The Antidote to Worry

Well, once again, good morning. It is great to be with you today. Mark mentioned to you guys last weekend, and actually had you pray for me, that I was away speaking at a church called Bayside of South Sacramento. Bayside of South Sacramento. I love those initials; they spell B-O-S-S, boss. Isn't that a great name for a church? But that is the church where Bishop Sherwood Carthon normally speaks. How many of you remember hearing Sherwood speak? An amazing speaker. And filling Bishop Carthon's shoes is a huge job. I asked Mark to ask you for your prayer specifically because it's the first time in my life that I've ever spoken at a predominantly African American church. And it was awesome. I just have to tell you a little bit about my experience.

They have three services just like a Saturday night, two Sunday morning. In the first service, very early on in the message, I say something mildly encouraging. Somebody over here yells, "That's right, preacher!" I'm like, "What? You know, what?" So I repeated what I said. It seemed like the right thing to do. This time, 15 people are all, "Yes, Lord!" like this. I repeated it again a third time, louder. People are now standing, waving their handkerchiefs, "Preach it! Preach it!" I loved it! It took me two hours to preach a 30-minute message, but it was awesome. Now, I do not expect you guys to do this at all. Don't even try it because it doesn't work. You don't have to do it. All I want you to do, I want to encourage you to do this. This is maybe your, I don't know, this church's culture's version of this. Just if I say something like that, kind of that inspires you, just nod thoughtfully. I'll consider myself encouraged. I really will. But it's great to be back. Mark did a great job last weekend, didn't he? Let's thank him. It's awesome to have somebody like that here.

I want to show you a picture. This is Kim Reichhelm. Kim has been an extreme skiing world champion. You may have seen her on TV or read about her in Outside Magazine, which I pick up once in a while from the newsstand, in an article entitled, "The Trees." Lovely, dark, and deep. Kim talks about how she loves to ski through thick stands of trees after a fresh, deep snow. Unfortunately, it turns out this is also the most dangerous thing you can do while skiing. You might think, "Well, I've skied through trees before." You probably have not skied through a thick stand of trees at about 100 miles an hour, like Kim Reichhelm does. As I said, she is an extreme skier. I do not recommend this, but Kim's most serious accident came not when she was doing one of her flamboyant extreme skiing stunts, but instead when she was skiing through trees like this.

So what lesson did she learn from that accident article? Quote, "What you focus your eyes on becomes critical in the woods." Look, she says, at the spaces between the trees, the exits where you hope to be traveling. Reichhelm says, "The secret is not to stare at what you don't want to hit." All right? Now, if you forget everything else this morning, that is the message as we talk about our topic, which is how to stop worrying. Grab your message notes. They look like this in the bulletins that you were handed as we came in. We're going to be studying a psalm in our new series in the psalm's soul food that deals with today's theme, the antidote to worry.

Quick audience participation here. Show of hands. How many people here this morning would like to learn how to worry more? Anybody want to incorporate more worry into their lives? I didn't think so. We'd all like to worry less. In fact, a few years ago I took a poll of this congregation, and I asked you guys to write down the top question you would like to ask God. Number one in this church, of all the questions you could ask God, was how can I stop worrying so much? Well, the good news is you can, and God in the Bible gives you an antidote. Look at the top of your notes. Here are some common worries. These are all scary trees that we sometimes stare at in life like this.

I worry about my troubles, of course, but I also worry about threats to my ability to survive and provide in life, especially now almost 15% unemployment in this county if you saw the paper on Friday. I worry about so much evil and turmoil in the world sometimes, right? We live in an age where riots in Libya can cause sleepless nights in Santa Cruz. Ten years ago, 20 years ago, you might not have even known about it until a week or a month later when you picked up Time magazine. And yet now we know information that a half a generation ago only God knew. We definitely do not have the capacity for handling that amount of potential worry. I worry sometimes for my loved ones, or I worry that nobody really cares about the things I care about, or I worry that life seems unfair.

Well, if you relate to any of these, you'll be glad to know that they're all addressed in the Psalm we're going to look at today, Psalm 37, because this was written by a guy who was an expert at all these things, the famous King David. He says in verse 25, "I have been young and now I am old." So King David in the Bible wrote this Psalm 3,000 years ago as an old man. That is important to understand the historical context because King David now is at the end of his life. He has skied down the hill through all the threatening trees successfully. And now when he looks back over his shoulder, looks up the hill, what does he see? What trees has he been through?

Well, just a few things. King Saul tried to kill him twice, then sent a band of assassins to hunt him down. David's own son tried to have him killed. His closest advisor of many years betrayed him and hired mercenaries to kill him, seeing a theme here. Part of his family was once kidnapped. One of his babies died at birth. Entire nations warred against him. One of his own sons actually raped one of his daughters. I mean, this is a man who had been through a lot of crisis. So when he talks about how to survive heart-rending crisis, he has credibility. And yet he says about life's stresses, verse one, "Do not fret." Would you say these important three words together with me? Let me hear you. "Do not fret." I want you to check this out. The word for "fret" in Hebrew is the word "chara," which literally means to burn, to heat yourself up, to get all vexed and heated up over something that bothers you.

Isn't that a great... Would you agree that that is a great word picture of what worry does to you? It really is like a fire that builds inside of you, isn't it? Think about this. A small spark can decimate a massive forest. We know all about that here in California. I got this satellite image of late summer 2009. This is a satellite image of California. Can you see it there? Do you remember that summer here in California? It was a bad summer for fires. Look at the plumes of smoke from the forest fire up in the Lockheed area here in the Santa Cruz Mountains and further south from the fires down in Southern California. The plumes of smoke alone as seen from the satellite are bigger than most states of the Union. Every one of these started with one spark, one initial moment of ignition. And that moment of ignition is what the word "fret" here refers to because worry is like that.

You start by worrying about one little thing and pretty soon you can't stop. You're on the cycle of anxiety that gets worse and worse and it robs you of sleep because you can't sleep because you're worried. The next day you're not thinking clearly and so you worry more and you're so worried that you don't eat. Because you haven't eaten, you're not sleeping well. Because you're not sleeping well, you're up late worrying more, and the cycle just spirals downward and robs you not only of sleep but of peace and of joy and of relationships and of health. I have been there myself. Many of you know anxiety attacks put me in the hospital here at Dominican 16 years ago. My wife thought I was having a heart attack or something, and when I was diagnosed in the emergency room, the doctor who had turned out had just started attending church here said, "You know what? You're having severe anxiety attacks. Are you stressed out?" I said, "Oh yes doctor, I am."

So when you sense that you're consumed by what you could call "fret fire," you know, worry, fever, what do you do? Well, again, some audience interaction time. I was thinking about what they used to tell us when we were kids, and they had a little saying for what to do. Let me see how well they trained you. What do you do if you happen to catch on fire like at Halloween or like at a Twin Lakes Church Christmas Eve candlelight service or something like that? What are you supposed to do? The first thing you're supposed to do is what? Drop. Stop. Second thing? Drop. And third thing? Let's say it together. Stop, drop, and roll. I was thinking about that related to fret fire, and I thought you could actually outline this psalm with those three words. You really could. Stop, drop, and roll.

Now, you may be dubious, but let me show you how this works verse by verse. This morning we're going to go through the first six verses of the psalm. Then I'm going to give you an overview of the rest of the verses. This is an acrostic psalm. What's an acrostic? It's like one of those little kids' books where every stanza of a poem starts with a certain letter. In this case, it's an alphabetical acrostic. Every stanza starts with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet. This is a long psalm all about one subject: how not to fret. So jot this down in your notes. Number one, stop. First, you gotta stop. Now, some of you are going, "Brilliant, René. How to stop worrying? Number one, stop. That is genius." But how do you do this? Thank you. I told you not even to try. Did I not just say that?

I heard about one guy who says to his friend, "Oh boy, I got a mountain of credit card debt. I just lost my job. My car was repossessed. The house is going to foreclose, but I'm not worried about it at all because I have hired a professional worrier. He does all the worrying for me so I don't even have to think about it." His friend goes, "That's incredible. How much does a guy like that charge?" The other guy says, "$10,000 a month." His friend said, "$10,000. You don't have that kind of money." The first guy says, "Well, that's for him to worry about." You know? Professional worry service. How do you stop? David's advice is a little bit different. Let's read these first two verses together. Psalm 37 verses 1 and 2. Let me hear you loud and clear. "Do not fret because of those who are evil, or be envious of those who do wrong, for like the grass they will soon wither. Like green plants they will soon die away."

Do you ever fret because of those who do evil? Do you ever get worked up? Maybe when you think of certain authors who, you know, are best-selling authors and yet they're espousing things that are wrong, they're in error, they're against the word of God? Or maybe you see entertainers who are influential or politicians who are promoting things that you know are contrary to God's best, and you see them getting popular. They're on talk shows. Their name is Charlie Sheen. Did I say that out loud? I'm sorry. But sometimes you get a little vexed. Or you think of much worse, of course, dictators in the world, oppressing people. Maybe there's a successful people's revolt, but you think they still stole billions and they apparently got away with it? Or on a smaller scale, maybe you have somebody at work who seems to be scheming against you.

I can tell you it's something that surprised me when I got into pastoral ministry. This is one of the top prayer requests that I hear as a pastor. Pray for me at work. Why? Things are going tough. No, no, technically they're okay, but there's somebody at work who's sabotaging me, gossiping, undercutting. You wonder why the boss hates you but seems to love them. Well, David had that too in his life, and so he says in verse seven, he repeats that phrase, "Do not fret when they carry out their wicked schemes." While this psalm is specifically about that kind of worry, about worrying about enemies, it really applies to every kind of worry that we could have representing here in this room. Why? Because of what enemies have in common with other worries. It's that they're out of your control, right? He's saying, "Stop fretting over the uncontrollable, uncontrollable enemies or the uncontrollable past or future or the uncontrollable whims of your boss or the uncontrollable tax code or all those other worries that will quickly take over and consume you like a fire."

You have to take action against the cycle of anxiety. Don't just let it burn over you. David repeats this phrase a third time in verse eight, "Do not fret." Why not? It leads only to evil. I want you to circle that phrase. It leads only to evil. It has no redeeming qualities. Let me ask you something that maybe you never thought of. Is worry a sin? I mean, we usually think of other things as being sin, but is worry a sin technically? Well, I want you to think of this. How many times does God say, "Do not do something before it's a sin"? Dozens of times in the Bible, don't worry. Don't worry. We'll look at those verses in just a couple of minutes. If something's harmful to people that God loves, harmful to you, harmful to others, then I would say I would put that in that category. Yet we just consider it kind of a quirk, kind of like, "Oh, well, you know, we almost brag about it." I'm just kind of a worrier. Worry is not some minor problem.

How does it lead to evil? Well, first, worry hurts you. I found an interesting quote from a Johns Hopkins researcher. "We do not know why it is that worriers die sooner than the non-worriers, but that is a fact." You've heard the phrase, "She's worrying herself to death." It's actually true. Second, worry hurts others. Did you know that your worry is contagious, like a disease? According to the LA Times just recently, researchers at Harvard and MIT have discovered that an individual's emotional state is linked to the emotional states of their friends. They found in the study that negative emotions are more contagious than positive emotions. In other words, you worry, and pretty soon all your friends are freaked out too. It leads to evil in so many ways. It's not just a quirk. In fact, I found a study yesterday that worry can even bring on tooth decay. Researchers on patients going through stressful times in their lives consistently found they had a higher rate of cavities. It's amazing how it can affect you.

So is it really possible to just stop doing something this bad? This is why God says don't do it, because it really damages your life, not just your peace of mind, your relationships, your physical self, your lifespan, and everything. So he goes, "Really, it's a bad sin. Don't do it." Is it possible to stop? Well, sure it is. First, my ability to do this is confirmed throughout the Bible. Look at some of these verses I referred to earlier. Ecclesiastes 11, 10 Solomon says, "Refuse to worry." I love that sentence. Because again, he's saying you got to take action against anxiety. It's not just, "I'm depressed today." There is some degree of control that you have, and you need to exercise it. Jesus said three times in the sermon of the Mount, "Do not worry. Do not worry. Do not worry about your life." In Matthew 6, verses 25, 31, 34, he says to his disciples in Matthew 10, "When they arrest you, don't worry about it." He talks about fears of going hungry in Luke 12, 29, and he says, "Do not worry about it." The Apostle Paul writes in Philippians 4, "Don't worry about anything." You know, if God says something one time, we got to pay attention. If he says something this many times, we can't just make it kind of the excusable sin in our lives. If he asks you to do something, listen, he would never ask you to do something that you can't do, right? If he asks you to do something, it is possible to stop.

Now, a clarification here. Obviously, this does not mean be a Vulcan, you know, don't get emotional, don't let anything ever bother you. Quiz, who wrote this again? Who was it? David, right? Now, David wrote this when he was old, but when he reads some of the Psalms that he wrote when he was young, it just seems like emotionally he's just freaking out. So obviously, it does not mean don't get emotional. It means when you fret, take a deep breath and calm down and put out the fire before it rages out of control. When I had my anxiety attacks, I called it the downward spiral. I learned the hard way. I had to take a stand when I saw the symptoms starting, or I would get into a depressive, discouraging cycle downward. You have to take a stand against anxiety. Don't just let the fire consume you. Send in the firefighters when you start to catch on fire with worry.

Okay, how do you do that? That comes next. You gotta drop. You gotta drop to your knees in prayer and meditation. This is really important because, would you agree with this? You can do stop and never get to drop, right? Lots of people in America, think about this, stop worrying without ever dropping to their knees in prayer. In America, we even have an industry for it. We call it amusement. We have a giant distraction industry here. Now, I want you to think about this for a second. The word amuse, it literally means to stop thinking, doesn't it? It comes from muse, meaning to ponder, and the prefix ah meaning without as in atheist or agnostic to be amused means you stop thinking for a while. You stop that hamster on the wheel in your head, spinning around and around and around on the same thoughts. It feels so good not to have to think sometimes.

Many people in our culture get amused from their worried musings by TV, movies, music, gaming, using, gambling, traveling, hobbies, etc., etc., etc. Now, of course, I am not saying that there's something wrong with all of that stuff. I like sports, watching football and movies and, you know, good TV shows and comic books and just diversions like that. The problem is not that once in a while you get a diversion. The problem is when you don't deal with your worries in a healthy way and you just use those diversions to just put pause on your thoughts and forget about your worries for a while. That's a problem. Why? Because then your worries pile up because life hasn't changed and they get worse after your amusement than before. Then you worry more because you're going, wow, this is no different, and then you need more amusement, and it's a vicious cycle. Take it from me. The only constructive way to proactively deal with worry is not amusement. It's what I call good amusement.

What is good amusement? Well, a biblical word for it is meditation. The Psalms are filled with this word. Dozens of times the Psalms advise, meditate. Even when this word is not in a Psalm, the concept almost always is. This is a problem for us speaking English because we think of this word meditate. We think, especially here in Santa Cruz, let your mind go blank, sit in a yoga position and, you know, eat probiotic food or something. But in the Bible, the Hebrew word is much more in common with our English word ruminate. Ruminate. Now that's what a cow does when a cow chews its cud. How many of you have ever been to a farm and watched a cow chewing its cud? Anybody? You know, what does it do? It chews. It's just like you're going, what does it have in its mouth? Is that just a mouthful of grass because it's chewing and chewing? You almost never see a cow not chewing, right? Because when it's done chewing, what does it do? It swallows. Before it takes another bite of grass, it goes, and it starts chewing again. Yes. Because it goes down into one stomach, comes up, they chew some more, goes down to another stomach, comes up, and they chew some more. A cow chews its cud in ways different than any other animal eats. It ruminates. It sucks all the juices out of its cud. Get all the juices out of positive thoughts. That's what meditation means in the Bible. It's literally good amusement.

You're saying like, "What? Why am I supposed to ruminate on?" Well, that's what these next two verses are all about. It says, "Trust in the Lord," and stop right there for a second. This does not mean you are saying, "I understand it all now. All my questions about my worries are now answered, so I'm not worried anymore." Now, it just means you're relaxing and putting your hand in his hand and saying, "I trust you." Not, "I understand it all, but I trust you." Somebody once said that worry is practical atheism. You may say you're a believer, but when you worry all the time, you're living like an atheist who doesn't believe that there exists a loving God. If you say you believe, why not get the benefits of belief and choose to trust God? And then some real practical advice. He says, "And do good." Some of you, this point is going to change your life. Listen, doing good takes your mind off your worries in a very powerful, life-changing way.

You know what I've noticed? We've sent a lot of outreach teams from Twin Lakes all around the world to do good. The number one thing I hear from the teams when they come back, the number one thing they say, "When I saw how little these people had and how grateful they are, then I realized I can choose to see my blessings too." There's something about doing good that helps to minimize the time I spend fretting. Tony Campolo is one of my favorite speakers, and he says when he was a Baptist pastor, there was a woman in his congregation who would always ask for appointments, and they were always about her worries and stresses and anxieties that she never seemed to be able to get a handle on. Well, one Tuesday she walks into the office, asks to see him, and he says, "Actually, I'm headed out right now to go visit the hospital, but you can come along if you want to." And so she does. He says to her, "Listen, most of these people I visit just need a kind word, and you can ask them if they want to pray with you and then pray with them." He says, "Listen, I'll do the first couple, and then you do some hospital visits." They do this for about three hours. At the end of the afternoon, she tells him, "That was one of the most exhilarating experiences I've had all year long. I didn't think about my worries one instant." He says, "Great. I think we just found a cure. See you next Tuesday." She says, "You don't expect me to do this every week, do you?" The solution was staring her right in the face. Do good. It helps your worries.

If you don't believe me, try this. We always have opportunities coming up. You can get more information, for example, about Project Homeless Connect, which comes up soon at the display in the lobby. I love the way this couplet of verses keeps going. He says, next line, "Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture." He's saying, "Enjoy your life." Look, God gives you a pasture to graze in. Enjoy grazing in your pasture. Don't have all, always have that grass is always greener in the other pasture mentality. You know, enjoy grazing where you're at. I found this last night. It was something that I wrote about 13 years ago, and I completely had forgotten about this strange little experiment that I did. I wrote, the other day when I was taking Elizabeth, my daughter, to kindergarten. She's a sophomore in college now. The other day when I was taking Elizabeth to kindergarten, I imagined I was 81 years old and on my deathbed. Now, that just gives you some insight into my insanity right there, but here's why. I said, "I imagined I was 81 years old and dying, and I was given a choice by God. I could choose to relive one day of my life." I imagined that as an 81-year-old, I had chosen to relive this day and that everything I was seeing and hearing was from the perspective of myself when I'm 81. It changed the way I looked at everything.

I looked down at Elizabeth's little hand as she skipped next to me, and I thought, "If I'm 81 right now, she's in her 50s, and maybe she has kids of her own, and Jonathan does too." The whole scene got a nostalgic glow as I realized I'd probably pay a thousand bucks to relive this when I'm 81. Yeah, I'd pay to relive it right now. Later this month, I'll be turning 50. I got about three weeks ago. I've been telling all my kids, "Keep asking me, 'How old are you, Daddy?' because I want to keep responding, 'I'm in my 40s for as long as I possibly can.'" But time moves on so quickly. So, you know, enjoy grazing in the pasture you're in right now. That's a great antidote for worry.

My favorite line is here in verse 4, "Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." I love that word delight. Delight! What a cure for people who think the Bible wants us to always be sober all the time. The Hebrew word is even more intense than our English word. It means take exquisite delight. Now check this out. This idea of delight or taking pleasure in life occurs in the Bible about 110 times in various forms. Enjoy your wife, take delight in your food, take delight in your drink and your kids, take delight in stuff 110 times. That's part of the cure for the cycle of anxiety for sure. But now specifically this verse says to delight in God. So how do you do that? How do you delight yourself in God? Well, it's sort of fun to trip out on God, right? Maybe to look up at the stars. You ever do this? And think, man, what must it be like to be God? To be able to go, 'Let there be light.' Boom! And all of this just explodes with no effort, just from a mere word. And to think about this, to chew on that cud for a while and become enthralled with God, to muse on God.

Like what I love to do is to think of all He made, maybe even parallel universes some mathematicians are saying now, with just a word. Then you think that He came to this planet to save us, to save me through Jesus Christ. You just start to kind of trip out and you just revel in His awesomeness and His grace. You know what? Theology is really fun to do. It gives your mind something else to chew on that never gets old because you can never get to the end of an infinite being. That is good amusement. That is good meditation. Now, some of you go, "I can't meditate, René. Meditate? I've tried. I can't meditate." Well, do you worry? Then you can meditate. Because worry is just negative meditation. All you got to do is change what you chew on. You could say, "Change from crud to cud." Let that be your slogan. All right? Then you've got meditation.

Look, let me put it this way. You can't tell the future, right? Nobody can. You can't tell the outcome of the future anyway. So why not imagine a positive outcome instead of always imagining a negative outcome? Either way, it's your imagination, right? So use your imagination to delight in God. Stop, drop in prayer and meditation. Then what's the last word in putting out fires? What is it again? Roll. Stop, drop, and roll. Some of you are going, "What are you talking about? René, you are really forcing your fire, fire outline on these verses now. I don't agree with this." Well, check this out. Look at the next two verses. In fact, let's read these two verses together out loud. Here we go. "Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in Him and He will do this. He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun."

The word in that verse for commit, again, this is where our English word does not have these overtones at all. It is the Hebrew word galal, which means to roll. Isn't that interesting? So it really does fit. Stop, drop, and roll, as in to roll away a burden. To roll off your shoulders that burden you're carrying onto someone else's. Roll it on to God. Isn't that a cool image? Because when you fret, you feel burdened. I suggest you try this. When you pray, you think of this verse and the Hebrew word meaning, and you literally picture yourself unloading your burden onto the infinitely larger shoulders of Jesus Christ. These are the first six verses of Psalm 37. First two verses, he says, stop. You got to take a stand against anxiety and get proactive. Next two verses, he says, drop and pray and meditate. Then the next two, roll that burden onto God.

These are the first six verses. Through my own anxiety attacks, God has clearly shown me when I am worried I can stop the cycle of anxious thoughts. It is my choice what I think about. When I remember to do these things, God really does fill me with His peace. Now, let me give you an overview of the rest of Psalm 37. I mentioned it was an acrostic poem so that each stanza starts with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It's pretty long, goes for the whole alphabet. But after David sets it up with these proactive steps, he really, and this is typical of Hebrew poetry, as Mark mentioned last weekend, he kind of rips on one theme over and over and over again. One verse after another, he is meditating, he's ruminating, he's chewing on the cud of one idea and developing it. What is the one idea? What's the theme?

Well, this verse is just one example. Consider the blameless, observe the upright, a future awaits those who seek peace, but all sinners will be destroyed. There is no future for the wicked. The key word there is future, future. Don't import a lot of our Christian ideas of, "Oh, he's only talking about the afterlife" onto this verse. Because there's not a lot of reference actually to the afterlife in the Psalms. I believe he's primarily talking about consequences here on earth. He's saying, "The pleasures of sin are for a season." Yes, but they have consequences. Consider future results, not just a present snapshot. Now sometimes, you know, you have to wait until the next life to see this, but many times you consider future results right here on earth, not just a present snapshot. There are consequences, you know, exhibit A, need I say more.

But seriously, always the go-to man to illustrate this point in any sermon. This is important because the main underlying message of worry is, "I don't believe I will be okay." Right? David says, "You'll be okay in the long run." Now some of you are going, "Well, I didn't really need this today. Actually not worried about anything. Could have stayed home from church." You know, I was thinking about the PG&E gas line explosion and fire a few months ago up in San Bruno. That was terrible. At first, everybody thought it must be a terrorist, right? Isn't that the first thing you thought about? Must be some crazy bomber. It turns out that it was just years of neglect of the infrastructure, a tiny bad weld and a small spark, and suddenly there's an explosion and a fire. Well, it's the same thing with us. You may not be worried now, but if you neglect your infrastructure, you don't know God's promises in His Word. You don't ruminate regularly on God's greatness and relax in that. That's neglecting your infrastructure. You're not prepared for stresses, and the smallest random spark can set you off into this anxiety cycle, this consuming fire.

So how do you work on that infrastructure? I'm done preaching on Psalm 37, but I want to challenge you to use these daily meditations, which will take you deeper into it every day this week and really let this become part of your warp and woof, part of your spiritual DNA, part of your infrastructure ahead of time so you can better handle the stresses when they come. You know, Psalm 37 is a great example of an overarching theme of all the Psalms. They are all basically about one thing. Even though they're about a lot of different topics, as you'll see in this series, they're all basically about a movement, about turning from a negative obsession toward God. The Psalms are not always about solutions. Some Psalms never get to solution, but they are always about orientation.

The Psalms are not always about solution; they're always about orientation. They are about your most important choice in life. Will I live my life self-centered or God-centered? The message of the Psalms is whatever you're going through in life, whether you like it or not, change your frame of reference because life just is what it is, right? There's a lot of circumstances you cannot control and you cannot change, so change your frame of reference. Listen very carefully. You may have walked in today feeling like you are perched on the edge of a precipice, like some unwilling extreme skier, and you're staring down at all these trees that you've got to get through. If you're honest, for the last several days or maybe even weeks, you've been focused on the trees, staring at your troubles, consumed by the fire of worry. I want to give you a chance, even if only for the next few minutes, to change your orientation, to change what you're staring at. Let's look at the way through.

Would you bow your heads with me? Let's pray. With your heads bowed, this right now is a great time to change your focus. Some of you are going, "But it's not going to work. My worries are obsessing me too much." All right, just for the next nine minutes, three more songs, just change your focus. In a minute, Heather's going to come and sing. It's the Psalm series. It's all about songs, so let's let the power of music, God-inspired words, have their way with your soul. As you listen to these songs, just take a few minutes to do what we just studied about. Stop and drop and roll the burden onto God. Lord, may all of us being consumed by worry shift our focus in these moments. Help us to just quietly be amazed by your power and your majesty. Help us to replace our negative thoughts with these positive biblical ones. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.