Steven Furtick - Check Where You're Putting Your Energy (10/29/2018)
When everything feels urgent and you're pulled in every direction, anxiety often comes from lacking clear priorities—saying yes to the wrong things means no to what truly matters. Pastor Steven stresses weighing God's truth over others' opinions, making firm decisions, living with integrity, and asking God to search your heart like David did to find real peace that transcends circumstances.
The Trap of Treating Everything as Urgent
When you don't have a sense of priority in your life and everything feels urgent, it's a sign that you haven't figured out what's really important. Now you are open to everybody's demand, and they all take up equal space. And so by saying yes to people who don't really matter, you say an automatic no to those who do. By saying yes to people who essentially are using you in order to achieve their own goals, now you find yourself unable to give, because you are a limited resource, to the people God has entrusted to your care the most.
So I have to have a sense of balance. I could preach about balance. You have to work out and pray and eat and all of that. But this is not that kind of seminar. What I mean is, you've got to be balanced in what you give weight to. That's what I mean. Sometimes we are stressed out because we are giving too much weight to the wrong words and not enough weight to the right words. And so we're out of balance because we have this feed, and everything on our feed is the same size. And because it's all the same size, we think it carries the same weight, so we live in a state of stress because we haven't learned how to weigh it out. You've got to weigh it out.
Learning to Weigh What Really Matters
When someone doesn't like you, sometimes it doesn't matter. It depends on who they are. Y'all are pulling on me. I'm going to start telling you things I shouldn't. The other week, someone was telling me that there was somebody who hated our church and came and said it wasn't that bad. I said, I don't care. I knew it wasn't that bad. In fact, not only was it not that bad, it's freaking awesome. Tell them I said I didn't need them to validate something that I see every week. Thank you very much. I already know God is in this place. I already know he is glorious in this place. I'm glad you think it's not that bad, but I wasn't really waiting for you to hand me the award for not that bad. It was not that bad before you decided it was not that bad.
I was talking to a guy one time about something here at the church that was complicated, and I gave him a 30-minute speech. Asking for his advice, I got my notebook ready to hear what he would tell me after I listed everything that was happening. He goes, Stephen, it doesn't matter. So I wrote that down. Point one. Because I need you to tell me what to do. And do you know he didn't say another word?
It Doesn't Matter—Finding Freedom in Perspective
Just turn to the person next to you and look at them and say their name if you know their name. Say, Stephen. Tell them, it doesn't matter. No, you have to tell them with that little bit of... You have to do it from your diaphragm. You ready? Tell them, it doesn't matter. Now what you just said is true. About 99.9999999973% scientific number of what they're staying up and worried about.
And one time I was laying in my bed at night and worrying about something, and God spoke to me through his spirit. You're staying awake, worrying about something that I've already worked out. Now when you give weight to that promise from God, when you give weight to the right things, when I give weight, when I have a clear sense of priority in my life, I'm okay if people are angry if I say no, because my no is a yes to something that I already decided was more important than what any given demand might require of me at any given moment.
And this is the thing that I'm coming to realize is that Christ is the solid rock, but if you don't know how to stand on that rock, with the right balance, the devil will push you around, and you will always feel unsettled, and you will always feel tossed and turned. But when you make up your mind, what does matter and what doesn't matter?
What Matters vs. What Doesn't
Let me help you out a little bit. What doesn't matter? What they think. What does matter? What God knows. Search me, God. Know my mind. Test me. You see. You speak to me. It doesn't matter. He was so right. What he was talking about didn't matter. In fact, I thought about writing a book and calling the book, It Doesn't Matter. And I've already got my subtitle figured out. Really? And my first chapter will be called, At All.
I feel somebody getting their balance back, getting your equilibrium back. You're seeing it right now for what it is. This doesn't matter. This matters. That I keep my faith. That I keep a grateful attitude. That I don't let my situation contaminate my spirit. This matters. Not that. This matters. Not that. Because if you don't sort this out, you will live in constant imprisonment to your own indecision.
Indecision Is a Prison—Make Decisions Now
Put that one down as number three. We're making terrible time. Indecision is a prison. So I want you to make three decisions before Wednesday. If you're watching this at a midweek worship experience, you're running short on time. The clock is counting. I want you to set a D-Day. All you procrastinators. And you're claiming to be thorough. I want you to make three decisions this week. I want you to do it. I want you to set aside a day this week. Sit down. Have four cups of coffee so you numb your rational thinking processes. And go in and just make them. Just make the decisions. And if you make dumb ones, apologize. But make the decision.
My God! Fifteen minutes to decide chicken or shrimp in a restaurant? I'm serious. You've been dating her seven and a half years, and you can't decide if she's the one? Well, if she's not, get out of the way. Oh, I'm preaching now. I just got somebody a diamond. You ought to name your kids Stephen. Do it or don't. Do it or don't. Buy the house or don't. Sell the house or don't. Stay in Raleigh or don't. Do it or don't. You can always move back.
And now we're making up more stuff to give us opportunities for anxiety, and we call it options. I don't know if it was just growing up in Monk's Corner. You didn't have to decide where to send your kids to school. There were two. I moved to Charlotte. I said, I never saw anything like it. It's crazy. It's killing us. Too many options. I just want gas, not a Slurpee, not a car wash, not a back massage. Just gas. It's too many options.
The Relief of Saying No with Integrity
I did it this week. I went in. I was feeling that anxiety, and I told Jess to send over my notes for my why am I anxious teaching, because I felt like I needed my own notes, and I'm going to keep them after I write them. I give them away. I scratch them down and then give them away, but somebody else keeps them. So I said, give me the notes and send them over. I need them. She said, are you going to teach it? I said, no, I need to live it. I was feeling all unsettled. I went through my list, and I found this one, and the Holy Spirit hit me and said, you're very indecisive right now. Everything everybody asks you, you're going, yeah, when we get back to that, I'm going to go through a few things. You're not going through a few things. You're not talking. You're not praying or anything like that. Just wait until it comes around again.
And it was becoming the way that I was handling things, and so I just came in that day. I made three decisions. I felt like I had spent a day at a spa just by making three decisions, and they all started with N and ended with O, and it felt so good. It felt so good. No, try it. Try it. One, two, three. No!
Now, this only works if you are living with integrity. This only works if you are living with integrity, and sometimes my anxiety is a result of a compromise in my integrity. It's kind of hard to have a peaceful heart when you're hiding secrets and feel like a hypocrite. It's kind of hard to have a peaceful heart when you're having to hope that your wife doesn't check your phone to see certain text messages. It's kind of hard to have a peaceful heart when you have three Snapchats, and the one that your parents think is your Snapchat is just a decoy, and now you're asking God to give you peace. But your life is so many different pieces.
Integrity Brings True Peace—Be the Real You
The word integrity means whole. Like in math class, they taught us about integers, whole numbers. Whole. Integrity. Everything, all one person, all the time. And when there are three different needs that I have to manage for every different situation, it's kind of hard to pray the panic away when my own lifestyle is creating it. When I'm trying to figure out which mask to wear at church so that no one will see into my situation at home, when there's work me, and after work me, and Friday night me, and 9:30 Sunday morning me, it's kind of hard for me to have peace when my foundation is cracked.
It's kind of hard for me to manage all those different me's, because I might send out the wrong one at the wrong time. It's kind of hard for me to ask God to bless a life that is divided in so many different directions. Now, I don't mean by this that you have to interact with everybody on the same level. For instance, if we were to meet at Pizza Hut, I wouldn't talk at this volume. Do you know I would modulate? People say, Well, you should be the same on stage that you are out in public. Well, that would be obnoxious. Can you imagine? Touch three people at the baseball field? Scandalous. Touch what? Who are you touching?
What I am saying is that although you might bring a different approach to different situations, that the essential nature of who you are remains unchanged in every encounter. So, it shouldn't be like that for my family to watch me preach and go like, Who is that? It shouldn't be like that. It should feel like a continuation. Somebody shouldn't see you on the television program and go, You go to church. I heard you say hallelujah on the church service, but I hear you say some others. It's costing you your peace.
Search Me, God—Aligning with Your True Self
I'm not condemning you. I'm telling you, you might be anxious sometimes because you are trying to manage so many different versions of you. If you would bring it all together and just be honest before God and just ask God what David, search me, know my heart, and if the way I'm doing it is wrong, I want to be changed. I'm already accepted because of what Jesus Christ has done for me. Now, God, help me to align my life with what you made me to be so that I can be the real me. I want to be the real me, the highest version of me, that called me, that chosen me, that secure me, that stable me, that God loves me, and I don't have to prove anything to anyone. This is my child. With him, with her, I am well pleased. I don't have to be anybody else.
And my cortisol levels just dropped just by being the real me. Because all that other layers of stuff and all that anger, that's not the real you, not in Christ. That's what David is getting to the bottom of. Did you notice that all of my points are starting with the same letter, the letter I? I figure that's a common denominator in a lot of our anxiety.
Search me, God. Your eyes can see. God's eyes. God, see beneath the surface of what the situation is. I'm anxious because of my money, and I'm anxious because of my health, and I'm anxious because of my mom. No, no, no, no, no. That might trigger it, but the truth of God's Word can enable your heart to transcend. This is what the New Testament preaches, is that the peace of God will actually pass all understanding and guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. So no matter what triggers the anxiety in any situation, David said, he said, search me and know me.