By Mark Christy
Steven Furtick’s work is praised by Craig Groeschel, Andy Stanley, Brian Houston, T.D. Jakes, Jack Graham, and Ed Young. His goal is to help his readers silence “the lies resounding inside [their] minds that keep [them] from hearing the voice of God” (213). These lies, according to him, include feelings of insecurity, fear, condemnation, and discouragement. To combat these lies, Furtick offers some Scripture, some advice and applications that are loosely derived from Scripture, and an amalgamation of personal stories. Despite Furtick’s professed call to the ministry and Paul’s directive to ministers to watch their doctrine closely, much frustration is in store for any of Furtick’s readers who may be expecting commentary that is theologically precise and discussion that is based on sound exposition of Scripture.
Given that Furtick is a well-known Christian pastor, it is hardly surprising that his book contains many Christian themes and appeals to the Scripture. Even so, much of the work seems to be what could be termed as Christianized psychobabble that seems to be more in common with self-help literature and admonitions from the field of psychology. Furtick himself acknowledges that his conclusions are in agreement with a work by secular psychologist Susan Jeffers who wrote Feel the Fear. . . Do It Anyway even while he chooses to expand upon her solutions essentially by Christianizing them by making loose appeals to Scripture (88).
At least in part, Furtick acknowledges the place of God’s word in fighting the inner battle with the mind. He notes that God’s “voice rises from the pages of Scripture, which is the exact expression of His Will” (3). Unfortunately, he then speaks of “reminders” or affirmations sent by God through “a simple picture, song, text, or conversation” (3). He then goes on to describe his impressions of God speaking very precisely to his heart about things unrelated to the teaching of Scripture (3-4).
According to Furtick, he has a “ceaseless war going on inside [his] heart and [his mind]” with the devil who is trying “to dominate [his] mind with the kinds of fears that control [him] a lot of the time” (1, 46-47). While giving the devil plenty of credit in regard to his internal struggle, Furtick does state that “the condition of our hearts and minds” is the “most immediate problem” (8). He loosely bases his argument on Paul’s discussion on his struggle against his flesh in Romans 7.
As a preacher, Furtick also reveals his internal struggles with preaching the Word of God. He basically admits (in a roundabout way) that he has to “confidently declare truths to others that [he] often [has] a hard time believing” (24). To bolster his insecurity during the sermon, he adds (once again in a roundabout way) that he “look[s] for external signs of approval from the people [he is] preaching to” (24).
Since this is his experience as a ‘Christian’, he writes his book in the hope of helping all Christians engage in this internal battle successfully. For his part, he believes he has learned how to win this battle of the mind. Essentially, he says that we can enable our power to choose which voice we give credence to (4). He then directs his readers to choose God’s voice. By choosing God’s voice, he seems to mean that believers should choose to faith God on particular promises and statements that have been selected by Furtick and assembled into a mantra that will help them successfully engage in their internal struggles (9). His mantra includes four confessions: “God Says I am”, “God says He will”, “God says He has”, and “God says I can” (15). According to him, these “confessions are life-giving, faith-increasing statements” that are to be repeated frequently so that they will “produce miraculous results when actively applied” (15). Apparently, Furtick would have Christians turn God’s word into a source for mantras that are to be rehearsed instead of holy writ that is to be carefully and consistently thought through.
Before unfolding his mantras in detail, he informs his readership (who he must assume to be Christians) that they are all members of God’s elect (25). At no point in his book does he inform his readers against the possibility that they may be self-deceived, that they may have been fooled into believing that they are Christians when they are not. Both James and Jesus mention the possibility of being self-deceived and being a fake Christian (Matt 7:15-23; James 1-2).
Furtick’s omission of any discussion of the potential for one to be self-deceived is compounded by his failure to adequately address God’s wrath against sin and God’s requirement of repentance.[i] At one point, Furtick proclaims that Christians are accepted with the same unconditional love that Jesus Himself received from God: “The acceptance [Christ] had, you have. The love He unconditionally received; you unconditionally receive” (28). While this message is popularly accepted among the misinformed and those poorly rooted in the teaching of Scripture, it actually breaks down fairly easy if examined against the basic teachings of Scripture. God’s love is intimately and perfectly woven into His character, person, and nature, and therefore is inseparable from His other divine attributes. For this reason, the sin of Adam and Eve led to their separation from God. Also, for this reason, Jesus had to die for the sin of God’s people to completely satisfy God in His fulness (e.g. His holiness[ii]) and thereby fulfill the conditions set forth by God’s character which would have prevented God’s love from being made available to sinners. Finally, sinners themselves are conditioned to repent and believe the gospel if God’s love is to be made complete in them.
To his credit, Furtick declares a Christian’s personal responsibility for sin and corresponding need to confess, but then he limits confession to mere agreement. Certainly, true biblical confession requires an acknowledgement of one’s personal accountability and an agreement of the sinfulness of sin, but it should also include Godly sorrow, a hatred against the sin, and a sincere desire for God’s forgiveness and restoration (Rom 7:15; 2 Cor 7:10-11).
Not only does Furtick fail to consider self-deception and adequately explain the nature of God’s love, he declares that God is required to love those who make a simple confession of faith: “God loves me. Yeah, yeah, because He has to. Because I prayed and asked Jesus to be my Savior. I did the deal. And God promised that anyone who would believe would be saved. Consequently, God loves me” (36). While Furtick may have made a decision for Christ, the question that must be asked (by him) is whether God has made a decision to save Furtick. Once again, a person who makes a simple profession of faith may be self-deceived. Since Furtick omits any biblically valid account to repentance, then one should have further concern as to whether or not his salvation experience is valid. His diminutive discussion about his experience should be a concern as well. Essentially, Furtick’s decision allows him to subsume God to the requirement to love whereby God becomes obligated to Furtick and loses the opportunity to freely obligate Himself on Furtick’s behalf. The Bible declares that God does the initial choosing and in so doing He willfully takes on the responsibility to redeem His people (Rom 9; Col 3:12; 2 Thess 2:13).
The lack of discussion on the need for repentance throughout Furtick’s discourse may be due to his belief that sin in the life a believer does not break their fellowship with God (37). He feels that such a belief only causes a believer to experience even greater internal struggles in the battle within their minds. While the Bible is clear that those who are saved are completely forgiven (Acts 10:43; 26:18; Eph 1:7; Col 1:14), the Scripture also teaches Christians to repent of their sins and continue to receive God’s promised forgiveness as they live their Christian lives. For example, the Lord’s prayer specifically includes a request for forgiveness to be uttered by the faithful in their prayers (Luke 11:4). The verb tenses employed in 1 John 1:7, 9 make it clear that ongoing confession, repentance, and prayers seeking forgiveness are a part of the Christian life (cf. 1 John 5:13).[iii]
For Furtick, the Christian’s struggle is not so much with sin but the effects of sin upon their minds. Given this, he directs his readers to fight against the devil’s attempts to question their “identity as God’s children” (57). As the father of lies, the devil will certainly attack any biblical truth that emphasizes the Christian’s identity in Christ. That being said, it would seem that limiting the devil’s work to only lies that go against these truths is a contention by Furtick that would fail to find merit upon careful study of the Scriptures.
Unlike Christians, Furtick proclaims that Christ could withstand Satan’s attacks because he was able to perfectly employ the Word of God when tempted (57-58). For Furtick, it was not Christ’s perfect character, perfect submission, and perfect love of God, it was his ability to merely perfectly apply God’s Word to the temptation being thrown against Him. Likewise, he would have his readers learn to perfectly apply God’s word against their temptations while making very little demands upon their state of their character. By having his readers focus on their identity in Christ exclusively, the question of their character, it would seem, becomes a non-starter. To ground this in Scripture, Furtick adds that Jesus not only correctly applied Scripture to Satan’s assaults, he resolutely understood His own identity as the Son of God (60).
Due to Furtick’s overwhelming focus on one’s identity in Christ as the cure for the internal battle of the mind and his belief that ongoing requests for forgiveness have no place on the Christian life, he sets out to redefine what it means to fear the Lord in the life of the believer. For him, it means “being terrified of ever being outside of His protection” (74). Biblically, however, this fear is related to believer’s knowledge that God is holy and his saved people are saved that are totally reliant on His grace for salvation. With this knowledge, believers live their lives in reverential fear realizing their own frailty (Luke 18:13; 1 Cor 2:3; 2 Cor 5:11; 7:1).[iv]
Furtick’s confusion concerning the Christian’s identity may be related to his misunderstanding of the difference between the indwelling of the Spirit and the filling of the Spirit: “I want to believe that I’m filled with the Spirit, as He says I am. But if I’m filled with the Spirit, why am I so often led by my selfishness” (125)? The Bible teaches that all Christians are indwelled by the Spirit (John 14:16-17; 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19). In Greek, ‘be filled’ means ‘by being kept filled”. In Ephesians 5:15-18, Paul says that the filling of the spirit coincides with the believer’s willing submission to the Word of God. In vv.19-21, he adds that such submission leads to singing, thanksgiving, and humility. In Galatians 5:16-24, Paul juxtaposes the Spirit with the flesh and demonstrates clearly that both are in opposition to the other and therefore being filled with the Spirit would mean to avail oneself to the desires of God and not of the flesh.
At this point, Furtick has dispelled the need for the believer to biblically fear the Lord as he directs them to stand on their identity in Christ. With this, he is ready to take his readers into a discussion on how to overcome (the effects) of sin in their lives (84-85). Whereas John tells Christians to confess their sins to receive God’s cleansing, Furtick focuses his readers on the task of fighting against the consequences of those sins (1 John 1:9; cf. James 5:13). To accomplish this, he informs the reader that feelings of shame resulting from sin are to be associated with the work of the devil whereas the Holy Spirit “convicts of our sin by reminding of our righteousness” (146).[v] Once again, the reader is led to think that his/her identity in Christ is the ultimate if not only defense when engaged in the battle of the mind has been wrought by sins or its effects. In response, Furtick needs to reacquaint himself with whose righteousness a Christian is to proclaim. As Christians, our hope and our victory are based on the righteousness of Christ. While Christians can proclaim their righteousness, they must always make sure to acknowledge that their righteousness is IN CHRIST.
After laying the groundwork for the internal battle of the mind and what Furtick believes to be principles/truths for successful engagement, he then suggests that this battle will continue ceaselessly in the mind of the faithful. Instead of demonstrating this purported truth through an appeal to Scripture, Furtick chooses to look to the life of Mother Teresa and her ongoing battle of the mind as a supreme example of real believers who will never finish the fight in the mind in this life. This, however, seems unwise given the various accounts that question her character not to mention the use of any person to validate an instruction from Scripture.[vi]
In this internal struggle, Furtick wishes to affirm his readers of God’s ability to render us victorious and their corresponding “power to rejoice” (191). For him, entering God’s presence is a matter of the Christian choosing to praise God and give Him thanks instead of choosing to become bogged down in discontent: “Nothing will bring us into a consciousness of God’s presence more quickly and deeply than praising Him and giving thanks to Him” (188). For Furtick, “gratitude gives [Christians] access to the place God wants to take [them] and enable the things He wants to do through [them]” (190). He adds, “Gratitude is a key that brings freedom, a weapon that brings victory, and a connection to limitless joy in all circumstances” (192). Paul, however, in Ephesians tells Christians that praise and thankfulness flow naturally from one who is filled by the Spirit, i.e. one who is submitting themselves to God and His Word (5:15-21).
[i]See page 121-24. Here Furtick recounts a personal experience where he sinned and repented. Unfortunately, he fails to integrate repentance into his overall discussion regarding the internal struggle within the believer’s mind.
[ii]Furtick acknowledges God’s holiness (29).
[iii]John Macarthur, “if We Confess Our Sins,” Oneplace, Available at: https://www.oneplace.com/ministries/grace-to-you/read/articles/if-we-confess-our-sins-9344.html
[iv]Check contexts of Scriptural references to further enhance your understanding of what it means to fear the Lord.
[v]Furtick does seem to acknowledge that righteousness for the Christ is in Christ. Unfortunately, his theological imprecision would certainly lead to vast confusion amongst his less discerning readership. As a preacher, he should know better.
[vi]Many stories speaking unfavorably of Mother Teresa can be found online. Here is link to an account from John Macarthur where he reflects on his having visited Mother Teresa. See: John Macarthur, “John MacArthur’s View of Mother Teresa” (October 27, 2016), Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRUBrKeR1vg