Practical Living

Dale O'Shields: Thank you for joining us for today's Practical Living broadcast, and I pray that through this message that you will learn how to apply God's word and truths to any situation in your life. Stay with us as we discover God's truths that will transform us.

Today we continue a series of messages. This is my 15th message in this series, and as I told the other gathering this morning, I'm not done yet. We don't know how long we're going to go with this. We'll keep going until I've gotten all the meat off the bone, we'll see. But we're going to talk today about tackling stress and tension in your life, and I've used a little parenthetical statement, "before stress and tension tackle you." How do you tackle stress and tension before it tackles you in our series called Lifequakes?

This phrase "Lifequakes," I'm using it to describe moments that come to us that shake us up—difficult moments in life. Sometimes they come on suddenly. Things happen, and we don't expect them to happen, and they sort of shake our world a bit. Sometimes they're more subtle in nature when they show up and knock us off our equilibrium emotionally, mentally, spiritually. These are the quaking moments of life, and Jesus very clearly taught us that everybody experiences this. It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or a non-Christian, every person goes through Lifequake moments.

In fact, in Matthew chapter seven, Jesus talked about two men building houses. One man built his house on sand, and another man built his house on rock. And the Bible says Jesus said that the storms of life came to both men, not just the man whose house was built on sand but also the man who'd built his house on rock. So both of them experienced the storms of life, but the man who built his house upon the rock, his house stood firm. He endured. Why? Because he was built on the right foundation. He had a relationship with God. He knew God's word and obeyed God's word, and that was the foundation for his life.

So we're learning the important lessons of building our lives on the right kind of foundation so that when the Lifequake moments come—and they do come to all of us—we are prepared for it. We're not shaken to the degree of being destroyed by it. And today I'm going to talk to you about these two words: stress and tension. Would you say those words with me? Stress and tension. These are two things that will come into your life, and they will shake your life up if you're not careful.

And they don't come in one major big blow. They normally come in a sort of slow process, a quiet process. They end up in your world and they eat away at the core of your life. Stress and pressure and tension—these things find their way into our existence and they can be very, very destructive to us. I'd like to draw your attention to two passages of scripture: one in the Gospel of Matthew, the other in the Gospel of Luke, that provide for us stories that relate to dealing with stress and tension. Matthew chapter eight is a story that deals with some stress in the life of the disciples. Let me read for you a story that most of you will be at least somewhat familiar with.

Then Jesus got into the boat and started across the lake with his disciples. This lake was the Sea of Galilee, the northern part of Israel there. Suddenly a fierce storm struck the lake with waves breaking into the boat, but Jesus was... what was Jesus doing? He was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him up shouting, "Lord, save us, we're going to drown!" Jesus responded, "Why are you afraid? You have so little faith." Then he got up and rebuked the wind and waves, and suddenly there was a great calm. The disciples were amazed. "Who is this man?" they asked. "Even the winds and waves obey him." A story of some stress in the lives of the disciples.

Let's take a look now at Luke chapter 10, a story of tension. As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted. That word "distracted" means she was in a point of tension. She's being pulled apart by the events that are happening there. Tension. She was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered. "You're worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed, or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." Stories of stress and tension. Today I want to talk about two basic points that we'll build on week after weekend after next as we'll continue in this theme together talking about how do we address this in our lives, how do we tackle it. But two basic things that will lay a foundation for us today. First thing I want you to recognize is to understand that stress and tension, while they're similar, they're also different.

There are nuances that we need to understand—very closely related terms but not exactly the same thing. I want to break apart an understanding of both stress and tension for us today. You need to recognize these things in your life because if you don't know how to recognize them, you'll not know how to properly deal with them. You need to know the differences. So let's start with stress. I want to define stress for you, and some of you are saying, "Pastor, you don't need to define stress for me, I know what it is." Okay, well, I want to give you a technical definition of stress so we understand together what the meaning really is for your life.

So I'm going to put on the board a definition; it will be somewhat technical, but I promise I'll break it apart so we'll understand it. I would ask you, if you would, to read this together with me aloud and loudly. Let's all read: "Stress is the internal response of the spirit, soul, or body to real or perceived pressures, demands, uncertainties, or overloads." Now just listen as I read it. Stress—what is it? It is the internal response or you could say reaction at times—response or reaction in your spirit, in the innermost part of your being, your soul, your mind, your will and your emotions. Your body even is affected by stress to what? To real or perceived. It could be real, it could be perceived pressure or demands, uncertainties or overloads.

So stress is what happens inside of us when life feels heavier than we have the present ability to carry. That's what stress is. When you're going through something in life, it's happening to you, and you feel it first of all on the inside that it's just too heavy for you to carry. And when stress shows up in your life, it affects you spiritually. It will affect your relationship with God, the peace that you have with God. It certainly affects you mentally in the thought process that you have psychologically and emotionally. You begin to feel it. It affects you in your relationships.

Have you ever been stressed at home and suddenly the stress you have inside of you is spreading to everybody else around you? Because you're stressed out and now everybody else is stressed out because you're stressed. So it's spreading around the relationships of your life, and it will even affect your body. There are many people today that are very sick, not because of some disease; they're sick because of stress. Stress will eat away at the very fabric of your health—spirit, soul, and body. Let's go back to Matthew chapter eight. Let's look at the story of stress in the lives of the disciples.

Matthew 8:23: "Then Jesus got into the boat and started across the lake with his disciples." Let's stop there for a moment. So Jesus gets in the boat with his disciples and does something they did many times. This is not unusual. Often times in the Gospel accounts, you'll see Jesus in the boat with the disciples. And the disciples were often in a boat because many of them were fishermen, and so they understood what it was to be in a boat. This is not something strange, something unusual. It's not something that Jesus is asking them to do that they're not familiar with. This is a very familiar activity for them.

Now notice verse 24: "Suddenly." They're in the boat doing what they'd done many times, but this time is a bit different because all of a sudden, in a moment, a fierce storm struck the lake with waves breaking into the boat. And so I'm sure this would not have been the first time that they'd experienced a storm on the Sea of Galilee because the Sea of Galilee is known to have storms there. But in this moment, it came upon them suddenly, and in this moment, Jesus is in the boat, and what is he doing? He's sleeping. Very important to notice that.

Let's look at the disciples. What are they doing? "The disciples went and woke him up shouting, 'Lord, save us, we're going to drown!'" This is kind of hilarious to me because they've now gone from a storm to planning their funeral. They're now in the place of saying, "This is so bad we're going to die." No one thought they were going to die. There was no indication they were going to die, but in their minds, they'd already jumped to the conclusion that this was the end. How many times do we do this in our lives?

So the disciples' reaction, "We're going to drown," it's their minds, their emotions embracing the worst-case scenario. Has that ever happened to you? That you get some bad news, something happens in your life, some event transpires, and you immediately your mind goes to the worst thing that could happen? And you begin to feel all of the emotions that go along with it. I'll break this apart for you in just a moment. But there in that moment, you kind of go to the point where your stress now—you're stressed, but now it's not just stress, it's distress. And there's a difference between stress and distress, and I'll describe that more for us later.

What's Jesus doing during this time? Jesus is sleeping in the back of the boat. Think about that. So you've got the disciples planning their funeral because they're going to drown, and Jesus is resting. He's asleep in the boat, and the same storm has a different impact upon the disciples versus Jesus. The disciples are all fretting, freaked out about this thing; Jesus is sleeping in the boat. Now I would ask you, when you go through a storm in your life, which of those two are you more like? I would have to say that there have been far too many times in my life that I've been far more like the disciples than like Jesus. How about you?

That I'm finding myself running down this pathway mentally that suddenly this thing is going to be terrible, and I'm planning the worst-case scenario in my mind, and I'm stressed out about it. Now suddenly the stress has become distress to me, and it's affecting me spiritually and emotionally and mentally and even physically in my body. I'm being affected by the distress, the stress that's turned into distress. And I'm going to break down for you how this happens because I want you to be aware, as I'm seeking to learn to be aware, of how this works in your life.

I'm going to give you four stages of this so you'll understand how to notice it in your life when it starts to happen. All stress starts with some event—something happens, okay? In this case, it was a storm for the disciples. They were in the boat, there's a storm—that's the event. And the event felt dangerous. And the same is true for us. Events come up in our lives, and they feel dangerous. They feel threatening to us in some manner, maybe hurtful to us in some way. And so there's an event that transpires in our experience—our life, our family, our job, whatever it might be. But some event transpires, real or perceived, it's there.

The next thing in the stress process that happens is that we begin to attach our thoughts to that event. You start thinking certain things about it. What did the disciples think about the storm? They thought, "We are going to drown." That was their thought. Their thought process affected now the third stage: now they had anxious and fearful feelings. And the same is true for us. You have an event that happens, you begin to think negative thoughts about it—negative imaginations about it—and then before long, those negative imaginations turn into anxiety and feelings of fear in your life. And all these imaginations and thoughts now have affected you emotionally.

Please always remember this. Always remember that feelings are connected to thinking. I hear people say at times, "I can't control my feelings." Yes, you can. You can control your feelings by controlling how you think. That's why the Bible says that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds—that you have to get control of your mind so that you're thinking the right thing in the midst of whatever you're going through. So you have an event, you add a thought to it, the thoughts produce feelings. And in the negative sense of this, when those negative feelings are anxious, fearful feelings happen, you get caught in what I would call the last part of the cycle here—this vicious mental emotional loop that you get pulled into.

You have fearful, anxious feelings that feed more anxious thoughts, and more anxious thoughts feed more anxious feelings, and before long you're being pulled down into this quagmire of all of these emotions and feelings that are dragging you down into distress. This is how it happens to us. This is what happened to the disciples there as well. And all of us, we experience this sequence all the time. Usually we're just not aware of what's happening to us. Something happens, we hear some news, somebody does something, somebody says something, some event transpires, our minds go to work, takes us to the worst-case scenario, feelings start happening, then we get caught in this terrible loop emotionally, and we get affected spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, relationally, and even physically.

That's stress. Let's talk about tension for a moment because I said to you a moment ago, stress and tension—they're similar, but they're also different. Let me define tension for you. I'm going to give you another technical definition for tension, and this one is even more technical than the last one I gave. But I promise I'll explain it to you, and I'm going to ask you to read this one together with me as well. It's going to be on the screen. So let's all read aloud and loudly. Here we go. "Tension is the strain, pull, or pressure created when opposing forces, competing priorities, competing demands, competing responsibilities, realities, or conflicting desires exist at the same time."

Now let me read it for you. I know that's a lot of words there, but let me go back and show you what we're talking about. What is tension compared to stress? Tension is the strain or the pull or the pressure that's created inside of us when opposing forces—competing priorities, competing demands upon our life, competing responsibilities, competing realities, conflicting desires—are all existing at the same time. This is exactly what happened with Mary and Martha. Let me read the story for you again, just a portion of it. Luke 10:38: "As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary."

So this is Martha, Mary, Mary, Martha. You'll see them multiple times throughout scripture. She had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted. That word "distracted" means she was in a point of tension. She's being pulled apart by the events that are happening there. Tension. She was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work or the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" Does anyone feel the tension in the room right then? The tension between two sisters?

Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to Jesus teach, and Martha's trying to get the meal ready and get the house ready and get everything all straightened up and make sure she's doing the hospitality kind of thing. And there's tension in the room. Both of these things were important. It was important to sit and listen to Jesus. Was it important to take care of the hospitality? Of course that would have been important. But the problem was Martha. Mary's fine; she's perfectly fine. She's now resolved the most important thing for her in that moment is to sit and listen to Jesus. But Martha is still being torn by the tension of all those things around her that she felt like she needed to do. And now she's trying to draw Mary into her tension—Mary into her problem, Mary into the assistance of what she felt like was extremely important.

And so you see stress—stress from an event that happens to us, how we think about it, how our emotions begin to pull us into this loop. Tension when we're trying to make a decision about something. See, tension lives in the realm of decision. Do I do this or do I do that? What is the right thing to do? Is it right to do this or is it right to do that? Or should I do this now or that now? This is tension in your life—what decision do I need to make? And so both of these happen to all of us at times. If they happened to people in the Bible, they're going to happen to you as well. And they do day in and day out—stress and tension.

Here's the second point that I want to bring to you today. The right amount of stress and tension is important in your life. It's important to have the right amount. One of the great misconceptions in our culture today is the idea that the best kind of life is a pressure-free life. "If I could just get rid of all the pressure, all the stress in my life, life would be wonderful." And some people even go to the next level—they begin to set this expectation for their life: "I'm expecting my life to be pressureless. I want my life to be stress-free. I don't want any tension in my life at all. I don't want any tension in my work, any stress in my work. No stress in my marriage, my relationships. I want life to always go well." And we may not articulate this, but many people are living with the expectation that my life should be always be peaceful.

It's a very dangerous way to think. It severely hinders our maturity and our growth when we begin to think this way because God never designed life to be stress-free. Did you know that? God never designed life to be tension-free. In fact, if you go all the way back to the beginning of the Bible, Genesis chapter one, as God created this beautiful, amazing universe, and then ultimately he creates Adam and Eve and places them—where does God place Adam and Eve? In the Garden of Eden. And do you know what he does? One of the first things that he does after creating them and placing them in the garden: he gave them a job. He said, "Take care of all these trees here, and this is your responsibility now." And I would tell you, and I think you would understand and agree with me, that anytime there's a job, there's stress. Anytime there's a job, there's some tension. Anytime you have a responsibility, you have to deal with it in a certain manner.

And so God placed them in an environment before the fall of man—before sin even entered the world—they had responsibility. They had a certain amount of stress and tension that was actually good for them. And certain amounts of stress and tension are actually designed by God—hear me this morning—designed by God to bring the best out of you. And if you don't have a certain amount of stress and tension in your life, you'll never become everything that God wants you to be. Because through stress and tension is how we grow, it's how we gain strength in our life, it's how we mature, how we gain wisdom. You have to exert some tension, some stress, to get the wisdom that you need. You only develop resilience through stress and tension—endurance—all these things that are vital to your life are found by moments that you have to deal with a certain amount of stress and tension in life.

I was going to bring a guitar with me on the platform this morning, but I decided just to tell you about it because it's just as easy to tell you. But a guitar generally has six strings. Some guitars have 12 strings—there are 12-string guitars—and in any stringed instrument, this would apply to any stringed instrument. But let's talk about guitars for a moment. And guitars and those six strings—you probably've noticed that on the end of a guitar, there are certain pegs that are the tuning keys for that guitar. And what a guitarist will do before they are engaging in playing a song is they have to tune up that guitar, and they tune it to a certain frequency or certain notes, I should say. And so they're tuning it so that each of the six strings have their own unique note so that when the chords are used and formed on the guitar, a sound comes forth that is a harmonious, pleasant sound.

And the pleasantness of that sound is always determined by the tuning of the strings. If the strings are out of tune, then the guitar will never sound as it needs to sound and blend in with all the other parts or instruments or the person leading the song—whatever the case might be. It will affect that capacity to communicate music as it needs to communicate it. If the strings are too loose, you'll never form the chord. If the strings are too tight, then of course you run the risk of breaking those strings and warping the actual bridge of the guitar. There are all kinds of bad things that can happen in either direction. But the right guitarist will take that guitar and tune it up with just enough tension, the right amount of tension, that when the chord is played, it makes a beautiful sound.

And what I want to tell you today is that in your life, there are times that God will bring stress and tension in your life to tune you up. There's a chord that he wants to play through you. There's a sound that needs to come through your life that can only come through your life when you're at the right stress level, when you're at the right tension level. Otherwise, you'll never make the sound that God intended for you to make. The same is true for example with suspension bridges. Suspension bridges, when you drive over them, you're able to trust them because they're under the right amount of tension—that they're now tensed, they have the tension that's associated with dealing with the wind that will come their way so you can have the safety. There are so many things in life that this principle relates to, and it relates to your life as well. You need some stress, and you need some tension in your life. It's valuable for us.

And we see all throughout the scriptures, all throughout the study of God's word, you see these great men and women of the Bible who go through these things in life where God is providing for them just the right amount of stress and tension to tune them up so that the message that he wants to bring through them can come through them and make the clear sound that is necessary. Paul is an example of this. Paul the apostle writes about his own life and ministry in 2 Corinthians chapter four, verses seven through 10. Listen to how he describes his own personal experience. He says, "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." And then he describes his own life here. Notice what he says. "We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed."

Tension—see, do you hear it there? "We always carry around in our body the death, the stress, the tension of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." Then he goes on in the same book in chapter 11 and describes more of what he's going through. Listen to Paul's life. See if you would like to trade your life for Paul's life. "Are they servants of Christ?" talking about false apostles. He says, "I am out of my mind to talk like this. I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the 40 lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea. I've been constantly on the move.

I've been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the country, from false believers. I've labored and toiled and I've often gone without sleep. I've known hunger and thirst and I've often gone without food. I've been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressures of my concern for all the churches." Would you say that's kind of a stressful life? Of course it is. But what I want you to recognize today is that God allowed Paul to go through these moments and these experiences in life because he was bringing a chord out of him. You know what that chord is? It's called Romans, and 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and Galatians, and Ephesians, and Philippians, and Colossians, and 1st and 2nd Timothy, and Titus, and Philemon.

These are the essence of what comes out of Paul because of what he went through in his life. And had Paul not gone through what he went through, I would submit to you today that perhaps we would not have these beautiful, wonderful letters of Paul. Because it was the letters that were written out of the stress that he goes through—the tension that he walked through in his life—that produced the very beautiful things that we read from him inspired by the Holy Spirit. Where he learned to trust in God and realize that the all-surpassing power was from God and not from himself. So are you under some stress today? Is there any tension in your life? "Oh, Pastor, I've got some stress at work." Did you know that maybe that assignment you have at work that's so stressful right now may be God tuning you up?

"Well, Pastor, you don't know my boss." Just maybe God has given you a boss that's uniquely designed to turn the tuning pegs on the end of your guitar, to tune you up. "Well, Pastor, you don't know the woman I'm married or the man I married." Well, perhaps God put you in that relationship to tune you up in a way that you can produce a sound that could never be produced any other way, except for you to go through what you're going through, so that the chord of God's grace and mercy could be proclaimed through you. And here's the challenge that we all face, and with this we're going to conclude today and we'll pick up on this a couple of weekends from now. The natural tendency that we all have—are you listening to me this morning? I'm talking to you as your pastor. The natural tendency that we all have when we're under stress and tension is to run.

"I gotta get out of this." That's the natural tendency. And I've watched people over the years run from one situation to the next situation. They're always running around from one thing to another, and they never become everything God wants them to be. Because they never allow God to have his tuning process in their life. So don't curse your stress. There is stress that becomes distress, and we're going to talk about that, and I'm going to get there as I continue this theme together. We'll talk about how to avoid distress in your life. But don't curse the good stress in your life. Don't curse the good tension in your life because God is using the good stress and the good tension in your life to bring about the chord that he wants to bring through you. Amen? Do you receive God's word today? Amen. Do you receive it? Come on, do you receive it? Do you accept it? I'm asking you, do you accept it as God's word for you today?

Because if you'll accept it, it'll bring peace to your heart and peace to your life. Join me as we pray. Lord, we thank you today for your word. We thank you that you're a good God and you know exactly how to tune us up where we need to be tuned up, Lord. We thank you for the moments that are difficult and challenging. We're thanking you today for the fact that even though they're stressful moments and tension-filled moments in our lives, you teach us so much through them. So I pray for anyone here today that has the tendency and the desire to run. I pray that today would be that day they would settle that issue inside of them and realize, Lord, that they want to allow you to have your perfect work in them so that your perfect will can be done through them. We thank you for in Jesus' wonderful name, Amen.

I would like to close today by giving you an opportunity to ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life. Would you pray with me right now? Right where you are, just simply bow your head with me and I'm going to give you a prayer to pray. And you can simply speak this prayer out, whisper this prayer out, and from the sincerity of your heart, call upon God, and I promise that he will hear and answer you. So let's pray together. Start by simply whispering the name Jesus. Let there come from your heart just the declaration of his name. Say, "Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, that I have fallen short with you. I'm sorry for all of my sins."

"Jesus, I believe in you. I believe that you are God's Son. I believe that you are the savior of the world. I believe that you died on the cross for my sins, and I believe that you rose from the grave, that you are alive today. Now pray these words: "Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Come into my life. Forgive me of my sins. Give me a new start in you. I commit my life to you. In Jesus' name, Amen." Now if you prayed that prayer with me, I want to encourage you with a promise from God's word that says that when we call upon God's name, we call upon the Son of God, there is salvation that comes to our lives. He changes us from the inside out and you become a new creation.

All things pass away; all things become new. And that's exactly what has happened to you today. Your next step really is to make sure that you get into a good Bible-believing church. And you begin to study God's word, get God's word in you. And make sure that you get a copy of the Bible if you don't have one and begin to read it. Spend some time every day in prayer. And I would encourage you also to check out the resources on our website that will help you to get going in your relationship with Jesus. You can find them at church-redeemer.org. Get those into your hands. Get started in your new life with Jesus Christ. Thanks again for joining us today. May God bless you and we look forward to seeing you next time.