Archive for October, 2023

Stress Management – Part Three

Had any stress lately? Perhaps a better biblical concept can help you.

“If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?”  (Luke 12:28)

“Therefore, we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day” (Vs. 16).

The Psalmist said it well: “He restores my soul…”

We often need God to bring back the springtime to our souls. And He does.

A. Aerobic exercise is expedient. When you exercise vigorously, your body produces and releases a group of hormones known as endorphins. These are natural pain-killers and mood-elevating chemicals that are associated with feelings of happiness. Put your endorphins to work for you. 

B. Calm yourself by eating foods high in complex carbohydrates found in grains, beans, seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables. They have a calming effect because they increase levels of serotonin, a chemical that helps you feel more relaxed.

C. Establish a quiet time during the day. A minute vacation can help clear the mind and relax the body. Close your eyes, flood your mind with Scripture promises. Simply thinking about your work won’t help.

Now some spiritual solutions.

D. Confess all the sin in your life. Make sure nothing stands in the way of a close personal relationship between you and the Lord. 

E. Explain your stress to God in detail, just like He doesn’t know about it. 

F. Believe that He is right now working out the answer. Don’t simply believe He is going to. Accept the fact that He is already at work on the project.

G. Search the Scripture. A doctor said to one of his stressed patients, “Go home and read your Bible for an hour a day and come back in a month.” She resented that it was all the treatment he prescribed. However she consented to take the prescription.

A month later she returned a new person asking: “How did you know that was what I needed?”

Pointing to a well worn Bible on his desk he said, “If I were to omit my daily reading of this book, I would lose my greatest source of strength and skill.”

Perhaps you have lost some of your life’s joy, have become more edgy, dissatisfied, and critical without realizing the reason to be you have gotten away from the Word. Return to reading it daily. Remember: “You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You”  (Isaiah 26:3).

Now comes the hard step.

H. Let go. Release your stress-causing situation to the Lord. Abandon it. Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

Stress Management – Part Two

How well are you dealing with the stress causing things in your life? Indications are that most people aren’t doing so well.

Industrialists estimate that annually $75 million is lost due to stress-related illness, injuries, or absenteeism.

Jesus urged us to “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these”  (Luke 12:27).

Instead we tend to see the glass half empty instead of half full. Instead of speaking of traffic lights we call them “red lights.” In reality they are very often green, but we never refer to them as “green lights.”

I Corinthians 10: 13 speaks of “the way of escape.” It is a nautical term. It depicted a ship in a storm. In order for it to ride out the storm, the crew had to throw some things overboard. Inventory your life and see what you need to throw overboard. Ask God to help you relieve the stress by unloading what you should.

II Corinthians 4: 8, 9 notes states of which we experience various ones.

Are you ever “perplexed?”  We all face circumstances when human wisdom isn’t sufficient. Often our minds aren’t sufficient to solve all our problems. You may be at a loss, but that doesn’t mean you have lost out.

Are you at times “persecuted?” Which means to be singled out for a personal attack is brutalizing. This may be verbal, social, emotional, or physical.

When those who would persecute us are in control, everything seems lost. However, note that little expression “not forsaken.”

Jesus said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Have you ever been “knocked down but not knocked out.”  Many fights have been won by persons who were repetitiously knocked down but who got up to fight on and win. The same is true in the spiritual realm.

The Bible is replete with accounts of people knocked down but not out.

See Jonah in the belly of the great fish. He was down, but soon came up to prove he wasn’t out.

Observe Jeremiah in the pit. If ever a man seemed to be down he was, but he wasn’t knocked out.

Samson, blind and bound, appeared to be down. Placed between the posts of the temple he proved he wasn’t knocked out.

Joseph in Pharaoh’s prison seemed out. His ascension to the office of Prime Minister of Egypt proved he wasn’t knocked out.

The classic of all classics is Christ. Look at the tomb and you see Him knocked down. Look three days later and you see He wasn’t knocked out.  You too can overcome your knock downs.

For what do we remember about these persons? It is that they got up. If they had never been knocked down, they would never have gotten up to become the persons we remember with admiration.

Stress Management – Part One

Luke 12: 22 – 29

Jesus said don’t “have an anxious mind” (Luke 12: 29).

Is that your personal profile?  Are you stressed out?

If so, welcome to the human race where everyone seems to lose.  Speaking here in America, the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health of England said, “The whole Western world is under stress. It is one of the fastest growing diseases in the world.”

We must learn to live with it. Fortunately we can.

If you can’t flee it or fight it you must learn to flow with it.

Stress is a good God-given ability. Normal stress is motivating. It is a stimulus. If it were not for stress your heart wouldn’t keep beating overnight. You wouldn’t even wake up in the morning. Stress does that.    

Dr. Hans Selye, director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the University of Montreal and the father of some of the most extensive research on stress said: “Stress is the spice of life.”  Stress is what keeps your heart beating, your lungs breathing, and your stomach digesting while you sleep. He adds, “Complete freedom from stress is death.”

Stress is good. It becomes bad when it develops into distress. The load in life is good. It is the overload that is bad. The overload can cause anxiety, depression, migraine headaches, peptic ulcers, strokes, and heart attacks.

It is essential to know how to handle stress.

Jesus said, “Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?”  (Luke 12:24).

Rudyard Kipling in writing about the ship “Dimbula.” Kipling wrote as though the ship had a personality. After 16 days of a stormy voyage this statement was made by “Dimbula” observed, “Now we have a great ship.”

“My master has taken me through the rough spots in which everything seemed to be coming apart, and I have become what I have been made to be.”  This conclusion follows.

“Because I have a master, I am a ship.”

When you have Jesus as your Master and obey Him then and only then you can become the ship you were made to be. Then you can enjoy the benefits of stress while evading the distress.

Physically Jesus calmed the storm for His disciples. He can oo the same for you. He said don’t “have an anxious mind”(Luke 12: 29).

Death Is No Respecter of Anyone

We all suffer the grief resulting from the death of a loved one. Please tolerate me the fact of my loss. This is a tribute and an exhortation. 

My brother Bob died last week. All the things he was going to do will remain undone. All the places he was going to go will remain unvisited. All the things he was going to say will remain unsaid. All the love he was going to share will go unexpressed. All his hopes and dreams will remain in their own silent tomb unfulfilled. These are reminders that whether in the twilight years or the opportunistic years of youth we should in our own time “Gitter done.”

Death, the final arbiter has in God’s good time called his name.  

In the shadow of a giant Mississippi oak his grave is marked by a head stone shared by his wife Jean, adjacent to our revered parents Sibert and Genevieve Price, and his honored grandparents Charley and Fanny Dykes. They are together again. I will never join them there for we are now Georgians. A green plot on a Georgian hill awaits us.

Bob burst the boundaries that held us in our little home town and became a scholar in the School of Pharmacy at his beloved Ole Miss.  Upon graduation he practiced his craft in a store adjacent to the campus of the primary rival of his alma mater, LSU.

Miss him, sure, we talked twice a week. No one with whom we share the intimacy of childhood goes by without emotion trailing. Archived in the annals of time is this ageless truth: “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” 

We pastured cows and herded goats in the nearby acreage. We drank from the cool spring waters where the Indian maiden Osyka and her tribe drank. We walked the railroad track together to see which one could walk the farthest without falling off.

Francis Bacon said, “It is as natural to die as to be born.” Yet, facing our own death can be distressing if we are not prepared for it. Being prepared for it is necessary for no one gets out alive, and there is much more to come. To attain the better, much better, of the two options is life everlasting.

Perhaps the person who said we have responses to birth and death reversed is right. He suggested that we weep at the time of birth knowing the hardships ahead, and that we should be joyous at the time of death knowing the blessings awaiting.

Etched in my memory are the words learned in youth by which Bob (and I) sought guidance: “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” Ephesians 2: 8, 9.

From youth we shared an uplifting faith. Everyone thought one of the Price boys would be a preacher, but not this one.  

Within sight of his grave is the stately old triple gabled Nineteenth Century house in which we grew up together. Near the polished bannister down which we often slid  hangs a tapestry with a life influencing message we read daily: “Only one life, Twill soon be passed, Only what’s done for Christ will last.” I add my Amen.

How to Be Saved

First, a summary then the details.

SUMMARY
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” Ephesians 2: 8. 9.

Grace is God’s unmerited favor. It is God providing what we don’t deserve.

It is “the gift of God.” A gift is given because of the regard the giver has for the recipient. God loves you and “God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him” I John 4: 9.

It is “through faith, and that not of yourselves.” It is through faith in Jesus Christ, not any deeds of our own.

It is “not of works, lest any man should boast.” If it were by our work some might boast they have done more and better work than others.

NOW THE DETAILS
Perhaps you feel unworthy of salvation. Good, that is a starting point for “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3: 23.

“There is none righteous, no, not one….” Romans 3: 10.

Here is the good news. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” Romans 5: 8.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” John 3: 16.

The word “believes” does not mean simply to have academic knowledge, but to “trust.”

This trust means to rely on Him in His forgiveness of sin and in His offer of eternal life. To fully trust Him means to ask for His forgiveness of sin and to commit to Him as Lord. 

Salvation faith involves an act of commitment and trust, in which you commit your life to Jesus Christ and trust Him alone as your Savior and Lord.

To initiate such commitment pray, don’t just say, a prayer like this:  

“Jesus, right now, I ask you to become Lord of my life. You are my Savior and I thank You for the sacrifice You made on the cross. I receive Your grace and confidently believe that my life is forever changed.”

FOLLOWUP
Ephesians 2: 10 follows the initial verses noted herein. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Salvation involves a complete spiritual makeover. In followup commit your new life to serve Him. We are not saved by good works, but we are saved to do good works.

Therefore, set as your standard Colossians 3: 23 “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men….”

To strengthen your new faith and find His will in your life, set a time when you read Scripture and pray. For starters begin by reading from the Bible books of Philippians, John, James, I and II Timothy.