Dealing With The Mess Of Stress - Part 3

So far, we’ve learned that stress is a load on the system that usually results from worry or anxiety. Stress manifests itself in many ways, physical, emotional and spiritual.

We also learned that the key to dealing with stress is securing the mind against wrong thinking and wrong feelings about circumstances, people and things. Paul tells us that the “peace of God” guards our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Peace is not the absence of trouble. In John 14:27 Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” In John 16:33 He says, “I have spoken these things to you so that you might have peace in Me. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

So experiencing “the peace of God” is not experiencing the absence of trouble and tribulation; it is experiencing God’s shalom or peace in the midst of your storm.

In fact when Paul wrote Philippians, he was in the midst of a storm—he was in prison, chained to a prison guard. The church he wrote to in the city of Phillipi, was in the midst of several storms:

False teachers were threatening the church –

Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. (3:2)

For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ (3:18)

Two sisters in the church were feuding-

I beseech Euodias, (aka “odious” meaning hateful) and beseech Syntyche, (aka “so touchy” feelings easily hurt) that they be of the same mind in the Lord (4:2)

The Bible lets us know that although your life might be stormy, you can be stress-free in the midst of storm and so Paul continues in Philippians 4 to give us three conditions that must be met in order for one to conquer worry and experience the secure mind: Right Praying, Right Thinking and Right Living.

Last time we looked at Right Praying. Today, we are going to look at the subject of right thinking.

Right Thinking

(Phil 4:6 NKJV) Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

(Phil 4:7 NKJV) and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

We have already seen how stress and worry can be abated if only Christians would practice “Right Praying.” I submit to you today that you and I can also decrease worry which leads to stress if we would only begin to practice “Right Thinking.”

We experience the “peace of God” as we submit wrong thinking to the Word of God. It’s kind of like the song that Bishop Paul Morton’s choir sings, I Am What You See, which has the lyrics:

Help me to see me

the way You see me

sometimes I see pain Lord

when You see victory

I see where I am Lord

You see where I shall be

open my eyes, help me believe

I am what You see

(Repeat)

You see me victorious

You see me faithful

You see me believing

that You are able…

…open my eyes, help me believe

I am what You see.

When thoughts and feelings try to take hold of us, and when they don’t agree with what the Word of God says about us, we need to discard those thoughts and feelings and think right.

Remember, worry doesn’t accomplish anything. Our anxious thoughts will not make our children safer at school. Worrying about finances will not make our employers increase our salaries. In fact, Psalm 37 tells us that fretting only leads to more trouble.

Wrong thinking leads to wrong feelings and wrong feelings lead to wrong actions. Jesus tells us that worrying about our finances is a result of wrong thinking concerning our relationship with our Heavenly Father. He makes this point in Matthew chapter six.

25“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

28“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?