 Dealing
with Stress
The days in which we live are filled with stress: all kinds of stress. It
seems there is more to deal with today than ever before. Have you
experienced the stress building up to such a pitch that you feel you just
can’t take it anymore? Are there days when you just lose it and scream
at the children or your wife or your husband, and you know as you're doing
it that what they did doesn't warrant that kind of reaction from
you?
Such days can change everything between you and your spouse and result
in irreparable damage. That is what this message is about; it is about
dealing with stress.
A NARROW PLACE
I Samuel 30:6 "Moreover, David was greatly distressed because
the people spoke of stoning him,
for all the people were embittered, each one because
of his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord
his God."
David has been involved in war. He has a small band of men and they are
on their way home after some bloody losses. They are almost home,
their horses are tired, they are tired: bone tired. Their nerves are on
edge; they haven’t slept properly in weeks.
They haven’t had a decent
meal in as many days. They are on the edge of physical, emotional, and
mental burnout. The one thing that keeps them going is knowing they will
soon sleep in their own bed with their own family.
THEY KNOW THEY ARE GOING HOME. They
have kept going by saying, "Just a few more days... just a little
longer... and we can eat a square meal and rest all we want. Then we will
be with our wives and our families. Even if we must go out again, at least
we can have a time of refreshment."
Now the day has come. They can scarcely hold their horses back; they
sense they are almost home. Just over one more hill... But as they
approach that last hill, they see smoke spiraling upward into the sky.
They get that sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs. There is
something wrong.
As they reach the top of the hill they see it. What used to be their
town (they occupied the whole town) is a charred out skeleton. It is still
burning in places. Every home has been burnt to the ground. What can they
say? They are speechless. Their town is razed to the ground.
They go through the ruins searching for bodies, but there are no
bodies. Nobody was killed in the fire. Nor are their possessions in the
ashes. They begin to realize what has happened. In their absence their
town was invaded by a bunch of desert thugs, the Amalikites. The
Amalikites were a bunch of wandering
gangs that would come upon communities like this and steal all the
possessions of the inhabitants and put all the captives in chains to sell
them on the slave market in Egypt and Iraq. After such forays, they
made off as fast as they could.
Now as David's men view this tragic scene, suddenly they snap. This is
the last straw and the camel’s back is broken. Not only have they come
home weary and tired, but they've come home to
a major crisis. They have lost everything: their wives, their children,
their possessions… GONE!
The only thing in their favor is that the embers are still hot. It
means whoever did this is not far away. Maybe they can catch up with them
before they hit the slave market. But they
don't leap back on their horses and chase after the marauders. Instead,
they just fall apart. It is just too much for them.
Stress Upon Stress
You know, there is a time when the mind just snaps. Because they were us
"tough guys" in the West … it says, they wept until they could weep no more. These
great men who were the champions of David, sat
down and sobbed and sobbed. THAT IS STRESS.
They had "bitterness of soul" : deep, deep pain and grief. It
means pain of mind .. it is not a headache; it means our thoughts hurt.
Embittered in soul is not just sadness, but agony of emotion. And within
it all there is a rage, a helpless rage; it is as if everything inside is
screaming, "No, No." Why did we leave? or why was there not a
man in the place to help them? They blame themselves, beating themselves
up.
Of course, David has had it, too. Their great charismatic leader is
there with his head in his hands like everyone else. He succumbs to that
helpless depression that comes over a man: the sort of depression that
paralyzes you, when you are not doing anything in your grief, you just
want to blame somebody.
Despondent David makes a magnetic target.
David's men begin to shift the blame to him, after all, they had just done
what they were told. This wasn't their fault, (they are coming out of it
now). They have to blame somebody, and the name that comes to everybody's
lips is "David".
He is the one who commanded them to go off and leave their families. He is
the one. Aren't they incredible? These men, just a few days earlier, would
have laid down their lives for David. They adored him. But, when you are
flat on the floor without an emotion that works properly, it is amazing
who you will blame and lash out at. They lashed out at David.
They wanted to vent their rage on a human scape goat. So they began to
sound like a lynch mob. They were saying, "Stone him." Not that
anybody actually got up and did anything, but they talked about it. They
spoke it.
David could hear them talking. David sat there and felt helpless. He
probably thinks, "Can anything else go wrong? I have lost everything
and now the only friends I have left are blaming me for what a bunch of
thugs did." He has lost everything. It was STRESSFUL.
Distress
It says he was distressed. Understand what this word means. DISTRESS is
the word of the 1990’s. In Hebrew it means to be overcrowded. They used
it with Elisha when he had the Bible school and the students came and
complained everybody was in their face.
There was no room to sleep. Everybody was on top of everybody. The word
used there is distress, but it was used
to describe being overcrowded. I feel overcrowded. Everything is coming at
me. Everything is in my face. I don’t have any room to breathe. I don’t
have any private space.
Also, this word is used by the Hebrews to describe walking into a
canyon where the sides get pretty close to you. It is a narrow place. As
you walk on in it gets narrower and narrower. Finally the sides are
touching you on either shoulder. You try to turn around but it is too
narrow. You're in a narrower and narrower place.
If you want one word to describe stress, it is a NARROW PLACE. It
evokes feelings of claustrophobia. It is when life completely overwhelms
you. It is when people are all coming together to get in your face. It
seems that every enemy has found your address. They all arrive at the same
moment. You are overcrowded, overwhelmed. It is too narrow, too tight to
breathe. You want space, so you go lashing out: get out of my way!
Sometimes it is translated surrounded. Same idea. Pressing in. It
describes a mind that is in torment because my thoughts are crowding me.
You can’t think straight because as fast as you try to think along this
line, other thoughts come to you from the other direction.
Obsession
Would you understand the word obsessed?
That word in ancient English meant to be haunted by ghosts. So when we say
the mind is obsessed, we mean there are shadowy fears, anxieties and
stress. Sometimes I don’t even know what they are. I just feel I am
obsessed with fears, anxieties and stress. Grown men feel like whimpering
like little children. Have you ever been there? I know I have. Crying and
sobbing uncontrolled. Life becomes too big to live. I want to run away but
there is no place to run.
David had a time like this and wrote a Psalm and said, "Oh,
that I had the wings of a dove that I might fly away and be at peace and
get out of here!"
That is all wrapped up in the meaning of this word. In one place it is
used to describe being attacked by a swarm of bees. When problems come
like a swarm of bees. Everything is coming at you. At the office or at
home; everything is coming at you at once. It is like the beginning of a
panic attack.
There are many levels of distress, various degrees. He said, I am
greatly distressed. He is in the narrow way; overcrowded with problems.
The canyon has crushed him. The light at the end of the tunnel is an
oncoming train.
The Spiritual Secret
What David did at this time could be the foundational Spiritual secret of
David’s life, because it tells us what he did in this situation, while
he was in the narrow way. It says, David strengthened himself in the Lord.
Here are ways the word strengthened is used in the Old Testament: (1) picking up a
little child and holding it, because the child doesn’t have the strength
to stand by himself; so I hold it and by so doing I am imparting my
strength to him. (2) Or to hold on to; you may want to go out that door, but
my strength holds onto you and I empower you to stay by imparting my
strength.
Remember, Pharaoh hardened his heart; it means that it became strong,
immovable in saying ‘No’. He didn’t say, "Well, no." He
said NO! And there is no discussion. He was stubborn, obstinate, strong,
and immovable.
Another place the word appears is in a bankruptcy, where a person does
not have the money to pay his bills and a rich brother comes and bails him
out, "gives him relief." But the Hebrew word used there is
strengthened. If you have bills that you can’t pay and someone comes
along and pays your bills, he takes the pressure off your shoulders and
strengthens you financially. Your weakness is carried into strength by
someone else giving you his or her strength.
In Other Words
One last use: suppose I told you that if you are the last person to leave
this place, be sure and turn all the lights out. That is: be strengthened
that the lights are all out. Don’t just say, "Well, I guess they
are out", and just go on. It means you will not let one room get past
your notice, not one switch will be unchecked. That is to say you will be
strong in this matter. You say to the kids, BE SURE TO DO THIS. You mean
no ‘if’s’ and no ‘buts’.
David strengthened himself in the Lord. That is, David was
strengthened; he received God’s own strength imparted to him: Divine
strength, the unbegun, infinite
strength of God, which was specifically needed for this moment, was
actually imparted to the humanity of David.
Did you get that?
No ‘if’s’, no ‘buts’, no areas of weakness. He was held on to by
God’s strength. God actually put into David His strength so that David’s
bankruptcy disappeared in the strength God
gave him.
Now, that didn’t just mysteriously happen. It isn’t that as David
sat there weeping, distressed, and broken, he was suddenly zapped with the
Spirit and became strong. NO! He was not an uninformed church member; he
knew how things worked.
Overhearing
Note: It says that David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. What
does that mean? We overhear this in David’s life all the time.
Let me tell you a few places we overhear it.
Ps. 3, 18, 23, 27 come to mind.. Have you ever heard this phrase
before? "THE LORD IS MY …"
My shepherd, my light, my life, the lifter of my head, my tower, my
shield, my rock, my salvation…
Who is saying that? David is saying that. He is strengthening himself
in the Lord. He is taking of all the resources of God and he is actually
making them his own. He does it with that phrase "THE LORD IS MY…"
What's in a Name?
"THE LORD is my …"
That means the name of God: LORD: Jehovah: YAHWEH. It is the name Moses
asked about when he said, "Who are you?"
A name described a person’s character. Asking for your name meant one
wanted to know everything you are. Moses was asking God to give him a
complete course in Theology in ten minutes. If we were to paraphrase the
gist of God’s reply, "I am", conveyed, "Moses, you want to know
who I am. What a joke.
"You can’t know who I am. I am the limitless God; there is no end to
me. In a trillion years you could not know who I am, but I will tell you
who I am. I AM the one who will become to you in your history. That is, I
won’t give you a theological textbook on this and say read page
44.
"I
won’t have you study theology to know me, but you will come to know me
as you live out your life, Moses, in every experience that you have; I
will show myself to you in a way that you have never seen me before. You
can write that in your book and say, 'Now I know who that is who He is
because God has become to me who He is.' "
The whole of the Old Testament is the story of God BECOMING. From
every story in the Old Testament, we know something about God that we didn’t
know before. I think your life is that way. You don’t read about this in
a book, you make the book. If you read it in a book, it is still not
yours, you don’t know it for sure, you heard it second hand, because God
still is Yahweh, the becoming one. He becomes to us who He still is.
David encouraged himself in the BECOMING ONE.
I am at the pit of despair. I have never been this low and I am looking
to God. That is, I am saying that He is going to become to me WHO HE IS in
this situation that I shall discover my God as I have never discovered Him
before in this experience that I have never lived before. He will become
to me this.
The Holy Spirit
This is the role of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit connects
me to God. The Holy Spirit makes God real to me, unites me to Him in my
situation. So David says, the Lord, Yahweh, the I am that I am, the Lord
is my … that He is now revealing Himself to me, but He is revealing
Himself in me, the Lord is my strength, my shield, my high tower…He is
revealing Himself to me, and in me and by me. So, the LORD is my fortress,
my rock, my _____ in my experience, in my life. The Lord shall be
revealed.
What to Expect
I know that He is love: unconditional love. He is limitless wisdom. He is
absolute goodness. He is almighty power. He is ALL of that. And He has
given Himself to us in covenant and He has promised, given His Word, that
He will be our guide and our protector and our Wisdom in all
circumstances.
That He will be love to us at all times, that He will be our caregiver,
provider, and comforter, He promised all that. You see there is general
truth that God is Love, but David is saying that He is love to
"me". It is generally true that God provides for His own, but he
says He provides for me. It is generally true that God protects His
people, but he is my shield, my tower, my refuge. He is becoming to me in
a most specific, personal way that which is generally true. "The
Lord is my…"
I want you to notice something else about him encouraging himself in
the Lord, David doesn’t pray. It doesn’t say, Oh, Lord, please be my
shield, be my protector. It is a statement: it is a declaration. The Lord
is My …David is taking a leap of faith; from being conscious of his need
into conscious supply. He is not saying, God please bridge the gap; I know
you are the answer, please bring the answer over here. He doesn’t do
that. It is a leap of faith. He says, I am aware of the need. Therefore,
the Lord is the supply. Whatever the need is, He is the piece of the
jigsaw that fits in perfectly as the supply.
He makes it a statement: "The Lord is my …." He
declares that God is joined to him by
the Holy Spirit and in so doing God becomes to him all that He is.
The Great Exchange
I am always conscious of need and he is always the supply. The
Christian life is always saying here is the need, You are my supply. Thank
You. It is done. The Holy Spirit makes it happen.
You confess He is Lord of the situation and you are saved. The Lord is
my strength and He brings it together by the Holy Spirit. The Christian
life is the continual fact that He is my life, whatever life is for me is
at this point. It is not asking Him to be that; it is daring to believe He
said He is it: so He is it. And I declare it: the Lord is my…
David did not do this out of his feelings. No! He did it in spite of
his feelings, in the face of negative feelings. Faith is an act of will by
which I choose to respond to the character from the Word of God. It is not
a feeling.
You see my true self, who I really, really am, since I have been born
again: Christ lives in me. He is my identity. I am joined to God in my
inmost being and so are you. But we go through things like David
did.
And my true self becomes flooded with feelings. Feelings that arise not
from who I am, but from who I call my FALSE SELF, that is made of
subjective feelings. It is not my life; it is the feelings about life. But
they never tell the truth. They are incapable of telling the truth because
they never include God in their summation.
Because you see, God is not seen and is not felt. So they have nothing
to report on. They say, we are reporting on what we see: enemies are out
there and they want your head. That is all they can see, but it is not the
truth because they left God out of the equation. They leave out the fact
that in my inmost being I am joined to God. My feelings report to me what
they feel, and they want to become my identity. They want me to say that
is who I am, but I am not.
Feelings or Truth?
I feel wiped out, washed out, a wretched person. My feelings are telling
me that’s who I am. Many Christians believe their feelings and that is
where they live most of their lives.
David had feelings, but in the face of
those feelings he chose to be present to his true self. He dared to
declare his true identity with God even though he couldn’t see and
presently couldn’t feel it. He overrode all of the feelings with their
words and their pictures that poured through his mind and his emotions. He
overrode them by declaring, the Lord is my strength.
I don’t have a feeling in my body to
support that, there is not a reason in my mind to say it is true, but I
know it is true. And I stand into the truth and I declare the truth
because it is the truth. He doesn’t wait for his feelings to change
before he declares the truth.
Some say they would be a hypocrite if they
say that and they don’t feel it. No! You are not a hypocrite if you live
out of the truth. He didn’t wait for his feelings to tell him that it is
true. It is true. It is his feelings that are the liars. The Lord is my
strength even though my feelings tell me otherwise.
He didn’t wait till he felt more like a
believer. Many days I don’t feel like a believer. Today, our kids are
being taught in school to live by their feelings. Those teachers are
liars. We do not live by our feelings; we live by the truth. Many times my
feelings are the opposite of the truth.
So David encouraged himself in the Lord and
declared, I am not my feelings, I am who I am in my God. No apologies. No
explaining. God knows how we feel. He planned that we would be weak. We
have to be weak if we are going to contain His strength. David stands into
the truth. And he did it by saying words that declare who he really was in
God.
Confess with your mouth the Name of the
Lord. The Name of the Lord is a strong tower and the righteous run into it
and are saved. If you don’t yield to the Holy Spirit you won’t know
what I am talking about.
Amazing Truth
This truth is amazing: that my humanity, at the point of its weakness, is
united with divine strength. At that point, not at a general point, but at
that point I am made a partaker of the divine image.
David said, "THE LORD IS MY STRENGTH." Somewhere in that process,
knowing that the Lord Who is utterly other than the creature, the Lord Who is not me, as I dare
to stand in that truth and say, "The Lord is," it happens!
And that which is
the Lord’s, is actually made manifest in my humanity. So, the Lord is my
strength, my life, my salvation. Thou art my glory. The exchange has taken
place. "The Lord is my …"
Not Stronger
Can I push it one point further. It doesn’t say that the Lord has taught
me how to be strong in myself. I don’t learn strength; I learn who is
strength. What I am trying to say is, you will never be strong in
yourself. If you could only see that.
Some ask me to pray that they will be strong. Sorry, the Bible says, we
have this treasure in earthen vessels. I will always be the earthen vessel
which will always send up to me these surges of weakness telling me I can’t
do it.
Look: I have a cup that contains coffee. I don’t care what the cup is
like. All I care about is what is in it. You are just a cup: an earthen
vessel; some of us are cracked, but you have within you the
treasure.
When you ask
to be strengthened you are saying, you want to be the coffee. Sorry, you
will always be weak and in your weakness you will express His strength.
Some think as they mature they will be stronger. No.
Maturity in the Christian life is that you
realize how weak you are. I know my weakness better today than ever in my
life. We are ashamed of weakness, but I find that a mature Christian is
one that not only knows he is weak, but rejoices in his weakness.
Paul says I boast in my weakness because
I found that when I am weak then I am strong. He said to me, "My
strength is made perfect in weakness." God doesn’t teach you to
be strong.
So you see this is not a process. David sits there on a burnt log, wiped
out, and then he says, the Lord is my strength. Now he can rise up from
that log in God’s strength. He didn’t go to school in between. This
isn’t something he learned in the natural, this is the impartation, this
is the divine exchange of his weakness for God’s strength and that takes
place like that. Immediately.
Me - Him?
The first time I really struggled with this … I was taught you have to
do a work FOR God. It was like a person is over here and another person is
over there. I was taught that while God is UP THERE, I am going to
work FOR Him DOWN HERE.
The Scriptures said very plainly that it is HIS strength and that He is
doing it IN ME. I would ask, "How do we do that? How can God be inside of me?"
Another Scripture said, "I live and yet not I, it is Christ who lives in me."
How does that work?
"FOR ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST."
The Mirror
There was a fellow walking by a great cathedral. He was in a deep shadow.
Suddenly he was blinded by the sun and yet he was still in the shadow.
What is happening, he wondered? Then he saw a little kid with a mirror. He
was catching the rays of the sun and systematically blinding everyone
as they walked on the sidewalk in the shadow.
That is it. A mirror is made to reflect
other. A mirror: all that was needed was to be in a right relationship to
the sun. Wow! The mirror didn’t go to school to learn how to shine, nor,
if it could speak would it say that the sun taught me to shine. If it gave
testimony, it would say, the sun is my light. See?
The mirror wasn’t shining. It was in a
position to contain the light of the sun and then be as the sun. We don’t
live the Christian life in the sense that we are trying with our will
power to be like Jesus. The Holy Spirit unites us to Jesus and we respond
to Him who is the center of our true self and we say, "The Lord is
my …." (fill in the blank).
Don't Try
When you feel every nerve of your body screaming, when you feel life is
too much for you, when you are stressed out with decisions you can’t
decide, when you don’t know where to turn, when every enemy has found
your address, when that canyon is crowding you in that narrow place; don’t
try to handle it and be a good Christian.
No, don’t try to be a good Christian,
just simply be still and recognize that every feeling that is flooding
your being is a subjective feeling from your false self and it is trying
to make you think that it is you. You are not that. You are the one in
whom Jesus lives. You are the mirror of Christ in you.
Speak in that situation the truth: "The
Lord is my…" (whatever you need in that situation:) the Lord is
my wisdom, my strength (strength of emotion, strength of mind, strength of
will…)
You may be a salesman who is on the road a
lot, and you may be ashamed to tell your wife or pastor what you are
tempted to do while you are out on the road all alone. I commend you that
you wrestle against it till a cold sweat runs down your back; I do, I
commend you. But the real way is not to wrestle with it, but to say that
the Lord is the strength of your life; the Lord is the strength of your
will, the Lord is your true love (love for your wife, love for others,
which forbids you to do this thing.) It is not struggling to become, It is
declaring that in Christ you are able and the Holy Spirit makes it happen
as a reality of your confession.
In such an experience the Lord became to me
what I had heard by rumor. I had read second hand, I had heard it on a
tape, but He has become to me in each situation: I have been strengthened,
I have been encouraged in the Lord. It has happened and I am living it. I
make these choices myself everyday.
One Thing More
It is all of God. Why did
David suddenly stop bemoaning his circumstances and begin to encourage
himself in the Lord? What started that? If he was uneducated in spiritual
things he would say, a thought came to me, why don’t you do that? But, I
think he was more educated in the things of God.
The very thought, the nudge down inside of
you, "turn your eyes on God, declare who you really are", isn’t
your thought. Christ inside of you, the real you, is told (and He really
is your life). He drops His word into your head in the middle of your
temptation and HE says, "I am your strength. Invoke my name; confess
that I am Lord of this situation." And you say, "What a
marvelous idea."
David did that; knowing it was all of Him.
You are joined to God because He came to you in Christ. He saved you. He
now lives within you. In the deepest trial He urges you to declare who you
really are and how He is your strength. And when you declare it, He
becomes who He is, only this time you know He has become to you who he
really is.
Not Being Like Jesus
Some who hear this will really hear this. To live is Christ. This is
CHRISTIANITY. Christianity is not that nonsense struggle to try and be
like Jesus. It is recognizing He is.
Remember when his disciples asked Him,
"Who then can be saved?" In Mark 10:27 it says, "He looked
on them." As if to say, you aren’t going to believe this,
"With man, it is impossible." I wish we would hear that. You
say, "How can I live the Christian life?." It is
impossible.
It isn’t you doing it FOR God. It is you
continually - a thousand times a day bringing your weakness and
declaring His strength for your weakness. You don’t go and say,
"Well, God, I was a bit better
today, wasn’t I?"
No, you are saying, "I am the coffee
cup. I
perfectly contain the coffee. Christ in me completely express my life for me."
You
spend your day encouraging yourself in the Lord.
The Message
Well, there it is. In a sense it is a message for the battle. You know
what I mean. If you are not in the trouble, then God will not become to
you. You can’t read this in a book of theology and have it become
reality to you.
Do you want to be raised from the
dead? Well, you have to die first. The experience: that is what I am
talking about. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to know the peace of God that
passes all understanding? Well, yeah, but you have to be in a
position of living hell first. God won’t become to you peace unless you
are in a state of disquiet and non-rest. Do you follow that?
Wouldn’t it be great to know the Love of God better? Well, He
may arrange for the most unlovable wretch to move next door so you will
know the love of God. God becomes to me in my history. That is, God says
He will never be theory to you. He will never be theology to you. You will
know Him in your history. Just declare Him for He is the "I
AM" for whatever the need is- He is.
The Blessing
Now God bless you and keep you and lead you and mature you, especially if
you are in that narrow place, in whatever stress you are dealing with, let
him be your supply in that situation and be who you are. Amen.
The Prayer
Our Father, from whom the whole family of believers in heaven and on earth
derives its name, I pray that out of your glorious riches you may
strengthen your people with power through His Spirit in their inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith.
I pray that we being rooted and
established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to
grasp how wide, and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,
and to know this love that surpasses mere intellectual knowledge that
we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. AMEN.
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