Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

How to have success over Stress Matthew 11:28-30 Dealing with Feelings Sermon Series Sermon #3 [Open with Film Clip from Mr. Mom where vacuum is eating blanket and washing machine is exploding] I want to be very clear that that particular clip has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Jane has been visiting with her parents all week in Texas.     Are you stressed? Are you overloaded? You might be suffering from stress if...Cleaning up the dining area means getting the fast food bags out of your car. Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they do not have e‑mail. Keeping up with sports entails adding ESPN's homepage to your bookmarks. You have a "to do list" that includes entries for lunch and bathroom breaks, and they are usually the ones that never get crossed off. You have actually faxed your Christmas list to your parents. You consider 2nd day air delivery painfully slow. You refer to your dining room table as the flat filing cabinet. Your idea of being organized is multiple colored post‑it notes. Your grocery list has been on your refrigerator so long some of the products no longer exist. You lecture the neighborhood kids selling lemonade on ways to improve their process. You get all excited when it's Saturday and you can wear sweats to work. You refer to the tomatoes grown in your garden as deliverables. You find you really need PowerPoint to explain what you do for a living. You frequently eat out of vending machines or from the racks at the local gas station. You’re on a first name basis with the cashier in the drive-through window at McDonald’s. You think that "progressing an action plan" and "calendarizing a project" are acceptable English phrases. You recognize the people from your daily commute easier than you recognize your neighbors. You ask your friends to "think out of the box" when making Friday night plans. You think Einstein would have been more effective had he put his ideas into a matrix. You think a "half‑day" means leaving at 5 o'clock. And the #1 sign that you are overstressed is that you hear most of your jokes via email instead of in person.   According to a 1996 Prevention Magazine survey, nearly three quarters of adults say that they feel great stress on a weekly basis. That’s up from 55% in 1983. A study conducted by MarketData Enterprises found that 22.7 million Americans, or 12% will suffer from an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. Many health experts say that coping with stress is the #1 health priority of our day. 25 million American have high blood pressure due to stress and every week 112 million people take medication for stress related symptoms. Rollo May was on to something when he said, “It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.” We’re not the Pepsi Generation; we’re the Stress Generation. Three words describe our times: hurry, worry and bury.   When it comes to stress, most of us self-deluded. Somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that stress is some temporary phase like potty training or braces. We cling to some false hope that the rat race will slow down “as soon as” we...Get into high school. Get out of high school. Get a car. Get a job. Get a better job. Get a raise. Get married. Get a house. Get a bigger house. Get finished with this project. Get children. Get this weight off. Get well. Get a vacation. Get my pension. Get something to do now that we’re retired. I am convinced that every “as soon as” opens the door to another. The wheel of stress runs full speed from the cradle to the grave. It is a fact of life.      While stress is something we cannot always control, God does not want you and I to be “stressed,” Matt. 11:28-30 (p. 689). The Lord Jesus wants to give us rest, soul rest. The psalmist said “God promises peace to His people” (Ps. 85:8). Jesus promised His followers in John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled...” The third fruit of the Spirit is peace. The Prince of Peace wants His followers to have His peace. Stress may be “out there.” We do not have to have it in here, in our hearts. So how can we be free of stress? How can we have success over Stress? What is stress? Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Let me show you a picture of stress [picture of overloaded car]. This is a real picture and was taken in Waldorf, Maryland. The materials were loaded at a Home Depot. The Home Depot store manager made the customer sign a waiver before loading. Both back tires are trashed. The back shocks were driven up through the floorboard. On the roof are many 2X4s, 4X4s and sheets of lumber. And the load isn't all that meets the eye either. In the back seat were ten 80‑pound bags of concrete! The estimated load weight was 3000 lbs. The car is a Volkswagen Jettah and the guy said he was headed forty miles away to Annapolis!   That’s stress. “Stress is simply feeling overloaded and trapped.” When we are carrying loads too heavy for us we feel stressed. What adds to our feelings of stress is that we often feel like we cannot set our load down. We feel that we have no options and we are trapped. This only adds to our stress level.     Some symptoms of being overstressed are: You have difficulty making decisions, both major and minor ones. You have excessive daydreaming or fantasies about getting away from it all. You use cigarettes, alcohol or drugs to relax. Your thoughts may trail off while speaking or writing. You worry excessively. You have sudden outbursts of temper or emotion. You may be having paranoid ideas about friends and family. You become forgetful about deadlines and due dates. You have frequent feelings of inadequacy. You may have had a sudden change in your behavior. Those are all symptoms of being stressed.   2. Most of us have misconceptions about stress. Here are three false ideas.   A. Stress is always bad. The term stress has negative connotations for most of us. Most studies have only dealt with negative stress and its effects. But not all stress is bad. Last Saturday I had a flat tire. Personally, I want my tires to have some stress, to be able to withstand some pressure. Too little pressure and you’ll end up stuck on the freeway going nowhere because of four flat tires. If you want to gain muscle, you have to stress them. Education requires some stress. How would you know what students have learned if you did not test them? A math test is a mental stress test, determining the student’s level of knowledge. Stress motivates us to study, encourages us to keep going when life gets difficult, spurs us to grow and improve, inspires us to action in the midst of crises, helps us mature and at times, makes life very exciting!   B. Stress is beyond my control. Yes and no. I cannot control external stress. You might get caught in a traffic jam this week. That’s totally out of your control. When Jane flew to Texas last Monday, Dallas was iced in. She spent four hours in a plane sitting on the tarmac as they kept trying to de-ice the plane. That was external stress and totally out of her control.   You and I become “stressed” though when we allow external stress to internally stress us. Internal stress is totally within our control. Feeling stressed does not come from outside. It originates from inside of us. This is exciting and freeing. No one can put you under pressure. You are the only one who can do that to yourself. If you feel stressed, it’s generated from within. It’s an inside job. The Lord Jesus is a wonderful example of this. When He was on trial for His life, He had complete peace. While others were out of control, Jesus was in complete control. External stress did not cause internal stress. In the Book of Acts when those early believers were persecuted, they did the same thing. Though Paul and Silas were falsely accused, brutally beaten and imprisoned, they had total peace. When Peter was imprisoned and probably going to be executed, he’s so sound asleep when the angel rescues him that the angel has to strike him to wake him up. External stress does not have to cause internal stress.   What does this mean? It means that husbands and wives should stop blaming their spouses for the pressure that they feel. Parents need to stop blaming their children. Employees need to stop blaming the boss. Want to know who makes you feel stressed? Look in the mirror. Feeling stressed is a personal choice. It’s an inappropriate response to external circumstances.   C. Stress is caused by having too much to do. Most of us instinctively respond to stress by saying, “If I just didn’t have so many demands made upon my time, or if I didn’t have so much to do...I wouldn’t feel so stressed.” This reveals a belief that if they didn’t have any demands made of them, they could rest and relax, and the pressure would be gone. We’ve already mentioned that feeling stressed does not come from having too much to do but comes from our response toward our obligations.   Freedom from stress comes from knowing our capabilities and limits. We need to ask God for wisdom so that we know our own limits. Feeling stressed is a result of overloading. Homes today are wired with sufficient circuits so that we have almost forgotten what it is to have a blown fuse or a tripped circuit breaker. But in older homes with few circuits, fuses frequently blew. You could blame the wiring as much as you wanted to, but it wasn’t the fault of the wiring. It was the fault of the individual who overloaded the wiring. When there’s a load limit and it’s exceeded, there is going to be a breakdown. We feel stressed, not because we have so much to do, but because we do not have a good handle on our limitations. Each of us needs to know our capacity, how much we can handle and then adjust to that load. We stress out ourselves when we take on more than we are able to competently perform. 3. Stress comes from several sources. Someone said, “Fifty years ago only bridges were stressed.” Since the 1950's “stress” has evolved from an engineering term to a cultural issue.   A. Stress is produced by sociological changes. Stress is caused by economic changes. The forty-hour workweek is a rarity for many, particularly those in management. Corporate downsizing and attempts to increase profitability has resulted in asking a smaller work force to do more.   Stress is caused by increased complexity and multiple options. I remember when a theater that had two different theaters with different movies was a big deal. We have multiplexes today with a dozen movies playing. If you have satellite, you have access to 500 different channels. Even the simple question, “What do you want to eat tonight?” can cause stress. There are so many options and choices. Our minds have difficulty handling all of the choices.   Stress is caused by technology. In the 1960's some members of Congress predicted that by the turn of the century one of the main problems in the United States would be what people would do with all their spare time. With all the "new" time‑saving devices, they predicted that the U.S. workweek would be cut to about 30 hours. We have faxes, cell phones, e‑mails, voice mail, laptops, pay at the pump and microwaves. It’s rare for a person to go home from work and really be home. We take our laptops and cell phones with us when we go on vacation. We have a new term – multi-tasking. We’re often doing at least two things simultaneously; talking on the phone and typing on the computer, reading a book and watching television. And we don’t even want to talk about all the things that people do when they’re driving!   Stress is caused by a lack of boundaries and understanding what is normal. Because so many of us grew up in either single parent, broken homes or substance abuse homes – we don’t have good boundaries. We often don’t know what normal is, so we overcompensate and try to be Super Parent. Today most mothers work. Yet the typical home has not adjusted to this change with the redistributing of domestic responsibilities. The Mom often tries to keep her house as neat as her Mom did. Or, the husband expects the same kind of home that he grew up in, though his mother didn’t work outside the home. We often expect too little from our children, failing to teach them how to work or responsibility, because we feel guilty because we’re gone and working so much.   Stress is caused by transient culture. Some 20% of Americans will move during this year. We are a rootless society. We’ve lost our extended families and with our isolationistic tendencies and hyper vigilance of privacy, we’ve lost our sense of community. We don’t know our neighbors and we don’t even know the people who sit beside us at church. Our desire for privacy has produced a sense of aloneness.   B. Stress is produced by sinful attitudes. Eccl. 5:3 says that too many cares can cause nightmares. Our own sin nature often contributes to our stress level.   Pride is a stress producer. Too many believers have re-translated Phil. 4:13 from “I can do everything through Christ...” to “I can do everything...” It takes humility to admit that you can’t do everything and to ask for help. That’s what a church family is about. Yet, while most of us love to help others, we would rather have our arm cut off than admit that we need help. It’s pride. Think about it. How often do even share a personal prayer request, other than traveling safety? Our self-worth often gets perversely intertwined with our own work and capabilities. Or, we believe that we are indispensable. Pride causes us to feel stressed when we do not get the attention or service that we feel that we deserve.   Discontent is a stress producer. We live in a continual state of stress because our mate, children, house, job, even our church – doesn’t measure up to our expectations. Hebrews 13:5 commands us, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’."   Dr. James Dobson points out that when the baby is on the way, we profess only to want a child who is normal. But from birth on, we want a super-kid! We want for him either the life we didn’t have, or a replay of the life we did have. Somehow, their grades, their friends, their style are never good enough. We focus on what they need to improve, seldom on what they have achieved. And our children are quickly caught up with us in the whirlpool of more.   Our marriages become battlefields because our partners continually disappoint us. Weaknesses are magnified; strengths are forgotten–just the reverse of the dating process. We are expecting more of Prince Charming or Cinderella, and they may be getting tired of never being enough. And there is always a better house, job, church – etc. Discontent produces stress.   Greed is a stress producer. Sometimes overwork is a by-product of our greed and materialism. We’ve convinced ourselves that we won’t be happy unless we live at a certain level. We stress ourselves out only to find that things never bring joy. And greed costs us our intimacy with God and our families. I Tim. 6:9 warns us, “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.”   Plato said, “Poverty consists not in the decrease of one’s possession but in the increase of one’s greed.” There is always another “thing” you don’t have! There was a time we looked forward to owning one TV, but then we needed two. Once we were thrilled with when we had an apartment of our own, but the thrill was soon replaced with a hankering for a little house of our own. Eventually the little house was too little. It would take a big house to do the trick.  Greed produces stress. Yesterday’s luxury has become today’s necessity   C. Stress is sometimes caused by God, James 1:2-4 (p. 854). There was a farmer who had three sons: Jim, John, and Sam. No one in the family ever attended church or had time for God. The pastor and the others in the church tried for years to interest the family in the things of God but to no avail. Then one day Sam was bitten by a rattlesnake. The doctor was called and he did all he could to help Sam, but the outlook for Sam’s recovery was very dim indeed. So the pastor was called and apprised of the situation. The pastor arrived, and began to pray as follows: "O wise and righteous Father, we thank Thee that in Thine wisdom thou didst send this rattlesnake to bite Sam. He has never been inside the church and it is doubtful that he has, in all his time, ever prayed or even acknowledged Thine existence. Now we trust this experience will be a valuable lesson to him and will lead to his genuine repentance. "And now, O Father, wilt thou send another rattlesnake to bite Jim, and another to bite John, and another really big one to bite the old man. For years we have done everything we know to get them to turn to Thee, but all in vain. It seems, therefore, that what our combined efforts could not do, this rattlesnake has done. We thus conclude that the only thing that will do this family any real good is rattlesnakes; so, Lord, send us bigger and better rattlesnakes. Amen."   Now I’m not suggesting that we should pray that way. Stress though is often the heat that God uses in our lives to burn off the dross in our lives or to prune us to make us more fruitful. If we were always comfortable, we would settle for spiritual mediocrity. Our loving Heavenly Father often uses stress for our good and His glory.   Stress will not be stressful when we see that God is in complete control. Nothing comes into our lives without His allowing it. Perspective makes a tremendous difference when it comes to stress.   A Christian guitarist told of a meeting that he had where he was to sing for some high school students. His four‑year‑old daughter asked, "Daddy, where are you going?" He replied, "I'm going to go sing for the kids." She asked if she could come, so he took her along. When they got to the meeting, he was surrounded by all the high school kids and his little girl looked up at him and said, "Well, Daddy, where are all the kids?" He said, "Well, there they are, out there." She looked at him and said, "Daddy, those aren't kids...those are baby sitters!" Let me encourage you, when stress comes into your life, ask your loving Heavenly Father to help you to see His perspective on it. 4. You really can have success over stress. Mental health authorities have many wise suggestions for decreasing stress. Most of their suggestions though focus on escaping stress; i.e., take a vacation, cut back your responsibilities, take long baths, exercise more. While those things are good, they do not usually help us have victory in the midst of the stress. For example, you have to finally come back from vacation and you can’t stay in the bathtub forever.    There were once two painters who made a wager, a competition to see who could represent best the concept of peace. The first painter painted a beautiful mountain scene with a lake. A very tranquil scene with no movement. Everything was calm. And for the first painter that represented peace. The second painter, however, painted a powerful waterfall. Above that waterfall the sky was dark and threatening with rain clouds. Alongside the waterfall stood a tree. And sitting on a dead branch that hung out in front of the waterfall was a little bird, happy and content. In the middle of the storm, in front of that powerful waterfall, the bird was at peace.   The peace that God gives us is more like the second of the paintings. God doesn’t promise us that once we believe in Him all our problems will go away. But God does promise the grace to be victorious over the difficulties of this world. A storm at sea is stressful. Acts 27 has a wonderful account of Paul having peace over stress, of having peace in the midst of a raging storm. As we tie this up, let me suggest some lessons from this story.    Acts 27 describes the savage nor’easter that threatened to sink the ship transporting Paul to trial in Rome. They lost all control of their circumstances, yet they survived. Locked inside this storm‑tossed story are the four skills we need to survive the unavoidable storms of stress.   A. Discard needless cargo. Luke, the author of Acts, explains the first survival skill this way. “We took such a violent battering from the storm that the next day they began to throw the cargo overboard with their own hands” (Acts 27:18‑19). If someone had suggested to the captain of the ship upon departure that the cargo, the ship’s tackle, and maybe even his favorite chair were going overboard, he probably would have burned their ears with his reply. Yet when the storm hit, they decided they could do without some items they once were sure they needed.   If we are going to handle our own personal storms, we will have to discard cargo we do not need. Of course, it sometimes takes a storm to make us even consider letting go. Some of our “extra cargo” may be bad things we have accumulated like barnacles: a compromising relationship, deepening debt, a growing obsession with money, an entangling sinful habit, a critical attitude–things we hang on to until a storm exposes how they are sinking us. And there is good cargo too that may have to be jettisoned. We tend to accumulate involvements that, taken separately, are each neutral–even helpful. But taken together, they are just too much. The storms of stress are our chance to change. If you want to survive your personal “hurricane,” evaluate extra cargo and discard it.   B. Focus on the things that really matter. This hurricane lasted two weeks! Then an angel appeared to Paul in the middle of the night. Paul’s visitor introduced a second survival skill for a storm and Paul shared this message with the crew. “Not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘ “God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you’” (Acts 27:22‑24). The angel simply reminded Paul, “The ship doesn’t matter. Only the people do.” To survive a storm we must get busy with the things that really matter–and those “things” are usually people! With all the pressures to achieve and accomplish, the people we love can slowly get pushed to the corners of our lives. And the neglect is not intentional; weeds grow in our garden, not because we plant them but because we forget them. A man leaves a wife or a child in his dust as he speeds toward his career goals. A woman slowly vanishes from the most important moments of her loved ones as she loses herself in a job or a social circle. Co‑workers or employees can become functions instead of people with needs. It usually takes a storm to restore our values. In the pursuit of peace, the “ship” – the project, the schedule, the deadline, the organization, the budget – may be lost on the rocks. That is costly, but it’s okay. It’s our people we cannot afford to lose.   C. Get serious with God. Our faith tends to be cool, calm, and collected, until a crisis clobbers us. Then we go from our feet to our knees, and God becomes more than someone Who “helps” us: He is our only hope. Luke apparently spoke for himself, and Paul too, when he said, “We finally gave up all hope of being saved” (v. 20). That is probably why the angel greeted Paul by announcing, “Do not be afraid, Paul” (v. 24). Though we think of Paul as some super saint, he seems to be as terrified and as desperate as everyone else.  When the bottom drops out, we get desperate. The sailors on Paul’s ship sensed that they were headed for the rocks. So... “in an attempt to escape from the ship, the sailors let the lifeboat down into the sea...Then Paul said,... ‘Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved.’ “So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and let it fall away” (vv.30‑32). Often our panic makes us reach for a lifeboat instead of the Lord. Our lifeboats usually just make bigger messes. We spent unwisely or push people we love too hard. A storm can make us panic or make us pray. It is when our points of reference disappear like the sailors’ stars that we learn what prayer really means. Stripped of any possibility of self‑rescue, we throw ourselves on the Lord. As one wise old saint said, “You never know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you’ve got.”   D. Get back into a healthy routine. When the boat is headed for the rocks, lunch can wait. Yet as Paul’s ship was about to go aground, he urged the crew to eat. “For the last fourteen days,” he said, “you have been in constant suspense and have gone without food...Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive” (vss. 33‑34). Paul encouraged them to get back to a healthy routine. When a strong disturbance batters our ship, our daily routines are usually the first things thrown overboard. In reality the heavier the pressure, the more important it is to guard our sources of strength. When we start to miss sleep, meals, and breaks, we start sinking. Quiet centers tend to be neglected when we start cutting corners. More than ever, we have to fight for that quality time with our Lord, our lovers, and little ones. Those healthy routines are what keep us strong on both sunny and stormy days.   The account of this horrible storm ends with a thrilling postscript. Luke records that the tempest finally blew them aground on the island of Malta. One look at a map reveals what was really happening in the midst of that raging crisis at sea. Malta sits right off the southern coast of Italy, the ship’s original destination! The whole time they thought they were out of control, they were right on course! Centuries before, the ancient Jewish prophet Nahum said it all in a simple sentence, His way is in the whirlwind and the storm” (Nahum 1:3). Our plans maybe interrupted by storms, but God’s plans never are. In fact, the storm is part of His plan. If we don’t abandon ship, the winds of God will blow us right where we belong, no matter how off course we may feel. Conclusion: We live in a world that is surviving stress or coping with stress. Our Heavenly Father wants us to be successful over it and conquer it. Romans 8:37 promises us, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him Who loved us.” If we can be “more than conquerors” in the stresses of life, why would we settle for coping? The difference between coping and conquering is in those two little words – “through Him.”   Without that prepositional phrase, this verse is just another inspiring way to say, “Think positively.” Real personal peace over stress is not the result of positive thinking. It’s depending on His grace to meet our needs so that we can His peace within our souls.   Friend, are you having success over stress? We cannot get rid of external but do not have to have internal stress.   Are you depending on His grace? Are you enjoying His peace? He wants you to. He wants to give you peace, like He did for Paul, in the midst of the storms.