Steven Furtick - How Your Thoughts Are Blocking God
Pastor StevenWe have so many misconceptions about what God needs to use to bless us or what we need to move forward, right? Like, okay, I need a team. Someone might say, and then I'll start this thing. Or I need somebody to come along and support me, or back me or finance me, or I need this perfect church. Or we get all this list of what we think we need for God to do it, right? And so we're holding onto that. Don't you think that a lot of what keeps us from moving forward. Is what we won't let go of. Our idea of how it should be. Our idea of the way we thought God was gonna make, I thought I'd be married and I'm twenty-five. And I was planning to get married at twenty-two. Well, that's the way I thought God was gonna make. Right. So I love what you said, like not only what God did in the past, but what I thought he was supposed to do. Right. And now I can't go forward. So. Let's have a little therapeutic coaching. I know you're not an is a Psychologist or a nutritionist. You know, I know that you're a coach, so let's coach somebody in faith who won't let go of something that they thought was supposed to happen. In order to go forward into the way God is making, they can't even see right now.
Brendon Burchard: Yeah. I think the, too often our vision becomes myopic on what was, and we're operating from here. What we should be operating from is our potential and into our future and the best of who we are. And so I always tell people never limit your vision for who you can be based on your past stories or your current circumstances. Because every great successful person there was that part of their story where they were broke down and out struggling and they just didn't choose to live there. They choose to work through it because they believe something good would happen. And so I think the first part is going, where is your vision? Where are you operating from? Are you operating from the past time zone or the current struggle time zone? Or are you living into and being the best of who you can be for the future? You, which is what your book is about? Yeah. And that's really powerful. Where are you operating and where's your vision? And then we also have to set up these rhythms in our life where we choose to release the tension and the disappointment.
Pastor StevenI love that rhythms where we choose to release our tension and disappointment. Yeah. So it's like, what are your rhythms of release? Write that down in the comments. Rhythms of release.
Brendon Burchard: Yeah. 'cause what happens is, you know, inevitably stuff builds up and we get disappointed, we get angry, we get hurt. And if we never release that, it's like a pressure cooker and one day it will release and it will release. A pipe burst. It'll release in an inappropriate way for people. That's why therapy's so powerful. You, you go every week or you talk to a coach, you talk to him every week. It's a place that you go to release your thoughts and your concepts and your frustrations and your plans and, but it can't just be releasing. It has to be what I always call you. Release the tension of that and you set the intention for what's next. So I'm somebody, I have to do this every hour. I'm easily distracted. I'm so enthusiastic. I wanna do this, I wanna do this, I wanna do this. And I know this about myself. So every hour, no matter what's happening, when I'm working at my desk, every hour a little timer goes off. I have next to my computer, press it start fifty-five minutes stops, and I push back and close my eyes, and I just start breathing. And I release the tension in my body, and I just repeat this little mantra to myself. Release, release, release.
Brendon Burchard: Release, and I might only do this for 2, 4, 5 minutes. Just release, release, trying to release all thoughts, all feelings, all emotions and tension in my body. Once I feel like I'm in a good place, open my eyes and I ask, okay, what's my intention for this next hour? And I learned that in helping a lot of people through grief and trauma. You know, sometimes we think our vision has to be this huge new thing, but when you're really struggling, what's the intention for the next hour? You know what, I'm gonna go pick up the kids and I'm gonna share some love with them. That's, that's the intention for the next hour. Yeah. But I don't wanna go pick up the kids carrying all that stuff. I always say before every significant interaction with somebody, if you can just release the tension. I teach people all the time if, if you're the one who goes to work and you come home to your partner or your spouse or the kids, when you pull up to that house, tell you what. Put the chair back, close your eyes, do a release meditation for about five minutes and say, what's my intention? Oh, my intention is go be a good dad. Go be a good mom. Go be a good provider. Go be a good servant, whatever it is, and these little moments that you're just releasing all this frustration and this tension. 'cause people carry a lot of tension and they get lost in the tension unless you release that. You know, you can use the metaphor of releasing baggage, but I don't like that metaphor as much, but. It's just releasing the tension and setting intention. It's a constant recalibration into the future and into your faith. Mm. And when you can recalibrate into my future, into my faith, then I can survive this moment.
Pastor StevenNow, what I love about this is how you broke it down and shrunk it. Because sometimes when we talk about letting go of the past, moving forward into the future, which is a lot of what this mindset is about with God, there's always a way. And by faith I will find it. We set that finder so far out in the future, five years from now, I want to be here. And sometimes what we really need to release happened five minutes ago. Not five years ago. And I love that you used the word rhythm because I like music so much that I thought, well that's brilliant because I've thought of letting go of what was as something I do. Maybe once. Like I let it go, God, how they hurt me, I let it go God. But when you put it in the term of a rhythm, that's not a rhythm, uh-Huh? Unless I do that. That right. That, that. So letting it go isn't letting it go unless I let it go every time it comes back up.
Brendon Burchard: Yeah. The stuff that your parents did or something that frustrates you. It's gonna come up over and over, and you let it go over and over. It's hard. You gotta let it go over and over. So this belief that one day you're, you know, completely spiritually free of all pain and problems in the past, maybe some people have that, but for most people, the difficulties of life happen on a recurring basis. There's a rhythm to that too. And so when it comes up again, oh, you know what? That's my old demons. They're fighting me again. You know what? That's that old behavior. I used to do that because he taught me to do that, or she said that. And so as it comes up, again, it's an active release process you're actively releasing. But here's the thing, if you just release it and you don't set intention for what's next, you'll keep falling prey. It'll keep pulling you back in. You have to set an intention that is higher or part of something that is higher. And that is where I meant by you have to set intention to your future and your faith over and over and over. It's like recalibrating back into him, back into spirit, because these things often they're dispiriting and you gotta connect to the spirit again. And so release the dispiriting things, tap back in to the spirited things. And when you teach yourself to do this over and over and over again, you suddenly realize I got a pretty good mindset.
Pastor StevenBecause. If our brain is operating off of the neural pathways that have created our thought pattern and our mindset is to think a different way, then we can basically say that seeing the way that God is making is a product of thinking the way God thinks. So we're possibly looking at something right now that would be an opportunity, or you could reconcile or. You could actually have love in your life or support in your life, right? And you're telling yourself you can't. And the reason you're telling yourself that you can't right now is because the way that you are thinking. I like how we call God a way maker, but there are also God blockers in our life. Like think about if God is the way maker. There are God blockers. Those are the thoughts, the thoughts that cause us to say. Well, if it would've happened, uh, five years ago, I believe it, but it would've happened by now if it was going to happen. Or things like that don't happen to me. They don't happen for me, they happen for others. Or maybe somebody told you, like, I remember my dad was, we, we both shared about our dads today and Yeah. I learned a little bit more about your dad and I didn't tell you much about my dad. We just realized our dads both went to heaven when we were about the same age. About thirty-two or thirty-three years old. Yeah. And, you know, my dad was, he was a passionate guy. Um, one time somebody was telling me, you'll never be able to go to college. Um, you won't be able to afford it. And they were saying, I didn't go to college. And so you're not gonna go to college and you need to make peace with it. It sounds like a weird thing for somebody to tell a kid. Right. And it kind of was, I was only like 10 or 11. Oh, wow. And I don't even know why they were saying that, but my dad goes, um. Shut your stupid mouth to this other person. And this is not probably recommended parental advice. He said, if I have to kill somebody to get the money to send that boy to college, if he makes good grades and wants to go to college, he'll go to college and I got a scholarship instead. So I went to college, he'd have to kill anybody. The story doesn't have a weird ending. Where then that's the day my dad died.
Brendon Burchard: Uh, the, the...
Pastor Steven...the point of it was that. He wasn't gonna have me limited. We've talked in the previous mindsets and I want you to go back and watch all of them. 'cause we talked about I'm not stuck unless I stop. We talk about coming from abundance in the mindset Christ is in me. I'm enough. But now we're moving deeper into this to say our, your thoughts, the result of seeds that someone planted and that someone wasn't God. And if they were, can you go back by faith? Uproot those through the process. Well, what does that look like? I love Brendan's Handles. Release attention set the intention. The intention of what? The intention of your future and your faith with God. There's always a way by faith. I will find it, and maybe that's why you haven't found it yet, right? Because you're not looking by faith, right? You're looking by sight. And so I don't see it and I've never seen it and I've never been it and I've never done it. But this mindset is by faith, I will find it. So how does faith open up your eyes to possibilities that we're there all along and, and how do you tap into it practically? Because a lot of people will say, so I'm just supposed to, what? Lift my hands. I'm just supposed to quote a Bible verse. Well, yeah. All of that's good. Yeah. Yeah. But there's an actual way to activate faith too.
Brendon Burchard: That's practical. Yeah. I think you begin, if you are looking backwards, look backwards and notice that all the big moves in your life and all the big random things that look so random, they happened when you were in motion. You were in motion, and Serendipity happened. You were in motion and you met this person. Who gave you this lesson that helped open this door later? It's like Steve Jobs said, you never connect the dots until you look backwards. And I think that when you do look backwards, you start to realizing, oh wait. Wow. God's grace is right there. I never thought about that. Huh? God opened the door right there. I didn't know that. And what happens is you start to realize that all these things have already opened for you, but they always happen when you're in motion. You made a decision, you went for it. You tried something. And some big lesson or a failure or a pivotal point happened, but they always happen when you're in motion. And so when you trust in that, you say, interesting doors looking backwards. I can see doors open when I was in motion. Let me get in motion now 'cause I want new doors to open. Hmm, come on. I want new doors to open for me. So I have to be in motion. I have this belief, I have this desire, I have this dream. Move. Yeah. And you write so eloquently about this in the book, it's like, move, move. Because when you move, the doors are open or you're gonna blast through 'em and discover something. But for the most often. I think that what people discover is, wow, when I get in motion, amazing things start happening. Yeah. These random people come into my life. Yeah, that's when I met my wife, or that's when I met this business partner, or that's when I got that first sale that led to this sale, and they can start, connect, connect that forward again with that trust and the faith that will happen again. I think coming from that standpoint, it's like it's evidence-based. There's a lot of evidence that great things happen when you are in motion and a lot of things when you are stopping yourself. Fearing yourself. You know, laying on the couch week after week in self-pity. There wasn't nothing that happening. Nothing was happening. You were in the 17th bag of Cheetos. Nothing happened. But when you got in motion, oh, okay, you got tired of sitting around and you tried something, something opened. So I think first, stepping into that. Truth in the smallest motion. Small motion. Get outta the house today. Yeah, get the shower today.
Pastor StevenGo ask for help today. I didn't tell you the story, but I'll, I'll give it to you now and maybe I've shared it publicly, but I don't think that I have, I feel like I should though, when it was time for me to write this book and I felt like you're either gonna do this now and write this because the message was coming alive in me, but. I had become pretty discouraged about the writing process, you know, going from the spoken word, which I'm more comfortable with. And I have a lot of muscle memory with to the written word and the way I would judge it. And I would think, this is not very literary. So everything in me was telling me you're not, um, you're not an author. You know, back to the identity, Christ is in me. I am enough arguing for your limitations. All of these mindsets build on each other, right? Yeah. Which is really why I want you to share every session and read the book. But the book actually was completely stalled out in my mind. I tried to write another book, and I remember the day that I had a blank afternoon on my calendar and something told me that today was the day. To set the book in motion. And when you said motion, something jumped in me. 'cause I wanted to say this for the person who is like, I, I know that there's something that, that God has put out in front of me in my future, but I am completely paralyzed by what I feel. And here's what I did that day. I went in my closet, I put on a suit. I never wear suits, but I put on a suit and I drove to my office. I called my literary agent and I stood there in a suit, not on a Zoom call, a phone call. So why am I wearing a suit? To set it in motion? It was my way of saying to myself, I'm in business, and this wasn't when I was twenty-three just starting out in ministry. This is recently that I had to do this for myself. Yes, to let myself know we mean business. And the series of meetings that were set up on that day, standing there in a suit that was, by the way, a little too tight because I hadn't put it on in a couple of years. And as the suit squeezed the blood out of me, the faith began to blow. And one of the reasons that the book is here today is because, like I said, instead of sitting and waiting for God to deliver away or make it obvious, I, I chose motion. And I think set it in motion is a great thing to add to this mindset. It's not just the mindset, but it's setting that mindset in motion that even the smallest step of putting on a suit, even the smallest step. Of setting up a call, even the smallest step of Flushing it, and telling somebody to ask you about that addiction and asking somebody to, to check in on you. Did you set up the meeting with the therapist that you've been saying you're gonna do whatever that move is? A lot of times I think the paralysis of the entire path blocks us from the next step. Yes. Because if I'm looking that far out to see, well, God's gonna make a way and then it's gonna lead to this, and this, and this and this, we are essentially trying to calculate the next five ways that God is gonna make when all we really need to do is step through the door that's open right in front of us.