Seven-Mile Miracle: Journey into the Presence of God Through the Last Words of Jesus - Hardcover

Furtick, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1601429223 ISBN 13: 9781601429223

Publisher: Multnomah, 2017

Synopsis

His Final Words Are Your New Beginning
 
It’s Good Friday. The Son of God is giving up his life. What does he want to say to us in His final hours? What does He tell the people standing at the foot of the cross, to pass down to the ages? He speaks only seven short statements. Words of forgiveness, salvation, relationship, abandonment, distress, triumph, and reunion. Seven statements that mean everything.
 
In Seven-Mile Miracle, Pastor Steven Furtick shows us how Jesus’s last words offer mile markers for our journey in relationship with God. It’s a lifelong journey and it’s not always easy. But Jesus is both our guide and our destination as we travel. 

Includes questions for reflection and a forty-day reading guide to Jesus’s death and resurrection.

A Proven Path for Spiritual Growth
 
From time to time we all feel stuck in our relationship with God and frustrated by life’s setbacks. Jesus faced what could have been the ultimate defeat on the cross. Yet he emerged triumphant through his relationship with his heavenly Father. And he showed us the way so that we could do the same.
 
In Seven-Mile Miracle, Steven Furtick explores how Jesus’s seven last statements on the cross offer a proven spiritual growth path for us. You will experience the Easter message more personally than ever before as you engage the words of forgiveness, salvation, relationship, abandonment, distress, triumph, reunion.
 
After all, we are not simply believers—people who have put our faith in Jesus. We are not simply disciples—pupils who learn from him. We are called to be followers of Christ. This is your opportunity to follow Jesus through his death, and move forward in his resurrection power, starting now.

About this title

About the Author:

STEVEN FURTICK is the New York Times best-selling author of Sun Stand Still, Greater, Crash the Chatterbox, and (Un)Qualified. He is also the founder and lead pastor of Elevation Church, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, which since its founding in 2006, has grown to multiple locations across several states. He preaches around the world and holds a Master of Divinity degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Steven and his wife, Holly, have three children.

Follow him on social media @StevenFurtick.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

IN T R ODUC T ION          
M.O.G.
Easter is kind of like the Super Bowl of Christianity, don’t you think?
Our church—Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina—expends a tremendous amount of energy every year around Easter. Countless hours of planning and rehearsal go into preparing for our worship experiences with hundreds of volunteers donating thousands of hours to make it all happen.
Our team goes all out for these services. Original music. Dramatic live elements. Video presentations. Projection mapping. Creative lighting and sound effects. And I try to deliver the most powerful presentation of the gospel message I can. All of this— from the technical elements to the proclamation of truth—is executed with our best efforts. All for the greatest possible purpose—to declare that Jesus is Lord over life and death and that God’s grace is greater than our sin and shame.
Sure, I know Easter and Christmas have the reputation of being the times of the year when the “nominal” believers show up at a church service just to keep their Christian membership in good standing. But I think these holidays can also be times when God-seekers dare to venture out of the shadows, hoping to sample something supernatural. What’s wrong with that, at least as a start? The spiritually curious are totally welcome at Elevation—at Easter or on any given Sunday. And we’ve been able to witness thousands of spiritually curious people become seriously devoted followers of Jesus during Easter worship experiences at Elevation.
My wife, Holly, and I and the rest of our original team started Elevation Church with the belief that vast numbers of people in our world are hungry to experience God. Some are far away from him, and they know it, so they’re looking for a way to bridge the distance. Others have turned their lives over to Jesus, yet they real- ize their relationship with God isn’t all it could be. It isn’t growing. It doesn’t measure up to the hopes they had at one time. They know there’s got to be more to being in a relationship with God—but how?
More of God. M.O.G. That’s what people want—whether they know it or not. Because it’s what we all need.
Do you feel that hunger too?
If you do, that’s a good thing. That hunger is the starting place of being filled with God’s presence. But you don’t have to look for God on your own—wandering around aimlessly, frustrated and feeling like a failure. Instead, you can take your first step on a proven path to meeting God and knowing him better and better.
Let me warn you, however, this path isn’t an easy one. It’s riddled with difficulty and distress. But, if you’re willing to take this journey with Jesus as both your companion and your destination, you will experience God’s power in ways you didn’t even know were possible. And while knowing it’s going to be difficult may discourage you, don’t let it. Easy isn’t what you’re called to. On this journey, fulfillment can never be measured in units of convenience and comfort.
This experience begins with both a map and a set of mile markers. First, the map. You’ve got a seven-mile journey in front of you, my friend.
 
 
Resurrected and on the Road Again
 
Imagine you’re Jesus and it’s Resurrection Sunday. In the early morning, you have come back to life and left your tomb. To mark the soul-shaking importance of this event, an earthquake has shaken the land. An angel has rolled aside the stone blocking your tomb’s entrance, allowing some of your friends to peer in and see that you are gone. Meanwhile, perhaps you wander around the cemetery garden a bit all alone (the flowers smell great after you’ve been dead for three days!). But soon you show yourself to Mary Magdalene and, a little later, to some of your disciples to let them know the incredible news that you are back.
So far, so good. But what do you do next?
Well, if you’re Jesus, you go for a walk. The story is told in Luke 24:13–35, and it provides us with our map—a template or pattern, if you will—for our spiritual journey in life.
According to the story, two of Jesus’s followers heard early reports about the Resurrection but didn’t take them seriously enough to let these reports alter their plans to leave Jerusalem and travel to the nearby town of Emmaus. One of these two followers was a guy named Cleopas. Who was the other one? We don’t know because the story doesn’t give us his or her name. There’s a good chance, though, that this second person was Cleopas’s wife. Apparently, they had a house in Emmaus and were going home after spending the Passover holiday in Jerusalem.
Whoever these two were, at one time they’d no doubt had high hopes in Jesus. But after his death, it seemed like the show was over. They were still sure he’d been a great man, an outstanding prophet even, but his death seemed to have put an end to their hopes that he would turn out to be the long-promised Messiah who would rescue Israel. As for the reports that Jesus had risen from the dead, that was just bizarre. Come on, to do that—he’d have to be divine!
These two didn’t really get Jesus. And he took their misunderstanding so seriously that he spent a big piece of his first day back from the dead making sure they did get him. He’d spent much of his ministry years traveling around Israel with his disciples, teaching them as he went, and now he went on the road again to show these two people who he was.
Another motive for Jesus going to Emmaus with Cleopas and Unnamed Follower #2 probably was that he wanted to keep his people corralled in Jerusalem for the time being.1 The departure of these two was the first sign that Jesus’s squad was starting to scatter. So he wanted to head the travelers off at the pass. He wanted to put them back on the path to knowing him, just as he wants to put us back on the same path when we’ve begun to stray.
Luke, who narrates this story, informs us that the town of Emmaus was sixty stadia, or about seven miles, from Jerusalem. That makes for about a two-hour walk. Jesus appeared at the side of these two people and asked if he could tag along with them.
Sure. Come along.
The strange thing is, Cleopas and his companion had no idea it was Jesus who joined them on their journey.
Why weren’t these two followers of Jesus able to recognize him? Maybe because they weren’t expecting to see him. After all, in their minds he was a corpse. Or maybe they didn’t recognize him because he looked different after his resurrection. Maybe. But perhaps Jesus actually prevented them from recognizing him. Maybe he supernaturally interfered with the facial recognition software running in their brains—because he had a big reveal in store for them shortly.
Let’s be clear that Jesus wasn’t just messing with the two travelers. He had a reason for concealing his identity. Cleopas and his companion didn’t accept Jesus’s real identity as the Son of God and Messiah, despite the things they’d heard him say and the miracles they’d seen him perform, and so it fit perfectly that now they didn’t recognize his face either. They had eyes but failed to see, as Jesus described spiritual blindness on another occasion.2
So Jesus took over the conversation on the road, preaching a walking sermon and using the Hebrew Scriptures to explain that the Messiah had to die and be raised again. He started with Moses and ended with Malachi, putting the Word of God (at least so far as it related to himself) in a new light for them.
As a preacher, I work hard to make sure the truths that I’ve discovered connect with people in meaningful ways. I love when I see that people are nodding along, shouting amen, or even crying, because these can be indications that God’s Word is connecting with their hearts.
I’m in awe of the effect Jesus’s preaching had in his two followers because the story tells us that their hearts burned within them while Jesus explained what the Hebrew Scriptures foretold about him.3 They felt like they were on fire inside! Jesus’s words burned up their old preconceived notions about the Messiah and lit a fire of hope and new understanding within them. They were catching on to God’s plan to redeem all things through the sacrifice of his Son, and it was amazing!
These two were starting to get the picture of who Jesus really was. But they still didn’t connect it all with the man who was talking to them.
At the end of their journey, the two travelers finally did realize who the man walking beside them was. I’m going to tell that part of the story when we get to Mile 7. But for now I want us to think about that journey as the pair gradually came to understand Jesus better, ending in a miraculous vision of the risen Lord. Why’s it important to us? Because this is the journey we need to take in our lives. Like those two people on the road that day, you and I have got to walk with Jesus, learning from him, observing his ways, and more and more seeing him in his greatness.
We’ve all got a seven-mile road of our own to travel.

The Jesus Highway

Jesus was a walker. Throughout his ministry years, Jesus gathered his team around him and then crisscrossed the country. Some- times he headed toward towns and villages where people needed his words and his touch. Sometimes he headed away from people, because he needed to get alone with his Father and pray. Some- times he stopped by Jerusalem for one of the big religious festivals. Sometimes he had strange appointments in out-of-the-way places that nobody else knew anything about (a woman of low morals in Samaria, a demon-possessed man in Gerasa, for instance).
The disciples had to have wondered how Jesus came up with his itinerary. And maybe Google sync could have helped them get their calendars synchronized with his agenda. But whether or not they understood what was going on at any given time, they went along with him. You see, they knew who they were:
Followers.
Jesus’s first words of calling to his disciples were really simple: “Follow me.”4 He wanted them to come along with him and pick things up from him as he went about his business. And so that’s what they did. They followed Jesus, both literally and metaphorically, for the duration of his ministry on earth.
Eventually, at the Last Supper, Jesus told the disciples, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now.”5 He was going to the cross alone. So for once these men would have to wait while Jesus went on ahead without them. It must have been disorienting for them. They were used to following Jesus. They wanted to keep following Jesus. For now, they could only follow so far.
But then Jesus added, “You will follow later.” They would re- join him for a few precious weeks after his resurrection. Then, for the rest of their lives, they would learn to follow his example and leading through the Holy Spirit. In fact, after spreading the word about Jesus far and wide, most of them would become martyrs for his cause. That is, they would follow him all the way to death’s door . . . and through it. They would follow him all the way to heaven.
Let me show you why this is all significant for us.
One morning after Jesus was resurrected, he was having breakfast with the disciples—the original Breakfast Club. This was the setting where he and Peter had the legendary conversation in which Jesus said “Do you love me?” three times. After Peter assured Jesus three times that he did love him, and after Jesus told Peter three times to “feed my lambs,” Jesus said this to Peter: “Follow me.”6
At the beginning of their earthly story together, it was “Follow me.” At the end it was “Follow me” too. It seems that following was the basic condition for being one of Jesus’s people.
And it’s not just the original disciples who are Jesus’s followers.
When Jesus gave his Great Commission with the word go, he turned us all into people who are to navigate the surface of the planet in obedience to his calling. We’re never alone in doing this. He’s right there by our side. We’ve got Jesus with us “to the very end of the age.”7
So we’re not just to be believers—people who have put our faith in Jesus. We’re not just to be disciples—pupils who learn from him. We’re not just to be Christians—those who are known by his name. We’re also to be followers.
Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny them- selves and take up their cross and follow me.”8 Like sheep who hear the voice of a shepherd we know and trust, we follow him.9
Our spiritual journey is not one we take by striking out on our own. We’re following in the footsteps of someone else—Jesus. He’s our trailblazer. He has gone ahead of us in life as a human being, and he has gone ahead to heaven to prepare a place for us there.10
But Jesus is not just our trailblazer; he’s also the trail itself!
When Jesus announced he was going away (to heaven),
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”11
Jesus answered, “I am the way.”12 He’s a path, a road, a way.
To elaborate, he said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” A journey with Jesus, it turns out, is the only way to truly have more of God.
The apostle Paul understood this. He had a hunger for M.O.G., saying, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”13 That’s exactly what we’re doing in Seven- Mile Miracle: following Jesus through his death and into his resurrection so that we can be like him.
Paul was totally determined to keep going. He said, “Forget- ting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”14
Straining forward. Pressing on.
Reaching toward.
We’ll make it to our destination if we keep going and do not stop. The way has already been made.

Famous Last Words
 
I hate exercising, but I do it because I feel like I’m supposed to. I work out with other people to make sure I keep going. One of the guys I work out with likes to do timed exercises and thinks it’s really clever not to tell me how much time we have left on an exercise. He just tells me when we’re done.
I told him one day, “From now on, I need you to give me some mile markers, because I need some encouragement when I’m in the middle of the exercise. Tell me, ‘Halfway there,’ even if I’m not halfway. Lie to me. Just tell me what you need to tell me to keep me going for another rep, because I can’t just be doing this and not know how much longer I have left.”
Wouldn’t it be great if we had a time clock or some mile markers to tell us where we are on our journey with God—and how much further we have to go? To my knowledge, no such definitive measurement of progress exists. But for this seven-mile journey we’re beginning together, we’re going to mark our miles with the statements Jesus made on the cross.
There’s something about people’s last words uttered in this life that inspire our curiosity or cause us to treat them as especially weighty. To the law, a dying declaration is testimony that can be admitted as evidence in court cases despite being hearsa...

About this edition

• Publisher: Multnomah
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1601429223
• ISBN 13: 9781601429223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192