Steven Furtick — 5 Ways To Fight Anxiety
Five ways we create our own storms sometimes. See some waves are God ordained in our lives, but some waves we make and sometimes we create our own anxiety, and then we ask God for peace. But how can he give you peace in a situation, that you're currently creating? And so I got five things for you. Just real quick I won't take long on them, but number one: often we create anxiety and waves in our lives with the words that we speak. Just write that down: words. Have you ever made unnecessary waves with your words? Words that you speak out of anger, that you then have to go back and then fix, takes a week, two weeks, three weeks. Words of doubt, words of... Some of you, just you frame your day with the wrong words and then you're disappointed with the world that you've built, but your world is created by your words.
And sometimes we make waves, you know, we create choppy conditions in the morning just by the way we get up talking. With any one thing is another. My grandmother used to say this phrase all the time, she say: y'all bout to worry me to death. And she'd say it about anything you know. The TV's too loud: turn that TV down, you're about to worry me to death, not to worry me to death. And she was a wonderful lady, but you know what, as a result of her saying all the time, you about to worry me to death, she was worried a lot, because she said she wanted to be worried.
We read a teaching one time in a book, it said: after anything you say in your life, don't say it, if you can't follow it with this phrase: and that's just the way I want it. And that's just the way I want it. So try it out on the things you say, you're about to worry me to death and that's just the way I want it. Now I'm just run around like chicken with my head cut off, I'm so stressed out, and that's just the way I want it... You got your own phrases, but the words we speak create waves of anxiety.
Check your words, number two: your approach. Sometimes it's not what we're going through, it's the way we're going through what we're going through. Some of us live with no margin and so we're always nervous. It's our approach. Anxious about money because we spend too much and don't make enough. No margin is your approach. You start your morning frustrated with people in traffic, you know there's going to be traffic, you've never adjusted the time that you get up and leave your house, now you're wondering why your job is so stressful. Your job is not stressful, the way you got to your job was stressful, because of your approach. I'm a help a student, your class is not stressful, the fact that you knew about the assignment for three weeks before you thought to look it up it's the approach that made it stress. "She just so means", she's not mean, you're just a procrastinator, you're making your own waves cannot get a parrot back me up...
And that's the second one the wrong voices. The wrong voices can create unnecessary and needless waves and anxiety in our lives. I mean if you checked the news or your your Twitter feed on your phone, before you've been getting up to use the bathroom in the morning, and you wonder why the outlook on life that you have is so dark. I think 24/7 news stations and news is one of the worst things that ever happened to our peace of mind as people. No offense to the media, no offense to a journalist, but I mean I was reading through just some headlines the other day. Do you really need to understand the dynamics of every disease, like every disease? Do you really need to understand the dynamics of every conflict in all these countries that you can pronounce?