The direction of your life

can be determined by the song that you sing.

Everybody, you included, are singing a song

and it's steering your life

and you might not even realize the song you're singing.

This is many of us right now;

we've swallowed the hook

from one of our culture's current three songs

and it's pulling us towads a future

that I don't know that you want.

- Where are we in the Bible?

Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

The Bible begins in the Old Testament,

written around 3500 years ago.

The first five books of the Old Testament:

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy

are known as the Pentateuch, or books of the law.

The next 12 books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth,

1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings,

1 Chronicle, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

Whew. That's a lot.

These are known as the historical books.

This brings us to the books of the Bible

known as the Wisdom Literature.

It starts with Job and then into

a collection of 101 poems known as the Psalms.

The direction of your life

will be determined by the song that you sing,

that's one of the secrets of faith.

By the way, I'm Kyle.

The teams that make the stuff you experience at Crossroads,

our online pastors, teaching pastors.

We're in this series right now

on the book of Psalms from the Bible

It's a collection of some of the oldest and most profound songs

in the entire world.

Here's why it matters: because everybody, you included,

are singing a song and it's steering your life,

and you might not even realize the song that you're singing.

You ever had that moment where you're in a restaurant

or a store or wherever

and a song starts playing in the background

and you're shopping or eating your food

and you're not even aware of it,

but then hours later you're at your house mowing the grass

or doing the dishes and all of the sudden

you hear it coming out of your mouth.

It's like, I don't even like this song that much,

how did it get stuck in my head? Why am I singing it?

That happened to me last year with this song.

I'm going to play it for you.

This is a real treat by the way, I happened to bring my recorder.

I've been saving it since third grade

This song is so catchy. I promise you know it.

I'm going to play it not well on this recorder.

Your mom knows it. Your mailman knows it.

And you're going to get it within 10 seconds.

Okay, ready? See how long it takes you.

[recorder music]

It's Old Town Road, that song doesn't make any sense,

but it gets stuck in our head.

Why?

It's because every song has a hook.

That's an actual term used by song writers.

Here's a quick download about hooks

from Crossroad Music's Robbie Reider.

[guitar music]

- I bet all of you could finish that musical phrase

without me playing another note.

You know why?

Because it's an amazing hook, that's why.

Now, every hook is designed to get stuck in your head,

to get stuck in your pocket, so you take it everywhere you go.

And any song writer who's doing their job

is going to use 3 ingredients to make a great hook.

First of all, it's going to have rhythm.

Second, it's going to have repetition.

Third, it's going to evoke an emotional response.

So, go with me for just a moment.

Our English language is made up of 26 random letters.

We put them together

so that we can speak, write and communicate.

Now, if we went to a toddler and said,

"Here are the 26 letters, make sense of this,"

they would just think, "What? What do I do with all these?"

But what we do is we set them to a melody,

we set them to a rhythm, and we make it repeatable

so that all of the sudden our kids are learning this.

[singing] A, B, C, D, E, F, G,

H, I, J, K, I, M, N, O, P.

And that is how you make a great hook.

Did you pick up on that?

Robbie said a hook has three parts.

It has rhythm, repetition, and evokes an emotional response.

And when you combine those three thing together

you just hear it over and over again,

it's got a good beat to it,

it makes you feel a particular something.

When that happens, the hook works.

What we say is that the song is catchy,

which means that we get caught.

I mean, it's just like a fishing hook, right?

It comes in, it sounds good, so we swallow it

and it just has us, it pulls us in a direction.

That's a hook, they're so strong

they get stuck in our head without us even knowing it.

Here's why this is so critical.

If you want a new season in life,

you want more peace, you want more joy,

you want more confidence, you want to stop feeling so angry,

you want to stop feeling so defeated all the time,

you want to stop feeling so down, so whatever,

you have to spit out the old hook

of the song you're singing right now

and you have to learn a new song.

It will not happen if you don't.

This episode we're zeroing in on Psalm 40,

which was written by

the most famous and significant king in Israel's history.

He was a military legend who defeated Golaith.

He established the capital city of Jerusalem.

And in true renasannace man fashion

he was also an amazing song writer.

We're looking at Psalm 40 because it holds the secret

of how to see this kind of change in your life,

how to sing a new song.

Maybe you've heard parts of this Psalm before

and didn't even know it was part of the Bible.

David wrote Psalm 40, and I want you to listen

to how he describes this new kind of life.

Here's verse 3, David writes:

He, God, has put a new song in my mouth -

Praise to God; many will see it and fear,

and will trust in the Lord.

See, David described this new life

as a new song in my mouth,

new new words that I'm saying,

new thoughts that I'm having

that I'm expressing to myself and everybody around me.

And this is a major insight

that you have to wrap your mind around.

What you say, specifically what you sing,

what's on repeat with rhythm

that evokes an emotional response

will 100% steer your life.

Not your emotions, not your neighbor,

not the government.

It's the song coming off your own tongue.

Here's how James 3 describes the power of your tongue.

If we put bits into the mouths of horses

that they obey us,

we guide their whole bodies as well.

Look at the ships also:

though they are so large and driven by strong winds,

they're guided by a very small rudder

wherever the will of the pilot directs.

So also the tongue is a small member,

yet it boasts of great things.

See, when you're a fish.

Got one right here.

When you're a fish, a hook gets set in your mouth

and it pulls you where you don't want to go.

It pulls you out of the water

on to a boat deck where you die. Bad.

Why that happen?

It's because you swallowed something

you thought was good.

But the hook ultimately pulls you

towards this dangerous future,

literally takes you to your death.

And this right here, this fish,

this is many of us right now.

We've swallowed the hook

from one of our culture's current three songs,

and it's pulling us towards a future

that I don't know that you want.

What are those top three songs?

I think, I come in at number three,

personal, my top three list, I think.

I think number three is fear.

The lyrics to fear are:

the economy is tanking, gas is up, this is awful.

I'm going to go broke.

I'm going to -- everything's going to be awful.

My bank account's going down.

And listen, friend, if you've swallowed that hook,

I want you to know you're headed towards

a future of crippling anxiety and a life without peace.

That's where the hook is pulling you.

Maybe you're singing along the lyrics

of our second best hit, anger.

The key line in the song of anger

is that they're the problem, them, the other ones.

Joe Biden is the problem.

Donald Trump is the problem. It's it's them.

Friend, if you've swallowed the hook of anger,

I'm telling you you're headed towards a future

of bitterness and resentment.

Or maybe you swallow the number one hit

of our current day, I think,

which is some version of eat, drink and be merry,

live for right now.

Do whatever feels good right now.

By the way, it's a form of apathy.

I have no vision for my life, so I just do good.

I just do what feels good right now,

no matter what it cost me,

no matter what it costs people around me.

Friend, if you swallowed that hook,

you're headed towards a future of addiction

and perpetual dissatisfaction.

Nothing will ever make you happy.

And I'm not trying to guilt trip you here.

I'm trying to help you because, listen,

this was me last year.

I got to the end of the year and I realized

I spent all of 2021 singing along

to the song of pessimism, and some version of like

that anger and fear puts together.

Everything is going to be bad and I'm mad about it.

That's what I kept saying.

That's what I saying to everybody around me.

Now, I didn't know, but if you ask my wife,

if you were to ask my kids, ask my friends,

they could have told you the song I was singing.

If it's a move you want to make, just ask.

You don't know what it is. It got stuck in your head.

You don't know what's coming out of your mouth,

ask the people around you.

And I'm telling you, it was pulling me

to a place I didn't want to go.

It was making me more and more and more pessimistic.

It was a hook pulling me towards a future I didn't want.

Listen, if you're singing those songs,

I just want to ask you:

Is it taking you to the future you want?

Because the hook's pulling you

and we think it's just words coming out of our mouth.

It's just an innocent complaint.

And I was just -- I'm just venting.

I'm just venting. I'm just sharing how I feel.

Isn't that okay? I thought we could do that.

Yeah, venting is fine.

But when it becomes a rhythm in your life,

when it becomes a repetition in your life,

when it evokes this huge emotional response from you,

it's more than just words.

See, the single mistake the fish makes

is seeing the hook and thinking,

"Yeah, that's fine, that's good."

But it's not. It's not even neutral. It's deadly.

And I want to be clear, this isn't me

making stuff up or being hyperbolic or whatever.

The stakes here are very, very real.

The Bible makes this clear,

it's incredibly dangerous territory.

Listen to Proverbs 18:21. It says:

Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

That's huge.

Death and life are in the power

of what comes out of your mouth.

That means that you can set a hook in your mouth

that pulls you towards death.

Or did you catch the good news?

You can set a hook in your mouth

that pulls you towards life.

Now the words that pull you towards a negative future,

do you know what you call that?

It's called a curse.

Do you remember the first time you ever cursed?

I remember. I was eight years old.

My mom had given me

a Christian video game for Christmas.

I did not ask for it, by the way,

I asked for the original NES.

This is the game, Bible Adventures.

I do not recommend it.

It's basically like Mario Brothers,

except instead of Mario and Luigi,

you were Mary and Joseph on a donkey

and you're trying to make your way to Bethlehem

so that baby Jesus can be born, I guess, in the manger.

I don't know why that was a big success story,

but that's what we're trying to get to.

And I was playing this game one day

and I kept dying. I kept falling in the pit.

Couldn't get my little donkey with Mary and Joseph

to like hop over the pit, kept dying.

And I got so mad, little eight year old me

had heard words on the bus.

I heard other people saying them,

they looked amazing, and so I just looked around,

like, I don't see Mom, and I just yelled.

I just yelled the F word.

And the problem was my mom happened to be

right behind me and I could not see her.

So what did she do?

She grabbed a bar of soap.

Actual bar of soap, looked just like this,

and she put it in my mouth

and left it there for a very long --

Oh, my gosh.

She left there for a very long time.

All right. She didn't want me to curse.

Oh, my gosh. That's very bad.

Don't do that to your children.

That's a very bad idea.

Why did she do that?

She didn't want curses to come out of her son's mouth.

Friends, I'm telling you,

a curse isn't a four letter word.

A curse is a hook that proclaims a negative future

for you and the people around you

and pulls you in that direction.

The stuff that we should wash out of our mouths,

our curses like I'll never amount to anything.

Curses like it's hopeless.

Curses like I'll always be stuck like this.

I'm never going to get ahead.

I always feel this way or I'll always be alone,

I'll always be overlooked,

I'll always be left out.

Those are curses.

They're not just words;

it's a cry proclaiming defeat.

But I don't know if you know this,

God is a God of complete and total victory.

Who promises to rescue every single one of us.

- Hey, I'm Andy. - And I'm Hannah.

- Here around Crossroads we believe

that giving is a spiritual discipline.

- That's exactly right.

And if that's something that you're open to

and want to take part in, you can do that super easy

by going to the Crossroads app,

clicking the gear in the corner,

and simply clicking give.

- Now let's get back to the message.

- I want to be clear, we titled this series

Psalms All the Feels

because God can take all of your feelings:

the good ones, the bad ones,

the happy ones, the sad ones.

He can take your cries. He totally can.

It can be healthy to simply say how you feel to Him.

I'm not helping you if I'm not clear.

The kind of cry that gets His help and response

is not a cry of whining, it's a cry of waiting.

The first miracle of Jesus was changing water into wine,

and the miracle you need to ask for and work on

in your life right now

is to change your whine into waiting.

Listen to the beginning of Psalm 40 again:

I waited patiently for the Lord;

and He inclined to me, and heard my cry.

He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,

out of the miry clay,

and set my feet upon a rock,

and established my steps.

God has put a new song in my mouth - praise to our God;

many will see it in fear, and will trust in the Lord.

The Word that David uses for cry right there,

I's the Hebrew verb sheva, which means a cry for help.

It's not a cry complaint.

It's not a cry of outrage.

It's a cry for help.

See, you yell out for Him, not at Him.

I'd be like, "Well, it must have been easy

for David to write those words, Kyle.

I took third grade English.

I know those verb tenses. They were in the past.

God had already come through, already changed his life.

That's what changed David's song.

If my life was already awesome,

like David, I'd sing a new song too."

Not so fast.

See, now we're at the secret faith part of it all,

because what David wrote in those verses

that we just read that sounded like

it was in the past tense,

like it had already happened, it hadn't at all.

How do I know that?

Because just a few verses later,

David wrote about his present situation, Psalm 40:12:

For innumerable evils have surrounded me;

my iniquities have overtaken me,

qso that I'm not able to look up;

they are more than the hairs on my head;

therefore my heart fails me.

See, David's present situation was awful.

So why? Why in the world would David write

the first three verses in the past tense

as if they'd already happened when they clearly haven't?

Well, first we'll talk about why he didn't.

It wasn't to magically speak something t

hat isn't true into existence.

There are people out there who are going

to teach you this thing on the lines of

the name and it claim that idea.

If you just name it and claim it, you get it.

Problem is, it doesn't work.

Watch. I am six foot six and I can dunk.

I'm still five foot six, and I still believe I cannot dunk.

Maybe, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I can jump super high, I don't know.

I'm just saying it doesn't work that way.

There's only one being in the entire universe

who can just speak things into existence: God.

And good news for you and me, I'm not Him.

Doesn't work for me.

See, David did that.

He spoke in the past tense because he knew the secret.

The song that you sing will steer your steps.

It will pull you towards a future.

It'll pull you towards life

or it will pull you towards death.

And he wanted to set a hook in his mouth

that would steer him towards who he believed

God to be: a deliverer, a healer, a provider,

savior, a rescuer.

See, David was stating his trust in God's name

to be those things for him.

He was setting his own hook.

Now you've heard that Jesus said that

we would be fishers of men.

A lot of early disciples are fishermen.

A lot of his ministry was around the Sea of Galilee.

A lot of fishing happens right there.

You're going to be fisher of men.

Do you know that work starts with you?

See, the new song is the new hook

that pulls you towards belief in

God, and you set it yourself.

So even when the present is painful,

you set the hook in your mouth

and you sing about God as peacemaker,

as deliverer, as provider.

And when you do that, you're pulling your heart

towards the peace that comes from that truth

and experiencing it now.

And when you do that, your whine turns into waiting.

You go from everything is awful

to the rescuer is on His way.

Rather than talk or call out curses over your life, y

ou just call out God's name.

This is where your true faith is completely exposed,

completely laid bare.

Because waiting on God, it's a terrible idea

if you don't have faith,

if you don't believe in His goodness.

How would you wait patiently on someone

who you don't trust, you don't think is your corner

and isn't going to come through?

That makes no sense. Don't wait on that person.

But if you believe in somebody,

God, who's good and for you and victorious

and strong and powerful and ultimately will win,

why would you not wait patiently for that God?

Why would you not call out His name?

Psalm 40, I waited patiently for the Lord.

He inclined to me and heard my cry.

The question of this message is really

do you believe that?

Do you believe that He hears you

when you cry out for help?

Now someone calls out your name,

you turn around and answer, right?

And depending on how they say it,

you probably respond differently.

My wife, Sarah, she calls me Love

and I know if she says Love, it's like,

"Oh, hey, babe, what's up?"

If she uses my actual name, Kyle,

or worse, my whole name: Kyle Joseph Ranson,

then I know things are really bad.

I'm in trouble and I respond faster.

I just don't --

I know something good's probably not coming.

The point is, when someone calls our name,

we turn around ready to respond, you know?

Kyle. Yeah, what do you need?

Same is true of God.

The Bible says that when we call out His name,

we say, "God," He goes, "Yeah, what do you need?"

Turns around ready to respond.

Jeremiah 33:3 says:

Call to me and I'll answer you and tell you

great and unsearchable things you do not know.

We see this happen in Jesus's life in Mark 10,

the situation happens, it happens many times.

He's walking along the road, He's got places to go,

and someone calls out His name.

Interestingly, in this situation, Mark 10,

the guy calls out "Son of David."

It's a blind guy named Bartimaeus.

He calls out "Son of David," one of the names for Jesus.

And Jesus's response was this, Mark 10:51:

Jesus answered and said to him,

"What do you want Me to do for you?"

So when we call out, God turns around

ready to respond and do whatever you ask next.

You say, "God." "Yeah, what do you need?"

Just call out His name.

And hang with me here, this is this is so, so important.

There are 950 different names

and titles for God in the Bible, 950.

You can Google them, look at them, amazing names.

But there's actually one name

that you're calling out all the time

right now in your life, in your old song,

without even knowing it.

It's the one name that God gave the one time

He was directly asked, "Hey, what's your name?"

It happened when Moses in the Old Testament

saw God in the burning bush,

and it was a time in Moses's life

where God was calling him to lead.

And so He calls him to go and to lead.

And Moses's response is, "Who am I?

I am unable, I am unwilling, I am unqualified."

That's what he says.

And then finally, after all this complaining,

Moses finally stops and goes,

"Hey, by the way, God, what's Your name?"

And this is what God says in response:

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM."

And He said, "Thus, you shall say

to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you."

I AM is a Hebrew word that means:

I was, I am, and I will be.

It's about the timeless nature of God.

It means that who He was is who He is

and is who He will be.

So if God was faithful, then God is faithful,

and God always will be faithful.

Moses is saying, "I'm unqualified. I'm unable.

That's -- that's my name."

See, remember when you say God's name,

He turns around and listens.

I want you to track with me here. Track with me.

What's another way to say God's name besides God?

You say, "I AM."

He says, "Yeah, what do you need?"

And then you say, "Destined to fail."

God says, "What?"

You say, "I am." "Yeah, what do you need?"

You say, "Overwhelmed." God says, "What?

That's not -- That's not my name.

That's not your name. What do you mean overwhelmed?"

You say,"I am." "What do you need?"

You say, "Insecure." God says, "That's not --

That's not what I named you.

That's not who I am. What are you talking about?"

You say, "I am." God says, "What do you need?"

You say, "Just so over this marriage, I'm just done."

You just said God's name.

You said I AM, and He's ready.

He shows up, He's there.

But you're singing the wrong song,

a song of complaint, a song of whining,

not a cry for help, it sounds different.

But what happens if you change it

just a little bit can change it significantly.

You say, "I am." He says, "Yeah, what do you need?"

And you say, "Protected."

God says, "I got you, absolutely. Absolutely."

You say, "I am." God says, "Yeah, what do you need?"

You say, "Delivered." God says, "Yes, absolutely,

that's who you are because that's who I AM."

You see, when God adopts you into His family,

when you believe in Him, you take His name.

And God's last name isn't insecure.

God's last name is not unable.

God's last name isn't incomplete, unqualified.

God's last name is deliverer, healer, rescuer,

restored, victorious. That's God's name.

And when you say I am those things,

God says, "Amen, I hear you, I hear your belief,

I hear your faith, and I AM on My way."

That's the secret of faith

that David puts on display in Psalm 40.

That's why he writes the first part in the past tense.

That's how much he believes it,

because I know I'm hurt. I know I'm delivered.

I know I'm established, therefore,

I am now singing a new song now, right now.

And I know maybe that's a leap too far for some of you.

That's okay.

There's a step between that and where you are.

It's in the very last words of Psalm 40.

David writes this:

But I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinks upon me.

You are my help and my deliverer;

do not delay, O my God.

Right now you've got an old song in the mouth.

It's pulling you in a direction you don't want to go.

And the solution is so simple, just spit out the hook.

You do the thing the fish wishes it had done

before it got yanked out of the water

to its destruction.

You just spit out the hook.

You stop saying I'm unable.

You stop saying everything's awful.

You stop saying they're the problem.

You stop saying I'm going to do

whatever makes me happy right now.

When you stop singing that song, you sing a new song,

a new song of deliverance, of hope.

Say, "God, would you put a new song in my mouth?"

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or made you curious to learn more about us,

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that are catered to you and what you're looking for.

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See you next time on Crossroads.

- There is a sacrifice that everyone can make,

but too many people miss it.

Today, we're exploring the sacrifice of gratitude

and how it stops us from chasing things,

and instead gives us the ability to reflect,

come to a new realization and rely on God.