Overcoming Stress

• Life Happens.
  + Click to add your own note

There’s just a lot:

Your coming out of a problem, your in a problem, or your about to go into a problem.

• A broken system
• Surrounded by sin

John 16:33 33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Defining stress:

• Pressure > Capacity = Stress

Pressure will not change, but your capacity can.

• You cannot always choose what happens to you…
  but you can choose how you respond.
  + Click to add your own note

And that response determines whether stress:

• Breaks you
• Or builds you

Anatomy of stress. Rick Warren

Shock:

Sorrow:

Struggle:

Surrender:

Santification:

Service:

If you will respond with these tools I give you today it will make you live an amazing life when you deal with stress.

1. SHOCK – RUN TO GOD AND PEOPLE

Something happens you didn’t expect:

And the natural response is to pull away.

When life falls apart, we disconnect from:

• God
• People

 

Ecclesiastes 4:9–10“9 Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: 10 If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.

And God says:

• Don’t run FROM Me, run TO Me
  Don’t run FROM people, run TO them
  + Click to add your own note

This is why we are a church of Small groups.

Phil 4: 13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength. 14 Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles.

2. SORROW – WORSHIP THROUGH IT

And sometimes we think, “If I had more faith, I wouldn’t feel this way.”

But Jesus Himself experienced sorrow.

Isaiah 53:3a  3 He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief….

 

The question is: what do you do with it?

Psalm 61:1–2 “1 Hear my cry, O God; Attend to my prayer. 2From the end of the earth I will cry to You, When my heart is overwhelmed; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.s of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

How do we go higher?

• Worship lifts your perspective to see God as he is.
  + Click to add your own note

He is bigger than your problem and worship aligns your heart to see him more clearly.

Ps 34: 3 Oh, magnify the Lord with me, And let us exalt His name together. 4I sought the Lord, and He heard me, And delivered me from all my fears.

Worship doesn’t make God bigger—
it reminds you that He already is.

3. STRUGGLE – REMEMBER ETERNITY

• Why is this happening?
• Where is God?

Jesus even felt this.

In the garden He prayed, “Take this cup from me.”
On the cross He cried,

Matt 27:46b ….“Why have You forsaken me?”

Jer 20:14 why was I even born, to have sorrow and trouble…

What do I do when I am questioning everything?

God is still working—even when you don’t see it
And this life is not the end of the story

In Hebrews 11:35–40, 35There were others who were tortured,… 37….persecuted and mistreated— 38the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. 40God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

When life feels like it’s falling apart, remind yourself—
this is not the final scene.

4. SURRENDER – CHOOSE TRUST
   + Click to add your own note

Eventually, you come to a turning point. The place where healing and freedom begin.

Proverbs 3:5–6 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight

• Trusting in God leads me to Peace
  + Click to add your own note

 

Serenity Prayer

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time. Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace. Taking, as he did, the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that he will make all things right, if I surrender to His will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever.”

Peace comes when you let go

5. SANCTIFICATION – GOD IS GROWING YOU

God uses stress to grow us.

Romans 5:3–4: We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

• There’s purpose in the pressure
• There’s growth in the struggle

Reframe this:

Your situation is not a rope around your neck…It’s a rope around your waist

6. SERVICE – USE YOUR PAIN

God never wastes pain.

2 Corinthians 1:3–4:“God… comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

Romans 8:28“In all things God works for the good of those who love Him…”

Your pain becomes someone else’s healing

CONCLUSION

Stress is real.

Pressure is real.

But so is God.

And no matter where you are today:

• Shock
• Sorrow
• Struggle
• Surrender
• Sanctification
• Service

There is a Godly response available to you.

FINAL ENCOURAGEMENT

You may not be able to control what’s happening around you…
but you can choose what’s happening within you

And when you choose God’s way…

• Stress won’t destroy you
• It will develop you