Stress Reduction
9/29/16
It would seem like reducing the stress in our lives is the number one goal that we could have. Individuals and companies alike have implemented an endless amount of programs, tutorials, and incentives in order to provide a healthier environment to inhabit. But as these stress reduction opportunities increase it is evident that many of them are not working, in fact, their productivity is somewhat having a reverse effect on the people who try utilizing them. The truth is that we are missing the original stress reduction effort and the only One who can guarantee this type of relaxed lifestyle when times are difficult. God is the key here and we must increase our faith and trust in Him in order to reduce our stress that we encounter from the world.
A little over thirteen years ago I was strolling along one day moving my daughter from one of the downstairs rooms up to the loft so that she could have a bit more privacy. It was a day long project for she had quite a bit of stuff that needed to be moved. After everything was said and done I felt pretty good and continued on with my daily activities without any complaints. Not much occurred for the rest of the day and I was enjoying my day off as usual. It was October and most of the garden had been cleaned up and all of the canning and processing had been completed for the year as well; just another part of my world that I enjoyed.
The next morning when I woke up I began my day with the normal routine and carried out my home duties with little or no complications. We were scheduled to take a short trip to the mountains to see if there were any fall colors still present, it is a beautiful time of the year in late September and early October for the mountains look like they are on fire with all of the red, yellow, and green leaves on the trees. We ended up going to the spot that we had wanted to look at and everything was great, but while I was up on the mountain I began to have a pain in my upper right shoulder but did not think much about it for I had been pretty physical the day before. It pulled like a sore muscle and was basically continuous for the entire day. As the day continued and I moved around the pain eased which furthered my soreness theory.
The next day my soreness was back and I took some meds to ease the pain for I knew that my day was not going to be as active as the previous. I continued to hurt for most of the day but continued my belief that it was just a sore muscle from moving my daughter. Sunday was a great day and the pain was gone. I felt great and it seemed like I had passed my moving test without any major injury. Then Monday came and my world changed drastically around lunch time when I began hurting again in my shoulder but this time, the pain was different. To make a long story short, I was having a heart attack and for the next few days, I would be in the local hospital getting an arterial stent put in place and learning how to live with my newly formed heart condition. There are many aspects to this event in my life and I shall not go into them now, but there is a huge issue here that deals with the topic of this message that God wishes to share with us and it has to do with stress.
About two weeks after I was released from the hospital it was time for my first checkup at the doctor’s office. Everything was sailing smooth and everything looked good. All of my follow-up tests were normal and everything looked like I had only received minor damage to my heart; praise God for this news because it could have been much worse, and logically it should have been. But for that moment it was a good message from the doctor and after the explanation of what had occurred in my heart, the real meeting with him began. This would prove to be the most difficult issue that I had to deal with and it is one that I still struggle with today.
My doctor stated that I would have to change my lifestyle in every capacity or I would not be around to see my children graduate. That was the gist of his proclamation to me and my wife and he was dead serious, pun intended here. Death was my only option if I did not reduce my stress on a continual basis and on top of that I had to change my inner personality as well. I am a prime example of a Type A personality and that had to be overridden if I wanted to continue to walk this earth for any great amount of time. I must admit that I continue to struggle with this concept and I must also state that I continue to fight this personality trait of mine today but I know God is doing His best to keep my eyes open to His plan for my life and to keep me breathing at the same time.
What a task I had to accomplish, for I had no clue of how to change this trait of mine and what made things worse is that I had no idea how much stress this type of inner personality was placing on my life. In addition to my genetic makeup, I was considered a walking time bomb if I did not change this aspect of my life. When I began this transformation it was a difficult process for I did not even know how to define what needed to be changed; in other words, I was shooting in the dark because I had chosen to complete this task through human means and ones directed by myself instead of placing God 1st as I should have done at the beginning.
Reducing stress is a major task in anyone’s life because it goes against all knowledge of what this world offers. What makes stress so dangerous is that for the majority of the time we do not even recognize that stress has invaded our lives and we carry this stress within without knowing what it is doing to our insides. Now, we all know that a tad bit of stress is actually good for our bodies but when it becomes a continual effort we begin to react to this change with no noticeable symptoms of this amount of stress appearing until something occurs like a heart attack or stroke. And when we do not allow God to be an integral part of our lives we automatically place another strike against us while we grace this land. See, God not only cares for your spiritual being He also cares about your physical as well. He wants us on this land for as long as possible so that we may be a testimony to His Kingdom. We all have our purpose for our existence and it is our job to let the world know just what God is saying to the world. Likewise, our enemy has his job as well and that is to snuff out our light quickly as possible so that no glory goes to the Creator of everything.
It is God’s intention to share with us the knowledge of what the world brings to our lives. We must continually remember that the world cannot bring life, only destruction and death for that is what its ruler can offer. The temporary pleasure and relief that the world provides is only a detriment to our existence because it is superficial and cannot provide the necessary relaxation that our lives require. Look at the passage of Psalms 23 and this will give you a great example of what God can provide for the tricks that our enemy provides. The Bible offers us another great example in the New Testament and it has to do with God’s only Son and my Savior Jesus Christ.
In Matthew Chapter 8 we have a large amount of turmoil that Jesus is dealing with here. The verses that will be used will be confined to 8:23 – 27 where it talks about Jesus and His disciples being on a boat when a storm arises. This entire chapter is filled with pain and agony and can be used for this article but God wants to use this specific passage to illustrate a point that He is in control and how through His control of our lives the stress around our lives can be eliminated as long as we allow Him to live in our hearts, even when the world is falling apart.
Some of you may know that I am not a huge fan of boats especially big ones that are on some ocean with no land in sight. I have no real fear of the boat itself for I will get into one that is on a lake or pond but a large one, in my opinion, can only produce trouble, so I can relate to this story on a personal level. Jesus had just finished healing a centurion’s daughter and was headed out of town. While the Bible does not say exactly how much time had passed between His healing of the little girl and the time when He entered the boat with His disciples it would be logical if this time would have been almost immediate. The point here is that Jesus had just completed an act of advancing God’s Kingdom and it was a teaching point to His disciples of what His mission was while He was on the earth.
So, Jesus gets into a boat and begins to cross the water with His disciples in tow; can you imagine the conversations that transpired concerning with what Jesus had just performed for His Father? The conversations must have quickly turned to the weather because it says that a storm came up and began to toss the boat around enough that the waves were filling up the boat, even high enough to cover the boat with water; which proves my point – in my head – that boats, water, and myself do not mix. Panic must have been the word of the moment because any sensible person would be looking for some type of rescue option while this situation was unfolding, except for Jesus who was napping on a cushion. Napping? Really?!? I know that some of us can sleep through a storm but when you add the tossing and turning of a boat to the equation this seems almost impossible. But it points out a great deal of information about God and the relationship that He wants with our lives.
No one can argue that this example is a stressful one and that the thought of the disciples dying did not cross their minds at some point. Can you imagine what went through their minds when they turned and looked at Jesus sleeping while they were fighting to keep the boat afloat? They do the logical and most human thing they could think of at that moment, they wake Jesus up to inform Him that they are all about to die. Totally forgetting who is in the boat with them, you know, the one who is asleep. Be honest, would you be thinking that this was the Son of God right at that moment? The world around you is doing its best to destroy your physical existence and with the deteriorating conditions being thrown at you, one would naturally panic. And looking at this picture in the Bible it should remind us that the forces of the world while seeming calm at the beginning of your journey can easily take a nasty turn against you at any time. While we may know this aspect of the world how often do we ignore this truth when the world shows its true self? The honest answer is almost all of the time, which is why when the world completes its “natural courses” we as humans are “shocked” at its relativity at that moment.
Adam and Eve are the prime and first example of living in perfect unity with God. Yet, their choices led to a great downfall that established such doubt in our lives concerning this truth and desire of God. In relation to this biblical example, Jesus had the exact same living conditions with God that Adam and Eve had with God and therefore, had no reason to fear from the elements of the world, which is exactly the living conditions that God wants for ALL of us to thrive in. But being asleep in a boat with a storm is kind of pushing reality, isn’t it? No, it is not because if the Creator of all living things is on an intimate communication level with you then you are at total peace and you will know what is ongoing around you AND WHY at all times. There will be no need for “shock” when things occur for your spiritual eyes shall see what is transpiring and God will give you the appropriate response.
Jesus did not panic when the disciples woke Him up, nor did He get upset at them either. He understood their fear and He also knew that this would be a teaching moment for them as well, another perfect setting for God to advance His Kingdom through mankind. Jesus stands up, looks around and speaks to the storm that is engulfing them. The seas and wind subside and the boat returns to its course across the water. The Bible says that the disciples are marveled at what Jesus just accomplished, for now, they see that Jesus can control the atmosphere and planet activity as if healing the sick was not enough. Shock of the surroundings resurfacing in their hearts maybe??? The disciples, even with them witnessing all of the miracles of Jesus so far still could not identify the advancement of God’s Kingdom as Jesus wanted.
Would you agree that when the storm was over and everything seemed back to normal that the stress level of the disciples had diminished greatly? There is a key factor here that we must understand about the disciples and it pertains to our lives as well. When times became tough these men turned to Jesus for help and there is nothing wrong with this, in fact, this is what we are supposed to do when times are tough. But through the next portion of this passage we see that the disciples still did not understand exactly what Jesus was teaching them. The disciples immediately began to talk amongst themselves and reiterated to each other what had just occurred. They completely missed the fact that if they only placed their trust and faith in God 1st, they could have accomplished the exact same feats as Jesus just did.
There is a song that was popular in the early 2000s and its words are profound and have a direct meaning to what God is saying to us today. Sometimes God calms the storm but He cannot do this unless we ask Him to do the act. Other times God calms His child while the child is going through the storm. I cannot tell you that God shall calm every storm that we go through but I can tell you that He shall ALWAYS give His child direction if we place Him first in our lives because when we do, we will be able to hear His voice during times of trouble. The world SHALL bring storms in our path and we must encounter them when they arrive but it is how we accept them and go through them that matters. Even though the disciples were able to physically and literally see Jesus they still struggled with this truth, so it needs to be reinforced to us today that we have the same power of Christ in us today that Jesus Himself had when He walked this earth.
It is through this truth that our spiritual stress program thrives which has a direct relationship with the physical stress that we encounter from the world today. To sleep through what is occurring around you is a phenomenal response but it is one that should be an inspiration to God’s children as well. I am not talking about being blinded to what is going on around us, which most fit into that category, but when one understands why things are unfolding they will have no stress. It is troubling to turn on the news and see parts of the world burning up with fires, to hear about people rioting and turning civilized cities into emergency states. It is disheartening to hear about groups suing people for ridiculous reasons with no just cause explanations as to why the events occurred. It is easy to see the world go up in flames and be stressed about it, but when the news is constantly filled with this type of violent behavior, the stress can seem unbearable.
It is at this point where we need to understand what exactly is going on and why things are getting out of hand. And to be truthful it is our fault that these events are ongoing and shall continue to become worse simply because we have placed our trust in the world and not God where we need it to be. See, we were created for a purpose and that purpose is strictly for the advancement of God’s Kingdom and when we are not completing this holy task Satan’s Kingdom is advanced. When these worldly conditions arise it is ok that our heart rates get raised a bit but there should be no reason why we should not know what to do during these moments. If the Church sits back and watches these events unfold and NOT pray we cannot be called the Church any longer. Prayer and directly speaking to God with a pure and connected heart is the exact same as when Jesus calmed the waters around Him. Jesus knew exactly what to say and do and since we have the same power residing in us we should be doing the exact same. We are living and breathing creations of God and we should not be silent to what the world is allowing to pass unchecked.
I am appalled to think that the Church does not understand enough of what is going on to market a godly response to what is unfolding before our eyes. The Church sits around in amazement while these events daily cross our screens and chooses to not learn about her surroundings and then do nothing about what she witnesses. We marvel at the storm and of what we have in front of us but do not realize the power we have through God to stop these events from continuing or occurring. The world shall not cease in creating chaos and destruction for this is all that it can produce. So why are we not combating these issues with a direct response from God? Repent church and allow God to restore the capital “C” back into your body. You want to continue to see the world fall apart, then do nothing and stay on your current course but know this that the world went to hell in a hand basket, just as the Bible has stated, all because you sat and did nothing.
Stress shall continue to present itself and rise unless we change our attitudes towards God. It is that plain and simple. God has all the answers that we need in order for us to bring order back into play in our lives. There is no way possible that the world will fix itself and it does not matter if all 200+ of the world’s leaders agree on countless numbers of plans to end every problem of the world, things shall not change until we return to God. Church, you are the key to push back the kingdom of Satan by advancing the Kingdom of God. Do not sit around and lose your life as Adam and Eve did go forward with the message of stress reduction. And not stress induction.
As the song from “Veridia” states, we are still breathing so we better once again act like it. It is tough to reduce chronic stress in our physical lives and we have plans to overcome this stress. God has provided us with a spiritual stress relief plan as well and it is called His Word! Embrace His Word and live through it with every breath you take and God guarantees that He will divide your stress to the point where it is minuscule and cannot be detected as you plow through the world’s troubles. Be a witness to the world and not a participant in its activities, rise up Church and claim the advancement of God’s Kingdom as a stress reliever.
DLB
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