The Movie of Your Life | Dennis Burke | 1/22/23
Sermon Recap
This past weekend, guest minister Dennis Burke talked about the “Movie in Your Mind.” He said we need to be “dialed into” God’s presence, in order to be in that place where we are able to hear, receive, and experience the presence of God. It all depends on what kind of movie we allow to play in our minds. Using Psalm 77 as his text, he taught us about a man named Asaph and how we can navigate through tough times with powerful yet easy to understand tools of the kingdom of God.
Dive Deeper
God wants us to be in a place where we are “dialed into” His presence. It’s a place where we can hear, receive, and experience the presence of God. It’s the place where God can use us to do great things.
Dennis sought the Lord for the upcoming year. There are a lot of horrible things that are happening in the world right now and the Lord wanted Dennis to make a decision, or choose, not to be fearful. The Lord said, “Instead, I want you to be fearless.”
Second Timothy 1:7 says God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind… a sound, solid, strengthened, empowered mind. In that regard, Dennis said he wanted to talk to us about “the movie in your mind.” He gave us three elements we need to face the upcoming year.
First element: We must step into this year fearless. We must judge those things that cause us anxiety and fear and that hold us back from doing God’s will.
Second element: We must be faith filled, to have faith in God. Hebrews 11:6 says it is impossible to please God without faith. We are to not only have faith in God, but we are to understand that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him.
Third element: We must be surrounded with the favor of God. Psalm 5:12 says the Lord blesses the righteous with favor, and surrounds them like a shield. Favor is God’s greatness and goodness being displayed in your life in the midst of troubled times and situations.
During these dark times, it doesn’t matter how many dark clouds gather against you. If you fearlessly stand on God’s Word in faith and impose the Word on the fearful situations in which you find yourself, you have the right to expect God’s delivering power and to be surrounded by His favor.
Dennis took us to Psalm 77 where he talked about a man named Asaph and used him as an example of how we can navigate through the tough times in which we find ourselves. Asaph had six questions, which summarized all of his unbelief. His six questions typified how most people think when they are in unbelief. He then talked about the movie that is playing in your mind and how to change it from unbelief to faith by using the two elements of memory and imagination.
Read About it
2 Timothy 1:7, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
Hebrews 11:6, “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”
Psalm 5:12, “For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield.”
John 16:33, Passion, “For in this unbelieving world, you will experience trouble in sorrows.”
Psalm 77:1–3, “I cried out to God with my voice—to God with my voice; And He gave ear to me. In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord; My hand was stretched out in the night without ceasing; My soul refused to be comforted. I remembered God, and was troubled; I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed.”
Discussion Questions
- Do you find yourself, currently, having fearful thoughts about the world in which we live?
- Can you articulate the things in which you are most fearful?
- What is the movie that is playing in your mind?
- Do you see now how you can use memory and imagination to change the movie playing in your mind?