Take A Chance on Stress Free Living

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, welcome to God’s living room,

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to take a couple of days to kinda recharge, to relax and slow down! Jacky and I went to one of those late morning breakfasts. It was really cool. Have you had a chance to regroup since summer started or are you still playing bop it. (play bop it game with someone) And you know the further you go in this game the faster it goes. Sometimes our lives are like bop it. They go faster and faster. Twisting, spinning, pulling, pushing. And then our batteries run down and we are not much fun. Question: Got stress?

As we start the summer of 2010 we live in a time of extreme tension. The Lake Front had to be closed down a couple of weekends ago as people spilled out into the streets fighting. Our neighborhood continues to have armed robberies, property is damaged or stolen. The stock market is back to jerking us around with some serious rollercoaster rides. We have the oil spill in the Gulf. The hurricane forecast is for a lot of hurricanes. The war wages in Afghanistan. The World Cup Soccer Tournament is set to begin this coming week in South Africa. Anybody besides me a little on edge wondering how South Africa is going to protect the world’s athletes.

I have heard it said any number of times: Everyone just wants peace. But that’s not true. Al Qaeda doesn’t want peace. The drug lords in Mexico don’t want peace. Some people are just bent on causing chaos. Some of these are in family settings, some are in neighborhoods, some in political arena and some in the religious sphere. There is tension inside our own hearts called anxiety. Anxiety means to be pulled in 100 different directions. For a lot of us we have become pretty good at hiding the anxiety. We look calm on the outside but in we are really being stretched. I heard a report this past week that said that the US CDC estimates that 50% of the death between ages 1 and 65 are directly related to stress. Proverbs 12:25 An anxious heart weighs a man down. Anxiety keeps us from living freely. Anxiety keeps us from being productive and sane.

Let’s look at some things that are make most of us anxious.

1. Unexpected trouble - We get blind sided. We never saw it coming. A week ago Friday, a teenager at one of my former congregations was killed in an ATV accident. Things like this put us in a tail spin of stress. Our faith gets tested at times of unexpected trouble. James 1:22Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Unexpected trouble can really rock our lives around but what we do with that anxiety determines what we do with our character, our peace, our joy, the condition of our souls.

But most of the time stress isn’t from unexpected trouble. Most of the time we put it on ourselves. With such things as 2) Unnecessary worry. Mark Twain once said, “I have had to experience terrible things in my life: a few of which actually happened. Worry is getting worked up over a bunch of stuff you have no control over. Jesus said it this way: Matthew 6:25-27 25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Said the robin to the sparrow: What I would really like ot know is why those anxious human beings rush about and worry so.” Said the sparrow to the robin: “I guess it must be that they have no heavenly Father such that cares for you and me.” Just a heads up: There is nothing productive about worry.

3) Unorganized clutter. Did you ever see that show “Clean Sweep.” People would come in and help others get organized. They would make three piles. One to give a way, one to keep and one to sell. Whether you have ever seen the show or not, you know that the pile that was the biggest was the one to keep. This would not only be a good exercise for us to do at our homes but it would be a good exercise for a lot of us to do with our minds. A cluttered mind will keep us from focusing on what is really important. James 1:8 says, he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. What about a triple minded man. Check this out. I found this on the internet this past week:

Recently, I was Diagnosed with AAADD - Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. This is how it manifests:
I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide my car needs washing. As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first. But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only 1 check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke that I had been drinking. I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over. I see that the Coke is getting warm, and I decide I should put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye--they need to be watered. I set the Coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning. I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers. I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do. At the end of the day:
1) The car isn't washed 2) The bills aren't paid 3) There is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter4) The flowers don't have enough water,5) There is still only 1 check in my check book, 6) I can't find the remote,7) I can't find my glasses, 8) And I don't remember what I did with the car keys. Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I'm really tired.

4) Unfinished tasks - Some of us like the scientific term - Procrastination. Steve has a shirt that says, “Procrastinators unite - tomorrow.” In a lot of our lives, nothing has made us run faster or work harder than procrastination. Procrastination just puts pressure on us. A lot of us say, “I just work better under pressure. No you don’t. You just always work under pressure because when we work under pressure we trade this aweful feeling of guilt for an immense feeling of victory. Procrastination allows a tiny problem to grow and grow.

5) Unrealistic expectations - many people are success driven. They have high expectations for themselves and their kids. Their kids are involved in everything a child can be involved in. Soccer, basketball, ballet, tennis, guitar. When they are shuttling from one activity to another the family stops off at a fast food restaurant so that when they finally get home the child can get right to homework and keeping up that 4.0. You have to choose. Set some boundaries. We can’t do everything. You shouldn’t even try to do everything. Maybe one of your goals for the summer of 2010 is to SIMPLIFY. Proverbs 17:1 Better a dry crust with peace and quiet
than a house full of feasting, with strife.

6) Unsolicited criticism - Whenever you are in a leadership position you can expect this. Parents know all about this. Criticism can eat you alive so much so that it can affect your personality. Have you ever wondered why coaches and managers say they don’t read the newspaper. If you and I start listening to the criticism and take it to heart then we likely will become reactionaries. Romans 12:19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. If you don’t let God deal with it, it will finally turn into unresolved bitterness and that will rob your joy and snatch your life away.

7) Uninterrupted seriousness - Sometimes some of us can get so serious that we miss whole weeks of life. My dad told me a long time ago, “Don’t take yourself so serious.” God is going to meet a bunch of us in heaven and say, “I didn’t mean for you to have such a crummy time.. Why didn’t you do more fun stuff. Laugh more. A lot of us need to just block some time out where fun could just possibly break out. What do you think? Do you think God wants us to have fun? He has cranked out a few million blessings for us. Proverbs 17:22 A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

8) Unbridled appetite - We will never know peace living outside the boundaries of God. We will never no peace if we are controlled by our appetites, impulses and senses. Every time we make a decision based on the feeling of the moment, just a little high, a little rush, we may sense momentary pleasure but we will eventually end up in a vicious cycle wanting more until we will never know peace.

9) The last one we are going to look at today is an Unhealthy Self-Image. We are always trying to prove ourselves. Someone look at me, love me, like me, applaud me, affirm me, choose me, notice me. Behind the anxiety, the work addiction not centered in the truth of who they are, they fail to notice that God notices them and that they are loved an accepted by the one who matters most.

It will be a great day when we get off the tread mill of stress. We will have peace. 1 John 3:1 1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! Psalm 46:10 "Be still, and know that I am God. God isn’t going to change. He is not going bail on you. He isn’t going to set some unrealistic goal on you. You don’t have to prove yourself. God says to you speaking to you worn and weary heart, “I love you for you.”