Steven Furtick - Greater Devotional: A Forty-Day Experience to Ignite Gods Vision for Your Life

G REATER D EVOTIONAL
P UBLISHED BY M ULTNOMAH B OOKS
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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica Inc.TM Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. Scripture quotations marked ( ESV ) are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( NKJV ) are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Hardcover ISBN 978-1-60142-525-6
eBook ISBN 978-1-60142-526-3

Copyright 2014 by Steven Furtick
Content in this book is drawn from Greater, copyright 2012 by Steven Furtick, published by Multnomah Books, and other published and unpublished works by Steven Furtick.

Cover design by Ryan Hollingsworth

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.

M ULTNOMAH and its mountain colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Furtick, Steven.
Greater devotional : a 40-day experience to ignite Gods vision for your life / Steven Furtick, New York Times best-selling author, with Eric Stanford. First Edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-60142-525-6 ISBN 978-1-60142-526-3 (electronic) 1. Christian lifeBiblical teaching. I. Title.
BS680.C47F87 2014
242.4dc23

2014019599

v3.1

Lately it seems like Im meeting more and more believers who are unsatisfied with the kind of Christians theyre becoming and the version of the Christian life theyre experiencing. These arent bad people. They arent gangbangers and ungodly pagans. If they were, their discontent would make more sense.

The thing is, most believers arent in imminent danger of ruining their lives. Theyre facing a danger thats far greater: wasting them. I worry about that risk for myself, and maybe youre the same way.

Weve had some big dreams about what God might want for our lives. But so many of us are stuck in the starting blocks. Or are dragging along at the back of the pack.

We know we were meant for more. Yet we end up settling for less.

Were frustrated about where we are. But were confused about how to move forward.

If this is where you are, the Greater Devotional is for you.

For the next forty days, well learn to spend time with God and His Word to find out how He wants to expand our world. The devotionals are based on some key ideas I talk about in my book Greater. Much of the material is brand-new to print, and here the focus is on the spiritual journey necessary to get from good enough to greater. Well be looking at a lot of events in the life of the prophet Elisha, but well also be mining other rich texts from all over the Bible.

These devotionals are not primarily meant to give you a cozy feeling or make you satisfied because youve met a spiritual requirement. They are meant to yank you from the mediocrity you may have grown accustomed to and set you on the course to a greater destiny.

The call to be greater is the call to walk with God Himself. And, in fact, I believe any lasting transformation flows from divine revelation. More can be accomplished in a half hour of prayer, worship, and listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit than in a month of strategizing on our own.

I can trace my most frustrating seasons to a deficiency of time I allocated to my most important task: seeking the wisdom of the Lord. And, conversely, I can trace the genesis of many of the most important changes in my life, my family, and my church to specific moments I spent in the presence of God. Thats why I believe you have every reason to expect amazing things to happen as you spend time with God for the next forty days.

Dream big.

Start small.

Ignite Gods vision for your life, starting today.

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

J OHN 14:12

Todays Bible reading: John 14:114

For most of us, the experience of our daily lives is a far cry from the greater works Jesus talked about in John 14:12. We know instinctively, even if we cant articulate it exactly, that something isnt squaring up. Theres a huge gap between what God said in His Word and the results we see in our lives.

Its like weve been lulled into comfortable complacency. Then we wake up one day to find ourselves stuck in miserable mediocrity. So we tuck away any dreams and notions of the great things wed like to do for God.

After all, were doing good. Good enough. It kind of sucks. But its all we know.

If thats where you are today, I need to share a strong word of warning with you.

You cant keep living like this. Its not fine for you to settle for going every day to a job youd prefer to quit, doing decent work, being a pretty good person compared to your neighbor, paying your bills on time, and sporadically reading the Bible as though its your guide to the great things God did in other peoples lives in the past.

RT We can be so much better than weve become, because God is so much greater than were allowing Him to be through us. #GreaterBook

Baseline living is not okay. Not for a believer in Jesus. Theres a price to pay for Christian complacency. If you keep living on this level, your heart is going to shrivel. It might already be shriveling. Your dreams are going to die. They may already be on life support. Will you look up one day and be overwhelmed by the stack of regrets staring back at you? The frustration thats simmering on the back burner right now might boil over one day, and youll be bitter about the opportunities you missed. Opportunities to be used by God, to touch lives, to get outside yourself and be a part of something greater. I know its not easy. But dont tell me its not possible. Jesus Himself said it was.

The fact is, we can be so much better than weve become, because God is so much greater than were allowing Him to be through us. Thats why, for forty days, were asking God to show us His picture of the greater life and help us go after it. Start today by telling yourself you dont have to stay stuck in the muck of mediocrity. Open your spirit up to the possibility of something greater. Open it up to Jesus Himself.

PRAYER FOCUS: Ask God to ignite in you a vision of the different life He wants you to live. Commit to a lifestyle of listening for His voice.