God Word, the Almighty Stress Reliever?

Did you start your day dreading all the stress you know you are about to experience? If you are like me you started stressing about the stress. When I speak of stress I think of “hair pulling, stomping on the floor, worrying about everything kind of stress. Today we are going to talk about stress and how we take a few steps toward eliminating it in our lives. We all battle with stress but many make no attempt to seek out ways to decompress. We only have to look to the Word of God for “God’s Stress Pill”.

Stress is the common term for general adaptation syndrome (GAS), or fight or flight syndrome. It is the body’s natural response to threating situations, it arouses us and gives us the energy we need to resolve or remove ourselves from the situation. Stress can be positive or negative, alerting us to an issue that needs to be addressed. Stress without relief can lead to physical symptoms, headaches, blood pressure, chest pains and problems sleeping. If we do not learn to control stress it will control us. But as Christians, we have our Heavenly Father to help us through our stressful tomes. Philippians 4:7 says, “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” We see throughout the Bible, men of God, Prophets, and Kings who struggled with stress and depression. David is seen in Psalm 32:3-4 saying, “When I kept silent, my bones grew old, Through my groaning all the day long,  For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;”  and in Psalm 51, “David pleads to God to; “Create in me a clean heart, restore me to the joy of my salvation” (vs.10;12). Then, Elijah, (1 Kings 19:1-18) and of course, the running prophet Jonah (Jonah 4:1-11). What cause all this great biblical characters to display these attitudes and feelings, “Stress”.

But, there are a few practical things that we can do to relief stress in our lives. (1) Attempt to identify what is the cause of the stress, if there are several things, address each one of them. (2) What is God doing in your life? One great stress reliever is seeing God’s purpose through your difficulty. God uses difficulty to develop faith and character in his children. Paul, said, “I have learned to be “CONTENT”. That may be a word we have lost in our society. Go back to Bethel and renew your faith again. The Book of Hebrews is called the “Hall of Faith”. Perhaps that is because Hebrews 11:1 is the best place to find the Biblical definition of faith “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. You can’t have faith without getting out of the boat as Peter found out.”  Take that step of faith and reach out to your Lord. Step (3) get alone with God, no smartphone, computer, just you, your Bible, and God. Listen and pray. As you cultivate a heart hungry for prayer, you will feel His presence throughout your day and stress will be overcome. (4) Share your burdens. Whether you share literally or figuratively, ask other for help. Commune with your church fellowship. (5) Are you doing too much? Even Moses delegated out task when he got overwhelmed. (Exod. 18:13-21) Step (6) check your compass. Stress has a way of orienting us toward the things that are wrong in our lives. Satan uses it to cause us to forget our blessings and the godly things in our life and focus on all the bad stuff. “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3)

Tomorrow, you and I will experience different levels of stress. It does not matter who we are or what we do for a living, our age or social status, we will experience stress. Stress and its partner worry will do their best to drag the believer down to the point that they begin to ponder on not what is happening but what MIGHT happen. I leave you with the words of Paul and invite you to take them with you this week as I will, on a 3x5 card or on your Smartphone, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; ⁷ and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Please email comments or questions to Eddie at eddieturner2502@gmail.com, on his blog http://eddieturner2502.blogspot.com “Wild For the Word” or on Facebook.