My notes for Pastor Steven Furtick’s sermon A Lesson in Letting Go. From Elevation Church, April 2020.

Click here to watch A Lesson in Letting Go on YouTube.

Click here to join an online volunteer team or eGroup at Elevation.

Bible verses are linked if you’d like to read them.

Please remember these aren’t my own words, simply the notes I took during the message.

Sermon Notes : A Lesson in Letting Go

• we need to learn the lessons of this season in preparation of the next
• It’s really hard to let go of something that you’ve never known any different than
• Exodus 14:5
• Revelation requires repetition
• They needed to be freed from the place they were fed in
• Certain seasons meet needs
• The process of growing in God is the process of releasing something in order to receive something
• Certain changes are not embraced, they must be forced
• What represented death to Pharaoh, represented freedom to God’s people
• It really doesn’t matter how causes it – if it’s from God, or it’s not from God, it still has to pass through God’s hands
• Will I partner with what God is doing even if it’s not what I prefer? Or will I resist it, or will I push against it? Or will I go with it?
• The enemy uses the heaviest artillery on the people who are carrying the greatest purpose
• If a lot is coming against you, that means God has put a lot in you
• One of the things that God is showing us in this season is what he put in us – and he’s doing it by shutting everything down everything around us
• Sometimes the lord allows something around us to shut down to die so that something within us can come alive
• It’s later that we see the lessons. It’s easy to look back and see what should have been done. What really takes faith is to look forward at something and really believe that he’s going to make a way when you can’t see it.
• The only way that God sets us free from certain things is to take them away
• A lot of times in our lives, the lesson God is teaching us is to appreciate something
• What is God teaching you to appreciate in this season?
• You get used to the things that God gives you, to the point that you can get used to the people that God gives you, simple moments.
• God is resetting the baseline for what we consider a blessing.
• Before God gives us a new blessing, he has to give us a new baseline
• The storm can come but it’s can’t knock my house down!
• God is homeschooling us right now.
• It’s not the weight you’re lifting that hurting you – it’s how tightly you’re holding it. Are you a control freak?
• You could lift a lot more if you could loosen your grip.
• If you’ll hold it differently, you can handle it.
• Looking too far ahead or too far behind is where we start to feel anxious
• If I’ve got a grip on something that’s behind me, then I can’t move forward to what God has in front of me.
• It’s about releasing the things that you could never control to begin with.
• All God is doing for some of us in this season is showing us how little control we had to begin with.
• What do I need to unlearn?
• You have to find the balance in between.
• What determines what becomes your new normal in this season is not whether God changes your heart, but whether you change your habits.
• God is trying to set you free from things that you never needed to begin with.
• Romans 12:1-2
• It’s hard to let go of something that you’ve been holding onto for so long, even when it’s not working anymore
• It’s not normal, it’s just old.
• The old way has to die for the new way to come alive
• conform/transform
• Conform – outside in – the way the world works
• Transform – inside out – the way God works
• Learn to set your agenda from within, to be guided by the Holy Spirit
• A lot of us are struggling because we haven’t gotten to say goodbye to what we have lost in this season of coronavirus. Even though we really didn’t like it, it’s what we knew. So we’re in mourning because we never got closure.
• No sooner did the year start than you had to bury it, and trust God with it and we didn’t even get to say goodbye.
• So this is the challenge – letting go of something when you don’t even know what you’re reaching for yet.
• God lives in the mystery.
• Is it possible that God is trying to get you to unlearn the way that the world works so that you can learn how he works?
• “God do a new thing, but make it just like what I’ve known before.” 
• Release your need to know
• It was easier for God to get Pharaoh to let the people go, than it was to get his people to let Pharaoh go.
• It is easier for God to change your heart than it is to make your habits new. 
• God is trying to set me free from me.
• I can’t receive what is now when I hold to what is old.
• I’m not going back to normal, I’m looking forward to freedom.
• God is trying to give new habits for a new heart.
• Ask God to show you his normal.

Leave me a comment with your favorite takeaway from A Lesson in Letting Go.