In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of recognizing that we are not alone in facing challenges and doubts. He encourages listeners to reject negative thoughts and voices that contradict the truth of God's word. The preacher emphasizes the need to talk to oneself and remind the soul of God's faithfulness and past miracles. He also advises seeking the Lord's guidance before making any decisions or taking any actions. The sermon concludes with a prayer for strength, joy, and peace in the face of adversity.

Are you ready to learn something? I only want to do this if you're very serious about learning how to get out of the blues, fighting the blues, or not living in the dumps I'm speaking about emotionally. How many of you have ever had moments in your life, since you're a Christian, maybe in the last week, when you don't even know how it happened, but you feel either some rush of anxiety, you feel sad, you feel dejected, you don't even know why, nothing has happened to make you feel that way, but you just catch yourself and you're going, oh wow, what is this about? Anyone who's ever experienced what I'm talking about, just lift your hand, okay. Again, I am not a doctor and there's sometimes dietary reasons and there's all kinds of factors involved in the way we feel, but I want to talk about fighting the blues and fighting the anxiety rushes that we get, and fear, and the sense of dejection, and the sense of sadness, and the sense of abandonment sometimes, and like a sense of heaviness and apprehension about the future. To do this, I have to start, I have to use some personal examples, I can't do this, I'll refer in a second to the Bible, but I want to tell you about my own battles, my own problems. When I first went into the ministry here at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, we were in a rundown building on Atlantic Avenue, for those of you visiting, which is about less than a mile where the crow flies from this door, and it was a rundown building with less than 20 people in the church, and sometimes if the weather was bad, there would be nine or 10 in the Sunday service. There were bills to pay, and I was inexperienced, my wife was ahead of me being a pastor's daughter, but I hadn't gone to seminary or Bible school. So here I was in downtown Brooklyn, I grew up in Brooklyn, so Brooklyn I loved, but I didn't spend that much time in downtown Brooklyn, and here were prostitutes hanging out on corners just a block and a half, either way, left or right, from the church. Crack wasn't in, but heroin was in, alcoholism, the neighborhood was dilapidated and getting worse, and downtown Brooklyn had been written off. And people even said to me, why would you ever, as a young man, go and take that church in downtown Brooklyn? Every Saturday night, I would fight a battle, every Saturday. I was living in New Jersey then. My mom and dad gave, when I went in the ministry, they gave my wife and I a gift of $8,000, which was the 25% down payment on a $32,000 house. Wouldn't you like to find some houses for 32,000? You have to pay that for a car now, right? So I was living in New Jersey, but then moved to Brooklyn when we saw how God was navigating our lives. But I would get this sense of foreboding, and I would get this sinking feeling every Saturday, because first of all, I knew I had to preach, and my sermons were horrific. They were terrible. I keep saying it, and they laugh, but it's true. I fell asleep while I was preaching, not just the congregation. That's how bad they were. So the stress of that made me want to run. And a couple Sundays, I just called in and said I couldn't do it, telling you the truth. Then on top of that, to face the same 11 people, not know what to do, and I would have to battle with I can't do this, and I used to get terrible blues, and feel in the dumps. And then on Sunday, there would be an elation. No matter what happened during the day, I would feel better just because I got through. But then even when Friday would come, I knew, oh no, Sunday's coming. Do you ever get anything like that in your life? As the church began to grow a little bit, my wife and I worked second jobs because the money was so small in the offerings. But then when something broke, and even $500 was needed to fix the oil burner, I would get this terrible apprehension, and it would go on for years. I would battle with this apprehension. Will the money come in to pay the bills? Because I'm responsible, I'm the pastor of the church. And if we don't pay the bills and they turn off the Con Ed, what would the church say? Or if we can't heat the building because we can't pay for the oil? So I would get these sinking feelings. I can tell I'm not the only one who ever went through these things. I got wore down by fighting all those fights and getting through all of that. So I got to the point of such discouragement because when you're dejected and when you get down and when you get low, you are never ever to make decisions. You never make decisions when you have the blues, when you're in the dumps, because your vision is skewed. You are not seeing reality. But I got so overwhelmed by those early battles that on two occasions, I tried to resign and get out of the ministry. That's right, the man you're looking at. On two separate occasions, I made phone calls to try to do something else. And both times, God in his mercy blocked me. He blocked me. In fact, in one case, I was supposed to talk to someone and I just reaffirmed the appointment and I said, no, I don't want to talk to you. But it was God having mercy. Come on, how many of you have ever been in the dumps so low but God just had mercy on you? Come on. When you're down in the dumps, when you're having the blues and you're dejected, and which can lead to depression, you never make decisions, you never. Are you listening to me, everyone? You never make decisions because what you think is reality is not reality, it's skewed. Well, even to this day, I've learned though, some things that I want to share with you, even to this day, I have battles. Sometimes even the change of the weather. I am a bad person when the fall ends and the winter is coming. I have emotional, I go down. And maybe it's linked to the fact that if it snowed or rained in the early years of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, I knew that half the people wouldn't come and the offering would be $91 and how would we pay the bills? So maybe I have an association in my mind that makes me get a sinking feeling. But I remember at one time when we were going through this building, my wife was away for 17 weeks tending her sick mother in Florida who had pancreatic cancer and Carol nursed her and took care of her. And oh my goodness, you talk about fighting the valley. I would call my wife and she was going through her time with her mother, bathing her, cleaning her. You understand what I'm saying? And having to pick her up and bring her to the shower from a soil bed. You understand what I'm talking about? So I would call my wife and I was going through my own things here of we're 500,000 short, we need a million dollars by two weeks or they'll walk off the job and then you'll have a church 90% done and the unions knew that if they walked off the job, where would we be? And how would I face you? How would I face you with a 90% done building and no C of O? So I got this sinking feeling many times, thoughts came to my mind. You're not gonna make it. No, God's helped you in the past. He's not gonna help you now and you're gonna have an undone building and then I would call my wife and she would go hysterical on me, screaming and crying because of what she was going through in Florida. Oh man, have you ever been in the valley? Come on, everybody here, have you ever been in the valley? I mean, and when you look for some prop, the prop is exploding. Excuse all the personal references but I found no other way as I prayed about this to introduce this subject. If you and I have gone through battles like that, I want you to know that it puts us in tremendous company. Godly men and women in the Bible have been in valleys that you and I can't even dream of. Moses, because the people wore him down and were so faithless and aggravating and all of that, Moses at one time said to God, if it's gonna be this way, I didn't know it was gonna be this way. If it's gonna be this way, then put me to death. Joshua, when he lost the battle at Ai because he was presumptuous and didn't ask God for direction, he said to God, they had just lost one battle and God had a thousand promises and he had seen what Moses did and he had walked with Moses for 40 years and so on and so forth. And then Joshua said, God, now what are we gonna do? The enemy's gonna encircle us and wipe us all out. That's where he was. Joshua, the one who crossed the Jordan River. Joshua, who prayed that the sun would stand still. He said, no, we're all gonna die. Elijah, you all know about Elijah, right? That beautiful lady Jezebel went after him and said, I'm gonna kill you. And Elijah had already predicted a drought, had already called down rain. The man knew God and then at a weak moment, he went out into the woods and sat under a tree and said, oh God, that I would die. Jonah said the same thing. A prophet like Elijah said, that's it. It's over for me, let me die. And Jeremiah, in a passage that people struggle with in the Bible, but God has it in there because it's Jeremiah. Jeremiah got so overwhelmed by his ministry and what he was going through, he said, I wish my mother had never given birth to me and I cursed the day I was born. That's how bad it is. I say all of that to know that if you and I have gone through battles with the blues and the dumbs, we're in good company. And although we don't know that much about the personal lives of the New Testament leaders, you can be sure they went through the same thing because it is what it is. We're all made of clay. Now David, of course, went through his perils of Pauline and trials, and he said this in the Psalms, which brings me to the message here, which is very brief and to the point. Why are you downcast, oh my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my savior and my God. I wanna read it one more time. Why are you downcast? Oh my soul. He's speaking to himself. Why so disturbed within me? Why so agitated? That word disturbed means either moaning or it means the agitation of a sea with its waves and all that turmoil. Downcast is downcast, sad. Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my savior and my God. Here's what I wanna tell you, and I don't wanna tell you this unless you wanna put it into practice. The worst thing about Bible reading is if you read it and you don't wanna obey it. That is a waste of time. How many wanna obey the word of God today? And wanna know, we're gonna learn a practice today. We're gonna learn something that godly people have learned over the years of what to do when you find yourself going into the blues, getting the blues, falling in the dumps, going in a valley, call it what you will. So number one, I already told you, this is nothing strange. So when you have these battles and you have these feelings, think of Elijah, think of Moses, think of Joshua, think of Jonah, think of Jeremiah. They had it far worse. I mean, I don't think, I've never cursed the day I was born. I never said, I wish my mother never gave birth to me. I've been down there, but never that far. So now here's what you have to learn how to do. Are you ready? This is simple. It's one, two, three, but it's, remember, never make a decision when you're angry or you're dejected because what you think is real is not real. You're skewed. Everything is messed up. So don't think that you're seeing things properly. That takes self-control and maturity, but God helped us to have it. Never make a decision. Never quit a job. Never do anything unless you get in the right frame of mind and you seek the Lord. Number one, I want you to see thoughts as voices. Because thoughts are really voices. It's like somebody talking to you in your mind. What is a thought? You know, a thought is like a voice. A voice tells me, you're gonna preach tomorrow. Nobody will be there, there'll be no money, and you don't even know what to preach and you don't know how to preach. And by the way, that battle has still gone on. I was just in Florida this past week speaking at a large pastor's conference in Jacksonville, Florida, and I didn't know what I should speak on. And I started getting that feeling. You're gonna get up there in front of 2,000, 3,000 people, and speaking in front of pastors is the hardest because they're all judging you. They're all going, that ain't nothing. I could do better than that. Pastors are the hardest to speak in front of. And I started to get that old-time feeling in my soul. Apprehension. I'm not gonna have anything to say. It's gonna be empty. Now, what is that thought? It's like a voice. Look at it as a voice. Where do those thoughts come from? Where do those voices come from? Well, they can come from a couple different sources, but I want you to see this as your first lesson. Do not believe the voices in your head. And I don't mean just the devil, I mean you. Don't believe yourself because you're a liar. You see, David here is talking to himself and he's divided himself into two parts. He's saying there's a higher soul, there's a higher spiritual being, there's a spirit of faith, and the spirit of faith in him is speaking to the spirit of unbelief in him and the human, natural, fleshly part that fluctuates with every single change in circumstance. He's talking to it and he's saying, why are you so cast out? What's wrong with you? He's talking to himself because he has obviously heard a voice in his head saying some negative things. Now, when you hear these voices, if you take them in, these thoughts, voices, call it what you will, if you listen to them, they will have an effect on you. All feelings, all feelings in everyone's life are produced by what you are thinking about and dwelling on, all feelings. You can't make yourself sad. If I said to someone here, look, I'll give you $1,000, just be sad now within three seconds. They can't make themselves sad. They could try to fake crying, but you only become sad when you think about something that makes you sad. Then when you dwell on something else, you make it, it makes you happy, you're happy. But what you think about, as a man thinketh, so is he. Whatsoever is lovely, whatsoever is pure, whatever is a good report, think on these things, why? When these voices come, you have to learn that they're liars. You're gonna have to make a choice, all of us. I have to be able to say to that voice, I'm not saying it was the devil. You know, the devil told me, the devil told me. Now, the devil does plant thoughts in our minds. And some are satanic, but you can usually discern those because they're ugly, they're satanic. But there are a lot of other thoughts that just come from us, from my background, from the way I'm constructed. She's constructed totally different. She has a different background. She has a different personality. She's had different experiences. So the thoughts coming into her pretty head are gonna be different than mine. But whatever they are, you can't believe them because they're liars. They're liars. When they contradict God's word, I am lying to myself. When the voice says to me or the thought comes in my mind, you're not gonna make it, you won't know what to preach. That is a lie. But paracymbra, it's so close to you, it's coming from your own being. That's what the subtlety of it is. It's right in me and it's telling me a lie and it's me. And if I listen to it, my soul will be cast down. If you listen to those voices, if we entertain those thoughts, we're gonna get a natural effect on our being. You dwell on something negative, you're gonna feel negative. So you never believe those voices. God has to help all of us now. When you get that negative thought, when you get that sense of foreboding, you are a liar. And if it's Satan giving it to you, then resist that liar called Satan. When the Bible says resist the devil and he'll flee from you, what does that mean? What does resist the devil and he'll flee from you mean? It means he's not gonna come physically to us and we're gonna shove him back. It means resist him in your mind. When he comes with that thought, no, you are a liar. You only speak lies, you only know how to say lies. And I don't care if they sound true, you're a liar. And if they come from Jim Simbala, Jim Simbala, you rascal, you're a liar. You're a liar when you say that that might not work out. It will work out because God said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. Come on, can we put our hands together and say amen? So all those battles I were having was coming from voices and they still come from voices or thoughts that produce, anxious thoughts produce anxiety. Wow. Fearful thoughts produce fear. Wow, there's a revelation. And a lot of us, you get people who live in the dumps, who always are living in the blues, have no joy. If you could just open up their head and know how they're thinking, you would understand them totally. And I wanna say this about the children that are here. When parents give into dejection and live in the blues and live in the dumps, do you know what a terrible heritage that is and the terrible influence that is on your children? You know how horrible it is to be a child and grow up with an angry father or an angry mother? I was walking on Fulton Street not so long ago and a mother was just seething with this little three-year-old girl, four-year-old girl, and she had her cell phone and she started letting out this profanity, lace tirade into the phone. I don't know who she was talking to her, talking with, but she was just seething with anger. And the little girl heard her mother with all these words and the little girl just looked up at her mother and was walking so innocent. As God is my witness, I wanted to go shove the mother away, grab the girl and take her away and say, no, protect that girl. Don't let her see that. Don't let her be around that kind of atmosphere. And dejection, depression, gloominess, that sense of gloom, children shouldn't grow up around that. The joy of the Lord is our strength. We have to be rejoicing at God. We gotta be standing against these voices and calling them what they are. They're liars. When any thought or voice comes in my mind which contradicts God's word, then that's a lie. I don't care who says it. It's a lie. I'm a liar. Satan is a liar for sure. So anytime you hear any thought, oh, that could happen. What if this? No, no, that's a lie. God is in control. He said he would never leave me, never forsake me. So you don't believe voices. You don't believe thoughts. Yeah, I know, but pastor, they're in my head. Don't believe them. Just because it's in your head doesn't make it true. That thought that came to me this week, you don't know what to preach on. You're gonna get up there empty. Imagine all the years I'm doing this. Those voices still come. They're liars. But here's what I did. I've learned you can't believe those voices. You can't believe yourself. Don't take yourself so serious. Haven't you been wrong in the past? Here's step number two. You gotta learn to speak to yourself. A lot of people live in depression because they don't speak to themselves. They live with the blues. They live in the dumps because they don't do what David did. They don't talk to themselves. And sometimes if you're alone and people won't be thrown off by it, you gotta say it out loud. Not on the number three train, or they might take you away. And then we'll have to visit you in another place. But what you do is you speak to yourself. Why are you cast out? Why are you down in the dumps? Hasn't God helped you in the past? Wait a minute. Hasn't God helped you down with worse things than this? Didn't he bring you through? Aren't you alive today? Has he not brought us through? Has he not helped us in the past? Now listen, even though your feelings have changed, God hasn't changed. Just because I have the blues, that doesn't mean God has the blues, or he's changed. My emotions go up and down, and yours are tempted to go up and down. But God is not going anywhere up and down. God is God. He is faithful. And you have to say to yourself, you have to talk to yourself, you're a liar, Jim Cymbala. I wanna speak truth to you, soul. Here's something for you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. He who has begun a good work in you is gonna complete it. If I take good care of my children and my grandchildren, God's not gonna take care of me. I'll tell you about what's gonna happen tomorrow in church. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. Come on, let's put our hands together. We gotta say that to ourselves. You gotta talk to yourself. A lot of people think they're only one person so they don't talk to themselves. We're two people. We got a fleshly, unbelieving side, don't we? And then we have that new creation in Christ Jesus. It's like we're divided in a way, and we have to speak to that emotional, flimsy side of us. What's wrong with you? Why are you down there like that? I'm not denying I'm down. David is not saying I'm not down. See, that's Christian science. I'm not sad, I'm not sad, I'm not sad. No, that's not what David is saying. David is saying you're sad, but why are you sad? God is with you. And if he is for us, who can be against us? And he made all these promises. And just think of this. No matter what you're going through now, I think about this all the time. And I thought about it this week in Jacksonville. I said, wait a minute. You're not gonna get me, you lying thing, you, whoever this is. God's helped me so many times. Did you know one time when I wasn't in the ministry, a year, I was invited like for the first time ever out to speak anywhere. Who would want me to speak anywhere, right? I had nothing. That's what I thought I would speak on. It was taken from me, and I'm sitting in the church in Plainfield, New Jersey with nothing, nada, nothing to say. If I got up there, I would do hickory dickory dock. The mouse ran up the clock or whatever. And as I'm walking up the steps, God gave me the message. As I'm walking up the steps, they're introducing me. And I just remembered all those times that God has come through. And I said, no, I will know what to speak on. God will help me because does God hate me or does he love me? Would he help me or not help me? Does he rejoice over me with singing or is he against me? No, he said, soul, shut up. God is gonna help me. And then you realize all that feeling just starts to run out of the room. You just speak to your soul. You speak the word of God to your soul. Now, honestly, I have had my experiences. How about you? How many have had God pull you out of things you thought might kill you or overwhelm you and you thought you would die and you were down in the dumps? How many have come through it because God brought you through? Come on, wave your hand at me. Wave your hand at me. And he won't do it again? Of course he'll do it again. Come on, let's put our hands together and just rejoice in him. He's gonna do it again. And that's what the Psalmist says. He says, why are you cast down, O my soul? Put your trust in God. He's helped you in the past. You will yet praise God. So when you're at your lowest, you gotta speak to your soul and say, no, I'm still gonna praise God at the end of this. Right now, it doesn't look good, but that's okay. It's gonna come out great because God, wait a minute, God chose me before the foundation of the world. Did you know that? Did you know, I was reminded of that in the conference. Before a star was made, God chose you. You say, no, wait a minute, I chose God, I received Jesus. Here's the mystery of the Bible. God in his sovereignty has elected us and chosen us and yet at the same time, we have free will and moral responsibility. We have to make decisions and we pay for it, but they both coexist. But what the Bible stresses more in the New Testament is you have not chosen me, I have chosen you. Before the earth was created, God chose me. You think he's gonna let me fall now? Come on, you think he's gonna let you go now? He sent his son to die for you. Jesus Christ hung on the cross naked and became your substitute and took all your sins on you and God punished him for your sins and my sins and you think God's gonna let you fall through a crack now? Is that even possible? When you didn't know him, when you weren't looking for him, he sent his son to die for you and now you're trying to tell me that he's just gonna say, oh, this is out of control. Your life's gonna be horrible now and it's gonna end in a tragedy. Never! God who begins a good work, he's gonna finish it. He does all things well. You gotta tell your soul that. And then you gotta stand on a promise like this. Remember, you're in good company if you battle sometimes with this stuff, but know how to combat it. And the first way to combat it is don't believe the voices you hear in your head. Don't believe, don't accept those thoughts, they're liars. When you tell yourself negative things or you let those voices come in, and some of it comes from our own background. You know, someone's here today, your background has been legalism. So you always hear voices that you're gonna be lost because you don't live a holy enough life. You can't receive God's grace that Christ is your substitute. You're gonna be saved because of Christ, not because of your good behavior, but because that background is so deep inside of you, you have that battle of anxiety all the time. What if Christ comes and I won't be doing perfect and I'm gonna be lost and all of that instead of resting in the Christ of your salvation? Now look at this promise. Here's one that you could use for all of us this week. This is this week's promise. Isaiah, for I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, do not fear, I will help you. Right now, he's holding your hand. You don't know it. And you gotta tell your soul that. You're not, I'm not a lone soul. Don't say I'm alone, he's holding my hand right now. The word says he's holding my hand. I know, but do you, I don't feel I'm holding my hand. What does it matter how you feel? Our feelings go up and down. He's holding my hand. He's holding my hand. Say that right now. He's holding my hand. Lift up your hand and say it. He's holding my hand. He is holding my hand. And here's what he says to us. Do not be afraid. I will help you. So he's gonna help us. Tell your soul that. Tell your children that. Don't be afraid. God is holding your hand. Don't be afraid, he will help you. But help me how? Let him take care of that, he will help you. He will help you, because if you go down, it'll shame his name. Blessed is the man who puts his trust in the Lord. That person will never be ashamed. It's when we give in to those voices, those negative things. I've chosen the right subject and the right moment to speak on this. God is assuring me of that. Because some of you just battle with this, don't you? You live with the blues, you live in the dumps. You give in to all those voices, you listen to them and they create a result. Thoughts dwelt on are gonna create feelings, always. But when you speak to your soul, you speak the word of God to your soul, you start meditating on the word of God. Brothers and sisters, please, if this is the last time I ever talk to you, please, read the Bible every day. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Choir songs are good, but that won't hold you. Praise and worship is wonderful, that won't hold you. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly so that you can just get ammunition against these lying thoughts that come into our head. I've had so many lying thoughts in my head. Did you know that one time, I was laying in my bed at night, Carol was down in Florida, I forgot how much money we needed here, but they had threatened, we're walking off, you're gonna have an undone building. The pressure of that. Did you know I gave into it, I gave into it, I was dwelling on it, dwelling on it, I wasn't practicing what I'm preaching. I gave place to the enemy. He found a spot, and the next thing I know, there was this terrible darkness in a room that was already pitch black. My heart started to pound as Christ is my holy witness, and I jumped out of the bed, and I started pacing around my bedroom in an empty house, pleading the blood of Jesus. Satan, you're a liar, you're a liar. What God has begun, God will do. And sometimes when you resist this, they don't go away right away, you gotta keep rebuking, you gotta keep resisting. Satan, you're a liar, no, you're a liar. And I can see myself now just walking in my pajamas, walking around my room with my hands up in the air, you're a liar, you're a liar, you're a liar. And I prayed through, and I spoke the word of God, and then I lay down and slept like a baby, because God gives peace, God gives joy. Can we one more time just clap our hands? And listen, young people, kids that are here from BT Kids, don't live down, don't live sad, don't be sad, be glad. Christ died for you, he wants you glad. You're never in God's will when you're sad. It doesn't please God to be sad, no it doesn't. How about your kids? Are you happy when they're sad and depressed? No, it breaks your heart, same with God. Don't walk around sad and think it's spiritual. You're just depressed, you're not spiritual. Those that seek the Lord will rejoice, the Bible says. Let's close our eyes. God's gonna do some help right now. Now the final step is this. Step number one, always remember you're in good company, don't think it's some strange thing that's happening to you. The best men and women have gone through this. Number two, don't believe voices, don't believe thoughts. Just because they're in your head doesn't mean they're true. Learn to discern that and resist them, reject them, call them the lies that they are. Anything that's contrary to the word of God is a lie, for God is truth, his word is true. Number three, you gotta talk to yourself, talk to your soul. Say, what in the world's going on with you? What do you think, God died, he's alive. And what has he done in the past, he's gonna do it again. I will yet praise God, he's alive, he's not dead. And he made a covenant with me that he would walk with me and help me, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. And he brought me out of worse things in the past, he's gonna bring me out of this. And then there comes a moment though to activate all this where you just got to get up out of your groaning, get out of your moaning, get out of your gloom. You gotta resist it, step out of it and say, you know what? I'm gonna praise God for what he's done in the past. I'm gonna praise God for who he is. How he's gonna handle this situation, I don't have the faintest, but he will help me. He holds me by the hand and he tells me, never fear, never fear because I will help you. Maybe you're here today living in the basement. You might be on the 15th floor of your apartment building, but really you live in the basement and you live constantly just pulled down negative and it's gonna hurt your children, it's gonna hurt your loved ones. It's a terrible testimony for Christ. Anybody here say, pastor, that was for me today. Just get up out of your seat, out of the balcony or downstairs here. It's a simple act, but it's like pulling the trigger. It's like saying, I'm not living that. I'm gonna put into practice what the minister said today because it's found in the word of God. I'm gonna resist these voices, I'm gonna resist the devil and I'm not even gonna believe myself because I lie. I'm a liar, I give in to fear. I have complexes, I have bad memory bank. No, I'm gonna speak to myself the word of God. I'm gonna reason with myself. I'm gonna preach to myself. I'm gonna exhort myself and say, soul, what's up with you? Why are you so down? You're gonna yet praise God. God's gonna abandon me after giving his son from me. He's gonna now abandon me. No, no. And I'm standing on a simple promise. Do not be afraid, I will help you. Anybody here living with a consciousness that God will not help you and you wanna come up and say, I resist that today. He is gonna help me. Gonna help me find that place to live. He's gonna help me find that job. He's gonna help me find the food I need. He's gonna help me find the friends I need. He's gonna help me and my family. He's gonna help me. And I'm not living with that gloom, I'm not. Breaks God's heart. Just get out of your seat. Just get up. Come on, at some point you just gotta get sick and tired of being sick and tired. You just gotta break off the shackles and say, no way, Jose, I am gonna praise God. I'm gonna bless God. Let's have a final prayer. Father, it's as simple as this. What you've taught us today is if we give in to circumstances and focus on what might happen and what somebody said and what somebody did. If we go by just a bank account and we forget about you, we will be up and down like a yo-yo. But God, you did not call us to live in depression, dejection, gloom, anxiety, apprehension, fear. But you said that your joy would be our strength. And that you would give us a peace the world can't take away. The world didn't give it to us. The world can't take it away. So today, help us to learn these lessons and apply them. Because the day will come when those voices start again to try to get us down. We're not going down, we're going up. We're gonna start praising you, Lord. We're not gonna listen to those lies. Anything contrary to your word is a lie, no matter who says it. If an angel comes and says something contrary to your word, he's a liar. But we're gonna speak to ourselves. The wonderful promises of your goodness. We're gonna remind ourselves of how faithful you've been. And we stand on your promise today. I hold you by the hand, so don't fear. I will help you. You are God the helper, my helper. And we rejoice in that today. Bless your people now, let your face shine upon them. In Jesus' name, everyone said. Yeah, let's give God one last hand clap. So come on, everybody, give somebody a hug, come on. Give a bunch of people a hug. Say something good.