In our first conversation of the fall, we jumped into an important topic: stress.  Why is this so important?  It’s because we all deal with stress.  The reality is we all face it and have to deal with it, and I would add that we are all dealing with it in some way.  Hopefully, we are dealing with it in healthy ways, but if we are honest, we don’t always get this right; we don’t always handle it well.  One of the things I’m learning in my own life is to give myself a little grace and patience in those moments when I don’t handle it well, which at times is easier said than done.  Why?  Because life hits hard and fast, pressure builds, and if we aren’t intentional about how we handle our stress, things can go sideways really quickly.  You can have a peaceful morning with God, start your day with prayer, journaling, and just feeling so good and ready for the day, and boom, life hits, people come at you, the wrong email hits the inbox, a tree falls on your car, your work life takes a turn, something happens with your family, and moments after feeling so peaceful, stress is not just in you, it’s coming out of you in ways that may make you want a do over in life—ever been there?  Yeah, me too. 

Stress is coming for us all, which means the most important thing we can do is learn to manage it well. What we want you to see is that God has given us a pathway to managing stress in a healthy way, right in Scripture.  That is what we are laying out for you this fall: an intentional pathway to managing stress God’s way.  This is where we have been so far.  We began by looking at the heart behind the series and answered three questions: what stress is, who experiences it, and how we manage it.  Then we have taken the first three steps on our pathway to managing stress God’s way.  Step One is to Let Go and let God lead.  Step Two is all about trust.  We must trust God with all our lives.  Those two steps go hand in hand; you can’t let go and let God lead if you don’t trust Him to do so.  Then last week, Ken led us to Step Three: What We Focus On Matters.  I really enjoyed Ken’s talk, which focused on the older brother in the Prodigal Son story, who was miserable in what should have been a time of joy because his focus was on all the wrong things.  We learned how essential our focus is.  What we choose to focus on is the one practical choice that can help alleviate stress in your life or add to it.  His point was so true.  What you focus on forms you, then ultimately forms your life.  So, that is where we have been, and today we move to Step 4: Where Do We Take Our Stress? 

I will say this: learning where to take our stress is very important, and Scripture gives us clear instructions on where to take it and how to do this, so this will be a lot of fun today.  I would like to start with a quote about stress to get us thinking.

“Stress is the trash of modern life – we all generate it, but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life.” Danzae Pace

Stress is different than a lot of things that we deal with in life, because it just doesn’t go away on its own.  It just clings to us and piles up on us.  We need to understand that stress is something we carry.  It just keeps piling up until we can no longer cope without offloading it somehow, and often life gets very messy because we don’t realize we are carrying it, we don’t see where we are taking it, and it comes out of us in ways that it just shouldn’t.  We need a place to take our stress, and Scripture is very clear about where it should go.  Spoiler alert, we are to take it to God.  The problem for most of us is that we don’t put our stress where we should. We carry it around with us, often without awareness of what we are carrying, until it piles up and becomes so heavy that it leaks out or explodes out of us in some way, which then leaves us having to react to or clean up after the stress comes out.  It is tough with the lives we live, so busy and distracted; our lives move so quickly that stress typically builds up significantly before we realize we have an issue.  On top of that, when we get to that place of needing to get rid of it, we often take it to places that we shouldn’t.  It may come out on people, or things, or substances, or alcohol, or we just try to give it to someone else so they can carry it for a while but we must understand in God’s design there is one place to take our stress, one place that it must go, and taking it anywhere else doesn’t help us the way we hope, it only leads to more pain, more struggles, and well, more stress.  Stress is the trash of modern life, and what we do with this modern-day trash is very important.

Before we move on, let me ask you, where or how do you carry stress?  Do you know?  Have you thought about this?  Stress is something you carry, and it doesn’t simply go away if it is ignored.  It just keeps piling up until it leaks or explodes out of us.  So, how do you carry it?  It can lead to physical issues, headaches, muscle stiffness, weight gain, high blood pressure, and countless stress-related illnesses.  It can fracture relationships and cause so much damage in your life, so before we move on, try to personalize this. I want you to see a couple of things on the front end of this talk today. The first is that stress is different than most of our stuff because we wear it, and it just doesn’t go away.   The second thing I want you to see is even trickier to see, but so crucial that we do. 

Stress has a goal for you, and that goal is to keep you stressed out.  It doesn’t just sit there as dead weight, making our lives heavier and harder; it also keeps trying to tell us what to do!  Now we hear our stress and pain talking, and we think it’s trying to help us alleviate stress, but what it is actually doing is trying to get us to feed it.  When we feed it, it grows, and grows, and speaks louder and louder in our lives.  What’s wild is that what our stress and pain tell us to do things that make sense, and we think it will help relieve stress from our lives, but we are actually feeding stress and helping it grow.  This is a brutal trap that stress sets in our lives.  This is the second thing I want you to see today about stress: it doesn’t just weigh us down; it piles up, and it talks to us, trying to guide us into the trap, where we think we are getting rid of it, but we are actually making our stress and pain worse, which is stress’s goal.  Stress wants you stressed out; it wants to grow in your life.  An awesome place to see how stress talks to us is to look at David’s Psalms.  He is so honest and often works through major stress.  Like here in Psalm 55, where David begins in a brutal place, listen to the stress and anguish in him, and I want you to see that stress is trying to guide him and convince him to do what it wants. In his case, here, it is to run, to escape, and it does this with us, too.

Psalm 55:2 Please listen and answer me, for I am overwhelmed by my troubles. 4 My heart pounds in my chest. The terror of death assaults me. 5 Fear and trembling overwhelm me and I can't stop shaking. 6 Oh, that I had wings like a dove; then I would fly away and rest! 7 I would fly far away to the quiet of the wilderness. 8 How quickly I would escape—far from this wild storm of hatred. NLT

Pretty intense, isn’t it?  This is stress, it’s on him, and it’s trying to convince him to escape and check out, but what is beautiful about David is that while he is very honest with his emotions and pain, he is also aware that his stress is trying to get him to feed it; he knows where it must go. He takes it there instead of doing the thing stress wants him to do, which, by the way, what stress says often makes a lot of sense, especially if you are in a bad spot!

Psalm 55:16 But I will call on God, and the Lord will rescue me. 17 Morning, noon, and night. I cry out in my distress, and the Lord hears my voice. 18 He ransoms me and keeps me safe from the battle waged against me, though many still oppose me. NLT

David’s stress and pain try to tell him what to do, but in the end, he takes it all to where it needs to go, and that is to God.  Later in this Psalm, he encourages us to do the same.  I love the phrasing in the Message version, with David telling us to pile our troubles on God, which is such a great visual for what stress does: it piles up on us and tries to get us to feed it.  We can take it and pile it up on God. I love this…

Psalm 55:22 Pile your troubles on God's shoulders — he'll carry your load, he'll help you out. He'll never let good people topple into ruin. MSG

I want you to see that stress is unique in several ways. First, we carry it and need to offload it; it doesn’t just go away on its own.  And whether we do it on purpose or not, we are taking it somewhere.  If it isn’t intentional, it’s leaking or exploding out of us in ways we probably regret after the fact.  Second, stress isn’t just dead weight that piles up on us; it’s talking to us, and doing its best to trick us into feeding it. It’s really deceptive and will try to lead us to do things that seem helpful but only make things worse.  Stress wants to grow on you, not leave you, and we must be careful not to feed it, because stress's ultimate goal is to keep you stressed out!

So let me ask you the big question of the day.  How do you deal with stress? Where do you currently take your stress?  How do you handle it?  This is important because you are dealing with it, we all carry it, and we are all placing, leaking, or exploding our stress somewhere.  So, what do you do when you are stressed out?  Do you listen to your stress or do you take it to where God would tell you to take it?  There are so many ways we try to alleviate stress, most of which actually feed it rather than relieve it.  I will hit a couple of examples here that stress encourages you to try to lift some pressure off your life.

Numbing or escaping into alcohol and substances – Stress will always encourage this one, and it is very convincing.  In the moment of numbing, you do find some relief, maybe even some fun, but the next day, stress has grown, and every little thing feels bigger and more stressful than the day before, which stresses you out more, which ironically leads you back to the alcohol or substances to find numb and escape again, which only allows stress to get bigger and bigger in your life.

Screentime – escaping into social media and mindless scrolling – This is another one that feels great in the moment.  Stress lifts as we lose hours mindlessly scrolling and sending funny reels to people and looking at all the fun things others are having.  But remember that stress has a goal to keep you stressed, and staring at the screen all day achieves this in many ways.  It distracts us from real life and people, even harming or replacing personal connections with others, which is something we need.  It can also push us away from contentment and peace with our own lives as we compare ourselves to others.  We can lose hours of our day to our phones and then not have time for what matters.  We stare at the screen before bed and lose sleep, waking up exhausted the next day, which stresses us out and makes us want to escape right back into our phones.  I didn’t even touch lust, and things we just shouldn’t be putting into our hearts and minds, but again, it seems nice to check out, and the stress lifts in the moment, but it’s coming back bigger and harder. We are doing what stress wants; remember, it wants to grow.

People – venting and offloading on others – You know, we are designed by God as social beings who need people in our lives.  Often, it’s nice to have someone to talk to or let off some steam with. This can be healthy, but so often it just isn’t, and it leaks or explodes out onto others.  And in doing so, it can fracture friendships, hurt the people you care about, and isolate you over time, which helps stress meet its goal of growing in your life.  The toughest part is, you probably don’t do this with acquaintances or people you really don’t know; the place your stress probably lands is on the people you love the most and feel safest with.  I think that is what Solomon was warning against here, not to hide our feelings, but not to let our stress cause bigger issues for us, which in turn makes stress grow.

Proverbs 29:11 A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.ESV

Listen, we must understand that stress is trying to keep us stressed out, so we can’t listen to how stress would tell us to find relief from itself.  The irony is that if you do listen to stress, you will find some moments of relief, but in the end, stress only grows and returns stronger when the moment is gone.  When you get stuck in this loop of listening to stress to calm stress, you get to a place where stress grows and grows to a level where the only time you feel normal is when you are stressed out or escaping in some way from it, which is where addictions and many other damaging behaviors come into play.  It’s a brutal trap because we think we are finding relief. After all, in the moment, things do calm down for a bit, but that is just because stress is enjoying the big meal it tricked you into serving it, and once it digests its food and takes a little rest…look out! 

As I mentioned earlier, Scripture is crystal clear on where we should direct our stress.  David has already helped us see this in Psalm 55, that we are to pile our troubles on God.  And what I would like to do is show you what Scripture says about this topic, and also how stress tries to tell us the opposite, so I’m going to read 5 verses from 1 Peter, then I’m going to slow down and show you how the stress and pain of your life will try to get you to do the opposite.  This is the Scripture I really wanted us to reflect on today. 

1 Peter 5:6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.NIV

This is an incredible teaching and clearly tells us where we take our stress and anxiety, but I also want to show you how your stress and pain contradict this.  So let's slow down and look at this verse by verse.

1 Peter 5:6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. NIV

We see two things here that stress will try to contradict.  God’s Word says to humble ourselves and allow God to do what we cannot, but stress will keep telling you that doesn’t work; don’t humble yourself, this is all about you, you need to fix it!  God’s Word says to allow God to handle it in His timing, but stress and pain really press against that and will keep telling you it needs to be handled now!

1 Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. NIV

God’s Word says we are to cast all our stress on God. Our stress and pain say that makes no sense; we need to take it somewhere else.  God’s Word says we do this because God cares for us, but our stress and pain say, ‘God doesn’t care for you, just look at your stress and pain, if He cared, you would not deal with adversity and stress!’

1 Peter 5:8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith NIV

God’s Word tells us we need to be self-controlled and alert; stress says we don’t need to be self-controlled and alert, that will just be too much to handle, we should escape, be numb, and be distracted from the realities of life.  God’s Word also tells us that we live in a world at war, opposed by the enemy who is like a lion looking to devour us, while stress points us to our circumstances, and doesn’t want you worried about the Spiritual War.

1 Peter 5:9 …because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. NIV

God’s Word reminds you that you are not alone in your sufferings, while stress tries to convince you that you are. Remember, we need community and people in life, stress knows that and wants you isolated!

1 Peter 5:10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. NIV

God’s Word tells us that after we have suffered for a little while, God will restore us, making us strong and steadfast, but stress doesn’t want you to think the pain or stress will ever end; it tells you that your stress will never go away.  Do you see how opposite God’s clear instruction is from how stress tells us we should feel and manage it?  Do you understand why?  It’s because stress wants to overwhelm you, to consume and dominate your life.  Stress wants you stressed out, and our job is to immerse ourselves in God’s Word and follow God’s clear instructions on how to manage our stress and where to take it.  We must take it all to Him, even if our pain, stress, and instincts tell us the opposite. 

I want you to reflect on the ground we covered today, because it is so important.  We must understand that stress is a unique challenge in our lives because it just doesn’t go away on its own.  It piles up in our lives and has to go somewhere, and we are intentionally or unintentionally taking it somewhere, it may leak out of us, it may explode out of us, or we may be making choices to take it somewhere, and we must see that God wants us bringing it all to Him, while stress tries to convince to take it anywhere but God.  Stress doesn’t just pile up on us and weigh us down; it’s also talking to us, trying to trick us into feeding it so it can grow.  Its ultimate goal is to keep you stressed out.  Our job is to obey God’s Word, not our stress and pain. It’s the only way through…but I’d add this isn’t easy because stress is really tricky and can convince us to do things that feel ok for a while, that only lead us deeper into the trap of stress and anxiety in our lives. 

So, as we close, please take a moment to think this through and try to personalize it; it truly can be a matter of life and death. 

First, we need Jesus in our lives; otherwise, we have no chance at all.  So, if you have never asked Jesus into your life, it starts there; you can do that today.  But you know, there are a lot of Christians who have invited people into their lives and walk through life completely stressed out, unable to see that they aren’t taking stress where God’s Word tells us to, but actually listening to where their stress and pain keep telling them it should go. It just leads to so much hurt and pain, and well…more and more stress.  So, that means it’s more than just asking Jesus into our lives. 

The second thing we must do is slow down and get very intentional and honest with our lives.  Ask yourself these questions today.  Where do I currently take my stress?  What am I presently doing when I’m stressed out?  Be honest, think about this: what do you do when you are stressed out?  The follow-up question to that, to think through, is this.  Is what I currently do or where I currently take my stress helping me or hurting me?  Am I taking stress where God tells me to, or am I simply feeding stress in my life and allowing it to grow? 

We need to name our stress.  Now that we have slowed down and are thinking this all through, we need to name our stress.  This is so important.  I want you to take a moment right now and think through your stress.  What stress are you carrying?  Could you name it?  Pray about this throughout the week and revisit it as often as needed.  Journal about this, keep talking to God about this, allow Him to show it to you, and then remember to take it to Him.  We need to see it, and once we can name it, it’s time to stop doing what our stress and pain tell us to do with it and take it to the only place we can take it to be rid of it: God.  We see it, stop listening to it, and start listening to God.

God’s Word tells us to pile our troubles onto God, to cast all our anxiety onto Him because He cares for us.  We don’t take our stress to a bottle, a pill, a substance, to your phone, to other people, to the next vacation, to the next big purchase, to the food you eat, it doesn’t even go to Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok…we take it to Him to rid us of the heavy, exhausting, stressful pain of the modern day trash in our lives.  If we listen to stress, it will just continue to grow; if we listen to God's Word and follow it, we can finally be free. This is Step 4 to managing stress God’s way: we take our stress to God, not to where our stress tells us it should go.

“Stress is the trash of modern life – we all generate it, but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life.” Danzae Pace