life as
to whether I am still struggling with sin.
The writer of Hebrews said, “You have
not yet struggled with sin to the point
of shedding your blood.” I guess he’s
saying when you say, “I’ve done all I
can do. I can’t change it…” Did you do all you
could do? Rarely. Then when grace comes in,
some people take that grace, and they
don’t really receive it as power.
They receive it as permission to keep living
in stuff that makes them miserable. Why would
you want permission to be miserable? You
can. Who’s going to stop you? But this is
what the Bible says in verse 20. Now we’re
getting into it really deep here. “That,
however…” The impurity, the greed,
the sensuality, the indulgence.
“That, however…” Just talking nasty. Because
you felt mad, you talk nasty. Just because
everybody else is so mean to each other, now
you’re just mean too. Now you’re hardened,
because the bone that was broken didn’t
reset in the hands of the healer. Paul says,
“That is not the way of life
you learned when you heard about
Christ…” I don’t care if everybody
else does it. That is not me now.
It used to be. Yeah, but not now. God
has done too much for me. Not now. “I
dropped out of church for 18 years,
but not now. I used to think it was
more important to wash my car on Sunday
than be in the house of God, but not now,
because I need God to wash my soul every Sunday so
I can go forward into my future uncontaminated.”
There is power in the Word of God, and
there is permission in the Word of God
to do it differently. That is not me. That
is what I used to do. That is what all of my
friends have been doing. That is what I saw
growing up. That is what was done to me,
but why would I take what was done to me
and carry it into the future God has for me?
That stays there because this is my then. Let me
make a sandwich really quickly. Verse 14 says,
“Then…” Verse 20 says, “That…” Verse 14
speaks to a point of maturity where you say,
“I’m no longer just going to be
driven by circumstances. I’m no
longer just going to wake up and
see how I feel and act like I feel.
I’m no longer just going to wake up and see
what I think and follow my thoughts until
they lead me right off the edge of the cliff.
I’m no longer just going to trust everybody who
makes me feel good so I can get what I want in the
moment. No more beans for birthright.” God says,
“When will your then finally come?” When
will it be enough of you getting the
same result from repeating the same
behavior? When will your then come?
The decision to grow up; the decision to come
into communion with God; the decision to say,
“Lord, I want to put this brokenness in
your hands.” Then something pretty awesome
happens. He said, “That is not you.”
The moment you make a decision then,
“I’m growing up,” that no longer
has control over you. That.
It would get really uncomfortable if I started
listing specific thats in the room. The categories
don’t really make you cringe…impurity, greed,
lust. “Oh yeah, I watched that Bernie Madoff
documentary…greed.” How about me always wanting
more and never giving much? How about me always
thinking somebody needs to encourage me, but
who am I encouraging? See how this works?
That is not me. I’m going to do a list next
week that I’ll give you where I’m going to
teach you “The new me is not…” We’re going to
list some of the things you are not anymore if
you name the name of Christ. We’re going to
wage war against those things, because we’ve
been accepting them too long as normal. Just
because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s normal.
Watch this. “That is not the way of life you
learned when you heard about Christ…” Faith
comes by hearing, right? How many know
that Scripture? “Faith comes by hearing,
hearing the word of God.” Faith comes by hearing,
but freedom comes by habit. That’s why it is
possible for you to know more about God than
you are bringing into your current experience.
That’s why it’s possible for you to drag
around deficiencies and dysfunctions that
Christ died to help you deal with and then
start justifying things Jesus wants to set
you free from. We’re going to get free
in some areas of our lives this year.
If you don’t want to get free this
year, don’t come hear Furtick preach,
because Furtick is trying to get free
this year of some childlike behaviors
that are coming around in a grown
man’s body. I want to be less petty,
less prideful. I want to be stable. I don’t
know what winds and waves are coming my way,
so I want to be more attuned to worship. I
want to be more tuned into the voice of God.
I want to be like him. Say it. “I want
to be like him.” Okay. “You were taught
in him in accordance with the truth
that is in Jesus. You were taught,
with regard to your former way of life, to put
off your old self, which is being corrupted by
its deceitful desires…” Y’all remember Tricks
Are for Kids from last week. I know you do.
I know if you missed last week, you
caught the podcast first opportunity,
because no way you would miss a sermon from
the Word of God. You wouldn’t do that and
watch Netflix or Hulu. Not you. Verse 23. This
is the goal. “…to be made new in the attitude of
your minds; and to put on the new self, created to
be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
So now I’m looking at my humanity, and
I’m looking at God’s holiness (wholeness,
changing me, who I really am), and I’m making
decisions daily about which one to choose.