Good stress, also called “eustress”, is very beneficial to our life. It means we stretch ourselves to be our very best. For years we've believed that stress is a bad thing - it damages our health. But stress can have a good side.
Illus: For example, for a violinist to make music, the strings on the violin must be tight—but only to a degree.
• If they are too tight, they will snap
• If they are too loose, they will produce no sound at all
The proper amount of tension lies somewhere between the two extremes.
There is GOOD STRESS and BAD STRESS, and it is important that we know the difference. It is obvious today that we live in a STRESSFUL WORLD and it is equally obvious that folks in our society do not know how to DEAL WITH THE STRESS in their lives!
(1) WE SEE THAT ON THE JOB SITE
Many jobs can become very stressful.
Illus: A man got a job as a night watchman at a factory. There had been a lot of thefts by the workers on the night shift, so every morning when the night shift workers passed through his gate, it was his job to check their bags and pockets to make sure that nothing was being stolen. All the stealing going on placed him under a lot of stress! Things were going along very well the first night on the job until a man pushing a wheelbarrow of newspapers came through the gate. “Aha,” he thought, “that man thinks he can cover up what he is stealing with that newspaper.” So he removed the paper only to find nothing. Still he felt that the man was acting strangely, so he questioned him about the paper. "I get a little extra money from newspapers I recycle, so I go into the lunchroom and pick up all the papers people have thrown away." The guard felt sorry after hearing his sad story, patted him on the back, and let him pass. The next night it was the same, and the night after that. Week after week it went on. The same guy would push the wheelbarrow of newspapers past the guard's checkpoint. The guard would always check and find nothing in the wheelbarrow. Then one night, about a year later, the guard reported for work only to find a message had been left for him telling him to report to the supervisor. He walked into the supervisor's office, and before he could say a word, the boss said, "You're fired!" "Fired?" he asked in total surprise. "Why? What did I do?" "It was your job to make sure that no one stole anything from this plant and you have failed. So you're fired." "Wait a minute, what do you mean I failed. Nobody ever stole anything from this place while I was on guard. “Oh, really," the boss answered. "Then how do you account for the fact that there are 365 wheelbarrows missing?"
We see that stress is a problem in the work force and also-
(2) WE SEE IT IN TODAY’S MARRIAGES
Illus: They stood at the altar, waiting to be married. The young man was very stressed out with all the marriage arrangements he found himself involved in. He wanted to have a small wedding with only a few of his friends there, but she wanted a big wedding. He had his own way of dealing with the stress of the marriage ceremony. The bride to be looked down and saw a set of golf clubs beside her new husband's feet. She whispered, “What on earth are you doing with those golf clubs?" "Well," he said, "this won't take all afternoon will it?"
Stress has played a major part in job failures and marriage failures.
(3) WE SEE IT IN THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE
Stress can contribute to heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, depression, and other harmful things. One fourth of all the drugs prescribed in the United States go to the treatment of stress.
Listen, those who are 55 and over can remember a time in this country when you hardly ever heard anyone talking about taking pills for STRESS and DEPRESSION. Today a common conversation is about how many pills people take a day!
One of the big problems in the ministry is the stress that many ministers have to deal with.
Illus: Brother John entered the 'Monastery of Silence' and the Chief Priest said, "Brother, this is a silent monastery, you are welcome here as long as you like, but you may not speak until I direct you to do so."
Brother John lived in the monastery for a full year before the Chief Priest said to him:
• "Brother John, you have been here a year now, you may speak two words." Brother John said, "Hard bed." "I'm sorry to hear that," the Chief Priest said. "We will get you a better bed."
• The next year, Brother John was called by the Chief Priest. "You may say another two words Brother John." "Cold food," said Brother John, and the Chief Priest assured him that the food would be better in the future.
• On his third anniversary at the monastery, the Chief Priest again called Brother John into his office. "You may say two words today." "I quit," said Brother John. "It is probably best" said the Chief Priest. "All you have done since you got here is complain."
All of us will agree that we live in an age where stress is a major problem.
But the biggest problem we have with stress in our life is caused by the people that we encounter. There are some people who seem to go out of their way to make life as stressful for us as they can.
Some folks have an unusual way of dealing with these stressful people.
Illus: One such man said to picture yourself near a stream.
• Birds are singing in the crisp, cool mountain air
• Nothing can bother you here
• No one knows your secret place
• You are in total seclusion
• The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity
• You can easily make out the face of the person you are holding under the water
There now. Feeling better?
As we consider stress, let’s look at two sisters in the Bible, Mary and Martha. Martha didn’t know how to deal with stress, but Mary was an expert in dealing with it. Let’s look at-
I. THE CAUSE OF STRESS
Illus: Think about STRESS as a rubber band.
• If stretched, it will return to its normal, relaxed position when the external force is removed. The body’s stress response is also stretched whenever it is subjected to any emergency or demand. It ought to return to a normal, relaxed state when the demand is removed.
• If stretched for a long time and held, it loses its elastic properties and will eventually snap.
Stress comes into our life when we feel we have NO CONTROL over the situation we are facing in life.
When we live our life focusing on problems, we are going to have some bad stress.
Martha, in our text, is a good example. The things that had her stressed out were GOOD THINGS TO DO, but she saw life as one BIG PROBLEM as she tried to accomplish all the things she wanted to do. We need to learn how to prioritize things.
Illus: Living can be like going to a restaurant that serves their customers a buffet. The customer sees all that delicious looking food, and gets a little of this and little of that and soon their plate is filled to capacity. It is impossible to get anymore on their plate, but they keep trying.
Life is like that. We see all the things we would like to do with our life and we keep loading our schedule down with all these nice things we would like to do. When we lay down to sleep at night we can not sleep because we are trying to figure out a way that we can do it all.
Many folks could get rid of a lot of stress in their life if they would just be willing to clear their day planners.
Illus: Dr. Odell Belger tells that due to funerals, surgeries, and sermon preparation, he had not had any time off in three weeks. Stress was beginning to show itself in his life. He and his wife have a little home in Chimney Rock, North Carolina. They were planning to take a two week’s vacation. but before he could take time for the vacation, he had to take a day off and go there to deliver some building supplies for a project he was working on. But again, due to sermons, some surgeries and car problems, he was trying to figure how he could squeeze it all in. By mid-week he began to feel the STRESS and he decided they would not go, and immediately all the stress seemed to disappear.
Sometimes when our schedule is filled to maximum, one of the best things we can do is wipe it clean or simply PRIORITIZE OUR SCHEDULE and say, “I WILL DO IT LATER!”
All the GOOD THINGS we want to accomplish DO NOT HAVE TO BE DONE TODAY!
If we insist on living a life of stress and keep squeezing things into our schedule, we can look for two things to happen:
(1) We are going to physically collapse under this BAD STRESS
(2) We are going to get out of the will of God because Satan wants to jam pack our lives so that we will not have time to sit at the feet of Jesus
Martha was a very stressed lady. We can almost imagine the facial expression as she became very IRRITABLE and said, in Luke 10:40, “…Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.”
She is so stressed out that she said two things:
1. She said Martha did not care about the work she was doing
2. She also accused the Lord of not caring
Martha was all stressed out!
If she were living today and went to some of the medical doctors that are no more than PILL PUSHERS, they would have prescribed all kinds of medication for her.
Illus: She makes me think of a distraught patient that phoned her doctor's office. "Is it true", the woman wanted to know, "That the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?" "Yes, I'm afraid so." The doctor told her. There was a moment of silence before the woman continued, "I'm wondering, then, just how serious my condition is. This prescription is marked 'NO REFILLS.'"
Martha was stressed out, and if she went to some of the doctors today they would have prescribed something for her STRESSED CONDITION.
WHAT CAUSED HER STRESS? She focused on her PROBLEMS! Any time we see life as a PROBLEM we don’t have any control over, we are going to have some STRESS!
We have looked at THE CAUSE OF STRESS, but also let’s look at-
II. THE CURE FOR STRESS
To understand what the CURE for stress is, we have to look at the life of Martha again. Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.
A. LOOK AT THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM
Look at Luke 10:40, we read, “But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.” Look at the words, “MUCH SERVING”.
The scripture shows that she had become ridiculous in her serving.
You see, Martha was like a lot of folks. They draw up their list of things to do that they consider to be important, and they expect everybody to consider these things to be as important as they do. There are people who have burdened themselves down with problems, and if you let them, they will burdened you down also.
Illus: Some see all kinds of things they want to buy. They buy and buy until one day they find themselves in a mess. All of a sudden, the most important thing to them is all those bills. And some folks get upset when their bills are not as important to us as they are to them.
Listen, they need to understand that we did not have any part in making those bills and we do not have any responsibility to pay them.
Illus: Another thing that people do is decide to have a half dozen children. Once they have them and things become stressful, they feel it is everybody’s responsibility to feed and clothe them and pay for daycare for them.
Martha was like this. She had her list of things she felt WERE IMPORTANT, and she felt these things should be important to others as well.
Stress is your body’s alarm clock saying, “Watch out! When we find ourselves getting stressed, it is time to cast our cares upon the Lord before we buckle!
The routine of life has a way of piling things on us. For example, some folks watch the News every day, but that is not always the best thing to do if you do not want to live under stress. You see the news media tries to find all the bad news they can find and then when we turn on the news, they want to take all the bad things they found and DUMP THEM IN OUR LAPS! The news media is not concerned about our health, all it is concerned about is ratings.
This is dangerous when we live under stress every day, seven days a week. If our bodies are repeatedly held in a state of alarm, they will show damaging consequences.
Like Martha, we can get so distracted by all the seemingly necessary things that we miss the important things in life.
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION TO THE STRESS PROBLEM?
The answer is to be like Mary. Look at Luke 10:42 we read, “But ONE THING IS NEEDFUL: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
WHAT A CONTRAST! Martha thought many things were important, but Mary thought only one thing was important. We must never get so busy with the outward things that we neglect the quiet and peaceful worship of our Lord.
As we close, let me share some things with you that will help cure the stress problems in your life.
(1) LEARN TO PRIORITIZE. Is the thing that is getting you all stressed out really that important? Maybe you can do it later or perhaps not even do it at all.
(2) LEARN TO LEAN ON THE LORD. The chorus of “learning to lean” that we sing sometimes is so important, But don’t just sing about it, do it!
(3) PRAY WITHOUT CEASING. If it is important to you it is important to the Lord. Have you noticed how little children come to us with things that are important to them? If it is important to you it is important to Him. Talk to Him about it.
(4) LIVE ONE DAY AT A TIME. Many folks are carrying today’s burdens, past burdens and future burdens. The Lord Jesus said, in Matthew 6:34 “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
(5) LEARN NOT TO TAKE LIFE TOO SERIOUSLY. Art Linkletter used to have a television program called “People are funny!” He just showed people living their daily life, and the THINGS THEY SAID and the THINGS THEY DID caused us all to laugh.
Life is to be taken seriously, but sometimes people take things too seriously. Learn to laugh at yourself.
Illus: Dr. Odell Belger’s mother is 87 years of age. She is in good health but has loss most of her hearing. On Grandparents Day, many of her grandchildren were there to honor her on this special day. Dr. Belger asked all the grandparents to stand, but she did not stand because she could not hear him. After church, her daughter decided to tease her and said, “Mom, why didn’t you stand to honor your grandchildren?” She said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Pastor asked all the grandparents that are proud of their grandchildren to please stand, and you did not stand.” She said “That really hurt your grandchildren.” She said, “I did not hear him say that!” But her daughter saw that she was really concerned and told her he did not say that, he only said, “All the grandparents please stand!” And then she started laughing. Many have forgotten how to laugh.
(6) BE THANKFUL FOR THE BLESSINGS OF LIFE.
Illus: Lynn Swann was voted into the NFL Hall of Fame. He was one of the greatest receivers that the NFL has ever had. But at his induction, he took the occasion to say that he never knew why Terry Bradshaw would not throw him the ball for several years. It was only in the last few years that Bradshaw chose him to be his number one receiver. Here is what is sad about these remarks that Lynn Swann made. He chose one of the most important times in his life to complain about Terry Bradshaw. A lot of folks are like this, great things are happening in their life and church, but they can not enjoy the great things because all they can concentrate on is the bad.
(7) QUIT LISTENING TO THE DEVIL. Stress is mostly a mental condition. The Holy Spirit constantly whispers truth, but the enemy constantly whispers lies to us. We decide who we are going to listen to.
This is why the Word of God says, in Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Conclusion:
I. THE CAUSE OF STRESS
II. THE CURE FOR STRESS
