Ade Birkby takes on the question of why peace stays out of reach even when we do the sensible things. He looks honestly at what mindfulness, green space, close friendships and digital boundaries genuinely achieve, and where they run out. Then he turns to Psalm 16, a psalm David wrote while he was being hunted, and draws out three moves David makes. Choosing a stronghold to stand in, accepting the reality he has actually been given, and resting on a future that is already settled. Along the way, a useful distinction. Happiness needs a good day. Joy does not.
01Talk notes
You have tried the things. The walking app, the meditation app, the phone in a drawer after nine o'clock. Maybe a weekend where you deliberately did nothing. And some of it helped, genuinely. But you still lie awake at one in the morning with your brain running, and you still wonder why peace feels like something other people have worked out and you haven't.
Ade Birkby spoke at Crowd this week on Psalm 16, and he did something unusual with a subject like this. He took the ordinary, everyday strategies seriously first. He looked at what the research actually says they do for us, and he was honest about where they stop. Then he went looking for what David had that we don't automatically have, and why it held when David's life was genuinely in danger.
02We are not imagining how busy it is
47% of adults report feeling busier than ever, according to the Office for National Statistics. We spend an average of 6 hours and 51 minutes a day in front of a phone, picking it up around 96 times, according to DataReportal's 2026 digital report.
The boundary between home and work has blurred. The 1970s and 80s model of "go and play outside" has been replaced by a scheduled string of clubs and activities, with a parent driving between all of them. The cost of living means two incomes is often a necessity, which leaves the same chores and less time to do them in.
So when you feel stretched, you are not being dramatic. You are describing the conditions accurately.
03What usually helps, and where it stops
The University of Bath ran a global mindfulness study in 2024, comparing a control group against a group doing 30 days of mindfulness exercises. The group doing the exercises saw depression reduced by 19% more than the control group, wellbeing improved by 7% more, and anxiety decreased by 13% more. That is a real effect. Mindfulness is not nothing.
Research from Ipsos and Gallup found the three lifestyle boundaries people lean on most. Physical escape, meaning walking, exercise and time in green spaces to shift your mood. Social connection, meaning a small and carefully chosen circle of family and close friends. And digital disconnection, deliberately turning off the news and the feeds to stop the steady drip of stress hormones.
A Chinese multi-university study went further and looked for the mindsets that give the best return on life satisfaction. It found two. Gratitude disposition, which is the practised habit of actively noticing the good things. And orientation to experience, which is the ability to look at a bad situation with curiosity and openness rather than denial.
All of that works. And all of that is about managing how you carry the weight. but none of it changes whether there is anywhere to put the weight down.
And it is the gap Psalm 16 walks into.
04Why this particular psalm
Psalm 16 was written by David, and it is not a general-purpose worship song. It belongs to a small group of six psalms known as miktam psalms, and every one of them was written out of life-threatening circumstances or intense trial. Most likely this one comes from the years David spent on the run from Saul, sleeping in caves, being hunted.
Nobody is completely certain what the word miktam means, which is quite interesting in itself. It is linked to the Hebrew root ketem, meaning fine gold, suggesting these psalms are of exceptional value. Early Greek translations connect it to the idea of an inscription, something worth carving into stone so it lasts. The Akkadian sense is to cover or to hide, which suggests a hushed and intimate prayer. If you are living in a cave and trying not to be found, a quiet prayer makes a great deal of sense.
All six follow the same shape. A cry, a surrender, and a victory. An urgent plea for rescue, an acknowledgement that God is the only refuge, and then a settled confidence about how it ends.
So this is not a man writing from a comfortable study about how to feel calmer. This is someone writing while it is still going wrong.
05The three things David does
He chooses where he is going to stand. The Hebrew word for refuge in verse 1 is chasah, and it does not describe a little hiding spot. It means an active, deliberate run to a stronghold for absolute safety. Ade put it in pictures. This is not ducking behind a hedge, this is heading for Fort Knox. Or if you prefer, it is Helm's Deep, the fortress built into the mountain. David is not hoping things improve. He is choosing where he is going to be when they don't.
He accepts the reality he is actually in. In verse 5 David says the Lord is his portion and his cup. Portion is manah, a measured share of land or duties or wealth. And the boundary lines he talks about come from chebel, the measuring cords used to divide up inherited property. David looks at his circumstances, and remember what those circumstances are, and describes them as land that has been carefully measured out for him. He is not pretending it is pleasant. He is saying it has been apportioned by God, deliberately, and it is his.
He also takes counsel from God in the stillness of the night. Instead of turning over and over with anxiety, he is awake and thinking about God. That is a very small detail that turns out to be a very practical one.
He looks at a future that is already settled. In verse 10 David is confident that God will not abandon him to the grave. And this is where the psalm reaches past David entirely. Peter quotes this verse in Acts 2 after Pentecost, and Paul makes the same argument in Acts 13, both of them pointing out that David was speaking about a resurrection that was not his own.
Happiness depends on good happenings. Joy is different, because joy is an unshakable confidence that comes from knowing your eternal future is secure. One of those needs today to go well. The other does not.
06What this looks like on a Tuesday
**Notice what you actually run to.** Modern idols are rarely statues. They are the things we lean on instead of God for security, comfort or identity. So when the pressure comes on, where does your time go, and your money, and your thinking? Online shopping? Social media? The next thing at work that will finally prove something?
Look at your own boundary lines. Are you thankful for what is inside them, or mostly aware of what is inside somebody else's? Comparison on social media is the fastest way to find your life insufficient. James 1 verses 2 to 4 makes the harder claim, that trials of many kinds are the very thing that produces perseverance. Whatever you are in right now, there is growth available in it.
Change what happens at one in the morning. When the anxiety arrives and you are awake anyway, what do you reach for? Ade's question was simply whether you doom scroll, or whether you pray. Psalm 16 verse 7 says "I will praise the Lord who counsels me, even at night my heart instructs me."
Make the focus deliberate. Stability does not happen by accident. It takes a daily habit of coming to God's word and coming to Him in prayer. As Ade put it, are we making God the centre of our lives, or are we saying we are?
Choose joy over happiness on purpose. When things are not going well, where do your thoughts go first?
07The thing worth remembering
David wrote this while he was being hunted. He was not writing about a life that had calmed down, and he was not offering a technique for calming it down. He had found somewhere to stand that did not depend on any of it improving.
That is what the apps cannot give you. Not because there is anything wrong with them, but because they were never built to carry that.
So here is the honest question to take into the week. When everything is loud, where do you actually go? And is it somewhere that can hold you?
Whatever your situation, there is peace available in God, where there is ultimate safety, needs met, and a future that is already secure.
Watch or listen to the full talk at crowd.church. Crowd Church is an online community for people who might not see the point of church - real struggles, honest questions, everyone welcome.
Topics in this talk
View Full Transcript
Matt Edmundson:
Well, hello and welcome to Crowd Church's non-live livestream August series. My name is Matt Edmundson, and I just wanted to jump on before we get started with today's talk and tell you what's going on. So this isn't our usual Sunday service. I know, but it is our usual August Crowd service.
If you're a regular to Crowd, you will have twigged already that we are not live. We're not in our studio as we would usually be when we livestream. Which means I won't be fighting the usual technical difficulties, but I may well fluff the odd line. Just putting that out there.
And here's why it's a little bit different, because in August, half of Crowd Church kind of disappear to somewhere hot, and the other half of us are trying to kind of figure out, well, why did we not book somewhere, right? It is the month in the UK that most of the team get to book their holiday because of family. So we lean in, we lean, see, messing my lines up, we lean into that every August. And we pre-record the talks.
So we don't have the Conversation Street. We don't have Live Lounge. And the whole team just gets to stop for the entire month of August. We think of it as our Sabbath rest.
And it's a practice we've done every year. Yeah, so that people who serve you week in week, they get some proper Sabbath rest and you still get something worth turning up for. The talks are actually brilliant. Uh, you'll get a lot out of them, so make sure you keep watching on a Sunday with your cup of tea, or possibly in August on a Wednesday afternoon when you're avoiding something important.
I don't know, whatever suits you. And of course, if you're new here to Crowd, let me give you a big fat hello. Crowd is an online church, uh, actually with, uh, members all over the place. Everything we do here at Crowd, from the Sunday live stream to our midweek community groups, even the online course for those exploring Christianity All of it is on the website, which is www.crowd.church.
Now, this August we are in the Book of Psalms for 5 weeks, 5 Psalms. These are sort of Psalms written by people that— it's the book in the middle of the New, uh, Old Testament, uh, and there's going to be a thread running through this, uh, series, which is what restoration actually looks like when your life is all over the place, which Hands up if you need to hear that right now. One more thing before we get started, make sure you stay with us to the end of the video because there are some changes coming to Crowd starting in September, all of them good ones. And I'm going to tell you about a few of them after the talk.
So hopefully that's created enough intrigue. But that's it. Let's settle in. Grab your notebooks, grab your pens. Let's enjoy the talk.
I'll be back.
Ade Birkby:
After this. Good evening. Today we're going to continue in our series of the Psalms, um, looking at finding peace and using Psalm 16 for some guidance. Now, it's fair to say we live in a busy life. In fact, a common answer to 'How are you doing?'— the word 'busy' generally fits there in the opening statement or thereabouts.
And you know, it's, it's not surprising. 47% of adults report feeling busier than ever according to the Office for National Statistics. We live in an always-on culture where the boundaries between home and work life are blurring. We're under more time pressures as parents.
The, uh, the model from the '70s and '80s, go play outside, has been replaced by a highly scheduled string of activities and after-school clubs requiring lots of ferrying kids from A to B to C. And when they do play outside, they need to be supervised because times just aren't like what they used to be. Cost of living has done nothing but go up, meaning two-income household is a necessity, which just leaves more chores for everyone in their spare time, giving less downtime. And then on top of that, we somehow find the time to on average spend 6 hours and 51 minutes in front of our phone a day according to the, uh, DataReportal, um, digital report in 2026, uh, people looking at their phones an average of 96 times a day.
Now, there are various, we'll say, peaceful strategies, things we can do to help this. Mindfulness has become a big buzzword. The University of Bath in 2024 did a global mindfulness study where they compared a control group versus a group doing 30 days of mindfulness exercises, and the group that did the exercises found, uh, reduced depression by 19% more than the control group. They found improved well-being by 7% more.
They found decreased anxiety by 13% more. And overall, their attitudes towards health got more positive by 7%, and their behavioural intentions to look after their health increased by 7%. So definitely a positive impact here from mindfulness. But, you know, it's still it's, it's limited to what it can do.
Global marketing research group Ipsos and Gallup did research into the most common lifestyle boundaries people undertake to try and achieve some balance, and the top 3 were physical escape, prioritising walking, exercise, or spending time in green nature and spaces to alter mood biology. Social connection, turning to a small, deeply vetted network of family and close friends for psychological safety And unsurprisingly, digital connection— deliberately turning off the news cycles and the social media feeds, or even the phone, to stop the constant flood of stress hormones. There are also coping mechanisms. A Chinese multi-university study looked at evaluating specific mindsets that would yield the best return on investment for life satisfaction, inner peace.
And they found two. One is gratitude disposition, which is the structured habit of actively acknowledging and reacting to positive elements in life, which acts as kind of a buffer against some more traumatic elements in life. And orientation to experience, or in other words, acceptance, psychological ability to look at a bad situation with curiosity and openness rather than denial, which prevents long-term mental friction. As believers, we have a little bit more to— at our disposal to counteract the stresses of a busy life.
I'm going to take a moment to read Psalm 16. Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. I said to the Lord, you are my Lord, apart from you I have no good thing. As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.
The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips. Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup. You have made my lot secure; the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.
Surely I have a delightful inheritance! I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me; because he is my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my tongue rejoices; My body will also rest secure because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the path of life. You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. Now Psalm 16 was written by King David, a key figure in the Old Testament. He was revered as a warrior king and a musician in Jewish culture.
He actually has the longest running narrative in the Bible. His story starts in 1 Samuel 16, spanning through 4 books all the way to 2 Kings chapter 2. In the gospel, he is closely linked with Jesus, Jesus being repetitively referred to as the son of David. After all, Jesus's lineage trace back to David.
David is very much associated with the Psalms, and we know he wrote at least some of them. With the Psalms, sometimes we know exactly who wrote them, sometimes we don't. We do know that David wrote Psalm 16. We also know that Psalm 16 is not just any old Psalm.
It is referred to as a miktam psalm. Now there are 6 of these in total. They were all written by David, and they were all associated with life-threatening circumstances or intense trials. Now we don't know specifically which circumstance David is referring to in this, but it is widely believed it was when he was on the run from King Saul after David's rise in popularity and Saul's jealousy.
The precise origin and meaning of the miktam Psalms is not fully understood, but there are quite a few theories. So, the word is associated with the Hebrew root word ketem, meaning fine gold, implying these Psalms are of exceptional value. If we look to early Greek translations, the word is linked to the meaning inscription, suggesting worthy of being carved into stone for preservation throughout time. Finally, the Akkadian translation means to cover or hide, suggesting a hushed intimate prayer, which, you know, if you're living in caves and you're on the run, that hushed prayer would be consistent with trying not to get caught.
Now, all of these psalms carry the same distinct structure. They have three parts: the cry, the surrender, and the victory. The cry is an urgent plea for deliverance, The surrender is an acknowledgement of God as the only refuge, and the victory is a conclusion of complete assurance in God's sovereignty. Interestingly, Psalm 16 is very much prophetic, and it is even referred to in the New Testament.
So after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came in Acts 2, as Peter addresses the crowd, he literally quotes Psalm 16. Verse 10, you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let the Holy One see corruption, proving that David was speaking prophetically about the death of Christ. Again, Paul uses the same argument in Acts 13, stating that because Jesus rose from the dead without decaying, as mentioned in Psalm 16, he uniquely fulfills David's song. So Psalm 16 here is, is one to take special note of.
You know, for the author, for the— its implication as a miktam psalm, and for its prophetic meaning as well. So in this psalm, David makes a choice to choose God. He takes refuge in God. And the Hebrew word for refuge, chasah, in verse 1 implies an active, deliberate flight to a stronghold for absolute safety.
We're not talking about a little hiding spot, you know, we're heading to Fort Knox, or if you're a Lord of the Rings fan, we're heading to Helm's Deep, the fortress built into the mountain. This is absolute stronghold. He acknowledges all blessings come from God in verse 2, and verse 3 goes on to find joy in God's people, finding community in God's people. And he warns that those who chase after other gods have their sorrows multiplied.
So David makes a clear choice to choose God, and in God he finds ultimate safety and the source of all good. He accepts his present reality. In verse 5, he declares, the Lord is my portion and my cup. Portion, the Hebrew word manah, refers to measured share of assigned land or duties or wealth.
Cup refers to God's provision and blessing. We say, "My cup is overflowing." It is overflowing with blessings from God. The boundary lines he refers to, the Hebrew word "chebel," refers to measuring cords used to divide up inherited property. He views his circumstances as being perfectly measured by God, as if inheritance were being divided up.
So the terrible situation he is in right now, he views as being perfectly measured by God. He takes counsel from God even in the stillness of the night. So rather than tossing and turning with anxiety in his bed, he's up meditating on God. He's making a deliberate choice to put God at the centre of attention and focusing solely on him and finding contentment by focusing solely on God and not what is happening around us.
Through God, he finds contentment and security in his present reality. And finally, David looks to a future hope. In verse 10, he says he's confident that God will not abandon his soul to the grave. He looks to God to reveal the ultimate victory over death.
He cultivates joy over happiness. Now, happiness is dependent on good happenings, but joy in the biblical sense is an unshakable confidence from knowing a secure eternal future with God. He looks joyfully to a certain future, and ultimately and prophetically pointing to Jesus's death and resurrection on the cross without spelling it out. So we take a moment to think about this, how we can use this to deal with a busy life.
Well, it's important to identify and remove idols now, and other gods. Now, for us, modern idols are rarely statues. They are things that we rely upon instead of God for security, comfort, or identity. So When we get really stressed, where does our time, our money, and our thought go?
Does it go to online shopping, social media, and career achievement? Or do we practice pausing to redirect our dependence and our focus to God, as in Psalm 16:8, I will always keep my eyes on the Lord. Another thing we can do is find contentment within our boundary lines. Are we thankful for what we have rather than envying others?
Do we compare career, relationships, or other lifestyle factors to other on social media? No matter what circumstance we're going through right now and how bad, we have an opportunity to grow in this. As in James 1:2-4, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that testing of your faith produces perseverance. By finding contentment within our boundary lines, we find a chance to grow in him.
Are we seeking nighttime counsel? So when we're lying awake with anxiety, do we toss and turn? Do we doom scroll? Are we praying or meditating on scripture?
You know, Psalm 16:7: I will praise the Lord who counsels me, even at night my heart instructs me. Where is our heart at night when the anxiety is creeping in. We can anchor our focus. Stability doesn't happen by accident.
It requires a deliberate choice to keep God at the centre of our attention. In order to do so, we need to be focused on God daily. We need that daily habit of coming to his word, coming to him in prayer. Are we doing that to make God centre of our lives, or are we just saying we're making him centre of our lives?
Finally, we can cultivate joy over happiness. As I mentioned before, happiness depends on good happenings. Joy comes from knowing our eternal future is secure. When things are not going well, where do we focus our thoughts?
Is our joy in the strength of the Lord? Because whatever the situation, we can find peace in God. Where we have ultimate safety, our needs met, and a secure future. Now, as this is a pre-recorded talk and not the usual livestream, you can still ask questions.
You just have to send them into the— to us at crowd.church via the website, and we will get back to you. We are an online church. If you would like to learn more, we have a Sunday night livestream, apart from in August when it's pre-recorded. We have a live room hangout afterwards, and we have midweek Bible study groups which are all Zoom-based, so it doesn't matter where you are.
If you would like to reach out, if you would like to come and study the word of God with us, please get in touch. Details on how to join, again, head to crowd.church. Have a wonderful evening. God bless.
Matt Edmundson:
So that's the talk, and you're going to be able to find all of the notes, a sort of a detailed blog post about it, all on the website, which is www.crowd.church. And of course, if you'd rather listen than watch, you know, maybe you're on the school run, on a dog walk, washing up, whatever it is, every talk goes out as a podcast. Just search Crowd Church not Crowd.Church, that's our website. Search Crowd Church wherever you get your podcasts from.
I reference back my previous point about fluffing lines. Now I did say at the start that there were some changes coming to Crowd, so do let me tell you about them. Number 1, Live Lounge. Now normally Live Lounge is a chance to jump and chat to the team, to jump on a call and chat with members of the team after the live stream has ended.
But from September, you're gonna be able to do that from the start of the live stream, you'll be able to watch the live stream in Live Lounge and watch it with actual people, for your community, your friends, maybe even make some new friends. And like I say, gonna do that right from the start, which I'm really excited about, because it is going to help us build community. We have a phenomenal community here at Crowd. And building on that, I think is going to just be exciting and phenomenal.
So that's going to be one change. The second change, the Wednesday night community groups are changing a little bit. So instead of having scattered and disparate groups, we're going to gather together as one big community and then break into smaller groups. And each small group will be your regular sort of community group where people get to know your name, when they notice if you're not there, and you get to build your friendships.
Alpha will run alongside Community from September, it's going to move to a Wednesday night, same time, 7:30. Um, and Alpha is great if you're new to the Christian faith or if you're just exploring the Christian faith. The next Alpha course starts on the 9th of September, and you can register for that on the website at www.crowd.church. We have lots of people coming to Alpha.
They are phenomenal things. Um, so yeah, go check out the website for more information about that at crowd.church. The third change is more in-person meetups. Yay, go in-person meetups!
Now, we baptised some folks in Dorset last month, which was really phenomenal. We thought, actually, we need to do more of these in-person meetups. So that's what we're going to do. We are planning gatherings throughout the year, from regional meetups to bigger events.
Again, more information will be coming, more information on the website. One thing to tell you about, CrowdFest '27 will be held— with CrowdFest is going to be a big get-together where we all get together, and we're going to do that at the Wildfires Festival at the end of July in 2027. You can find out more information about Wildfires Festival and buy your tickets at wildfiresfestival.com, um, or just follow the links from the website because there's going to be more information on the website about CrowdFest '27, crowd.church. So yeah, if that's not it, there's more stuff coming.
Yes, there are, so— but I don't want to bombard you. We're going to go through that in more detail in September. Yes, we are. So in the meantime, like I said, everything you want to know about Crowd from past talks to all the stuff we've talked about today is on the website, www.crowd.church. Make sure you subscribe to the channel, uh, whilst you're here, because like I said, this is a 5-parter all the way through the Book of Psalms, and it's built to be taken as a whole.
Each one's going to build onto the next one, so don't miss any of them. But that's it from me. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a phenomenal week wherever you are in the world.
I will see you next time. Bye for now.
Where next?
- TopicFinding Inner PeaceAchieve mental calm, reduce stress, and create inner stillnessTake a look
- TopicManaging Anxiety & WorryArticles and resources to help cope with anxious feelings, racing thoughts, and excessive worryTake a look
- Next stepJoin us this SundayLive every Sunday, 7pm UK — bring your questionsTake a look
