The Essential James

Today as I was checking blogs I went to Steven Furtick's over there on the left hand side of this page and went to the watch messages online thingy, it has been a while since I've watched on of his messages so I thought I'd check one out as I sat here and ate my buffalo chicken pizza. If you don't know who Steven is he is the pastor at a church in North Carolina called Elevation Church which is a rapidly growing church in the Charlotte area, the series they are in right now is called "The Essential James" and its description is 4 weeks, 4 principles, one book, thats it. A fresh approach to spiritual growth straight out of the book of James. I checked out the message on James 1:13-18 which ended up being about temptation.

I've watched a few messages online before but this time about 15 or 20 minutes in I started jotting down some notes of things he said that just hit me and I'd like to share a few of them with you. Number 1 - If you haven't had a head on collision with the devil in a while it might be because your on the same path as him. Woah never thought of it like that.
Number 2 - New levels bring new devils. Each time we progress in our walk with Christ, the devil comes at us with different angles and such to knock us off God's path.
Number 3 - If God isn't in it then get the hell out. I got a kick out of this one, he was talking about conversations and situations and us knowing that what we are doing does not have God in it.
Number 4 - Worry is the opposite of worship. That one hit hard. How easy is it to worry about our jobs, our finances, our future, our family, and every other little thing there is to worry about. If we are totally sold out to God like we say we are we should have the faith to know that He is in control and we should worship Him for who He is instead of worrying about who we are.

I have a feeling I'll be checking out the other 3 messages in this series in the upcoming days. He even took me back a few years when he started talking about Mike Tyson's Punchout for the Nintendo game system, Bly and I used to play that every chance we could. You should check this message out sometime, you'll be glad you did.