Steven Furtick - The Devil Wants You Anxious
This is an excerpt from: The Guided Mind and The Guarded Heart
I want you to know you can bring any problem you ever have into the presence of God. Your problems are welcome in God's presence. You might as well bring them into the presence of God. It's not like he doesn't know about them anyway. My problems are welcome in God's presence. That helps me to know there's nothing I'm dealing with I have to carry by myself.
I don't get extra credit for holding it to myself. When I come to God, I can start talking about, like Paul said in Philippians, chapter 4, anything. He said, "Don't be anxious, but instead, pray". I'm so grateful there's nothing I have to hide from God. I can bring him any problem I have. Not just a big one but a small one. Not just a small one but a big one. God doesn't have a scale where he weighs my problems and says, "That's too big. I'm busy". On the other hand, God doesn't have a "Must be this tall to ride" sign in his presence, where he says, "If your problem isn't a certain amount, I'm not concerned with it," because he has numbered the hairs on my head and he cares about what I care about. But lately, I've felt the Lord challenging me.
I want to start this teaching with you today, and this will really just be the beginning of it. God has been challenging me, "Instead of always just bringing me your problems, which you're always welcome to do, why don't you start bringing me your thoughts"? Instead of coming to him in an emotional state where I'm all worked up and so depressed and so anxious, and all of these other things I know I'm not supposed to be, but I get there, and then asking God, "Will you please suck it out…"? Have y'all prayed any prayers lately, "God, would you please suck this out of me"? Have you ever come to the Lord for lipo is what I'm trying to say? Where I'm asking God to deal with the consequences… And that's fine. I would not discourage you from that.
There's nothing you brought in here today that God hasn't seen before. Please don't ever be arrogant enough to think you have created a new category or species of sin that God is somehow going to be repulsed or surprised by. And please don't ever think you're going to bring God something he would be intimidated or insulted by. At the same time, wouldn't you like to find out what it would be like…? Instead of letting the problem get to the point where it's so tangled up inside of you that you have to bring it to God as a full-grown problem, what if you started involving God earlier in the process at the level of your thought?
When I read you the Scripture from 1 Kings 20, it was a surprising Scripture for me that God led me to to preach, because the main character in the passage is not King David…you know, man after God's own heart…or Moses who was no ordinary child, but a king we don't preach much about named Ahab. The only time you ever here Ahab's name is in connection with the problem he caused. And Ahab caused a lot of problems. In fact, for any of you who feel like you're too bad for God to bless you or you can't really get what God has for you, the Bible says in 1 Kings 16 that Ahab was the most wicked king who ever lived. That's who we're talking about. The Bible says that 32 kings came to attack him, a confederacy of 32 different kings, led by Ben-Hadad, who Ahab fought three different times.
I'm giving you all this background to remind you that Ahab, in 1 Kings 20, the king who needed for God to do something… Isn't it crazy that the king of Israel, the nation that belonged to God, didn't even ask for God's perspective before he agreed to the enemy's demands? If you notice, there is no section in this Scripture that Ahab stops and calls for a prophet. There is no section in the Scripture I read you that Ahab stops and says, "Well, let's see what the Lord says about this". There is no indication… I hate Ahab, because he caused all this trouble for the nation and then wanted to blame the enemy for an agreement he himself made with the enemy. How many times in my life and your life have we asked God to deliver us from an agreement we made with the Enemy without consulting him?
"Oh, you're one of those kinds," the liposuction doctor said to me. "You just want me to suck it out. You just want to bring me the results of your habits and have me fix them without adjusting any of them". Ahab is so quick to agree with the enemy. I wonder how many times in your life you have agreed with the enemy without even consulting God. Do you know what I mean by "agreed with the enemy"? It comes along in the form of anxiety. I'm not one of these people who wakes up to my first alarm clock. In fact, my default disposition in the morning is despair and discouragement. So, in some ways, the verse I read you in Philippians… I know you don't think these two Scriptures go together, but I'm going to show you how they do.
Philippians 4:6 to someone like me is just about the most annoying Bible verse in the Bible, where Paul says, "Don't be anxious about anything". My first instinct is I want to file that in the court of useless advice, and I also want to argue with Paul, because his kids didn't have Snapchat. When he's telling me, "Don't be anxious about anything," he didn't even have kids, so how are you going to sit here and advise me on a situation you never had firsthand experience of?
I want to argue with Paul… "Don't be anxious about anything"… because to me, at first, it seems like an impossible demand. Then he says something else. He says: "…but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God". "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God".
This is the end of a letter Paul wrote to the Philippian church. This is not the first thing he said to them. This is not your annoying friend who gives you unsolicited advice. This is a church he had a great relationship with. This is in a time of his own imprisonment where he has more to worry about than they have to worry about.
When we see the word anxious… I know you can't relate to this, but a few people in the church have had more anxiety in the past year than they ever had before. Just a few people in the church. Just a few dirty sinners. What the Devil did to me over the course of the pandemic is very interesting. It's almost by getting me to indulge in the little thoughts… I noticed he had tempted me to make agreements I didn't even know I made that almost caused me to give up what God gave me. An agreement with the enemy.
Ahab has a wife named Jezebel, and she has taught him to depend on idols. She is a Phoenician woman. She does not serve the God of Israel. She has taught him to serve Baal, the rain god, but he has just been proven false on a mountain called Mount Carmel under a prophet named Elijah. Now, after a state of famine, the nation is weakened, so Ben-Hadad makes a strategy. "I will attack them while they are still weak from the famine". It's not just one enemy you have to worry about. The Bible says he went and got 32 other kings. You need to know, before you agree with the Enemy, he always brings company you didn't count on. An agreement with the enemy.
Have you made any agreements with the Enemy that need to be broken today before you can move forward into the promise God has for your life? "Do not be anxious about anything". I don't like that verse, because, frankly, I like my anxiety. I'm not talking about as a medical condition. Terms get so culturally loaded. They mean different things to different people. I am not telling you not to consult a professional. That is not the point of this sermon. But many of us have made an alliance with anxiety somewhere deep in our hearts, and we have actually grown so accustomed to our anxiety it now feels normal to us and peace feels foreign. Now you get used to waking up feeling weird all the time, and now you get used to feeling on edge all the time, and you begin to think it is normal because it's all you've ever seen.
I love what the elders said to Ahab. This is what I believe the Spirit of God is saying to somebody today, and it's the message God gave me: "Do not listen to your enemy or agree to his demands". Just because my enemy speaks something doesn't mean I have to agree with it. After all, it is not the voice you hear that determines the life you end up with; it's the voice you believe. Before the Enemy can get you to agree with it, he has to get you to believe it. So in order to get you to believe it, he'll get somebody to say it. How many have found out you cannot believe everything you hear? Not these days.
I was reading the list of things Paul said we should think about, because he's trying to give us a new perspective. You don't have to believe everything that crosses through your mind. You don't have to accept everything that comes across your heart. He said, "Don't be anxious about anything, but pray about everything". He says there are some things we should think about. Verse 8: "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely…" I stopped at part one when he said, "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true…think about such things," because I wondered, "How do I even know anymore what that is"?
How do I even know what is true? How can I possibly know in this culture of headlines and highlights? Now you don't even just believe the headline. You believe the retweet of the retweet of the retweet of the retweet. How do I even know what is true anymore? If I make an agreement with the Enemy… That's why I was excited about YTHX. I think if we can undo some of the untruths and keep our young people from making some agreements with the Enemy… This is what I'm praying, not only for this week, but I'm praying this for my kids all the time.
Y'all know I have a good prayer life because I have three children who are still living in my house. Y'all know I have a good prayer life because one of them has his driver's permit. Y'all know I have a good prayer life because I have a beautiful 10-year-old daughter. I'm praying every day, "Don't let my daughter, don't let my sons, don't let me make agreements with the Enemy".
Sometimes you get in this self-pity mode and you kind of go with it. You start thinking, "Oh, I'm just worthless. I'm just this. I'm just that. I'm just the other". Do you know why you do that? Because it takes the pressure off for a minute. Do you know why Ahab gave up his silver and his gold and, the Bible said, his best wives? "You can have the other ones, but, Lord, let me keep the best ones". "I'm going to take your silver and your gold, and I'm going to take your best wives and your best kids".
In other words, "I'm going to tax the land". Ahab said, "Okay. If I agree with you, maybe you won't attack me". Sometimes we find ways to make the attack stop that actually make the battle worse and weaken us on the inside after the fact. This is the root of addiction. Oh, I was praying for our kids. When y'all were standing up earlier, I was praying, "God, don't let them make an alliance with something early in their lives. Don't let them make an agreement with something".
Some of us make agreements with things that provide us with temporary relief, but they are false gods. They cannot save. They do not serve us. They do not satisfy us. They are broken cisterns that cannot hold water. So, if we're going to preach about anything, if we're going to preach about repentance from sin and dead works, we have to first understand that before the promise of God can be received, your agreement with the Enemy has to be broken.