When Your Thoughts Attack | Steven Furtick

Honestly, that's why I had to stop dating certain people. I started to realize that you pick up on what you're close to. Now, if you need to pull out

your

phone at this point in my sermon and do some surgery with that "swipe left, delete" motion... Some of you don't need to raise

your

hands for more faith; you need to slide your thumb, because they are your contacts… I understood something. I catch something every time I'm near them, every time I move around. I realized this the other day. I get in a certain mood and I can't understand: "How was I so happy three minutes ago and now...?" Have you ever had to change so quickly?

I started studying and realized that before I caught a feeling, I caught a thought. Sometimes that thought is just me scrolling through my feed and I see something that doesn't register... Here's what I noticed. You don't feel it while you're moving. When I ate an entire bag of Oreos one Thanksgiving after eating three meals, I didn't feel bad while eating them. My taste buds didn't tell me to stop. So I scroll and I don't feel bad until I stop. What I realized about myself... Maybe you are more spiritually mature than me and can find a church where the pastor is whole, healthy and doesn't have these problems, but for all of us who understand that sometimes you are angry about something that you saw 10 minutes ago on your phone because you were in everyone else's life but your own, trying to figure out, "Am I better than them?

Are they better than me?" What happened while I was moving? I saw them on vacation and I know they are in debt, so I came up with a lawsuit idea. "Why should they be on vacation

when

I know they are in debt?" Now I feel bad 10 minutes later because of a thought that occurred to me while reviewing someone else's situation and that has nothing to do with my responsibility. What happened to me was that I caught an offensive thought and then picked up an attitude of frustration. The other day I was offended because I saw God blessing someone he wasn't supposed to bless.

Have you ever seen God do something wonderful for the wrong person? He didn't consult you. Then I found myself feeling insecure. The reason I felt insecure about myself is because I caught an offensive thought toward another person. Now this is what happens: you become a victim of your own judgment. When you judge others that way, you judge yourself that way. So

when

it occurs to you to judge others, don't be surprised when judgment comes upon you. Then I had an idea. I caught a thought and realized the thought I'm holding on to... You know, like you could catch a wave.

You can catch a football to score the winning touchdown, like Graham Furtick did yesterday. Just yesterday. But I never knew I could capture a thought. I knew you could catch a case. I have some family members who did it. I knew you could catch a cold, but I discovered you could catch a thought. Then sometimes I trace the weakness of my faith and ask myself the question: "Where did that thought come from?" It is important where it comes from, because where it comes from determines where it leads. My problem is that when I say I hear God, I don't hear it out loud.

God bless you if you do. I have never heard the audible voice of God. Ever. I mean, he speaks through my wife all the time, but other than that exception, I have never heard the audible voice of God. If so, I'm not mad at you...unless you start trying to use it to manipulate people by making up things that God told you, because God has a threefold calling and he can tell us both. Don't tell me that God told you about something I don't agree with and try to get me to do something you want to do by saying that God told you so, especially if you say that God told you to quit your job because you're just tired. of dealing with frustrating people.

I don't know if it's God or if you're just tired and need to get some sleep and have a better attitude when you get there. I have never heard of God out loud. A man once asked me, "When you say God spoke to you, how do you know?" Big question. I don't hear God on an auditory level, so when I say, "God spoke," that can be misleading. When Peter said, "Jesus spoke to me," he was literal. Jesus was a person. "He spoke to me. I was fishing one night. I hadn't caught anything. I was frustrated, and Jesus said, 'Cast your nets into the deep to catch a catch.'" And Pedro said, "At first I felt frustrated because I thought, 'You're a carpenter.

I'm a fisherman. You do your job; I'll do mine. I didn't know you were going to try it.' Handle it." But because you say so, I will let down the nets." Now, when he let down the nets, he caught a great quantity of fish, but God was showing me that before he caught the fish, he caught a thought. Before there was a seat, there was a thought. See, the problem with this is that I don't hear God out loud that way, so I connect with God not on an auditory or sensory level; I connect with God on a thought level, which would be fine if God spoke to me on a thought level and I was the only one who spoke that way.

But I have this other wild card. They call him the devil. When I say "The devil tempts me" or "The devil discourages me," I don't mean some guy in a Halloween costume that got clearance at Target coming up with a pitchfork, a cape, and some horns. I never saw the devil like this. I just shook it off. He's not on my shoulder. When he comes to me, he comes to me through a thought. So now I have God speaking to me through my

thoughts

. I have the Enemy trying to speak against what God spoke to me through my

thoughts

.

I have two voices on the same device and I'm stuck between a thought. One tells me: "Your best years are ahead of you." One tells me, "You've already done all the good things you're going to do. You'd better hold on, because it won't be long." One tells me: "Go ahead, speak, say it, do it, get into it and believe in it." The other one tells me, "Well, you better not go too far. If you go too far, you'll be embarrassed. After all, if you go up high, you can get knocked down." I'm caught between Caleb ("We Can") and the other spies.

I'm trapped. I had an idea. They caught me. A thought caught me. I don't know how it happened, but I have this thought that runs through my mind all the time that says, "It doesn't matter." All the time. I could be doing anything and it'll be like... You know that eye roll emoji? That would be the appearance, but the thinking behind it is like, "Who cares? It doesn't matter." Have you ever had that thought that caught you trying to do something? "You are not enough." I don't know if you say it exactly like that, but it's crazy how many people I talk to...

I used to think they were people who weren't very confident, but then I realized that professional athletes have this thought that "I'm not enough." They are the ones that our society worships, and there is still a thought... It is a thought that is going around. The reason why it circulates much more now than before is because now we do not judge or measure ourselves according to the call that God has given us; we compare ourselves to a fictional account of another person's life. That's where you always get into trouble. Now understand this point. You always get into trouble when you start comparing your calling to someone else's.

When you compare callings, you detect insecurity. When you compare callings, you detect insufficiency. When I think, "I'm not enough..." Even the disciples... "It's not enough food for everyone, Jesus. You have to send them away." How many times have I rejected something God put in my life because I thought I'm not enough? They wandered and wandered around and around in the desert for 40 years, not because of their enemy but because of their thinking. So even sometimes when things are going well, I have this thought. I don't know where it comes from. I don't think it's God. I do not think it is.

Sometimes it's hard to tell, because it's not like he talks like that. He doesn't sound like Morgan Freeman. It is just a thought. Come on. If God sounded like Morgan Freeman, you could do it. If he narrated your life like that, you could do it. You could do it. You would go to sleep and wake up and be ready for the day. But it arises as a thought. Even when everything goes well... "It won't last. They'll leave you too. You can't count on them." Then you sabotage the gift because you're not sure about it, because even while it's happening you don't believe it's real.

These are my thoughts. I don't know where I got them. I had a good mom, a good dad. I mean, they weren't perfect. Do not misunderstand. I wish I could trace it back to a single traumatic event. I think it would be easier. "I'm not enough." Where did that thought come from? I'm not sure where it comes from, but I know where it's taking me. When I look back at the seasons of my life when I was so deeply sunk in depression… And I know the Bible verses. I know them better than you. Let's have a dating contest. "Always be joyful in the Lord.

I will say it again: Be joyful!" Do you see the movements of my hands? I know the verse. "Always be joyful in the Lord." Then Paul says, "I'll say it again: Rejoice!" Well, you can say it as many times as you want, Paul. I'm sad right now and I can't find a way out. So now I'm fighting at the level of my feelings, but before it became a feeling... It wasn't just that Moses was a bad leader. Even Paul had to contend with opposing voices and systems of thought that undermined the essence of God's grace in the gospel, even in the churches he started, even in the church at Corinth.

He would write to that church, and what would happen to them is that they would be led astray, or the word that he likes to use in 2 Corinthians is misleading. He says, "I fear the power of suggestion is deceiving you." He uses the example... He says, "As Eve was deceived by the Serpent." Do you remember that story? When God said, "You can eat any of this," and then she caught a thought of a snake. She allowed something beneath her to speak to her. She caught a thought. Look, I've never had a snake slither up to me and talk to me.

I wish I had. I wish I were a snake I could cut off the head of. It's a thought and I have to live with it and I have to deal with it. The Serpent said to Eve: "Did God really say...?" You see it? He introduces a doubt about the possibility and potential of faith, causing her to focus on what is not available rather than what is available. Paul says, "I fear that you will be deceived." There are spies in the church at Corinth, and they are leading Christians astray. They are doing it by the power of thought.

They are introducing the thought into the church that you need something more than Christ to justify you. He says, "I fear you have strayed from your pure devotion to Christ." Pure is the correct word. That's the important word: pure. It is that uncontaminated place that you access occasionally, where you know that God has you and everything is going to be okay. Have you ever felt that way and you had no reason to and you didn't even have the facts to back it up? Have you ever felt like, "Wow! I feel like I'm going to do it and God is going to do it.

I can't even prove it on a flowchart or anything, but I just..." What happens is that the enemy deceives you. He can't take what God gave you. Do you know it well? I need to make sure you know that. He cannot accept what God gave you, but if he can get you to grasp a thought that opposes it, he can keep you so weak that you will not enter into it.