HANDLING STRESS GOD’S WAY

I was looking up some information on stress and ran across a website published by the American Institute of Stress.  In 1983 Time Magazine June called stress "The Epidemic of the Eighties" and referred to it as our leading health problem.  The list of diseases that are now listed as stress related lets us knot that the problem of stress in has gotten progressively worse.  Surveys confirm that adult Americans perceive they are under much more stress today than a decade or two ago.  A 1996 survey found that almost 75% feel they have "great stress" one day a week with one out of three indicating they feel this way more than twice a week. It has been estimated that 75 - 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress related problems.   Job stress is the leading source of stress for adults.  But stress levels have also escalated in children, teenagers, college students and the elderly.  These stresses are generally associated with increased crime, violence and other threats to personal safety; destructive peer pressures that lead to substance abuse and other unhealthy life style habits; social isolation and loneliness; the erosion of family and religious values and ties; and the loss of other strong sources of social support that are powerful stress busters. 

Believe it or not, when God designed us He gave us bodily functions and mechanisms to help us overcome stressful situations.  For example when confronted with a stressful interaction

v    heart rate and blood pressure soar to increase the flow of blood to the brain to improve decision making,

v    blood sugar rises to furnish more fuel for energy

v    blood is moved away from the gut, where it not immediately needed for purposes of digestion, to the large muscles of the arms and legs to provide more strength in combat, or greater speed in getting away from danger, or

v    Blood clotting occurs more quickly to prevent blood loss from lacerations or internal hemorrhage.  

These same functions, that under normal stressful situations could be life saving have become life threatening. The reason for this is simple.  These mechanisms where intended to assist us when we encountered occasional confrontations with stressful situations.  However, the nature of stress for modern man is not an occasional confrontation with a wild beast or a hostile warrior but rather a host of emotional threats like getting stuck in traffic, disagreements with customers, co-workers, or family members, and bill collectors that often occur several times a day.  Then we must tack on the added stress of job insecurity, economic and political unrest and many other uncertainties of life.  Mechanisms that were designed for occasional use are now being used constantly.  This repeated use of these mechanisms contributes to hypertension, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, ulcers, neck or low back pain and many other diseases prevalent in our society. 

One might ask, “Since God is all knowing, why didn’t he design us with mechanisms to cover the wind range of stresses we must now face.  Surely He knew that our stress initiators would increase.  So why didn’t he prepare us for that.  I believe that God did take care of that.  We however, are not using what God provided.  Let me explain what I mean.  First let’s group stress into two areas:  those associated with physical causes like someone is attacking me, or I am injured in some way or even sick; and those associated with mental and emotions causes like worry, job pressure, uncertainties of life and general cares of this world.  I believe that the list of physical reactions given above was intended to deal with physical causes of stress.  But God himself and our relationship with him was to handle the many emotions, mental and psychological stresses that we face each day. So this morning I want to talk about HANDLING STESS GOD’S WAY.

A.  S-Surrender - ROMANS 6:13

          Here we are told yield or surrender ourselves unto God.  It is not the body so much that is to be yielded to God, but the real us, our spirit and our soul which includes our emotions, our mental faculties; what we think, what we desire, what we feel, etc.   The sentence says yield yourselves to God and your members as instruments of righteousness.  Your members there represents your flesh and thus your actions.  The self there must represent all that is remaining, thus the spirit and soul.  Sometimes we fail to surrender everything to God.  We hold on to some things, maybe thinking that we can handle them ourselves.  But in holding on to them, we only increase our stress level.

ROMANS 12:1-2

          To win over stress we must surrender our will, our wants and desires, our feelings, our ways, words, work, walk, everything about us and concerning us to God.  We must not fall into the trap of the world’s way of thinking and behaving.  The world says that we should be self reliant, independent, and self gratifying.  The world teaches that the strong man or woman is self sufficient.  But as Christians, we must remember as Paul stated in 2 Cor. 3:5 “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God.”

B.  T – Trust – Psalms 37:39-40

         This does not just mean salvation in the sense of saving us from our sins.  God is our strength, our support when we face any kind of trouble or discomfort.  If we put our trust in God, and submit our way to him he will deliver us, protect us, comfort us, and make provision for us. He will help us simply because we trust in him.  He will do it for His name sake, when we put total trust in him. 

PROVERBS 3:5-6

          Many times, even as Christians, we will put our trust anywhere and everywhere other than God.  We trust friends, doctors, lawyers, family, teachers, the voodoo woman, our finances, our position and even the horoscope more than we do God.  Yet time after time these people and these things have failed us.  Our trust must be in the Lord if we are to beat stress.  Human power is finite; God’s power is infinite and never fails.  We must learn to put complete, total trust in God.  If we will do this Isaiah 26:3 says “God will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on God: because he trusts in God.”

C. R – Rejoice

          Philippians 4:4 says “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.”  Many Christians fail to rejoice because they are overwhelmed with the cares of this world. Bombarding us with the cares and pressures of this world is one of the enemies tricks used to still the word of God from us and thus weaken our faith and trust in God.  The enemy knows that if he can motivate us to worry about the issues of life then he slowly kills our ability to be effective, fruit bearing Christians.  We become so engrossed with our own cares that we lose focus on God’s affairs and our mission.  For certain when our primary focus is our lives and the issues we must face our stress levels will continue to skyrocket.   Rejoicing in the Lord is a good antidote for stress.  It is difficult to rejoice and stressful at the same time.  The psalmist in Psalms 119:164 said “Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.” Maybe we should adopt this same principle.

D.   E – Endure – Hebrews 6:13 - 15

          Many times we Christians have a problem with patiently waiting.  We want everything to happen when we desire it.  We want God to be like Samantha the witch on Bewitched.  She twitched her nose and things happened.  Waiting becomes even more frustrating for us because God can say it and things happen.  When we desire something, or even feel that we need something and it does not happen right away, we begin to stress ourselves out wondering why God has not answered our prayer.  We listen to the enemy and begin to look for defects in our character or actions.  We look for a reason why our request is delayed rather than realizing that sometimes we must simply wait.

          To overcome stress we must learn to wait for God’s will to be done.  God’s timing is always right.  He is never too late or too early.  Psalms 18:30 says “As for God his way is perfect.”  Over the years I have really come to understand that God is never late, however, I am often early.

E.  S – Self-disciplined – I Corinthians 9:27

          I am sure that very little that I have said today is new to you.  Yet we still seem to be killing ourselves with stress.  Why?  Because we often fail to do what we know to do.  Even when we attempt to do as we should we often find that it is short lived.  We do it for a while and then we revert back to our old ways.  We lack self-discipline.  Paul says here that he keeps under his body.  In other words he maintains a hold on his body.  He keeps it in control.  We must retrain ourselves in how to handle the pressures of life.  Retraining is often more difficult than the initial training because we must undo the wrong and replace it with the right.  Because retraining is more difficult it often requires more determination and more self-discipline.  We must not allow ourselves to be so easily drawn into worrying, so easily distracted by circumstances and discomforted by the cares of this world.

F.  S – Service –Ephesians 6:7

          Doing God’s work is one of the best antidotes for stress.  While actively engaged in worthwhile activity, we forget personal problems allowing God opportunity to work on our behalf without us getting in the way.  But I am finding that even in doing God’s work we must surrender it to Him and trust Him to do the work through us.  We must find time in the work to rejoice and be patient with ourselves and other in the midst of doing the work.  We must be self-disciplined and committed to the task.  Focused on the service but even more focused on the one in whom we serve.  If we don’t approach service for God in this fashion, it too will become stressful.

          Remember, God imbedded mechanism in our bodies to help us deal with physical stresses, but he has given us principles and promises in His word to hip us deal with mental, emotional and psychological stress.  Our ability to deal with occasional stressful occurrences in our lives was designed in our original makeup.  Our ability to deal with the constant bombardment of stresses is connected to our relationship with God.  God himself and our relationship with him is the cure of stress.