Sermon Notes : Pastor Steven Furtick – You Don’t Have To

Hi friends! Below you’ll find my notes for Pastor Steven Furtick’s sermon You Don’t Have To. This message is from Elevation Church on December 15, 2024.

You can click here to watch You Don’t Have To on YouTube.

I’ve also linked the bible verses, so you can click on them to read if you’d like.

Please keep in mind that these are not my own thoughts, but rather the notes that I took while listening.

Leave me a comment with your favorite takeaway from this sermon. I’ll leave mine in the comments, too.

Sermon Notes : You Don’t Have To

• Luke 1:26-41
• You can be highly favored and greatly troubled at the same time.
• Anointed and addicted, saved and struggling, grateful and a gossip, favored and afraid.
• The favor doesn’t care about your feelings. 
• Watch God do stuff that people said he couldn’t do. 
• In all of the “got to’s”, we can lose our “get to” spirit.
• You’ve got a God who didn’t have to give you anything that he gave you.
• It’s not good to have a got to spirit when you serve a get to God.
• Pressure turns things you used to delight in into dread.
• Something shifts in a moment when God speaks
• You go from “I’ve got to” to “He’s got this” and you can’t explain how you got there.
• He came from a virgin because he had to be clean. 
• It has to come from God. 
• He would not have been able to pay the price on the cross.
• He wanted to come close. 
• He also wanted Jesus to get credit. 
• Clean. Close. Credit. 
• Maybe God wants you to realize that this thing did not start with you so it doesn’t need to be sustained by you.
• If you start giving God all the credit, he’ll start taking more of the stress.
• If you want to survive criticism you have to change your relationship with praise.
• Don’t take praise too seriously. 
• Don’t take criticism too seriously either because they don’t want you to see the plank in their eye.
• We don’t expect Gabriel in Galilee. 
• God is gonna show up in some unexpected places in your life, so don’t be surprised.
• When God sends Gabriel, Gabriel has got to go 
• When God speaks a word he does not consult the circumstances.
• God is going to give you clarity, perspective and provision.
• You can call on Jesus when you get depressed. 
• Gabriel came to Galilee to get it ready for something greater.
• He started something so great in something as small as a baby.
• God wants you to know that he’ll hold you too. 
• Heaven was held by humanity. 
• Not of necessity, but of love.  
• So humans could be held by heaven. 
• You are held this season. 
• The invitation of incarnation. 
• Give God the credit for carrying you. 
• God is not through with me yet. 
• The purpose of the Christmas story is not just in being held but in being humbled.
• How?
• He didn’t say how, he just said who. 
• The answer to how is a who. 
• The Holy Spirit is the answer. 
• God says you don’t have to know how. 
• If you can get a glimpse of who. 
• You get hung up on how and forget the power of who. 
• God knows how so you don’t have to. 
• Get to.
• You don’t have to convince anybody. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Stop trying to defend yourself to people who aren’t even paying attention.
• Stop having imaginary arguments with hypothetical opponents.
• You don’t have to win an argument. 
• You only need to complete your assignment. 
• Pressure to perform. 
• Wouldn’t it be crushing for you to live under the debilitating weight of how when it’s never been how, but who?
• We’ve been humbled by how. 
• It turns out a completely different way, not how you wanted.
• So that when he does it there will be no confusion about who is doing it.
• Now you can be helped. 
• Do not give yourself over to things that can be taken away so easily. 

Thanks for taking the time to read today. You can see more of my notes from Elevation Church by clicking here.

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