Does your brain ever play this game with you? At some moment on a quiet afternoon, a sudden thought crosses your mind. “What if..?” Or maybe it’s after a midnight bathroom trip, “What if..?” After a doctor’s appointment, reading the news, or waiting for a phone call. “What if..?”

It’s like a cat playing with a mouse. The cat doesn’t want to kill its prey so much as torture it until the poor mouse pleads for death.  Once you ask the question, your body instinctively reacts. The stomach tightens, and muscles stiffen while your pulse quickens as your mouth goes uncomfortably dry. A cold, clammy sweat covers your forehead.  The game is afoot.  What follows may be minutes or even hours of scenarios flooding through your mind, torturing yourself with possible trials, deaths, heartbreaks, or disappointments over and over again. The game finally ends when the brain gives up in exhaustion and sleeps or the nonchalant child struts into the house, unaware that they forgot to call two hours ago.

Very rarely is anything ever accomplished by mentally playing out these disturbing scenarios because rarely do any of these situations turn out to be true. That is the main problem.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8

When we become entangled in the “What if..?” we are not thinking about true things; at best, they could possibly someday eventually be true things, maybe.

Questions are powerful tools in that they excite the mind and open channels for meditation and reasoning. Our Lord Jesus knew the power of questions and often used them in his teachings. What if we fought fire with fire? What if we answered that impertinent question “What if..?” with our question? What if we spent those minutes or hours playing out scenarios for things that we knew were true?

For instance:

• What if this is God’s world and everything is under His power? Every wind, every wave, every beast, every king, and every country? What if all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus? (Matt 28:18)
• What if one day, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father? (Phil. 2:10-11)
• What if nothing is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account? (Heb. 4:13)
• What if it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God? (Heb. 10:31)
• What if this _______ wasn’t the biggest problem facing me. The biggest problem is that I will one day stand before a Holy God, and I am a sinful man who lives among sinful people. What if My Judge, who in love while I was still a repulsive sinner, made a way to redeem me from the just punishment for my sins by placing the punishment I could not bear upon His Son Jesus Christ?
• What if there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus? (Rom. 8:1)
• What if neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord? (Rom. 8:38-39)
• What if the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness but is patient toward us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance? (2 Pet. 3:9)
• What if all the days ordained for me were written in His book before one of them came to be? (Ps.139:16)
• What if it were impossible to add even a single hour to my life by worrying? (Matt. 6:27)
• What if the eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and His ears toward their cry? (Ps. 34:15)
• What if I am hemmed in behind and before? What if God Himself was my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble? (Ps. 46:1)
• What if the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit? (Ps. 34:18)
• What if this light momentary affliction is preparing for me an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison? (2 Cor. 4:17)
• What if no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” — the things God has prepared for those who love him? —these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. (1 Cor. 2:9-10)

What if we studied through our Bible to find that exact truth to cling to that we needed most? And what if we clung to it, meditated on it, and found rest in it? Because the truth in the Bible is not a “What if..?” but a “Since/Then.” And since it is true, then you can have confidence in every “What if.”