Relentless Pursuit

Lately I feel that God has been hitting on the same subject over and over again. This post is going to be pretty straight forward because I know that I need to set some things straight. About a month ago I was extremely convicted and knew that God had given me a message to speak into the people around me. Due to some things going on in my life I felt that I didn't have the right to speak this to the people God had called me to speak it to. A month later here I am, in one of the biggest spiritual funks I have ever been in and I know exactly why. Delayed disobedience is direct disobedience. I know that if I would have just stepped out of my comfort zone and trusted that He would use what He told me to say exactly how He wanted a lot of negative things that have happened lately would not have happened. So first and foremost I would like to apologize to you all, especially my Lolley girls. 

Romans 13:11-14 says "It is now time for you to wake up from your sleep, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is almost finished, and the day is almost here. So we should stop doing things that belong to darkness and take up the weapons used for fighting in the light. Let us live in a right way, like people who belong to the day. We should no have wild parties or get drunk. There should be no sexual sins of any kind, no fighting or jealousy. But clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ and forget about satisfying your sinful self."

God broke me completely through this passage. The simple fact is we do not know when Jesus is coming back. He could come in five minutes, tomorrow, a year, or 100 years. Because we don't know, we should live our lives so on fire for God as if He were coming back in minutes. We do not have time to waste. There are too many helpless and hurting, lost and broken people. Jesus paid a cost too high for us to waste time and make excuses for not making His name known! 

Every single moment of our lives should present the Gospel, should shout Jesus boldly and loudly! EVERY. SINGLE. SECOND. Period, no excuses. I am preaching to myself just as much as anyone else when I say this. If we truly believe the Gospel, if we truly know the value of eternity, we need to get serious, we need to urgent. That crap that is coming out of my mouth and your mouth, nailed Jesus to the cross. If a lost person came into our dorm could he/she know there was something uniquely different by how we present ourselves or by our conversations? Is every single action, every single word coming out of our mouth glorifying Christ? If it's not, which I think is where a lot of us are, including myself, I think we need to take a step back and realize the high calling of Jesus Christ in our lives. He demands radical obedience at every waking moment. He demands us to take the hard roads, to have the hard conversations, to step out of our comfort zones. He demands and DESERVES every single ounce of our lives!!! Please get this. We do not have time to waste if Jesus could come back in seconds. That person you walked by is now on an eternal road separated from Jesus Christ because he was passed by. The girl that you hears you gossip is now eternally confused about how a so called Christian really lives their life and now has confirmed what apparent little different He makes just from those few words of trash. This is not a hate fest. I am just as guilty, if not more. 

This has to stop RIGHT NOW. I am asking you, begging you, to join me in keeping each other accountable. Your relationship problems can wait, your social life can wait, your friendship drama can wait, THE GOSPEL CANNOT.

We should be in such a relentless pursuit of Christ that all the shouts and lures from from world are only blurs.  We are on mission at every single second. The most important and highest mission we should ever imagine. Lets get busy.

Lord, may we NEVER get complacent in our lives. May we NEVER get comfortable because we know that You sure as heck were not comfortable on the cross. Lord, I truly believe that if this generation would cling to you in such a radical way and would strip ourselves of every single thing that does not glorify You, I truly believe that we could see the world, every single person, come back to You. Call me crazy, I am choosing to trust, I am choosing to believe that my God is a God of the impossible. 

Please, join me. He cannot wait. 

Coming to Pass

This week and especially this weekend has absolutely blown my mind. God has been moving in an incredible way. I am humbled, grateful, and inspired. Several things came to pass this week and I can't withhold from sharing them with you all! I feel like it has been a continual cycle of unending blessings this week. God is so faithful, so persistent. If you are trusting in God to bring something to pass, continue to keep trusting Him. He will fulfill His promises! Always.

First off, God confirmed and laid down some solid vision in my life earlier on this week. I have a pretty good picture of His purpose for my life and the specific people group I am called to reach.  As I look back I see how God spoke this so many times into my life, but for some reason I just kept on questioning. I'm extremely excited and grateful God slapped in my face and woke me up to realize what was right in front of me. I have fully committed my life to reaching these people for the glory of God. Unless God stops me dead in my tracks I will recklessly abandon all to see these people have life in Christ. 

Something I am extremely thankful for this week was finding out that one of my friends has found true life in Christ. Her life is turning around and she is finding joy in Christ alone. She has recently plugged into a community group and I am so thankful she has people surrounding her that can speak Truth into her life! God will continue to come through for you!

We released our new album Kingdom Come this weekend. We gave out somewhere around 8,000 FREE copies (I think). It officially release on iTunes on Tuesday and 100% of proceeds are going to Samaritans Purse for a project called Turn on the Tap. It supplies water filtration system to people in Uganda that do not have access to clean water. As we celebrated how God has moved in our church this weekend, I absolutely broke. I'm so humbled to be a part of such a great move of God. He is using Elevation to reach this city, this state, churches worldwide, and even to the ends of the earth in places like Uganda.

I got to catch up with a friend from VMI last night and found out some news worth shouting about. I brought her to Elevation numerous times this summer and God used it to absolutely change her life and set her on fire. She recently shared some of Pastor Steven's Sun Stand Still stuff to the chaplain there. He got so pumped out and told her to send it out to everyone. People's lives are getting rocked by the message of audacious faith. Praying for a revival at VMI! Can't wait to see God blow that place up for His glory!

Today I got to hang out with my homeless friend, Richard (you can read about him here). I haven't seen him around in a while and found out today that he has been in the hospital with pneumonia. He is back on his feet and even has a job interview on Tuesday!

I am so unworthy to be apart of advancing the Kingdom in such a way of all of this, yet God is so loving to allow us to participate in an incredible journey with Him. I couldn't imagine using every ounce of me for anything better than making Jesus known. Sometimes it's hard to trust God when everything around you is falling apart. But know that things will come to pass in His time! Isaiah 55:11 says "So shall My word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." Cling to that Truth with everything you have! We serve a BIG God that is capable of bringing to pass in the unthinkable and the impossible. 

Sun Stand Still

If your not a part of the Elevation family, then you probably haven't heard of an astounding movement beginning called Sun Stand Still. This vision, birthed in Pastor Steven Furtick, is all about audacious faith; daring to ask God for the impossible.

In a conversation with a friend last night we talked about how so many Christians pray simple prayers. "God please let me get to work on time." "Please keep me safe from harm." "Lord please give be a higher salary." "If You would just this once get me out of this situation, I promise I wont ever....." You know the story. We've all done it, and personally that's the only way a lot of us were taught to pray. I never knew about audacious prayer. I never knew that you had to act in faith on prayers. I thought once you said it that was it.

Somewhere we have failed. Somewhere we stopped truly believing in God's sovereign power. We get so caught up in the simple things that we underestimate God's power to do the impossible in our lives and end up not even bothering to praying about it.

This is an outright shame and a downright insult to God. He made the sun stand still, the oceans part. He's brought the dead back to life, healed the diseased, and rescued the lost. We see it in His Word, yet we don't believe He could do any of that today.

We are wrong.

The world is waiting for this generation to rise up for the glory of God. I truly believe that God is raising up an audacious generation to reach the world in our time, right here, right now.

I can't even begin to think of how many people's lives will be challenged and changed by the message of audacious faith. I can only hope and trust that in God's time, this generation will truly be conquerors for Jesus Christ. We have yet to see what God can do when we dare to ask Him for the impossible.

The best is yet to come.

To My Elevation Family....

Elevators!

I have thought over and over again the last few months about how I could ever begin to express what God did in my heart and life on July 4, 2010, the day of my baptism.  While words could never do it justice, I will try to express it as best I can.

To make a long story short, through Elevation, God has turned my life totally around. If it wasn’t for Elevation, I would still be stuck in the idea of working my way to heaven by trying harder and doing better, a way of life that eventually led me on a path of self-destruction and self-hate by high school.  I always thought of myself as a Christian, but through Elevation, God opened my eyes to the lie that I was living. I left my life of religious hypocrisy for a radical fully devoted life of truly following Jesus.

 I was baptized in the Lutheran church as a baby; an event that did well for my parents, but was one of little significance to me.  When Easter time came up, God spoke clearly through His Word to my heart that I had to make this choice of being biblically baptized on my own. God continued to speak boldly on this subject and when I got an email in late June about baptisms on the Fourth I knew my answer no matter what the cost.

I truly thought my family would come around or at least be there out of love, but they weren’t.  Not one of my family members showed up. The morning of the Fourth, I was half an emotional wreck and half ready to shout Jesus’ name from the rooftops. I was excited that I was finally nailing my decision to follow Jesus down, but also disappointed and sadden that my family did not support the most important decision of my life.

Stepping into that tank I felt all the burdens, hurts, and worries of the past come into that tank with me. At that very moment, I truly understood why God had allowed all the bad, hurtful things to happen in my life. He knew it would bring me to my knees and that 8 months later, after giving my life to Christ, I would end up here, in this exact moment, on my own without the support of my family, nailing this decision down for everyone to see.

Coming up after being dunked was truly something I will never forget. I knew that at that moment I had truly left all those burdens that I brought into that tank there and had come out new. The second thing I will never forget and that I will forever be grateful for was God showing me who my real family was. I truly felt God told me “What do you mean your family’s not here!? LOOK AROUND!”  Coming out of the water I saw the faces of my greeter team, my eKidz team, my community group, and the many other friends I had made at Elevation, all ecstatic, some even in tears, celebrating my decision. These are the people I love, who support me, who speak God’s truth into my life, who slap me in the face when I’m about to make a wrong decision, and who are always there in good times and bad. These people are my family.

Like I said earlier, words alone could never do justice to express what God has done in my life through Elevation, the people of Elevation.  I could never thank the original families and Pastor Steven enough for the audacity it took to just pick up and move. But I hope each and every one of you knows that it was well worth it. I know some people don’t like that we are all “about the numbers”, but I am truly grateful we are, because I was one of them. I was a life far from God, who “just so happened” to end up at Elevation during the worst part of my life. A life that ended up here during a series that “just so happened” to exactly pertain to what was going on in my life at that exact time. A life hungry for God, but broken by life. A life God redeemed for good, a life now filled with Christ.

Thank you so much!

With Love and Gratitude,

Kimberly Wheeler

Christ Alone

We are currently in a series at my church called Christ Alone which focuses on Romans 8. Pastor Steven challenged us all to read the entire chapter everyday for the next twenty one days (ending 7/26) out loud. Take about the first 10 minutes of your day to do this spending around five minutes reading through the chapter and the other three minutes in prayer to God on a concept that spoke to you. 

God has really been changing and molding my heart through this and I invite you to join in. You can also check out the past two sermons from the series here.

I am praying for God to move mightily in your life, to tear down walls and open your eyes and heart to what He has in store for you. 

Romans 8

Life Through the Spirit

 ¹ Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ²because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. ³For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man,⁴ in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

 ⁵Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.⁶The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; ⁷the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. ⁸Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

 ⁹You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. ¹¹And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

 ¹²Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. ¹³For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, ¹⁴because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." ¹⁶The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. ¹⁷Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Future Glory

 ¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

 ²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

 ²⁶In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

More Than Conquerors

 ²⁸And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. ²⁹For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. ³⁰And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

 ³¹What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³²He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ³³Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶As it is written: 

   "For your sake we face death all day long; 

      we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." ³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Click here for the audio of Romans 8!