Stress

What is Stress?

Stress is caused by anxious and fearful reactions to difficult circumstances. Difficult situations come when we take on adult responsibilities that hold increasing importance to us. During a normal American childhood, our responsibilities are limited. We are responsible to make our grades, clean up our room and perhaps a few chores assigned by our parents. As we reach adult life, we take on the responsibilities of marriage and rearing children, which place much greater pressure upon us. Circumstantial pressure increases as the importance of our responsibilities increase. Stress, which is anxiety related to our pressures, increases as we choose to worry about the outcomes of these situations.

God Is Prepared
Long before God created the universe, with His genius, omniscient mind, He was able to look ahead into human history and see every moment of our lives. He saw our bodies being formed in the womb, the moment of birth and every moment since. He is fully and totally aware of every aspect of our lives. In fact, he is totally aware of every life, every situation and every problem that any of us will face in our lifetime, and He has made provisions for us to handle every situation with His grace. The pressure we experience from the important responsibilities we have taken, have a solution, a way that God has provided for us to deal with these situations and be at peace, instead of feeling stressed.

In this article, we will discuss some of the different pressures that come with simply being alive, the provisions that God has made to give us victory over daily life and the way He has designed for us to practice His solutions to experience inner peace and joy in spite of difficult circumstances.

Pressures of Life
I am defining pressure as the weight we feel associated with the responsibilities normal to every stage of life. In our early life, we have the pressure of everything being new to us and having to learn how to deal with things we don’t know how to do. We have to learn how to make good grades, relate to others in school and how to compete within the social structures we experience. Looking back, the pressures of childhood look small, but when we were in the midst of them they didn’t feel small, they often felt overwhelming. As we enter adult life, the scope of our responsibilities increase and with them the pressures increase. Marriage and family carry bigger pressures than making good grades or having to compete on the playground. Most of us consider these relationships to be the most important of our lives. As the importance ratio increases, the temptation to “stress out” also increases.

Every stage of life carries its own difficulties and burdens. Early life has the pressures of everything being new, mid life the pressures of everything being so critically important and older life holds the pressures of seeing it all come to an end. God designed human life and is fully aware of all the pressures that come with each stage. All along the way He has made provisions for us that enable us to handle the pressures with class and make decisions that edify everyone around us. When we use God’s promises and principles to manage our souls, we are relieved of stress within and we are able to give freely to others. His promises guarantee us a way of looking at pressure that makes dealing with it fun and beneficial. Instead of feeling stresses, we can feel challenged and use the pressure as an occasion to grow. Only God could turn difficult circumstances into something good.

Provisions of God
God knows what is coming next. He knows what is going to happen to everyone, the choices that each of us will make and how these choices will interact with one another to motivate us to make other decisions. He knows the end before it begins. God, knowing how human life works has made promises relating to life that He always honors when we believe them and use them for life. What God who cannot lie has promised, He will certainly perform whenever anyone trusts Him for them. For example, God has promised to meet all of our daily needs for earthly life, ie food, clothing and shelter.

Phil 4:19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.God’s glorious riches supply all of our needs.

Notice that this is an unconditional promise and not dependent upon any action we must perform. He takes care of all the needs of His children, like any good father, even when they are in a state of disobedience. Notice also that His promise pertains to our needs, not necessarily our wants. What we think of as needs and what God knows are our real needs can often be very different. This promise is a real comfort to those who trust Him when we are struggling financially. To know that God will take care of us and our family can give us inner peace if we will believe the promise and not doubt it.

God has given promises and principles pertaining every stage of life. He knows us in the womb, knows when we will be saved, when we will struggle with any and every issue in life and He is prepared to handle them. We feel stressed when we don’t know how our situations will turn out. We imagine them turning out for the worst and visualize scenarios of disaster resulting in disappointment and pain. With God’s promises that enable us to deal successfully with every problem in life, we can eliminate the negative images. Rather than imagining negative images, we can rightly imagine successful images and be at ease about the outcome of any situation. When we trust God’s promises, they take away stress and replace it with peace. This is true about everything in life and every stage of life. Let’s look at the ultimate problem we will face, or own death. For the Christian, those who have trusted the death, burial and resurrection of Christ for their salvation, death means that our soul leaves our earthly body and goes to be with the Lord. Listen again to Paul,

2 Cor 5:6 Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight 8 we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.

While we are here on earth, we live inside the body we were born with. When we leave this body, the promise is that we will immediately go to heaven to be with Jesus, who will one day give us a new body that will last us forever. What a wonderful promise from God that can alleviate our worry and fears when facing death or when a loved one who is a believer dies. God’s promises answer every problem in life and give us peace in any problem in life, when we will believe them.

Practicing our Faith
God in grace has provided for every problem life holds. God’s grace means that He has done all the work and offers us the benefits of His work as a free gift. We benefit from His work when we believe what He has promised. Christ paid for our sins and offers His work as a free gift, which we accept by faith. Christ has also provided for every other problem in life and offers His grace provision as a free gift, which we accept by faith.

Faith is how we utilize God’s grace provisions. The writer of Hebrews explains how faith is mixed with the promises of God.

Heb 4:2 For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.

The writer tells us that faith is united or mixed together with the promise of God and when it is, the believer is benefited. All of us have faith and can choose to connect our faith to any idea. When we choose to connect or mix our faith with God’s word, He benefits us by blessing us with whatever He promised. The more we know about God, His word and what he has promised His children, the more we can mix with our faith and the more we can be blessed by God.

Summary
Pressure from our responsibilities grows as life progresses and the temptation to feel stressed grows along with it. Stress can grow if we don’t handle pressure well and can even take over our life. God has given us promises that enable us to deal victoriously with every difficulty in life. When we mix our faith with His promises, He blesses us with inner peace and contentment. His promises have made a way for us to avoid stress even though we can’t avoid the pressures of life. If your life is filled with stress, consider talking to God about your problems and learning His promises to deal with your difficulties.