A short devotional-style YouTube message by Holly Furtick addressing anxiety and the habit of imagining ‘what if’ scenarios. Using a Psalm as the anchor, she encourages shifting focus from self-centered worry to remembering God’s past deeds (miracles, deliverance) as a way to reframe fear into worship and trust. The talk concludes with practical encouragement to recall personal examples of God’s faithfulness.
Chapters
When I get anxious, I start to jump to these crazy conclusions and then I start to search for an answer for everything. So I plan out these elaborate if then scenarios, and then I find myself worried about problems that don't even exist. What do you do when you find yourself in this place? I want to share with you today something of the things that God has been showing me about how to break this cycle in my mind. And the psalmist is about to show you. Don't you love the Bible? I love the darkness and the humanity in this psalm. I love knowing that I'm not the only one who goes through periods where God feels far away. He says, God, can you. Are you hearing my cry? I am crying out to you, so I wanna show you what he does next. But spoiler alert, he's not gonna show us the way out. We actually never know who even wrote this psalm, what he was going through, or how he got out of it. In the end, he's going to show us how to shift our perspective. Perspective is everything. Because I found that my initial response to every situation in my life 100% of the time is how, how does this affect me? What if I get sick? What about my canceled plans? This is not the way I thought this would go. And then after I do that, I turn it on God, just like the psalmist. And I think I know why. It's easier to blame God than to take responsibility for my own heart and my own attitude. So it's easier for me to say, God, are you hearing me? What about your promises? God, you must be angry with me. But thankfully the psalmist doesn't stop there and we won't either. Do you remember my husband's sermon from a few weeks ago called there's a hole in your story. If you missed that sermon, you have to go back and watch it because he said this and it's forever in my mind. He said, don't let doubt and self centeredness cut you off in the middle of your story. It's okay to feel the doubt. It's okay to think about how you're being affected by this situation. But realize that we are in the middle of the story and you can feel those feelings, but you can't stop there. You can't lose faith. You can't keep circling in this loop of making up stories. You have to get to the next part. So part one of this Psalm is my worries. Part two is his ways. And verse 10 is the shift, the shift from going from myself to my God. Look at this. Says Then I thought, to this I will appeal the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand. Watch this, because he's about to go from what if to worship. He's going to shift his focus from self. What if God has forgotten me? To the character and the nature of God. He says, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. I will remember your miracles of long ago. He's forcing himself to remember. He says, I will consider all of your works and meditate on all of your mighty deeds. Your ways. God are holy. What? God is as great as our God. He's reminding himself about who his God is. You are the God who performs miracles. You display your power among the people. With your mighty arm, you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind. Your lightning lit up the world. The earth trembled and quaked. We serve a big God. He says, you, path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters. Though your footprints were not seen, you led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. Sometimes the only way forward is to circle back. This is so beautiful to me. What do you do when you're awake in the night? Instead of circling on all of those questions in all of those stories, you stop and you remember how great and how powerful our God is. He's a good God. He's a miracle working God. He's a deliverer. He is the God who makes himself known to his people and his promises to do. Stan, what has God done for you? Can you take a second and look back over your life? Because he's been there for you. He's provided for you. And what makes you think that he's going to stop now? I don't know about you, but this is not my first dark night. The problem is, when you're in the middle of the night, it's hard to remember the things that you have come through. For some reason, it always feels like it's never been this bad before. But if you can just force yourself to remember, he was with me the last time. He will be with me all the way through this one. I love the part where he says, your way was through the sea. You're digging deep. You've got to remember how God parted the Red Sea and he brought his people through on dry land. What does the song say? We just sang it. You made seas into highways. Instead of worrying about what is coming, you've got to use all of that energy, all of that fear, and rechannel it to recall the times where he was with you in the past, the times where he made a way through for you. I wish we could shout about all the times that he was with us. I wish we could play popcorn. We used to do that when I was a teenager in youth group and you would just shout out things and I wish you would shout out in the chat that when you were that he healed you in your body when you were going through a divorce. He was with you all along the way. When you lost your job, he provided for you. Tell me the ways that God has been with you because I know that we serve a God who makes a way for us, though his footprints were not seen at the time When I look back, look at the verse again. It says, you, path made a way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were we're not seen even when you don't see it. He's working and this psalm closes by telling us that he leads us like a flock. I love all of the metaphors in the Bible that remind us about the Lord being our shepherd. It's truly throughout the Bible. But my favorite one, and probably yours too, is Psalm 23 the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. What a comfort it is to know that our shepherd is leading his flock and he knows where the green pastures are. He leads us to the water when we're thirsty. He is with us every step of the way. Hey, thanks for watching. I hope that that encouraged you today. Make sure that you subscribe so that you don't miss out on other videos like this and I'll see you back here next.
