Last month, my sister and I went to the Elevation Worship concert at PPG. I expected to have a great time with my concert buddy and BFBN (best friend besides Nate), but I did not expect to be so moved spiritually that here I am a month later centering a blog post around it, as it’s come up time and time again for me since then. 

Steven Furtick, founder of Elevation Church in Charlotte, delivered a sermon that night; frankly, I wasn’t in the mood for a sermon! And I did see several people leaving as it became apparent this was happening lol, but I’m sure glad I stayed! Let me first just state – I don’t know much about Furtick or his church or even the worship band other than liking a handful of their songs – how “theologically sound” they are in every way. I just know what I heard tonight has impacted me in a big way, and it’s had a ripple effect in how I’ve been able to share it and apply it with my children, as well.

The sermon was entitled “Tune Your Heart to Truth” – which is really quite a contrast to the popular phrase “Follow your heart.” The problem with our heart is that we have courageous moments and crazy moments, Furtick stated. “We are living in a time where it’s more important than ever that we do not trust our hearts to tell us what to do; we need the truth of God’s word to guide us like never before, so we don’t wreck our lives.” He went on to also criticize the line “Live your truth” – “It’s good advice if your truth is God’s truth.” How often we go after God and have it right but then turn right back around getting caught up in our own ways. (MORE ON THIS LATER).

Colossians 3:1 states Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. “You can’t just go by your feelings, you’ll give up, you’ll cower before the challenges in front of you. Your heart is not your instructor.” Furtick went on to say you need to think of your heart like David says in Psalms 144:9, like your instrument: I will sing a new song to you, my God; on the ten-stringed lyre I will make music to you. A lyre is a harp…well your HEART is a LIAR. “Your heart will tell you things that aren’t true, your feelings will tell you you can’t make it and you can, your feelings will tell you it’s over and it’s not.” That’s scriptural – Jeremiah 17:9: Your heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? When you look back at the Psalms verse, what’s it saying? “I’m going to worship you, God. There are all these lies coming against me. I’m in trouble. I’m in fear. I’m in discouragement. I’m having a difficult time with this. There are many enemies who rise against me. But I’m going to sing to you, God.” Because he understood that “my heart is a liar/lyre. Not only is it deceitful, but it is an instrument.”

PART 1: Our Hearts Being In Tune with God

He then got out a guitar and said, “I want to demonstrate for a moment how to tune your heart to truth.” So first, he sang a beautiful worship song “What a friend we have in Jesus” followed by “Great is Thy Faithfulness” that we all joined him in singing, and honestly I thought that was going to be the climax of the evening –  I was already flying high! Crying out the lyrics I embedded for you within the song titles is EXACTLY what this whole sermon centers around (so keep reading)….what beauty arises from these moments of pursuing the Lord with our whole, bang-ed up heart!

I thought that was going to be the whole demonstration of what tuning your heart looks like….these lyrics preached such a strong reminder that trying to carry the burdens ourselves is when we are truly weighed down in life – it sounds so simple but we simply forget it! Over and over again, Psalm 55:22 just doesn’t take root (Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken). After we all sang out those incredible lyrics to God, Furtick said, “Isn’t it amazing when your heart is in tune with Him?”

YES, I was FEELING that, and immediately lecturing myself to remember this, lying to myself thinking maybe someday soon like maybe even tonight I will officially get this down pat! And you guys, this is why I NEEDED this second part I’m about to get into in Part 2. If I didn’t get this second part this night, then the next day, waking up the wrong way with the wrong set of values for the day and losing fruits of the spirit by the second, I would have been looking back at this night feeling weighed down with discouragement, feeling down on myself for my stupid heart! How it can go from courageous to crazy in no time. Heck, even if I would wake up the right way with some great one-on-one time with God and was feeling the same high I was feeling the night prior, would there not be moments once I would get back to the to-do list, once I would return to interactions with others where there is much room for pride, jealousy, anger, impatience, etc. to creep in, that I’d just be feeling down on myself, until the next time I get it right, and then that same cycle would repeat?! So let’s get to that second part, shall we? How can we break this cycle??

Well first……we don’t. We don’t break this cycle. But we also don’t get discouraged by it. We get ENcouraged by it, by the fact that the cycle is inevitable, for it empowers us to turn to God sooner and mightier than maybe we would if we let the lies that evolve from the cycle to take root and keep us farther from God as we wallow in self-pity or spin ourselves out of control as we listen to the wrong things, the wrong truths. The second part is coming, I promise, just first a little more setting up for it:

“When you’re in tune with him, the panic attack can’t get you. When you’re in tune with him, the thing that’s waiting for you back home looks smaller when you get back home, because God gets bigger when you magnify Him, when you’re in tune with Him. When you’re in tune with Him, the wind and the waves have to obey the voice in the name of Jesus and be still. When you’re in tune with Him, you can sleep like a baby in the middle of a storm. When you’re in tune with Him, you can just roll it over to the Lord and know that He’s already working out what you’re worried about and if he dresses the lilies with beauty and splendor, how much more will He clothe you? It feels amazing to be in tune with Him. When you’re in tune with Him, and aligned with Him, and you feel this strength and you realize that I can take this one day at a time and I don’t have to think three months into the future and I don’t have to think 30 years into the future, and I can say ‘give us this day our daily bread’ and my Father will feed me and my Father will care for me, and I don’t have to live in the shame of my regret, and in the shadow of my past mistakes. When I’m in tune with Him, I realize that if I confess my sins, He’s faithful and I realize he will forgive me of my sins and cleanse me of all unrighteousness, when my heart is in tune with Him.”

YES! But this ain’t heaven yet….

PART 2: Our Hearts Getting Out of Tune with God

“And tonight, our hearts are in tune with him. But I want to show you what happens, so often. It’s why we have amazing moments with God, followed by moments of tremendous despair.” Oh, I am listening, Steve! Why is it like this? What am I missing? What am I getting wrong? (The answer, btw, is nothing, other than believing maybe I am missing something – Haha -yes, it’s that confusing! Bear with me)

That’s when the second part began, and this is the part that I didn’t know I needed!

“But then you get back home, and you get distracted…..”

He brought out the lead singer of the band to play the part of the devil. He went on…… “And while you are distracted, you’re scrolling, you’re distracted, the pressures of life, you’re distracted, the pains in your body, you’re distracted, the kid that is driving you absolutely crazy, you’re distracted, and while I was distracted, he was de-tuning…..He puts his hands on this instrument, and while I am distracted, He is de-tuning my instrument of my heart. [At this point, his devil helper is turning all the knobs on his guitar while he is looking the other way]. This is what the enemy loves to do. To get you distracted by the past, distracted by the future, distracted by things you can’t control, distracted by things you can’t do anything about, which by the way, if you haven’t figured this out, one thing you cannot control is other people! So even getting distracted by what somebody else is posting, wearing, saying, when somebody else gets married, buys a house, graduates…….. all of that stuff is a distraction. AND IF THE DEVIL CANNOT DESTROY YOU, HE WILL DISTRACT YOU TO THE POINT THAT ALL OF A SUDDEN, YOUR HEART BEGINS TO SOUND LIKE THIS (strumming down and all of a sudden it sounds terrible). You see how beautiful it sounded when it was in tune? And then this devil puts his hand on my heart? My Lyre? My instrument?”

OKAY WOW. Suddenly I felt SEEN. I’m not a fan of overusing that term but it’s just right here! And I understood this cycle I go through from a different perspective. I saw the moment I turn away from this feeling of such intimacy and oneness with the Lord as INEVITABLE. I WILL go right back to my sinful ways of _________, ___________, __________. I will! Fill in the blank – what your negative tendencies are! Where the devil gets you off track time and time again! But God’s love for me and God’s grace for me does not DEPEND on how well I am or am not getting it right! His Hand is always on us.

And he went on to say how ridiculous it sounds to trash the guitar just because it’s out of tune. But that’s so often what we do, we give up. “But if you make the decision in the name of Jesus, you can say, ‘Get behind me Satan, for greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world! I’m getting my heart back tonight!’ And all you have to do….every time your heart gets out of tune, and even if you have to do it 100 times a day, you can’t just do this once, every time you pray, you get your heart back in tune with God. Every time you worship….you don’t have to be at a concert to worship God, you can worship God in the car, kitchen, hospital, etc. Do not let the enemy trash your heart just because it’s out of tune.”

PHEWWWW. And it didn’t even end there. There was then a THIRD PART to this awe-inspiring analogy. And I was still listening!

PART 3: Tuning Our Hearts Back to God

“You have a relationship with somebody who is always in tune. If you have a relationship with Jesus, He is always in tune. 

So then came the next helper to demonstrate this third part of the analogy – the keyboard player named LJ. He said, “You have to turn to the one who is always in tune. And LJ’s instrument doesn’t go out of tune because it is a digitally-built instrument. It is programmed to be in tune. That’s like God….God is not subject to human whims, God is not subject to human environments, God is bigger than that, He is enthroned, He is seated. Set your heart on things above. So I turn to LJ, who is in tune, and I say ‘LJ, show me what is true, play a high E for me’ and he plays a high E, and I play my high E, and my high E doesn’t sound like his high E, so guess what? He’s not coming down to where I am. I gotta come up to where he is (and Furtick keeps strumming his E alongside LJ strumming his, until he gets there). So you bring it to Him and you get in tune with Him.” He went on to say it’s not just once a week at church you do this……but daily. “Sometimes even when you’re at work, you gotta lock yourself in the bathroom for about three minutes, and just pray ‘God if you don’t help me right now, I’m about to burn this whole place to the ground!’ Because your heart is courageous and crazy, your heart is a liar! It has to be tuned! So you tune it and you say, ‘God, I’m feeling tempted right now, and the devil is telling me that this temptation is bigger than me, but Your Word says that no temptation has overtaken me, except what is common to man, and that You’re faithful, and that You will not allow me to be tempted beyond what I am able, but with the temptation You will provide a way of escape, and You tune to truth….give me a B.’ And again, the Bs don’t match up. So if your heart is telling you that you’re not gonna make it, but God is telling you you are, your heart is wrong. You just gotta tune up to truth. Am I close, LJ? Keep playing. Cuz I don’t wanna be tuned to what I think sounds right, I want to be tuned to what LJ says is right. Give me a G. I come before God and I say, ‘God, show me what to do about this situation. I know what I want to do, but I need to tune my heart to your truth.’ Give me an A. You bring your anxiety before the Lord, you say, Lord, I’m feeling so nervous about this, God show me what You say. You say in your word that I don’t need to be anxious about anything, but by prayer and supplication I can bring my petitions before you so God I’m bringing my children before you, I’m bringing this miscarriage before you, I’m bringing this opportunity before you, I’m bringing this stressful situation before you. I’m going to tune my heart to truth.”

And after bringing each janky note to the ultimate Tuner, it’s back to sounding beautiful: “I’m back together again.”

He transitioned into the next song “Graves Into Gardens” saying we all have an LJ – it’s Lord Jesus. “The enemy cannot have your peace, your joy, your family.” He told us to take back tonight what Jesus Christ died to buy for us. He had us tell our neighbors these powerful truths that are also the lyrics of this song, that we’ve got a God who turns mourning to dancing, who gives beauty for ashes, who turns shame into glory, who turns seas into highways, who turns bones into armies…….and graves into gardens.”

WHAT A JOURNEY. We can look at this cycle as a cycle that explains why we are worthless, why we are unworthy of love, and continue down a bad path getting farther away from God, or we can look at this cycle as inevitable and to accept that fact instead of being continually discouraged by it, letting the discouragement keep us even further from the truth. We can STOP, wherever we are in this vicious cycle, and we can TURN our instruments to God, asking Him to play for us, to model for us, to intervene for us, ONE note at a time, one step at a time. Lord, direct my path and tune my heart to you. One word at a time, Lord, allow my speech to honor You and have my heart follow. Tune my heart one string at a time. Little by little, God will do BIG things.

It just so happened (but not coincidentally!!!) that the memory verse that my oldest son P was assigned to the very week following the concert was John 15:5: I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” WOW – thank you Lord for allowing me the opportunity to connect this sermon with this memory verse. I told P and A all about the sermon I just went over with you all, and how, to follow and embody this verse, we can think of our hearts as instruments. And time and time again (choosing the right moments to do this, of course), I have been able to remind the boys to “tune their guitars” when they’re feeling themselves slipping into their negative tendencies. For illustrative purposes, one of my kids is trying to work on whining less. I’ve been able to, after the fact, discuss that it was when he let being in a bad mood for no real reason (or for a good reason even!) get the best of him and start to direct his steps….how inevitably, negative self-talk crept in, given he is trying to work on this, and that that likely caused him to get even farther from where he wanted to be with less whining in his life. How he can instead, next time, literally turn his body around to mimic this important moment illustrated so beautifully within Furtick’s sermon, take a deep breath, and say to God “you know, I’m really mad right now, I’m upset right now, I’m not happy right now, whatever it is. Lord, I am pausing to just ask that you help my heart feel less mad or sad, help me move on from whatever it is I’m holding onto, and help my words be more positive and my heart to follow, too. Help me get in tune with You and how you see me, how you want me to see me, how you want me to feel, and how you want me to interact with others.” It’s been such a powerful visual for them.

Oh, and TRUST and believe I’ve been tested time and time again since! It was the very next day I was so annoyed with my husband over such a stupid thing – like literally revolving around us being late to something and it was all his fault in my head and I was having so much trouble, knowing exactly what I needed to do – to tune my instrument, but just feeling stuck in my agitation! Well I did end up taking a breather after dropping off the late gang, and forced myself to try to get in the right posture while still seeing red! Well this song came on and I’ve been using it ever since, in attempting to get out of funks. Ahhhh, God strikes again with sending me what I need when I face my jaded heart towards Him.