Today is a big day, and one we have been looking forward to for a while.  We are jumping into our first conversation of the fall, focusing on stress.  Stress is something that we all face in our lives.  It’s something we all experience, which makes this a particularly relevant conversation, especially in North American culture, where stress is often considered normal, almost a badge of honor in people’s lives.  As people, we wish we didn’t have to deal with it, and we would love to avoid it, but it’s not something we will ever completely avoid, stress is going to be part of life, so that means how we handle or navigate it, is a big deal, and that is what we are up to this fall, learning to manage stress in a Godly way.  In our world and culture, stress is a growing issue that leads to numerous challenges and problems in our lives.  While we won’t totally avoid stress, God does guide us through this issue in Scripture.  So, maybe that is something to address right away here in this series.  Should a Christian feel stress?  I mean, as Christians, we know we live a life filled with God’s peace, a peace that Scripture tells us is beyond human understanding.

Philippians 4:7 Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. NLT

So, can we do that and still face stress and pressure? Can we do that and still deal with challenging things in life? For many Christians, we seem to be surprised that life is still difficult and stressful now that we have joined Jesus’ team, which is something we will talk about throughout this stress conversation, but I’m just going to point this out to you now, life will still happen; even a Christian will deal with stress.  Jesus pointed that out often, yet we seem to miss it, or maybe we just focus on the peace we could have rather than the reality of what life will be.  I will show you what I mean, Jesus says this in John 16…

John 16:33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world."

Many Christians can quote this verse and turn to it as we should for inspiration and encouragement, but we seem to stay focused on the peace Jesus says that we can have, and then we tend to jump to the fact that He has come to overcome the world, while missing the reality that we will face many trials and sorrows in life.  You know, sometimes Ken and I get asked about why we bring up the tough stuff in life so much.  Are we just negative people who want to bum you out?  No, we just love you too much not to point you to reality here at MRC. It would feel irresponsible or unloving not to address the reality of life.  Well, as we anchor to reality, we must come to terms with the fact that our lives are filled with challenges, and we will face stress.  Check out this quote…

“Reality is the leading cause of stress for those in touch with it.” Jane Wilder

So, while we would rather not experience it, at some level we all do. When stress isn’t dealt with, it can cause a lot of damage in our lives, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and physically.  Let me give you just a few statistics before we dive into this with you. 

Studies show that one in three people in America say they feel "extreme stress." Nearly half of all people experience trouble sleeping due to stress. Anxiety is being called the fastest-growing disease in the Western World. In fact, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health, Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health concern in the United States. Over 40 million adults in the U.S. (around 19%) have an anxiety disorder. Meanwhile, approximately 4-5 million (around 7%) of children aged 3-17 experience issues with anxiety each year. Most people develop symptoms before age 21.  In fact, anxiety is now called the fastest-growing disease in the Western world.  Stress is all around us and affects every area of life: emotional (soul), physical (body), and spiritual.

So, here’s what we are going to do today.  We are going to look at the heart behind this conversation.  We will then answer three questions as we begin this conversation.  What is stress?  Who deals with?  What can I do about it?

Let’s start with the heart of this stress conversation.  Well, that comes right from Scripture, specifically from Psalm 119.

Psalms 119:105-107 Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.106 I've promised it once, and I'll promise it again: I will obey your righteous regulations. 107 I have suffered much, O Lord; restore my life again as you promised. NLT

Many of you may have heard verse 105 before: that God’s word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.  It is beautiful, and you will see us walking a very deliberate pathway through God’s Word to managing stress in a godly way. But we need to see the following two verses because they show us that through following (obeying) God’s word, we can be restored, even though we have suffered and walked through so much pain.  This is powerful and so important.  Yes, we have suffered much, so much of that suffering is internal, mental, and emotional torture that we walk through, but God can restore us; this is the heart of this series—using God’s Word as a pathway leading us to new levels of health and peace in our lives, as we navigate this painful, stressful world.

Did you notice that when I mentioned those statistics earlier, it stated that most symptoms develop in people before the age of 21?  We don’t start stressed out and filled with anxiety; this develops over time, and how could it not? Just spend a few moments living in this world, and it’s easy to see how this takes place.  It’s a brutal place that just beats the peace, joy, confidence, and comfort we once had in ourselves out of us over time.  Think back for a moment, if you can, to when you were a child.  Were you stressed out over money?  Bills?  Politics?  Were you worried about what others were doing?  Did you care what others thought about how you looked or dressed?  Were you addicted to your phones, to social media?  Were you struggling to avoid pornography?  Were you addicted to drugs and alcohol?  Were you so stressed out that you couldn’t sleep or eat?  So, what happened?  We weren’t born this way; we seem to become this way over time as we go out into this brutal world and face all that we face.  This is why restoration is so important, and it is something we need each and every day of our lives.  Time alone with God, in His Word, to keep us walking the pathway to Him, so that even while we suffer a little while, He can restore us to who He created us to be all along.  It’s like we were created with factory default settings that would allow us to live the life God wants us to live, but we go out into this world, and pick up a lot of hurts, wounds, insecurities, sin, and it just builds up over time, and if we aren’t spending the necessary time with God in His Word, that stuff just keeps building up until we can’t carry it anymore.  It’s a lot like what can happen with your computer.  You use it every day, and you surf the web, work with it, and it just keeps building up cookies, issues, viruses, malware, and if you don’t stop and clean that stuff out, your computer eventually dies.  Talk about stressful, there is a funny little thing that happens to me each Sunday when I am speaking with you.  I use my laptop for speaking because I don’t see as well as I used to, so I appreciate the large font and illuminated notes that I can zoom in on and use. However, there is always a moment before I speak when I open my laptop and hope it turns on!  LOL, talk about stress, it’s a one-second moment that always makes my heart skip a beat until I see the screen light up.  Recently, I opened my computer and started reviewing my notes, and boom.  The screen went black, and I didn’t know what to do.  I was glad it wasn’t a Sunday morning, but it was very stressful for me.  Did I back everything up?  What did I just lose?  I called Geek Squad, and they told me that it had accumulated too much junk over time and needed to be restored.  The machine wasn’t bad or broken.  It wasn’t time to throw it away; it was just bogged down and needed to be restored.  I learned a lot about cookies, bots, malware, and viruses on that day, but it was also a great visual for me on the lives we live.  We go out into life and pick things up, and in so many ways, we need God to restore us to our factory default settings.  Try to think back to your childhood before this world started pushing in.  How stressed were you?  Well, so much of our lives in Christ is allowing Him and God’s Word to restore us back to the very people God created us to be all along.  I think that is what Jesus was trying to help His followers see here…

Matthew 18:1 At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, "Who gets the highest rank in God's kingdom?" 2 For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, 3 and said, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. 4 Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom. MSG

Do you see it?  Jesus wants them restored to their factory default settings, to the heart they were given by God.  They have gone out into the world and learned to rank, to compete, picked up sin, hurts, addictions, insecurities, fears, an inability to trust, and be pure-hearted and confident…we need restoration. We can find it in Him, and the best way to do this is to spend time with God each day, allowing Him to restore you from that day's junk, so that you don’t get bogged down over time.  That is what this stress series can do, even though we have suffered much; God’s word can lead us to restoration in Him.   This is the heart of what we are up to this fall.  Allowing God’s Word to lead us back, to restore us to a place of peace that we can have, even as we face so many stressors in life.

So, let’s answer three questions as we start this journey to managing stress in a Godly way.  The first question we need to answer is What is stress?  Here is the World Health Organization's definition of stress.  

Stress is a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation. Stress is a natural human response that prompts us to address challenges and threats in our lives. Everyone experiences stress to some degree.  

It is important to understand that you will experience stress to some degree.  For many Christians, this is an important concept to understand, and I believe that Christians and churches are more accepting of it and honest about it today than in years past.  Some of us grew up believing that Christians shouldn’t have problems or feel stressed, and that if you feel overwhelmed, you are doing something wrong in your faith.  That’s a brutal way to go through life.  Some think they must be lacking faith, or that they aren’t working hard enough at their faith, or that they must be doing something wrong and God is punishing them…or that somehow their faith life just isn’t working…and you must understand none of that is true. Asking Jesus into your life, doesn’t mean you won’t deal with tough stuff, and that you won’t feel stress or worry in life…it means that you get to walk through all of it with Him, you now can walk in God’s peace regardless of what life throws at you next…and we are looking forward to showing that to you over the next couple of weeks as we tackle this massive topic of stress.  Here’s another definition I really like on stress.

Stress is a state of worry or mental tension caused by difficulty…something we all experience...Stress is the gap between the demands that are placed on us and the strength we have to meet those demands.

It is our prayer that as we move through this conversation, we will not only understand what stress is, but we will understand it isn’t something we need to run from, or avoid, or worse, pretend it doesn’t exist.  We hope you will see that we can use it to our advantage and see that stress can actually be helpful in our lives, as crazy as that may sound. It’s a signal to us that something may need attention in our lives. It can be telling you something important, and that pressure or stress can lead you to a greater understanding of God in your life, which can lead you to the peace you can have when you allow God to lead your life!  We will deal with stress; it’s unavoidable, but as we start to live God’s way, we can experience God’s peace, regardless of the circumstances we face, which is huge!  So hopefully, as we walk through this conversation you will start to look at stress differently…not as something horrible in our lives, but something that can help you grow stronger, draw closer to God, and embrace His invitation to rely on Him, allowing Him to lead your life, because that is where we start to experience that peace that The Bible says we have with God living in us, that peace that doesn’t make sense to us humans because life isn’t all that peaceful.  Let’s look at the next question we need to answer today.

Who deals with stress?  Well, hopefully it is clear by now, but the answer to this question is EVERYONE!  God’s peace in your life doesn’t mean you will never feel stress; it means you are learning to walk through stress and stressful situations in a new, healthy, and peaceful way.  I love this quote from Erwin McManus on the struggles we face in our inner worlds.  It can help us as Christians understand that it doesn’t make us bad people to experience the realities of life; it simply makes us people in need of God’s restoration. 

“Struggling with your inner world is not a sign of your lack of faith, it’s not a sign that you are weak, it’s a sign that you are human.” Erwin McManus

Our final question of the day leads us to where we will head over the next 7 weeks. 

How do we handle stress?  The beauty is that our loving God has given us His Word to guide us to our best lives possible, and found in God’s Word is the way to experience His peace in our lives.  When we slow down and engage Scripture, there is a clear way through this difficult world we live in today, and we are so excited to lay out a pathway to navigating stress in a healthy way. You can live your best life possible here on this broken, challenging world, and God loves us enough to show us how!  This is literally what God’s Word shows us in the heart behind this series…

Psalms 119:105-107 Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.106 I've promised it once, and I'll promise it again: I will obey your righteous regulations. 107 I have suffered much, O Lord; restore my life again as you promised. NLT

Let’s take a moment as we close and look at the pathway we will be walking over the next seven weeks to a new, healthier, and more peaceful life.  A life that will still have pressure and stress, but a life that can be lived in a way where we navigate it God’s way.  Here is the pathway we will be on as we learn to navigate stress in our lives.

Stress Intro – What It Is? Who Deals With It? How do we deal with it? 

Letting God Lead Our Lives

Trusting God With Our Lives

What We Focus On Matters

Where Do We Take Our Stress?

Our Choices - Where The Practical & The Spiritual Meet

Rest – Real Rest

Now, what is really cool about this series is that we aren’t just leaving it on Sunday mornings.  We have podcasts from The Ready Heart Podcast that will help us carry this conversation on throughout the week.  Every Sunday, you will find the Sunday Sermon posted, as it always is, in the app and on the website. A second post will be beside it, featuring that week’s Daily Discipleship plan.  It will have links to the podcast for that day.  It will be posted weekly in the App and daily on all our social media platforms. 

Listen, stress is real, and it isn’t something you can avoid.  If we aren’t dealing with it, it can overtake our lives and cause so much damage inside and out. As we close, take a moment to think through a couple of things today.  Do you struggle with stress? What are some ways you cope with stress?  Has stress almost become a badge of honor in your life today?  Is that how God intends life to be lived?  Should a Christian who has God’s peace still struggle with stress and deal with challenges?  When you look at your life, do you see areas that need to be restored back to your factory default settings?  Do you see how the world takes and presses in?  Is the pressure of life just crushing you to a place where it is affecting other areas of your life?  Well, if you are like the rest of us, you are dealing with stress. We are glad you are here, and we would like to invite you on this journey with us to use God’s Word to guide us down the pathway of learning to manage stress in God’s way.  Yes, we have suffered much, but God’s Word gives us the pathway to healing and restoration, the pathway to our best lives possible.