-Transcript-
00:37 Amen. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the cafe.
00:43 Pastor Clark Covington here with another message for you that hopefully will help you. Man, this one really helped me just to even prepare for it. And I hope this will help you too.
00:53 Lord knows we all deal with stress and this message is all about stress. In fact, the title of this message, and we’re going to do this in two parts, we’ll do part one today and part two tomorrow. The title of this message is Balanced, Imbalanced or No Balance.
01:09 Balanced, Imbalanced or No Balance. And the idea here is are we living as God wants us to live? Are we living sort of like God wants us to live but have an imbalance or are we totally out of whack when it comes to how God would have us to live and how God would have us to deal with stress?
01:25 Because frankly, stress is a normal part of life, yet it can have awful ramifications, unnecessary at that for Christians. As I mentioned to the congregation yesterday evening in our Wednesday night prayer service, I don’t think that we can eliminate stress in our life.
01:45 I think that would be naive to say that. That would be like, okay, you haven’t really lived. If you’re going to say, oh, I’m going to live stress-free.
01:56 But at the same time, I believe that God understands how we’re made to the point where even medical terminology tells us that our body has specific responses for stress.
02:07 Well, who programmed those responses in? The Lord did. And so if the Lord made us, the Lord knows we deal with stress, then maybe, just maybe in His word, amen, there could be a remedy for some, if not most of this stress in your life, in my life.
02:19 And so what is stress? Let’s start there real quick. Stress, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, NIMH, but it’s part of NIH, I guess. What is stress? Stress is the physical or mental response to an external cause, such as having a lot of homework or having an illness.
02:40 A stressor may be a one-time or short term occurrence, or it can happen repeatedly over time. Stress affects the body. The first thing that may come to mind when you think of stress is the byproduct of anxiety.
02:57 What is anxiety? According to the NIMH website, anxiety is your body’s reaction to stress and can occur even if there is no current threat. My research has shown that stress affects all systems of the body everywhere. The musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, nervous, reproductive, all of it.
03:18 Common effects of stress on your body could be headache, muscle tension, or pain, chest pain, fatigue, stomach upset, sleep problems, issues with intimacy, on your mood, anxiety, restlessness, lack of motivation or focus, feeling overwhelmed, irritability or anger, sadness or depression, on your behavior, overeating or undereating, angry outbursts, drug or alcohol misuse, tobacco use, social withdrawal, exercising less often.
03:49 These are all common effects of stress according to the APA. And so what are we going to do with this? I mean, if we know that stress exists, and if we know that all of us, or not all of us, but most of us here today are dealing with a great amount of stress, what would God’s word have to say about it?
04:07 Our text verse here is Psalm 55:22, cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee.
04:15 He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. Psalm 55:22, cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.
04:28 You know, we have an awesome God that desires us to cast our burdens upon him, and that promises us that he will sustain us, and that he will never suffer the who? The righteous to be moved. As I understand it, living righteously is living as Christ, living Christ-like. We live like Christ.
04:48 We, of course, we follow a lot of the doctrine that Paul teaches, but Paul himself says, follow me because I follow Jesus. And so we live righteously. We live like Christ, and we live by all the commands he’s given us.
04:59 Amen. You can think of all the commands, all that red letter text. You can think of the Beatitudes and so forth.
05:06 You can even think of God’s commandments, you know, to love our neighbor as ourselves or even better than ourselves, to give charitably, sacrificially, and being cheerful about it, to take up our cross each day, to be selfless, to be loving, to do all of these things that God calls us to do.
05:26 That is living righteous. So if you are living like that, the Bible says that God has favor for you.
05:33 In fact, the Bible tells us that God hears the prayers of the righteous. And here in Psalm 55:22, God’s Word tells us that he cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.
05:50 I love that absolute. He’ll never suffer the righteous to be moved. And so we understand here that God desires to hear from us and that we understand that we can’t be perfect.
05:59 We’re not under the law. We’re not saved by our works. We’re saved by grace alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.
06:05 So this is not for salvation, but this is how we are to live in this world. I mean, think about it. If you are a believer, don’t you want to have everything appropriated to you and through you from God as possible?
06:21 I mean, if I am grafted into a family, to a king’s family, and I never get to know the king or his family, ah boy, I bet I’m missing out on a lot of blessings.
06:34 You know, that king may have a lot of things for me. He may have a job for me. He may have food for me.
06:43 He may have possessions for me. He may have much things to give me security and peace and so forth. And that’s what comes from a relationship with God.
06:51 Amen. We’re saved. We’re grafted into the family.
06:57 Amen. We are born again. We are now a child of God.
07:03 We believe on Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. And once we’re saved, amen, now we can appropriate what God is telling us about the righteous. That now includes us.
07:08 Amen. And he’s telling us, cast your burden to him, cast your burden upon him. The remedy for stress, I believe, is a heart full of peace.
07:18 John 14:27, peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
07:30 You know, how can we be stressed if we’re totally filled with peace? Jesus is telling us that he leaves us with a peace that the world cannot give us. That we should not be troubled, our heart should not be troubled, and we should not be afraid.
07:44 And so when we go to the Lord in prayer, and when we think on the Lord, we are given peace.
07:50 Isaiah 26:3, thou will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee.And so as long as our mind is focused on the Lord, amen, we are going to have peace from the Lord. Now, how do we keep our mind on Jesus? I mean, think about that.
08:08 It’s not easy, is it? But it’s what we’re called to do. And think of that in light of being stressed out. How do we keep our mind on Christ when we are dealing with very stressful situations? Think about it.
08:20 When was Jesus tempted of the devil? He was led by the spirit into the desert, in the wilderness to be tempted, after he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights. So he was hungry, right?
08:33 He was thirsty, amen? He was dealing with whatever had been thoughts and passing through his head for that series of time. And that’s when oftentimes the devil will come and test us and tempt us when we are going through that desert experience.
08:48 When we are tired, when we are hungry, when we are moody, we’re going through things. That’s sometimes when that stress really starts to appear or show its rear, its ugly face, amen.
08:58 And so in light of that, the Lord saying, seek me and I’ll give you peace. You know, it’s hard when we’re going through difficult times.
09:06 And so let me start with one idea here. You know, get away from the stressor. Now, I know if you are, let’s say you’re a nurse and your job is to work in the emergency room and you’re hearing me tell you to get away from the stressor, you’re laughing.
09:22 I get it, okay? And that is very challenging and God will bless you for your service to those that are in dire need. So sometimes you can’t, you know, or you think of a teacher in a classroom full of kids that are really, really bad. Okay, I get that.
09:35 I’ve been there actually in that circumstance and it’s no fun. But in light of that, okay, when you’re not at work or for those that don’t have that kind of stressful occupation, what are you doing when you’re not working? When you have that quote unquote free time?
09:53 And again, I know that free time really may not exist. You may have responsibilities to kids or grandkids or family, mom or dad or whoever it may be.
10:01 But think about giving yourself some time to just do nothing, to just focus on God. I mean, the idea is that you’ve probably heard preachers or somebody say, get alone with God.
10:14 You know, I’ve heard some preachers, they like to go hiking just to spend time alone with God and nature.
10:19 Or some will like to go to water, to the beach. Or we have a little park near our house where there’s a lake and there’s no beach or trail or anything, but there’s a little place that you can park and just look at the water.
10:36 And the more of that that we do, that we just kind of like unplugging, getting away from social media and the gadgets and the cell phones and everything, and just exhaling and just praying and seeking the Lord.
10:49 I think that that’s fertile ground for him to give us peace. Amen. Just kind of combining the logical with the spiritual there.
10:55 The idea also too is thinking about saturating your time with godly counsel. And so for me, I have to pack packages for part of one of my jobs and I’ll pack packages and I’ll just play Bible study in the background, sometimes for 30 minutes, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for multiple hours. And it just gets me in the right mindset.
11:20 We have a lady in our church that likes to sing on her way to work really early in the morning. She’ll just sing Christian hymns and so forth and it helps her. And she’s talking about the peace that’s come from that.
11:32 So maybe it’s singing, maybe it’s playing the guitar, maybe it’s listening to Bible teaching or preaching like this. Amen. You can find us on Facebook and YouTube.
11:38 We’ve got a ton of messages on there. So you could listen to KJV a lot if you choose to. Whatever it is that’s going to bring you close to God, that’s going to help get you in a place to keep your mind on him.
11:50 And Isaiah 26:3 says, thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee. And this is the operative word here is trust. And oftentimes in the Bible, I believe you can interchange trust with faith.
12:04 And so the idea is if you believe God is really going to help, then he will. But if you don’t have that level of belief that he really is who he says he is, and he’s a rewarder of them that diligently seek him,
12:17 as Hebrews 11:6 tells us, then we’re in trouble. And many people, they don’t even know that this is in God’s word, that he wants to relieve their stress and give them peace.
12:24 They don’t even know that God, or they don’t believe, they don’t want to believe that God is real. They certainly don’t want to understand what it means to live righteously, and then understand the idea that if they believe in God, they’re saved, they’re doing their best to live for him. He’s going to provide that peace.
12:41 Amen. That God is not a liar. The Bible tells us there’s no shadow of turning with God.
12:46 There’s no variableness. God doesn’t change. Amen.
12:51 So the same God that inspired David to write this in the Psalms is the same God here today that you pray to today that will honor his word. You can literally pray this Psalm back to him and expect him to provide you with peace.
13:01 Matter of fact, I preached on this last night and today I felt very peaceful today.
13:06 It was like the Lord just gave me a little double portion of peace because I was preaching on this and thinking on this. So trust me, this is very much true. God is alive and well.
13:13 Amen. God is not mocked. God is not a joke.
13:17 God is not far off. God is not ambivalent. God has a point of view and God has a program.
13:22 And when we follow God’s program, we can expect the result explained to us in his word. And he wants you to have peace. He wants you to have peace.
13:29 Another way to have peace and it kind of saturates your mind in the word of God and who God is, is to spend time at your local church, to be involved with your local church.
13:38 There’s nothing sweeter than the fellowship with the brethren. I’m so thankful for our local congregation that we have.
13:48 Like I said many times, it’s not big. It’s not fancy by any means. But when we get together, even if it’s just a few of us, we’re always laughing and having fun.
13:56 And it’s a wonderful time and see brothers and sisters in Christ that we’ve known for a long time out and about and just talking. It’s such a lift. It’s just the Holy Spirit loves it.
14:04 So getting around believers helps too. And I’m going to pick up here in the second message on more about having true peace and getting rid of that stress and being balanced for God. I thank you for listening.
14:15 Take care. God bless and amen.