-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:40 Welcome to the cafe. Hopefully you’re having a great week, a great day. Amen.
00:45 Today we are continuing our series on dealing with stress. And don’t worry if you didn’t hear the first message on this. We’re just doing two parts here.
00:55 I’ll sum up the first one here quickly and get you caught up. So look, stress is a normal part of life, but it can have awful ramifications, unnecessary at that for Christians. We see stress everywhere.
01:09 What is stress? According to the National Institute of Mental Health, which is part of the National Institute of Health, NIH, and then you got NIMH, a bunch of acronyms here.
01:25 You know it’s part of the government. They must know what stress is, right? 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.
01:34 A stressor may be a one-time or short-term occurrence, or it can happen repeatedly over a long time. And we know with stress comes anxiety. What is anxiety? Anxiety is your body’s reaction to stress and can even occur if there is no current threat.
01:50 So we see that the byproduct of stress is anxiety. We understand that stress can affect the whole body. I mean, I don’t need to tell you this stuff.
02:00 You know that when you get stressed out, you get moody, irritable. Maybe you’re tired or maybe you’re restless. You know, you may get a headache.
02:08 You may have even chest pain or fatigue. I heard great preaching years ago on something called psychosomatic, which means of a physical illness or other condition caused or aggravated by a mental factor, such as internal conflict or stress. And you say, well, you heard preaching about psychosomatic illness? Yeah, I did.
02:33 I believe it was Brother Adrian Rogers preaching an awesome message. He had a guy in his congregation that was a doctor, a gentleman that was a doctor, who explained that many, many of the patients, I don’t remember what percentage, but it was very high that came to him, had a psychosomatic illness. So they thought something and they got sick.
02:49 They were thinking about things and they became ill. And that is true today. And I’ve given many examples, which I’ll spare you of in the past, preaching and especially with our local congregation of issues that we might have as we deal with stress, the great stress that we have in our lives and how that can make us sick.
03:11 Amen. And so all we’re talking about here today is what is the biblical remedy for stress? You know, what is it? Our text verse Psalm 55:22, cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.
03:25 Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.And so we understand the biblical remedy for stress is going to God in prayer, keeping our mind on God throughout the day and seeking the Lord with all our heart, mind, and soul.
03:43 And he is going to provide us peace even in the midst of very stressful situations. And you say, well, that sounds kind of simple. Well, it’s true.
03:51 Amen. It’s very true. And we see here in Psalm 55, 22, it says, cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee.
04:04 He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. And so if you say, well, I read my Bible and God is not providing me peace. Well, are you living righteously?
04:12 Are you fully repentant before God? Have you gone to God and say, Lord, forgive me of my sins? First of all, are you saved? Okay.
04:18 That’s number one. Have you believed on Christ for salvation? Do you understand your need? Like Romans 3:23 tells us that we’ve all sinned. We all fall short.
04:30 Do you understand your need for a savior? Okay. So you understand your sin nature. You understand your sin debt.
04:36 You understand that Christ paid that debt on the cross. That’s the only way that it could be satisfied before a holy and righteous God. And that when you accept Christ as savior, now you are made new again.
04:45 You’re born again. And you believe on Jesus. So that’s number one, believing on Jesus.
04:49 And if you haven’t done that and you’re stressed out, the number one thing you can do here today is believe on Christ. And I’m not saying your life will be perfect, but it will be so much better than it’s ever been before. I promise you that.
05:07 I’ve never met a true believer. I can’t think of anyone that I’ve met that truly knows the Lord that has regretted being saved. The only regret they have is like me, that we weren’t saved sooner.
05:14 But that’s God’s providence and his timing. And so we see here, you believe on God, you get right with God, you live by the commands. Amen.
05:20 The Bible’s full of commands. You go through the Bible and there’s commands in the Old Testament. They’re also there in the New Testament, to love our neighbor, to turn the other cheek, to let God be the one that gets the vengeance, to give sacrificially, to take up our cross, to seek the Lord, to have no other idols in our lives, on and on and on.
05:40 So we’re not perfect, amen, but we study the word. We try to live as God wants us to live. And it’s not rocket science.
05:50 I’ve got a five and a six-year-old. We talk about the Bible literally every day. Yeah, I would say every day.
05:55 If not every day, God knows almost every day. And they’re getting a lot of these principles at five and six years old. So it’s not rocket science, amen.
06:04 It’s just listening and caring and believing that God really is who he says he is, amen. So you’re living righteous. You’re trying to live for him.
06:10 You’re doing the best you can. Again, you’re saved simply by having faith. You’re saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone.
06:16 That’s how you’re saved. Once you’re saved, you’re just trying to live for him. The idea of biblical word would be sanctification, doing your best to live for God.
06:24 Say, hey, you know what? I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to covet. I’m not going to lust after the opposite sex.
06:31 I’m not going to do these things. I’m going to live as God wants me to live. And you say, Brother Clark, how can you put that expectation on somebody?
06:39 Well, the Bible tells us, God himself tells us in his word that there’s no temptation that’s not common to man, that God doesn’t give us a way out of.
06:45 And I believe that that’s true. Look, you want to meet someone that’s tempted? Talk to a preacher. The devil would love to get God’s man off of the pulpit, out of the pulpit, right?
06:57 And so the preachers are constantly dealing with temptation and snares and problems.
07:07 At least that’s been my experience, not just me individually, but other preachers that I’ve worked with through the years. It is not always easy because you are dealing with things, but you can give a mighty testimony and say, you know what?
07:16 God’s delivered me. God has provided, God’s answered that prayer to keep me from that temptation.
07:25 And each and every day I have to pray anew, pray afresh, Lord, keep me from temptation, keep me from evil, keep me from wickedness. And I’m far from perfect, ask my wife, you know, I’m far from perfect, but I am trying my best to live for God.
07:35 And I believe, you know, I preached on this one time, I believe all God expects is your all, all God expects is your all.
07:42 And this deals with belief. And this is part of having a true relationship with God that provides that peace that you so desire to not maybe eliminate the stress, but to bring that stress level down a bunch. You know what you have to do? You gotta believe.
07:58 You have to really believe that God is actually real and that he is fearful, that he is a living God. The Bible tells us it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God, amen, that he is the living God, that you believe he’s all powerful. As in he could provide you with perfect peace if he so desired.
08:15 Now if you start believing that you really believe that you’re going to dust off that Bible and you’re going to be digging into that Bible day in and day out, wanting to know the truth in that Bible because the Bible starts coming alive to you
08:28 because you truly believe that it’s really the word of God and that God is real and that God is alive and that God has sovereignty over this world, that despite the devil and the flesh and all the culture that we have in this world, that God is still sovereign and can do as he pleases. Amen.
08:43 Another one from Adrian Rogers I heard one time was not a blade of grass moves without God’s permission, not a blade of grass moves without God’s permission.
08:53 I always thought that was a beautiful way to put God’s sovereignty into context. And so here we have the prescription for peace, Isaiah 2:3, thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee. Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth or I believe in thee.
09:14 So now we’re getting to the idea of living for God. I started talking about at the end of the first message, just spending time doing nothing but thinking about God, not having your phone in front of you, not having the TV on, not being driving around here, there and everywhere running errands, but just giving God some quality time.
09:35 This is the biblical concept of moderation, the state of being moderate, of keeping a due mean between extreme extremes or excess restraint or passions, indulgence or appetite.
09:50 The idea is we should eat and drink with moderation. You know, we should exercise with moderation. We should bear prosperity or adversity with moderation, doing all things in moderation.
10:02 And the reason why is because if we are not giving ourselves enough time to mentally kind of decompress and think about our lives and think about what God is doing in our life and think about what the Lord would have us to do and pray to God, if we’re not giving him that time each day, how can we expect him to provide the peace to remove the stress?
10:20 Maybe the stress exists to communicate to us. It’s time to step back a little bit. And as I’ve thought back over the past year, the least stressful times, the times that I’ve been most mentally, physically just like not a lot of stress has been when I’ve been doing very little.
10:36 And oftentimes that means getting out of the house, going somewhere for a week here or there with not a lot of gadgets or phones or computers and just being like, okay, we’re not doing anything,
10:47 but just taking it easy, thinking of the Lord, spending time with other Christians, Philippians 4:5-7. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
10:59 Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
11:15 You see Philippians 4:5-7 is telling us that we need to be moderate. We shouldn’t be out of control.
11:23 And I won’t say, okay, well, don’t read your Bible too much or whatever. I don’t think that’s going to be an issue, but certainly if you’re going from fellowship event to fellowship event to fellowship event, yes, even that needs to be moderated. You need to have that under control.
11:36 But most of the time, that’s not the issue. Most of the time, the issue is those little things that creep in, you know, you and they can look innocent. Oh, I just read the newspaper at night.
11:46 What’s wrong with that? Well, your mind’s not on the Lord. You’re occupying your mind with these anxious thoughts, you know, or, or I watch TV at night. I watch a crime show.
11:53 What’s wrong with that? Well, you’re watching a show about death and destruction made by some worldly company on and on and on. You know, it may not be bad, but it could maybe stress you out and bring you down when you could be lifting up the name of the Lord and praising him, which by the way, is what the Bible tells us will bring you peace and joy.
12:13 In fact, here in Philippians 4:5-7, it says, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.
12:20 So a piece so amazing that we can’t even describe it or understand it. We’ll keep our hearts and our minds, our heart being the deepest part of our souls, our hearts and our minds through Christ Jesus.
12:30 And so all we have to do is spend time thinking about the Lord and praying to God and being in his word and seeking him to really see God move, you know, self-restraint and obedience to God’s calling on our lives is what this is all about.
12:50 It’s about discipline. It’s about saying, you know what, uh, I can’t, you know, do volleyball on Tuesday nights anymore because I’m just too busy and I need time just with God. I just need time to spend alone with the Lord.
13:02 And finally here quickly, the underlying cause of stress is fear. Why does fear preclude stress? Think about it.
13:11 Well, you know, we talk about the definition of stress, something added, and then you’re worried about something.
13:19 Well, that thing added makes you worried about something which causes fear. We get stressed because we are tasked with more than we can think we do. We can do.
13:28 We then believe something bad will happen. This is fear. 1 John 4:18, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear because fear hath torment.He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
13:36 And so perfect love comes from the Lord and there’s no fear in perfect love. And I believe the Lord will remove that fear and anxiety from us as we seek him fervently.
13:48 There’s another scripture that the Lord didn’t give us, uh, the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind. God wants us not to be as stressed as we are. God wants us to seek him.
14:00 He cares for us. He loves us. He wants us to be stress-free or at least as close as possible to it, but we have to abide by his program and seek him.
14:08 And if we do, he’ll be faithful to provide us that peace we so desire. I thank you so much for listening today. Tune in next time.
14:14 Take care. God bless and amen.