How do you know when it is going to be a bad day? Bad days are going to come. Some days can be down right ugly can’t they? One writer offered several clues to identify these inevitable bad days. He wrote:
You know it is going to be a bad day when you wake up face down on the pavement.
You know it is going to be a bad day when you wake up to a Sixty Minutes crew outside your home.
You know it is going to be a bad day when you turn on the television and they are broadcasting emergency routes out of your city.
You know it is going to be a bad day when you wake up to discover your water bed is leaking. Then you remember you don’t have a water bed.
Everyone of us are going to experience some bad days; days when disappointment and disaster create tension, frustration, and anxiety; days when everything that can go wrong does go wrong and we feel washed up, and wiped out by a tidal wave of stress. Stress seems to be the ‘in’ disease for our generation. Many of us are all stressed up with no place to go. Last year Americans consumed five million pounds of aspirin. That does not take into effect all of the aspirin type products, sleeping pills, pain pills, or tranquilizers. The American Medical Association reports over two-thirds of the office visits made to family physicians are stress related visits. We are a stressed out society, and no longer is stress confined to the workaholic.
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According to the United States News and World Report up to thirty-five percent of America’s children suffer from stress related health problems in their pre-teen years ranging from pulling out their hair to migraine headaches. Stress affects us all. How can you and I conquer stress before stress conquers us?
I encourage you to open your Bibles to the fortieth chapter of Isaiah where the prophet shares with us: How to Soar Above Stress. We will soar above stress when our confidence rests in God. Isaiah’s generation faced some stress filled days. Isaiah had broken the prophetic news that Babylonian captivity was imminent and irreversible. God’s people would be carried away from their homeland. They would live in exile. They would be slaves in a foreign land serving a foreign master. The storm was coming. The wind was about to blow, the rain was about to fall, and everything in their lives that was not nailed down was about to come loose. Talk about stress! The promise of being a blessing to the nations was about to be severely tested.
It is in such times of testing that we wonder: “Where is God? Why is He silent? Why doesn’t He do something?” But in the fortieth chapter of his prophetic work, Isaiah seeks to help God’s covenant people trace the rainbow through the rain. He encourages them to put their confidence in God. God is the one who will sustain them. God is the one who will protect them, preserve them, provide for them, and prove Himself to be faithful to the promises He has made to them. We will soar above stress when our confidence rests in God.
Read Isaiah 40:27-31
What is stress? That is a very important question is it not? If we are going to have success over stress we must clearly understand what it is we are trying to have success over. Stress is the gap, the gulf between the every day demands placed upon us and our ability to meet those demands. When your ‘have to’ exceeds your ‘can do’ stress occurs. It is not a sin to be stressed out. None of us can avoid stress, but we can avoid being overcome by it. How can you and I conquer stress before stress conquers us? When a stress storm hits, what should I do?
ELEVATE YOUR EYESIGHT BEFORE YOU SACRIFICE YOUR SANITY.
The first thing most of us do when stress hits is panic. We pull out our hair. We tie our stomach up into knots. We frantically start looking for a way out of the storm we are in. We desperately examine our resources seeking a solution to the seemingly insolvable situation. But the first thing we ought to do is elevate our eyesight. Try to view your problem from an eternal frame of reference. The prophet urged the Jewish people to take their eyes off of their circumstances and look to the One who rules and reigns above their circumstances.
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable”. (Isaiah 40: 28)
God says the first thing we ought to do when stress hits is pause to remember who He is. Put your problem in perspective from God’s vantage point.
HE IS EVERLASTING.
We see our situation from a temporal frame of reference, but God sees our situation from an eternal frame of reference. He is everlasting. Remember those words that begin John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John was not referring to a start in time but a state in time. He was not referring to a temporal start but an eternal state. John does not say from the beginning, he says in the beginning. That implies a preexistent state of being. In other words, before there was a creation, there was a creator; before there was a sun to shine, a moon to glow, or stars to sparkle in splendor, there was the glorious, all consuming light of God’s great love. We cannot understand God on a tangible time line because God had no beginning and will have no end, so any point of reference is irrelevant in light of Him. God does not dwell in time, time dwells in God. He is everlasting.
HE IS INFINITE.
“The Creator of the ends of the earth”
Isaiah says if you go from one end of the universe to the other, God will be there. Imagine taking a trip across the galaxy at the speed of light - that is 186,000 miles per hour or 669 million miles per hour. In ten seconds we would pass the moon. That is only 230,000 miles away. In ten minutes we would pass the sun. That is only 93 million miles away. One year. Five years. Ten years. One hundred years. One thousand years. Were you and I to tap into the mythical fountain of youth and manage to live 50,000 years traveling at 669 million miles per hour we would finally make it half way across the universe, and God would already be there waiting on us. He is infinite. An atheist once mocked a believer by asking, “Where is God?” The believer calmly replied; “First answer my question. Where is He not?”
You and I cannot go anywhere that God is not already there. That is why it is ridiculously laughable to try to run from God, because every time you try to run from God, you run smack into Him. We call this the omnipresence of God; it is but another way of saying He is infinite. God is everywhere at all times.
HE IS INEXHAUSTABLE.
God does not become weary or tired. God never runs out of energy. You and I grow weary and tired. We wear out. God does not. Even the Energizer Bunny cannot keep up with God, because He just keeps going and going and going and going.
HE IS INSCRUTABLE.
“His understanding is inscrutable.”
Inscrutable means incomprehensible. You could spend all of your life in libraries researching the Creator of the universe. You could commit to memory the works of the world’s greatest philosophers and theologians, but you still would be unable to comprehend God. Quite frankly, this bothers some people. They want a God they can get a handle on. They want a divine being they can put in a box and control. Some of you find it hard to believe God because you cannot comprehend Him. But consider for a moment your dilemma from another perspective: Would you entrust your eternal destiny to someone who was no bigger than your limited finite comprehension? If God were no bigger than my ability to comprehend Him we would all be in trouble. I cannot comprehend all that God is, nor do I understand all God does, and I confess that frustrates me, but that inscrutability is what makes God, God.
When your problems run in packs, when circumstances, situations, pain, panic, and heartache gang up on us, and stress starts rolling like an avalanche of snow down the mountainside of our souls, we need to elevate our eyesight before we sacrifice our sanity. We need to understand there is one who is greater than our problems, one who sees our problems from an eternal frame of reference, and possesses the resources to help us overcome them. He is God, and, when we turn to Him, He promises strength for the storms, and energy for the task. So don’t focus on how small you are, look at how big God is. There is nothing that will ever come your way that you and God cannot handle together. Elevate your eyesight before you sacrifice your sanity.
When stress hits, many of us start running around like a chicken with our heads cut off. We have no idea where we are going, but we try to get there as fast as we can. In the midst of our hustle and bustle Isaiah challenges us not to speed up but to slow down.
DON’T HURRY TO WORRY, BUT SET YOUR FATE TO WAIT.
“They that wait upon the Lord”
The psalmist wrote in Psalm 27:14: “Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” I cannot tell you how often I have missed out on the glorious promise of this passage because I did not fully comprehend the concept of waiting on the Lord. Forty or so years ago, when a young man was interested in a young woman, he was said to be waiting on her. That meant he was pursuing her, going after her, head over heels in love with her.
When you go to a restaurant, a young man or a young lady will approach your table and say: “Hi. My name is ________ and I will be your waiter this evening.” Does that mean they are going to go sit in the corner and wait for you to finish your meal? Sometimes it may seem that way. No. It means they are going to serve you. So when you are waiting on God, you are really pursuing Him with all of your being, wanting to please Him and serve Him. So waiting on the Lord is not passive, but active.
WAITING ON GOD MEANS LONGING FOR HIM.
We need to have a deep burning desire for Him. The psalmist declared: “As the deer panteth for the water, so My soul longeth after Thee, O God” (Psalm 42:1). We tend to view this biblical image as peaceful and serene. Most paintings show a deer at dusk silently sipping from the cool of a stream. That is a beautiful image isn’t it? The problem is: it is a false image. When the psalmist David wrote: “As the deer panteth for the water,” he was being doggedly pursued by Absalom. David was running for his life. He was exhausted. He was weary. His heart was about to burst through his chest, and he was gasping for air. Like the deer, exhausted from fleeing the pursuit of the hunter, desperately needing refreshment from the spring, David desperately needed a place of refuge and refreshment from his pursuer. He needed God, so he actively pursued God like the deer actively seeking water.
Psalm 62:1 says: “Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from Him cometh my salvation.” To wait on God means you and I, like the deer, are making constant trips to the true source of strength, for refreshment and renewal.
WAITING ON GOD MEANS LISTENING TO HIM.
Proverbs 8:34 says: “Blessed is the man that heareth Me, watching daily at My agates, waiting at the posts of My doors.” God links waiting with listening, not only hearing but heeding. So many of us are all shook up because we have not met with God on a regular basis. Call it a quiet time, a devotional time, a time of meditation, whatever you will, but waiting on God requires listening to Him at that appointed time when it is you and Him alone. If you are too busy for God, you are just too busy. I have heard people say I am just too busy to pray. Most of us are too busy not to pray.
WAITING ON GOD MEANS LOOKING TO HIM.
Psalm 104:27 tells us: “They all wait for Thee to give them their food in due season.” In the one hundred fourth Psalm the songwriter praises God for His provision in nature. He sings of the wild mules, of the fowls of the air, of the cattle, of the lion cubs, of the creatures of the sea all resting in the provision of a Holy God. How much more should we, as His crowned jewels of creation, trust God to meet our needs according to His riches in glory.
Jesus poses the question in Matthew 6: “If God so arrays the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more do for you, o ye of little faith?” (Matthew 6:30) Instead of worry, wait.
Then Isaiah reminds us:
DON’T JUST CHANGE, EXCHANGE.
“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;”
Underline the word renew. The Hebrew word for renew is chaleth, and it literally means: exchange. The Christian life is not just a changed life, but an exchanged life. In the face of stress, that means you and I go to God and say: ‘God, I want to make a trade with you. I will give you my weakness for your strength.’ And God says: ‘Done deal!’
The apostle Paul understood the power of this principle. In the twelfth chapter of Second Corinthians, he recounts his long running battle with what Paul referred to as his thorn in the flesh. Much speculation has been bantered about among scholars as to what that affliction may have been, but the bottom line is we do not know the nature of his affliction. I believe the affliction was left vague for a reason. That thorn in the flesh may be different for every one of us, but the divine answer for that thorn is the same for every one of us. Paul writes: “And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9a). ‘Paul, if you put on one side of the scale all of your weaknesses, afflictions, disasters, and disappointments, and on the other side of the scale My grace and My grace alone, you will discover My grace more than outweighs all of your weaknesses.’
How can that possibly be true? Well, the answer to that question is really the crux of our discussion, for God says: “My grace is made perfect in weakness.” When you and I, in and of our own strength are weak, then we are forced to rely on the power of Him who lives within us, and in so doing become strong, because we are trading our weakness for His strength, and
HIS STRENGTH GRANTS US SOARING POWER.
“They shall mount up with wings as eagles”
God grants us the strength, not only to confront, but to soar above the storms of life. Ornothological experts tell us that every member of the bird family, when it sees a storm brewing, flies away from that storm except for one: the eagle. The eagle flies directly into the storm, because the thermal updrafts of the storm can cause the eagle to fly faster, farther, and longer than under normal conditions. The average speed of the eagle is fifty-five miles per hour, but, during a storm, bird watchers have clocked an eagle flying as fast as one hundred ten miles per hour.
While the storms of life make some people bitter, they make the child of God better. We learn more about the grace of God, more about the goodness of God, and more about the sustaining power of God than we could ever learn under sunny skies. Our faith is forged, not in the sunshine of life, but in the storms of life.
GOD’S STRENGTH GRANTS US SURGING POWER.
“They shall run and not grow weary”
While soaring power grants us strength to overcome obstacles, surging power grants us the strength to seize opportunities. Opportunities present themselves each and every day, and if we are not prepared to meet them, they are lost forever. The great British playwright William Shakespeare penned: “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, if taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, but omitted, all the voyages of life end in the shallows and the marshes. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures.” In other words, when we exchange our weakness for God’s strength, He empowers us to seize the day.
But just as important as soaring power, and surging power:
GOD’S STRENGTH GRANTS US STAYING POWER.
“They shall walk and not faint”
Most of us have figured out by now that life is not a sprint but a marathon, and the key is simply to keep going: one step at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time.” In my files I found an old letter to noted columnist Ann Landers that helps convey the need for staying power. It reads:
Dear Ann Landers,
In 1981 I had breast cancer. I was thirty six years old and my mother had died thirty two years earlier, at age thirty six, of breast cancer. I got through it. In 1983 I had a second mastectomy and learned my husband was having a mid-life crisis type of affair. I got through it. In 1986 our beautiful, bright eighteen year old son took his life. No warning; no sign that he was unhappy. My husband and I were at home when he quietly hanged himself in the basement. God knows how I got through it, but I did. In 1988, after twenty years of what I thought was a good marriage, my husband moved in with his “Friday Night Rendezvous.” Because of all the hell we had gone through together, I was certain nothing could break us apart. When he left me the pain was gut wrenching, but I got through it.
How have I overcome all the grief in my life? It was due to the help I got from a competent and caring therapist and the loving support of family and friends. Above all, it was believing in God and having faith in myself. If I could go from a living hell to peace and serenity, anyone can. There is nothing special about me. I just asked God for strength to get through the day. I didn’t ask for strength to get through the week because I never knew what I would need two days up the road. I asked only that He give me strength to get through the day. And He never failed me.
And He will not fail you if you will put your faith, hope, and trust in Him. When you see God for who He really is, when you trust Him to grant you strength for the journey, you will find success over the stress. God never turns anyone away who comes to Him with a broken and contrite heart. You will soar above stress, if you put your confidence in God.
