I especially love Steven Furtick, the young, enthusiastic senior pastor at Elevation Church. He was our guest speaker today, and boy, does he rock my socks off.
He talked to us about how we ask and ask and ask for God to do things for us, and how we have it all wrong. So many people (including myself) will go to God with a list of "Things I need". Then, if we don't get everything we ask for, we feel "slighted" by God. He encouraged us to look at scripture and see that the bible tells us to "Enter his gates with Thanksgiving in our hearts". Before we can even START to give him our list, you need to thank him for everything He has done for us. If we are in a sad time, or a dark place, and don't have things to be happy about, just thank Him for sending His son and for giving you life.
I remember when we were in the hospital with Laynie for the first time. She was so ill, and countless people had told us that she shouldn't be alive, with a hemoglobin at 1.6. There was no reason she should have survived that. That was a dark time. We were terrified and broken.
I remember not being able to stand in the room and watch them find a vein to give our baby blood, and as Lacey and I stood in the hallway outside her room, we started singing,
"Savior, he can move the mountains... Our God is mighty to Save.. He is mighty to save....
Forever, Author of Salvation, He rose and conquered the grave....He conquered the grave".....
And we had a mini worship in the hallway. We could have been saying, "GOD WHY OH WHY is our baby about to die? WHY OH WHY didn't you intercede sooner?" Could have walked down that road, but instead, we looked up, we opened our hearts and we praised His holy presence.
And He heard us. And He blessed her, and we took our girl home. For 9 more gifted months.
Instead of taking the perspective of Why?, we chose to have the perspective of "We believe..." and it changed everything about the walk.
He went on to talk about how people feel entitlement, that they accept all the benefits of life as "Normal", instead of a "gift". I loved when he said, "If you only show up to church once every five weeks and feel like God should hear you?" it made me tingle. When your sense of entitlement is high.....your sense of gratitude is oh so very low.
He showed a clip of Oprah Winfrey telling her audience they had been selected to be on her "Favorite Things" Show..... It was pandemonium and crazy. He said, "If people get that excited about "stuff", shouldn't you feel that way EVERYTIME you walk into your FATHER's HOUSE?"
For.the.love. YES, I should feel that excited.... and the entire audience proceeded to have an Oprah Winfrey moment. It was glorious.
He ended with the statement..... Grateful People can FIND a blessing.....ENLARGE a blessing....or CREATE a blessing....in almost every situation....
He said that there are those people though, that suck the joy right out of everything and can FIND a problem, ENLARGE a problem, or CREATE a problem, that wasn't even there, in almost every situation, and he called those kind of people......wait for it....
Crap factories.
Knowing my love of the word, "Crap", you know this just jacked my world into another realm. I leaned over to Lacey, and said, "If I call you and start worrying about ANYTHING, just tell me that I am being a CRAP FACTORY".
Enter his gates with Thanksgiving in YOUR heart, gratitude for life on your lips, and an excitement to share your light with everyone...
Every.Single.Day.
It doesn't get any better than that.
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