Steven Furtick - Breaking News: Scrolling For Hours Causes Anxiety
This is an excerpt from: Why Am I Anxious?
"Search me…" Those two words would set you free from 90% of the drama, because some of you borrow drama trying to look into other people's lives. Clap it's not like you. No one will know. "That's good, Pastor. Tell them". "Search me, God, and know my heart", Did you notice the shift? Kill 'em. The way things are in the world, these bloodthirsty men and all these selfish politicians and all this corruption, the systemic corruption. "God, do something about it". "Search me". Nothing changes until I do. "Know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts".
That's where I want to spend some time today. And I've been asking myself the question lately, this is my sermon title. "Why Am I Anxious". Why am I anxious? Apparently, according to my non-scientific YouTube study, all of you are anxious. And so I won't ask the question, have you experienced anxiety in the last week, because we live in the age of anxiety. Let's be honest about it. I mean, it is almost marketed to us through the stations that are supposed to be giving us our information. They actually engage us using fear tactics so that they can sell advertising time, often promoting the same drug and pharmaceutical companies, that is own by the same conglomerates that push out the information that is designed to make us anxious. But let's be careful, 'cause we sound like David now in verse 22. "Kill 'em, God". But David came to a place where he said, "You know, it's not what's happening out there, that make me anxious, it's what I allow in here to go undetected and unchecked. It's my thought process". He uses an actual Hebrew word that means disquieting thoughts. It's translated as closely as it can be into English, anxious thoughts.
So David is saying now it's not what is happening, that is creating anxiety, it is the way I am thinking about it. Look at verse 24. I know that David didn't know about neural pathways, but it sounds like he did because he said, "I want you to look inside, God, and see, if there is any offensive way in me". And now we know that when we think something long enough, it creates so 485 in our minds, a 77 in our minds. What's a highway in Toronto, L.J.? I don't know. The 401 for our Canadian friends and Drake. There's a process by which I get stuck in a rut. And so, David is saying, "See if I've been thinking in a way that has allowed the enemy to traffic in my mind where I've just been letting him in". And that's what I want to do today. I want to take you through a seven point test answering the question "why am I anxious", and hopefully help us to get past this point of answering that question with somebody else's name, and hopefully get us past the point of answering that question by mentioning something that is happening that is outside of our control, and hopefully to get us to the place where we can see that not only is God watching over my life, that's what David understood. It's that when Saul is trying to kill me, God is watching over me".
God has His surveillance system in every situation of my life. He will not suffer my foot to be moved. The Lord which keepeth thee, He's got 24/7 surveillance on me. Touch somebody; say, "You better be nice to me, God is watching how you treat me. God is watching how you talk to me and God likes me". How do you parents like it when somebody talks about one of your kids? God feels that way about you times 1.000 and He's watching out for you. So why am I anxious if my Father knows me needs? Why am I anxious if He's numbered the hairs on my head? Why am I anxious if He promised to supply every need? And I've got to get honest about it. I'm not necessarily referring to this in medical sense. Please don't take this to mean that I'm saying that your sin or behavioral choices are always responsible for anxiety. But what I want to show you today, regardless of where it's coming from, 'cause I'm not a doctor. You have to talk to Stacey if you want some help with that. But maybe there are some ways in me that are making me vulnerable to the way that things are, and allowing me to remain anxious. When the Bible says, "Do not be anxious," I don't think it means that we can never feel anxiety. It is when we stay anxious.
It doesn't mean that there won't be moments and seasons in your life where your hands are shaking. Demi Lovato couldn't sing the National Anthem without her hands shaking. I don't know if you saw it. She sang it in front of a lot of people. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about this pervasive sense of when things are going right you can't even enjoy them because it probably won't last long. I mean, looking around every corner for what's going to happen next, and I want to take you through something quickly today. It's kind of a sermon/seminar from Psalm 139. It's a psalminar. I thought you'd like that. It's a psalminar. And pay attention and write this down. If you don't write this down, you're not going to sleep any this week. You're going to have horrible stomach pains while you try to sleep. But write this down and God'll bless you.
Number one, when I am anxious, ask somebody next to you, "Why are you anxious". Alright, the first thing to check is your intake. The first thing that I consider when I'm anxious is how full I am of what? Because I found out that anxiety and cellulite have one thing in common, you can't pray either one of them away. They are both about intake. Oo, they showed me this new feature on my phone the other day. Can I show you? My kids are always showing me stuff and so they showed me a feature on my phone the other day. Oh, I've got a text from Holly. Okay. She just told me this should be my next book. Okay, but let me show you something else right now. You know, all these great functions on the iPhone, this is, what is this, a 7? A 7? The iPhone 7 has this function, and I want to show it to you. If you hit this button and hold it on the side, and then, you'll be shocked how many, y'all don't want to learn nothing today. You would be shocked, 'Cause I'm going to tell you a secret.
There is no way that we can... Take it, Touch somebody and say, "It's too much". We can't take it all in and still have room for the peace of God. You're praying for the peace of God. God doesn't have anywhere to put it. Your mind is too full. You were not designed to have the entirety of the conversation of the whole human race buzzing on your back pocket, on your butt bone; just walking around like snipers. What did they say? Where did they go on vacation? What about that press conference? It was not supposed to be this way. Of course, we're freaking out. Of course, we're zombies. Of course, we're numbing ourselves and drinking and smoking and popping. Of course, we can't stop it. The devil's got a shock collar, and we don't even know it.
Now, I'm messing up my seminar. Sit down. My psalminar. So you want me to like give you inspiration for 45 minutes every week, and you're going to lay it over top of 17 hours of media that is designed to hardwire the way you think. Then hope to we have peace if we don't make a place for it? And they used to teach me in youth camp this saying called Garbage In Garbage Out, and it was basically a way of saying "don't listen to rock and roll music and watch bad movies". And there's some good to that too. I think you've got to be in tune with your conscience in terms of what creates a sense of darkness in you. And you have to know that and we shouldn't make rules for each other, but say, "God, search me". I think that's very good. But I also think that sometimes what we don't take in is just as fatal to our faith as what we do take in. I think some of us are on a spiritual starvation diet and we don't even know it. And so, we have faith that we don't feed and then we cannot access the strength that we actually possess if we feed it.
And so, you've got to get your intake levels up. Buck, when he first started trying to get me to work out more, he said, "The first thing I want you to do," because he was telling me the only way for me to get the result I wanted, he said, "You've got to do two things". What as the little cheesy motivational poster you had up in your gym? "You can't out train a bad diet"? Is that what it said? And he was like, "So I want you to keep a food log and write down everything you eat". And I didn't do it, but I thought it was a good idea because before I can change what I take in, I need to know, track what I take in. I wonder what it would look like if you kept a thought log of just what you let in. So if you let the enemy in and then pray for God to drive him out, it creates a cycle where you are creating your own state of mind that you're trying to pray away. So there has to be a knowledge "Search me, God". You have to let God show you. You have to let His eyes see what it is that you're taking in. And I even mean this in terms of relationships.
Some of the people that you're around are draining your faith. And I know you have to be around them a little bit, but you might need to put on a little protective, yeah, like UV75. SPF75. Spiritual Protection 75, just to get around them. And I think it would be good sometimes for us to check our intake levels. "Oh, well, you know what? I didn't read a Bible verse since the last time they put one on the screen for me at Elevation Church". I've got all these apps on my phone and 97% of them are empty calories. I mastered Candy Crush. I'm not saying don't play Candy Crush, 'cause Holly would leave me if I put that out there in the universe. She loves Candy Crush. But I'm pretty concerned sometimes that we're filling ourselves with empty calories; and then so we're weak in the battle and we wonder why. Check your intake.