Philippians 4:6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
STRESSING OUT, unlike burn-out, is mentioned in the Bible. Just different words express it. The words STRESSING OUT in itself isn’t mentioned, but it’s all over the place. ‘Be careful for nothing’ is Bible talk for ‘don’t be STRESSING OUT’. Martha was the prime example. Jesus came. She knew He liked her cooking, so she ‘assumed’ He was there to eat. She missed it. When you are STRESSING OUT, you miss the Lord, every time.
Luke 10:41 And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.”
STRESSING OUT is sinning. I know. I sin a lot by STRESSING OUT.
1. It’s not trusting God.
2. It’s not believing God.
3. It’s saying that I have to fix it, God can’t.
4. It affects everyone around me negatively.
5. It’s a sign of horrible leadership skills.
6. It shows weak character.
7. It’s a bad testimony.
8. It causes your tongue to say stupid things.
9. It kills relationships and family bonds.
STRESSING OUT MURDERS YOU AS WELL
Stress can be defined as a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation. Stress is a natural human response that prompts us to address challenges and threats in our lives. Everyone experiences stress to some degree. Stress is normal, STRESSING OUT is not.
While STRESSING OUT is abnormal, normal stress is not. Our pre-schoolers have it. Our own babies, when they were growing up, had it. We live in a stressful world. Not being able to deal with stress however, is a mental illness. Stress is part of living in a fallen world. Even monks, living in complete isolation, have stress. Missions are extremely high stress, if you care about the people. Military as well. But you don’t see highly qualified soldiers or anointed missionaries, running around biting their finger nails. Working with lost, at-risk children for 3 decades is extremely sad and over-the-top stressful, with no let-up. Finances, or lack thereof, is stressful as well. All just what you get when you sign up. Just another day on the job. But STRESSING OUT isn’t. STRESSING OUT means succumbing to the stress. I personally love stress. It wakes me up in the morning. Keeps me busy all day so I can sleep at night. TRADOC (military learning) keeps a little stress on you at all times and I thrive on learning in a stressful environment. But STRESSING OUT isn’t my bag anymore. I looked up to a few people in my life that were STRESSING OUT all the time, but they’re not here any more.. SELAH.
Most mediocre businessmen, housewives, students, pastors I know proudly brag about being ‘slammed’ ‘super busy’ ‘stressed out’ ‘back against the wall’ etc. like it shows success. The weirdest ‘badge of honor’ is ‘I am running around with my hair on fire’. My little son was eavesdropping one time on a call. I had on my speaker. Mike, a good friend of mine, was a Comcast salesman. Mike said ‘I’m slammed, I’m running with my hair on fire’. My baby boy gave me the funniest look on his face when he heard that. He’s never wanted to be in sales, wonder why? Haha. Contrary to popular opinion, STRESSING OUT doesn’t mean success. It means on the brink of failure. Mike is no longer a Comcast salesman.
I used to repeat that garbage, because the people I looked up to said that. As they went the way of the dinosaurs, I discovered that STRESSING OUT isn’t cool, in fact it is fatal to careers, families, souls and even your own life. I discovered that everyone, literally everyone in America who is failing at life uses that same, boring, sinful cop-out of STRESSING OUT. Verbiage like that is not a badge of honor or good work ethic, it’s a badge of cowardice, weakness, unbelief and mediocrity.
Just by talking about STRESSING OUT makes you start STRESSING OUT even more. STRESSING OUT isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t make you tough. In fact STRESSING OUT causes weakness, laziness, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer. Worse than that, it makes you a rude and nasty jerk. Not a very good Christian witness.
Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
Either you believe in God or you don’t. If you are STRESSING OUT about your secular job, making you a candidate for the mental ward, change jobs. Being the shopping cart guy or greeter at Wal-Mart is better than your kids seeing you in a straight jacket. If you are STRESSING OUT because you are trying to fulfill a spiritual calling, either you weren’t called, your motives are wrong, or you are not doing it right. Pastors who do not have time to answer a simple text because they are ‘STRESSING OUT’ should re-evaluate their calling. STRESSING OUT about ‘having to’ help others is as foreign to me as STRESSING OUT over ‘having to’ eat pizza (if you know you know 😉
I once posted (due to my own personal experiences) that if you wanted a church of 300, simply make one house call a day to someone you don’t know in your neighborhood, inviting them to church. It was a blast doing that, and my first church grew to 300 almost overnight! Awkward at times, but a blast. A pastor saw that and got ‘miffed’ (don’t you hate it when a middle aged man is miffed?). He wrote me saying that this Facebook post had him STRESSING OUT. I did the ‘haha poor little baby’ reply, thinking surely he was joking. (He stepped into a church that had 509 members, so he never planted a church). So. He wasn’t joking. I felt bad. But really how can I be accused of STRESSING OUT someone with a helpful post like that? There is something wrong upstairs, either spiritually or mentally (usually both?) if someone is STRESSING OUT all the time.
I have spent the last 30 years working with underprivileged children, sickly, (one little girl had 14 abscessed teeth). Little kids, working like slaves under 100 degree sun, often carrying bags on their heads that weigh 40-80 pounds, in filthy stinking squalor, barefoot and bleeding. Only to get starved, prostituted or raped when they came home with the dollar they earned for the day. I have never seen one, not one kid in the dump, ever in my 30+ years of working with them, STRESSING OUT. Not even one time. However, go to a luxury place, like a gym, in the states I’ve often seen overnourished musclemen, weightlifter types, driving their luxury cars to work out completely STRESSING OUT if the AC didn’t work, someone didn’t wipe off the exercise bench, the gym’s bar didn’t serve their favorite milkshake or bottled water brand.
If you knew, and really believed that God has you, and has all of this handled, why worry? In fact the Bible tells us 365 times not to worry. Don’t worry every day of the year is the message here. Don’t worry about not getting the milkshake you NEED at the gym. Be like the 59 pound, 12 year old girl carrying 40 lbs of filthy garbage on her head in the hot stinky garbage dump every day. Stop STRESSING OUT.
1 Peter 5:7 Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.
As a pastor, I care, a lot. For everyone and anyone. Our door bell wears out at least once or twice a year. It is being rung almost continuously from 7 am til 9 at night, for the past 11 years since we moved here. I try to answer it always, but often times I can’t. When I can’t, I feel bad…. Always. Someone’s sick. Someone’s hungry. Someone needs a friend. I wish I could be there always, but I can’t. And sometimes I feel myself STRESSING OUT because of that.
I started ministry down here with ‘a church without walls’. Well actually I started with a hundred glue sniffers in the basement of the ruins of the national Catholic Church in the plaza of the Revolution in downtown Managua. But we got kicked out by the police, and started ‘church without walls’ for the glue sniffers. Now, if I ever planted another church, I will call it THE CHURCH OF THE OPEN DOOR (better start soon, I am getting close to being 70). I would love to have it open 24/7/365 for anyone and everyone. Even if they just wanted to sleep it off without getting mugged.
I am never STRESSING OUT while serving others. I am STRESSING OUT when I can’t serve others. I shouldn’t though. If God didn’t let me open the door when someone rang the door bell, He knows why. I love action. I love being the ambulance driver, the sobriety counselor or the problem solver. It invigorates me. But sometimes I feel I am taking the place of the Holy Spirit. Psalms 107 says when you are at a place where no one can help you, that’s a great place to be. Note to myself, you are not the Holy Spirit. If someone is falling, let them fall. When no one can help them, they will cry to the Lord. That’s a very good place to be.
Psalm 107:12 Therefore he brought down their heart with labour; they fell down, and there was none to help. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses.
May the Lord de-stress you. The key to not be continuously STRESSING OUT is to be continuously in the moment, with Christ. Be in His presence. If you are His, He is in you. Embrace Him. He isn’t in the past. He isn’t in the future. He’s right here, right now. Don’t think about anything else, it’ll just lead to you STRESSING OUT. Want people to see Jesus when they look at you? They will, if you are practicing His presence, by living in the moment. Do you want to project boldness and confidence, as well as project the Lord? Be in the moment. Practice mindfulness, I know a lot of nervous, critical, angry Christians STRESSING OUT when I use this word ‘mindfulness’, but look at the fruit, there you have it.
Acts 4:13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.