Steven Furtick Narcigetes The Story of Elijah at the Awakening Revival

Moving along, time for our Steven Furtick update.

If you were lucky, you would dance for tea. The beads you watched streamed, you'd be their mentor. You'd be their mentor and you're so vain. You probably think the Bible's about you. You're so vain. I bet you think the Bible's about you.

Don't you? Don't you? Several years ago, we were made to pray the real gospel. Heard the real gospel and you're so vain. You probably think the Bible's about you. You're so vain. I bet you think the Bible's about you.

Don't you? Don't you?

Well, true to form, the man who hasn't found a Bible passage that he can't find a way to make it about himself, Steven Furtick, was headlining last night at the Awakening Revival in Jacksonville, Florida, at Celebration Church, that's Stovall Weems' church.

He brought the house down by narcegeting the story of Elijah from 1 Kings 19. It's unbelievable. Hang on, I'm going to kill this music. What we're going to do right now is we're going to listen to some samples of the things that Steven Furtick said when he was preaching at the Awakening Revival last night, so that you can kind of see how it all works.

I mean, literally, this guy is like clockwork. You know, I know when he's going to be visiting somebody's church that I can tune in and it doesn't matter which passage of the Bible he's working from, he'll find a way to make it about himself and make it about you.

And here's the deal. The Bible's not about you. The Bible's about Christ and what he's done for you. In fact, you would have had to listen very hard and very long to Steven Furtick to hear anything about Jesus.

I mean, he got an honorable mention, for sure. But, I mean, Furtick made sure to preach about himself quite a bit. And then, of course, bringing the people in the audience along for the ride and reading the story of 1 Kings 19 of Elijah kind of fleeing from the death threats of Jezebel to somehow be about you, it was, well, unbelievable to say the least.

And rather than talking about it some more, I think maybe what we should do is, well, let you hear what he did. So here's Steven Furtick talking about Elijah and, you know, from 1 Kings 19 about how strong people in faith have struggles, just like you and I have struggles and he has struggles.

So here we go.

I think we think that really strong people spiritually have very little struggle. I'm glad the Bible's honest. I'm glad the Bible put that three-word sentence in there because if all I read about Elijah was he's up on the mountain challenging the gods of his day and, you know, calling down fire, I would think that I can't relate to him.

But yet the book of James says in James chapter 5 that Elijah was a man just like us. And so there's a similarity. And I think some of you in this revival and in this season of fasting and awakening, which is so exciting, are cropping yourself out of the picture of what God can do through your life because you don't think you're as spiritual as some of the other people who are a part of this.

So I'm supposed to look at the story of Elijah and say, oh, see, this is what God can do with my life. God hasn't exactly promised to do the same things with my life as he did with Elijah, okay? Elijah and Elisha are like really super high watermarks in the scriptures, and they point us to Christ, not our own selves.

I mean, this is looking at these passages completely wrong.

Because you struggle with things you don't think they struggle with. But here's one thing I've learned in our Instagram, Snapchat, show you the part of my life I want you to see society. Strong people struggle too.

Strong people sometimes struggle the most. And one of the reasons that we count ourselves out of the great things that God can do, we believe God can do great things, but we kind of crop ourselves out of the picture, is because we're insecure about what we struggle with.

But we struggle with insecurity.

So the story of Elijah, okay, is a story about struggling with insecurity, like all of us struggle with insecurity. Now we're psychologizing the story of Elijah.

Because we're comparing our behind the scenes with everybody else's highlight reel. Think about it. I wish I could start a version of Instagram where people had to post real stuff.

Of what their life is really like.

I want to see all your kids smiling after they climb to the summit of a mountain, and you had a picnic lunch of Daniel Fast approved foods, and prayed for two hours, and recited from Leviticus 26. That's some crap.

I want to see the picture where the one kid karate chopped the other kid in the throat, and you threw a banana across the room. Posting all these recipes you never cook. Pretend to rest. Pretend to rest.

You've got to pretend like your life is more interesting than it is, and more fearless than it is. Here's the announcement I wanted to make from the front to the back. The people who do great things for God are not fearless.

They're faithful.

Again, this is off by 180 degrees, because the biblical message is not about all the people who did great things for God. The biblical message is all the great things that God did through them. More importantly, the gospel, the good news itself, points us to something even greater than that.

What God did for us to save us. Sacrificing himself. Living a sinless life. Dying and rising from the grave. Suffering in our place for our sins. That is the good news. What God has done for us, and that should be first and foremost at a revival, don't you think?

Last time I checked, maybe I'm just old school, but when a pastor or a group of people do a revival, usually there was a lot of proclamation about what Jesus has done for sinners. But that's not what we're hearing here.

Instead, what we're hearing is, well, you need to not have such insecurities about doing great things for God. What kind of God is this? Why does God need me to do great things for him? I thought he's God.

I don't know what this God is, but everything is off here by 180 degrees. He's literally going the wrong way. He's focusing on the exact wrong thing.

The people who do great things for God are not people who never struggle. In fact, struggle is a good thing. Struggle is a sign you haven't been conquered yet. So if you're struggling with lust, if you're struggling with fear, if you're struggling with inadequacy,.

Struggling with lust, that's a sin. So now all of a sudden lust becomes, oh, it's just one of these issues that I'm struggling with. Now we're completely diluting the biblical problem that is revealed that we all face.

And that is that we're born dead in trespasses and sins. And we sin because we still have a sinful nature to contend with. It's not that we struggle with lust. It's that we struggle with our sinful flesh that has it out for us.

If you're struggling with an eating disorder, if you're struggling with a weakness inside of yourself that you maybe can't even mention to other people, it's all right. I point it out because the Bible says—.

So if you're struggling with these things, oh, it's okay. It's all right. Yeah, listen again. He just said it's okay.

If you're struggling with inadequacy, if you're struggling with an eating disorder, if you're struggling with a weakness inside of yourself that you maybe can't even mention to other people, it's all right.

I point it out because the Bible says that the greatest prophet of this day got so afraid not when times were bad.

Okay, so did you hear that? Now, it's subtle. It's quick. But that's the problem, okay? He just listed off a litany of things. Many of them are sins. And he said if you struggle with these things, it's okay because according to Stephen Furtick's reading of 1 Kings 19, the greatest prophet who ever lived, he struggled with insecurity.

So, I mean, you're struggling with sin, no big deal. Elijah struggled with insecurity. That's not the biblical message at all. And by the way, the story of Elijah in chapter 19 of 1 Kings, it's not about him struggling with insecurity.

That's not really what the big deal is.

Bad, but at the time when he should have been at the after party celebrating what he just did to all the false prophets. I mean, if I'm Elijah, let's recap what just happened. If I called down fire from heaven and I said, I don't know what he said, but somehow him and God communicated, you know, a secret signal.

I don't know if it was a hand motion or whatever. But something released and it rained. Now, if that's me and I just single-handedly, standing with God, God of the Bible, put all 850 of your false prophets to shame.

See, there's this woman.

No, no, no, no, no. He didn't put them to shame. They were all eventually put to death. I mean, right there on the spot. They were all killed. They weren't just put to shame. They were killed.

Her husband Ahab is the king. Jezebel hears about what Elijah has done and sends a death threat to him. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to make your life like one of the prophets that you just killed.

Here's what doesn't add up about that to me. If I just killed all of your prophets, you know, God did it, but he used me. If I just killed all your prophets in God's name, if I'm the one who just stood on the mountain and called down fire and all your prophets tried to call down fire and they couldn't, and all your prophets started cutting themselves to try to get their God's attention, but their God didn't respond because he's not real.

I'm not scared of your threat. I'm not. You know, you send a message to me. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to kill you.

Yeah, because isn't he so great?

I mean, yeah.

Furtick is so much better than like Elijah and Elisha and like Jesus even, man. Too bad Elijah just wasn't like Stephen Furtick.

I'm going to be like, oh, do you want some too, woman? Or something like really tough like that.

Something intimidating.

You know, something hard like that. Do you want some too? You know, I'm a real intimidating guy. I would have shut her up.

Because you're so great.

Yeah.

See, what's the point of having a biblical text when, you see, now he's talking about himself. It's all about Stephen Furtick. Let me fast forward a little bit more just to kind of get an idea of how this narcissus went down last night.

He was the one who called for a drought in Israel. He was the one who was responsible for all the cattle dying and the crops drying up. So now he presents himself, and he stands up on the mountain, and God wins.

And he breathes out. But no sooner can he breathe out after the victory before another battle starts. And I wonder if Elijah wasn't just tired of fighting.

So now I wonder, I wonder, is he doing exegesis or is he engaging in speculation? Answer, he's engaging in speculation. The text doesn't tell us exactly what he was thinking or feeling. We got a little bit of details.

If you're going to be an exegete, a biblical exegete, you need to keep your mind on the thin rail of the words in Scripture and not wander off into, I wonder, I wonder if, well, maybe this. Because then what happens is you start asking questions like that that are not answered in the text.

You're going to start answering those questions, and the origin of the answers is going to be your brain, not the mind of God or what's revealed in Scripture. Let me back it up. Here we go.

Starts.

And I wonder if Elijah wasn't just tired of fighting even though he was winning. Do you know you can get tired of fighting even when you're winning? It's not just losing that can wear you out spiritually.

You can actually be doing really good in your walk with God. I found this out, Pastor Stovall Weems.

I can even.

Now he's talking about himself again.

Even be doing really good as the leader of the church. But the struggle and the strain of success and victory can take just as much of a toll as the pain of losing and the disappointment of loss. And so maybe, here it is, maybe Elijah is not running for his life as much as he's running from his life.

Now, pause there for a second. Does the text say that Elijah was running from his life? Or does the text say he was running for his life?

Okay.

Because Stephen Furtick here just said maybe, maybe. So now all of a sudden you're going to actually preach based upon a maybe. The question is what does the text say? So let's take a look here. First Kings chapter 19.

I'll start at verse 1. Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, So may the gods do to me and more also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.

Then he was afraid and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.

Okay.

You'll notice, in fact, if you had watched this last night, you would have watched him do this quite masterfully.

Okay.

He's not teaching the text. He's jumped the tracks with his so-called questions. Well, it makes me wonder. Just, you know, I wonder. Maybe he wasn't running from his life or for his life. He was running from it.

But the text doesn't say that. It actually says he was afraid and ran for his life.

Listen again.

And the disappointment of loss. And so maybe, here it is, maybe Elijah is not running for his life as much as he's running from his life.

Uh-huh. So now we're just completely taking the biblical text, erasing it, basically taking white out and just whiting out the words. Now, see, the Bible was wrong. God the Holy Spirit absolutely messed up.

I mean, I don't know what the Holy Spirit was thinking when he ran for his life. No, no, no. Stephen Furtick, the prophet Stephen Furtick, has discovered that the prophet Elijah wasn't actually running for his life.

He was running from it because this is all about insecurity. But when you read it in context, it's nothing about insecurity at all.

Okay.

So from this departure from the biblical text then, Stephen Furtick decides to come up with three points, three instructions on how you can overcome the cycle of fear in your life so that you don't run away from your life the way Elijah ran away from his.

No joke. We continue.

But I want to give you three instructions from the Lord for all of you who are locked in a cycle of fear because God starts awakening stuff in you in an atmosphere like this, starts calling you, starts speaking to you, starts descending in glory and meeting with you, encountering you, personalizing his will, crystallizing things for you, starts giving impressions and ideas and concepts to you.

It's a powerful thing.

Notice apparently because you showed up at the awakening revival, God's going to start giving you direct revelation in this atmosphere of what... How many times have we heard that word now? Atmosphere.

The atmosphere of faith. The atmosphere of the glory. The atmosphere of the... So Stephen Furtick, are you ready? He's going to give us a three-point sermon on three things that you need to do to overcome the cycle of fear in your life from the story of Elijah from 1 Kings 19.

Here we go.

But you're going to find yourself in the struggle at some point running away from... Elijah ran away from his ministry post when he should have been standing strong and seeing God's salvation. And so there are three things God...

Yes.

Again, he's making this... So the foundation is actually based upon him twisting one word. Rather than the word for his life, Stephen Furtick has taken upon himself to change the word to from his life to make it about insecurity so that he can then tell people that God doesn't want you to have cycles of fear and insecurity in your life.

So here's three things to help you overcome that cycle in your life.

He wants to say to you in the first one, you're going to love the first one. The first one is this, get up and eat.

Now you're thinking, where did he get that from? So point number one. See, back in the day when I used to attend a church where the pastor would give us three applications, the applications generally made sense.

But what's he doing? He's allegorizing this text and narcogeting it. First Kings chapter 19, I'll start at verse three so we keep the context of the story going. Then he, Elijah, was afraid. He rose and ran for his life.

That's what the biblical text says. He ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree.

And he asked that he might die, saying, It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my father's. And he lay down and slept under the broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, Arise and eat.

And he took and behold, and there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. So Stephen Furtick, in his three instructions for how you can overcome the cycle of fear in your life that's keeping you, making it so that you're running away from your life and from your ministry post, point number one, step number one, eat.

What kind of boneheaded advice and application is this? Here's the reality. Elijah actually for real ate, because a real angel actually for real put that food there. How am I supposed to actually apply this first step?

Let me back it up so you can hear him say it. Here we go.

Should have been standing strong and seeing God's salvation. And so there are three things God wants to say to you. And the first one, you're going to love the first one. The first one is this, get up and eat.

And what am I supposed to eat? Let me continue with the story here. He looked and behold, there was at his head a cake of bread on hot stones and a water jar. And he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.

And he rose and ate and drank and went in the strength of that food for 40 days and 40 nights into Horeb, the Mount of God. So how am I supposed to apply this? How is this supposed to help me overcome fear and insecurity in my life that's keeping me, causing me to run away from my life?

We continue.

Let me show you. It's in the Bible, I promise. This is going to be your favorite verse. You're going to memorize this sucker.

Watch this.

Verse five, part B. Elijah wants to die, writes a suicide note, flips over his Nirvana Nevermind cassette tape. 1992, deal with it. All at once, verse five, part B, an angel touched him and said, read it, get up and eat.

It's in the Bible.

Yeah, and this is historical narrative. You care to explain how I'm supposed to repeat this?

I'm just reading the Bible. And he looked around and there by his head was a cake of Ezekiel bread, baked over hot coals. I love this. It's God bakes him some bread. God, will you kill me? No, as a matter of fact, I'm going to feed you baked bread, not fried, because that would contribute to an earlier death.

I'm going to feed you healthy food. I'll give you some gluten-free bread.

How about that?

I love God.

God's full of mercy.

God is so good.

Watch this.

Keep in mind, this is application step number one. Get up and eat something. Have you figured out how to get up and eat anything yet?

Looked around there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water. He ate and drank and lay down again, just like a man. Angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, get up and eat.

For the journey is too much for you. And so he got up and ate and drank. And strengthened by that food, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights until he reached toward the mountain of God. And there he went into a cave and spent the night.

Get up and eat. Isn't it just like God? That even when you're running in the wrong direction, he'll somehow sustain you for your journey. I wouldn't do that if I were God. If I were God, I would punch a hole in your gas tank.

You wouldn't get anywhere if you were running from me. I certainly wouldn't feed you. And I know I would not deliver it right by your head.

Where in 1 Kings chapter 19 is there a promise given by God to you that if you're going in the wrong direction, that God's going to show up and give you something to eat? There isn't. The only way you can come up with such a screwy idea as this is if you think the Bible's about you and that this is now a pattern that applies to your life.

You see, just like Elijah was heading the wrong way and God gave him something to eat, so if I head off the wrong direction, God's going to turn right around and give me something to eat and put it right by my head too.

There's no promise here that he'll do that.

You know, I might let something fly by you or pass by you and you can kill it yourself, but I'm not going to cook for you and bring it to you. But God is so gracious.

Yeah, notice that at this point, Steve Furtick is now comparing himself to God. Yep, that's what's going down here.

How many can testify that there have been times where you were actually running in the opposite direction.

Of where God was calling you to,.

But still he fed you with brand new mercies with every rising of the sun. He didn't starve you, but he fed you with his love.

That is better than life. If you know what I'm talking about, make some noise.

Yeah, quite the crowd. All right, we're going to move a little bit forward here to the point where God asks Elijah the question, what are you doing here? And let's see what Furtick does with this.

What are you doing here? You're supposed to be there serving me instead. What are you doing here?

Right, because you're running from your life, not for it.

This far away from your ministry post. But here's what the Bible says. He asked him a question, and Elijah has an answer ready to give. He'd been practicing this. Watch, verse 10. He replied, I've been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty.

Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I'm the only one left, and now they're trying to kill me too. Giving God a news update, a briefing, if you will.

What's interesting, by the way, I studied how the same thing that he said in verse 10 that was a cry of despair is the same thing he said in chapter 18, verse 22 as a statement of victory when he was standing on the mountaintop.

See, in 1822, Elijah said, I'm the only one of the Lord's prophets left, and now choose you this day.

Whom you will serve. You serve the Lord.

If you're gonna serve Baal, you stand on one side.

Or the other.

He said it like a statement of boldness. But the thing that makes you bold and unique and powerful for God in one chapter can make you very lonely and isolated in the next chapter. Now it's not so fun.

It's fun to stand for God in here. It's fun to lift your hands in here.

Back this up, because watch what he does. He entangles your life and my lives, everyone's lives, up in this text as if we're in this text. Listen carefully. It's very subtle.

He said it like a statement of boldness. But the thing that makes you bold and unique and powerful for God in one chapter can make you very lonely and isolated in the next chapter.

The thing that makes me bold for God in one chapter makes me isolated in another chapter? There are no chapters of the Bible written about my life or your life. What are you doing to the Bible here?

Now it's not so fun. It's fun to stand for God in here. It's fun to lift your hands in here. It's fun to testify in here. But the same passion that courses through your veins in here that makes this exciting can make you a freak in your school, can make you the person nobody wants to hang out with at work.

And then you got to decide, do I have an inner strength and resolve in the name of the Lord? Is he my tower?

He said God, yeah, so apparently this text is just all about you.

I'm ready to be done with this now. It's enough. They're trying to kill me too. He knows they can't kill him. He's already seen they can't kill him. But it's a struggle. See, he's not afraid of what they might do.

He's afraid of what he has to face, just going back another round. I can't take this stress anymore. Even if I win again, I just don't want to go back in that cage. And the Lord said something to him.

And this is the second thing I wanted to tell you. Verse 11, the Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord. Point number two, I think God wants to tell some of you to go out and stand.

So point number one, if you want to overcome the cycle of fear and insecurity in your life, rise and take something to eat. And then the Lord's telling some of you to go outside and stand. Listen again.

This is point number two.

On the mountain in the presence of the Lord. Point number two, I think God wants to tell some of you to go out and stand tonight. The next time you find yourself running, I think the Lord, the word of the Lord that would come to you.

The word of the Lord that would come to me. Direct revelation.

And quicken you is his invitation. He said, go out and stand.

Go out.

No, he's not telling you or I to go out and stand anywhere. This was a specific event in history spoken to a very specific person by God in a very historical context. This is not a pattern that you follow to overcome insecurity and fear in your life.

Out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord. I want to meet with you. We're standing on the mountain tonight, this week. We've been called into a time of consecration to stand. We are Mount Zion.

We are God's people. We are his chosen dwelling place. You know, the devil...

Preaching about themselves again. Everyone's getting... We are, we are. Oh, yeah, yeah. Aren't we great?

Kind of awkward, but I'll take what I can get. Yes, it's a miscalculation that the devil let you get here to this revival. Because if he can...

Yeah, based on this Bible twisting, I'm fairly certain that the devil was doing everything he could to get as many people to that revival as possible.

He can keep you in the cave. He can tell you whatever he wants to tell you.

What?

If he could do what?

Hang on.

Because if he can keep you in the cave, he can tell you whatever he wants to tell you.

This is so absurd.

Yeah, you know,.

Because if the devil can keep you in the cave and keep you from having, you know, rising and taking something to eat and going outside and standing, then he's going to defeat you. So are you in the cave right now?

This is absolutely nonsensical. This is utter gobbledygook.

And he can trick you into believing whatever he wants to trick you into believing, that you're ugly, that you're worthless, that you're stupid, that there's no hope for you, that the divorce was the end of you, that the abortion is going to define you, and that nobody could ever love you.

But if you get out of the cave.

And get in the presence of God...

Yeah, get out of that. You've got to get out of the cave and go stand outside.

And stand on the mountain. His lies aren't going to bounce around the echo chamber. That's why we came. That's why it's important you come back.

Enough. Done. So that's the sampling of the things that Stephen Furtick said last night. And it was just utter narcissistic eisegesis. And the reason he was able to make the point that he did is because he changed one word in the text.

One word.

In the sentence, Elijah ran for his life. He changed it to from because he said maybe, just maybe. He was running from his life. And then he can change the whole story. Make it about insecurity and how you...

And then look at his life as a pattern for steps that you can take to overcome insecurity and fear in your life because that's what this biblical text is all about. It's all about you applying steps to overcome insecurity.

Hogwash.

It's not about any of that. In fact, it's not about you. Ultimately, it's about Christ. That's who this passage is about. And Stephen Furtick wouldn't know how to find Christ in it if his life depended on it because the only person that Stephen Furtick sees in these biblical texts isn't Christ.

And the person he sees is himself. All right, we're up on our second break. If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the Faith, you can do so.

My email address is talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com or you can subscribe on Facebook, facebook .com forward slash piratechristian. Follow me on Twitter. My name there at piratechristian.

Quick break.

Sermon review on the other side of the break. We'll be listening to a Craig Groeschel sermon about, well, my story. That's the name of the sermon series. Yeah, true. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

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