Are you stressed? If you live in America, then you have experienced stress at one point in time. It could be while you were driving on the freeway and traffic was backed up bumper to bumper. Or possibly when little Junior was throwing a tantrum, the dog was chasing the cat, the telephone was ringing and dinner was burning – all at the same time!
Stress is not something
caused on the outside. It’s something
that’s caused inside you. When we get
under stress we blame our circumstances. They are not the cause of your stress. No, no! Stress is the
response. Stress is in your mind. It’s how you react to circumstances. You could put two people in the exact same circumstances
and one will be stressed out and the other is not. Why? It’s the way you think about it. Stress is a combination of emotions. Worry, guilt, fear, bitterness, anger, tension, anxiety – all these
things put together based on a way of thinking. That’s why the Bible says if you want to deal with stress, you’ve got to
change the way you think. 2 Timothy 4:5, says “You should keep a clear
mind in every situation.”
When you’re pressured to do
something you know is the wrong thing to do. When you were in school, this was called peer pressure. You remember you were pressured to do things
you didn’t want to do but the crowd was doing it so you went ahead and had to
make the decision – “Do I go against the
crowd or do I do the right thing.”
time you were pressured to smoke a cigarette? Or the first time you were pressured to take a drink of alcohol? Or pressured to lose your virginity? Maybe you were pressured to let somebody
cheat off your test paper. You had a
choice to make and at that moment you were under stress. The Bible has a lot to say about stress. Think about it, Jesus himself was put in stressful situations and he demonstrated how to handle stress without getting stressed out!
If you would like more detail on how to reduce your stress – email meand I will send you biblical principles to use to overcome stress.