Lions & Lizards & Lies
This is part one of Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church's new series "Triggered" which teaches us how to take our minds back in the age of anxiety. This series is something that I can certainly relate to because anxiety is something that I deal with regularly and is something I am fighting to overcome because I know that anxiety can hinder the plans of God for my life. It is my hope that as I am blessed by this sermon that you to will be blessed and if anxiety is something you are dealing with you will be able to join the fight in overcoming it with me.
1 Peter 5:5-8 Humble yourselves in the same way you are younger submit yourselves to your elders. All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another because God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under God's mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour, resist him standing firm in the faith because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
Sometimes we say we are suffering anxiety when we really are just suffering adulthood.
We are too surprised by our struggles. One of the reasons we struggle so much is because we are surprised when we do.
We are supposed to suffer some, that's what Jesus said.
Sometimes we suffer because we are stupid. Somehow as a species, we invent new ways to suffer and cause us pain and call it progress.
We feed our minds with things that eat our peace alive.
We don't want to humble ourselves, for a lot of us humble is a hashtag. For Peter, Humble was not a hashtag, it was a way of seeing the hand of God in history that knows that we are just a small part, a little Child of God in his big strong hands.
To take back your mind you have to humble your heart.
God will use the same hand to oppose the proud that he will use to distribute grace to the humble.
- Sometimes the way God will protect you is to remove you from situations you like. Peter says you can either fight that or you can go with it.
- Protection & Provision
- We want what is in God's hand that we can't give ourselves.
- How has God provided for you?
- There is an invisible hand of God that is making things happen that we can't even explain.
- Sometimes the way God will protect you is by removing you from situations that you like. Peter says you can either fight that or go with it because it's the hand of God.
God's Plan
- We have a hard time with God's Plan because we like our own.
- A lot of our anxiety comes because we forget who is in control.
- Peter is writing from experience. He didn't come to humility easy.
Matthew 3:16 Jesus said, I have to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders.
- At this point, Peter didn't think the Savior was supposed to suffer. He was still confused about whose hand was writing the story.
- Jesus tells Peter "Get behind me Satan", "you are a stumbling block to me, you do not have in mind the concerns of God but merely human concerns".
- What we can see is controlled by the hand we can't see.
- We have to trust God and his timing.
As we humble ourselves anxiety goes out the window.
- God gives us peace and the enemy eats right through it.
- The enemy prowls around like a lion.
- The devil is a liar, not a lion.
- Our enemy is the devil who wants to fill our minds, putting us in hypothetical tomorrows thinking about things that may or may not happen or putting us in the past replaying what we wish we would've said to the person who wronged us.
- We call the wrong stuff the devil. i.e. "I got a flat tire, it's the devil".
- "Lizard brain" is the thing in our brain that processes at the level of fear not wisdom.
- The lizard has no power over you.