For about three years now I have been attending a church in Charlotte called Elevation, which is a nondenominational church that has fifteen locations around the Charlotte, NC area. The pastor is Steven Furtick who founded Elevation and their first service was on February 5, 2006. Since then the church has grown from 121 worshippers to now approximately 17,000 plus worshippers every Sunday. Recently, Pastor Steven did a three week sermon on relationships and he called it "The Other Half". Luckily, I was able to attend the first sermon in this series in Charlotte and the other two I viewed online at Elevationchurch.org. I wanted to share the three points he made during these sermons and how they changed my relationships with the people I love.

1. Fix Your Focus

Out of the three points I thought this was the hardest to wrap my head around. Pastor Steven makes the point of saying sometimes we feel as though we have lost the love in our relationships, but it is more that we have lost our focus. He preaches that "sometimes we are so focused on falling in love, that we are very uneducated about the process of staying in love." He goes on to ask if our focus is on finding or becoming and I believe this was the part of the sermon where I was thought "where is he going with this..." because how are we supposed to become something instead of finding someone? How is that supposed to help our relationships in life? But then he he said "happiness isn't finding the right person, it's being the right person." BAM. Then suddenly I understood. Relationships are not built on who we can find and how much we will love them once we find the one, but about loving yourself first and knowing who you are. We should not be seeking for another half; instead we should work on making ourselves whole because at the end of the day no one should complete you. And if you're religious, only God can fill that emptiness you feel. He is the one who makes us whole. Even if you are not religious by any means, just know that the boy or girl you are crushing on, they can never complete you as a person. Love yourself first because how will you be able to love anyone else until you love you?

2. The Prison Of Offense

This was by far my favorite sermon of the series because I knew I needed to hear this more than anything. I think with all of these sermons Pastor Steven preaches about things we all know but we never think about enough. In this sermon he talks about how it is the little things that build the division between us and the people we love. We find ourselves being defeated by the simple offenses in life rather than being able to overcome them. He uses one example that I think paints a great picture for what he is trying to explain, and he does it by bringing a couple on stage and playing out a hypothetical situation. Let's say that there is a couple and their names are Jane and Mike. Now, in Jane's house birthdays were a huge deal. Her mom would wake her up with a birthday breakfast, presents, the whole family would come over, and it was a huge celebration all day. So when Jane spends her first birthday with Mike as a married couple and he wakes her up with a "Happy Birthday!" and a kiss on the head, Jane is going to be offended. But you see, Mike doesn't know how important birthdays are to Jane. Instead of talking about this problem, Jane just takes an offense and lets the negative energy grow inside of her. The point is all these small offenses will build up and begin to corrupt our relationships we have with the people we love. So a way Pastor Steven says we need to deal with these simple offenses is to just drop it. Of course we can deal with what happened and say how we feel, but after you have had the conversation of "hey birthdays used to be a big deal in my house, so it hurt my feelings when you didn't do all of these special things," you then have to learn to drop it and move on. We cannot let the negative energy of simple offenses resonate inside of us because it will poison our relationships in the end.

3. Give What You Want

This sermon was preached by Steven Furtick's wife, Holly Furtick. I thought it was interesting that she spoke in the relationship series because it gave the audience another insight than just Pastor Steven. She spoke about how we should give what we want and we will get what we need. In the majority of our relationships we tend to give or do things with the expectation that we will get something in return. We look for words of affirmation, material items, or anything else to know the other person noticed what we did for them. Holly's take on this was that we should give without expecting anything in return. When I first heard this sermon I thought about the relationship I have with my mom. My mom is honestly the greatest mom out there in my opinion, and I have watched her make all of my meals everyday, come home from a busy day at work and clean the entire house, walk the dog, take out the trash, and do all of these things that go unnoticed by my sister and I. Of course she would ask us to help and we would, but most of the time we had bratty attitudes about it, or we would pull the whole "give me 5 minutes and I'll do it" then 30 minutes later it's still not done. And after listening to this sermon I could only think about my mom. She did those things because she loves us and wants us to have a great home life, and she wants to cook for us and she wants us to love being home. She gave what she wanted. It's not like she complains to me everyday now saying "remember these past 19 years that I have been cooking you meals? Where's my return for all of my hard work?" No of course she doesn't say that. She might think that sometimes, but she doesn't let that effect our relationship. We should give what we want in our relationships with others to know that one day we will get what we need. Do things for others because you love them, not because you want them to notice and reward you for it. If you live in that mindset your relationship will not be built on a good foundation.

I strongly believe this series can help anyone with relationship issues even if they are not religious at all. I was able to figure out so much about myself and where I am at fault in my relationships with the people I love the most. I am still not by any means perfect with my relationships with people, but now if I find myself conflicted with an issue with my mom, sister, dad, or significant other I am able to step back and see where the root of the problem is. Maybe I am relying on them too much when I need to work on myself and my self love. Maybe I am building a wall of offenses against them that I need to just drop. Or maybe I am looking for an unknown appreciation when I voluntarily do nice things for someone, and they don't understand the affirmation I am looking for. I hope this article is helpful to anyone out there who feels like their relationship is falling apart, or to anyone who is trying to build a relationship with a stable foundation. Also, I completely recommend watching the sermons at Elevationchurch.org because they are incredible. Have a blessed day!