Turning Stress Into Sucess

By Blake Carroll
Bible Book: Isaiah  40 : 28-31
Subject: Stress; Pressure in Life; Distress
Series: Dealing With How Your Feeling

Isaiah 40:28-31

"Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint" (NKJV).

Have you ever gotten up in the morning and just had a strange feeling that it was going to be a rotten day? Someone has depicted a few of those situations that let us know, "It's going to be a rotten day when..."

  • You wake up face down on the pavement.
  • You call Suicide Prevention and they put you on hold.
  • You see a "60 Minutes" news team waiting in your office.
  • Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles.
  • You turn on the news and they're showing emergency routes out of the city.
  • Your twin sister forgot your birthday.
  • Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.
  • Your boss tells you not to bother to take off your coat.
  • The bird singing outside your window is a buzzard.
  • You wake up and your braces are locked together.
  • You call your answering service and they tell you it's none of your business.
  • Your income tax check bounces.
  • You put both contact lenses in the same eye.
  • Your wife says, "Good morning, Bill," and your name is George. [9]

It is days like that which generate tension, anxiety, and nervousness, although the modern day term is stress. Stress, in effect, has become the "In Disease" in America. One of the most familiar coined phrases today that we use to describe ourselves is "all stressed out." As a matter of fact, I know more than a few people who are all stressed up and have no place to go. A man went to his psychiatrist and he said, "Sometimes I think I'm a teepee and sometimes I think I'm a wigwam." The psychiatrist said, "Your problem is you're two tents." [10]

Stress has become a big-ticket item in our culture. Just in my home state of Tennessee, there are various treatment centers devoted to the care and management of stress. Some of the best selling books on the market today have these titles: Stress Free for Good, Total Stress Relief, Transforming Stress, and Stress Management: A Comprehensive Guide to Wellness. There are videotapes with titles such as Healthy Ways to Deal with Stress, and relaxation tapes with titles such as Letting Go of Stress.

The nutrition society of America recommends vitamins such as B-complex and Calcium-magnesium to decrease stress. There is even a national clearinghouse for information on stress-related illnesses, controlled techniques, therapies, and diet, called the American Institute of Stress. It is clearly evident that we are living in a stress-filled society.

Someone has described the times in which we live as:

  • The age of the half-read page
  • And the quick hash and the mad dash.
  • The bright night and the nerves tight,
  • The plain hop, the brief stop,
  • The brain strain and the heart pain.
  • The cat naps till the spring snaps
  • And the fun's done.

We may not do everything better, but we are indeed doing everything faster. Someone has said that you can sum up life today essentially in three words - hurry, worry, bury. Not too long ago, an article in a leading newspaper pointed out how even fast food restaurants are trying to speed up how fast they get out food because consumers are wanting faster and faster options. Thus they do away with seats to accommodate customers who no longer have time to sit, they install computers to accommodate customers who no longer have time to speak, and they eliminate "think time" because  customers no longer want to time to think.

In fact, we are living in a society whose goal is gold, and whose creed is speed. Dr. Laurence J. Peter has stated, "America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there." However, we need to bear in mind what Gandhi said, "There is more to life than increasing its speed."

God is the Great Physician. He knew about stress before we even knew what to label it. He gives us a remedy in the book of Isaiah that is sure to help us turn stress into success.

I. Acknowledge The Problem of Stress

What exactly is the problem of stress? Webster defines it as "pressure, intense strain; to bind tight, to subject oneself to external forces." Yet, stress is initially the gap between demands that are placed upon us in everyday life and the strength we have with which to encounter those demands. Different people call it different things. Some call it the stress factor, some call it the stress ratio, while others call it the stress component, and still others call it the stress formula. On the whole, it is the gap between my "ought to's" and my "can do's." So when my "can do" can't keep up with my "want to," aggravation, irritation, and tension set in.

Stress is a key problem. We are, without a doubt, the most stressed out people on earth. Time magazine's June 6, 1983 cover story called stress "The Epidemic of the Eighties" and referred to it   as our leading health problem. There can be little doubt that the situation has progressively worsened since then. Numerous surveys confirm that adult Americans perceive they are under much more stress than they were a decade or two ago. A 1996 Prevention magazine survey found that almost 75 percent felt they had "great stress" one day a week with one out of three indicating they felt this way more than twice a week. In the same survey conducted in 1983, only 55 percent said they felt under great stress on a weekly basis.

It has been estimated that 75 to 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress related problems. Job stress is far and away the leading source of stress for adults.[11]

Furthermore, stress affects everybody. Isaiah tells us, "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall" (Isaiah 40:30, NKJV). Researchers now conclude that stress levels have escalated in children, teenagers, and college students for reasons such as increased crime, violence, and other threats to personal safety; pernicious peer pressures that lead to substance abuse and other unhealthy life style habits; social isolation and loneliness; the erosion of family and religious values and ties; and the loss of other strong sources of social support that are powerful stress busters.[12]

It is unquestionable that stress is a critical problem. It is one that is being managed very poorly, if it is being managed at all.

II. Accept The Pressure of Stress

Stress is inevitable. No one is completely impervious to it. No one can totally avoid it. Therefore stress must be accepted. In 1967 Dr. Thomas H. Holmes and Dr. Richard H. Rahe of the University of Washington published the results of their work on the relationship between social stress and illness in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research. By assigning "Life Change Units" to a number of life events, they were able to predict the likelihood of the appearance of a significant illness or injury in the life of an individual experiencing them. They found that someone that accrued more than 300 life change units over a 12-month period had an 80 percent chance of experiencing physical or emotional breakdown over the next two years.[13]

Each day we are continually faced with stress-producing situations - the death of a friend, a divorce in the family, loss of employment, sick children, or dreadful news from a doctor. With stress- related problems forever comes stress-induced pressure.

A. Physical Pressure

Dr. Hans Selye is known as "the father of stress." He began researching and writing about stress in the 1930's and gave this timeless definition: "Stress is the non specific response of the body to any demand made upon it." In other words, regardless of what kind of pressure you may undergo, your body will react by being stressed. The physical effects of stress can be colossal.

After you've fought, fled, or otherwise escaped your stressful situation, the levels of cortisol and adrenaline in your bloodstream begin to decline. As a result, your heart rate and blood pressure return to normal and your digestion and metabolism resume a regular pace. But if stressful situations pile up one after another, your body has no chance to recover. This long-term activation of the stress-response system can disrupt almost all your body's processes.[14]

Note how different parts of the body can be affected by stress:

  • It can cause severe hair loss and even some forms of baldness.
  • It can cause the brain to experience depression, anxiety, insomnia, and even memory loss.
  • It can cause temporary blindness.
  • It can cause premature wrinkling, and even skin disorders such as acne and eczema.
  • It can severely deteriorate the muscles in the neck and shoulders and cause painful spasms.
  • It can bring about cardiovascular disease and hypertension because it stimulates the release of fatty acids, which harden the arteries.
  • It can cause the hands to become sweaty and tremble.
  • It can attack the digestive tract and cause gastritis, ulcers, colitis, heartburn, and even nausea.

Doctors now know that chronic job stress can cause high blood pressure and trigger literal physical changes in the heart. In fact, the Journal of the American Medical Association has reported that men who found their jobs very demanding, but had little control over them, were three times as likely to have hypertension as their peers, and they had slightly larger hearts. In addition, elevated blood pressure remains high even after work. Their conclusion: job strain affects your blood pressure twenty-four hours a day. An estimated 60 million people in America have hypertension.

B. Mental Pressure

The mental mutilation of stress is remarkable. Stress is what causes an actor to forget his lines. It causes the football player to drop the winning touchdown pass. It is what causes a baseball player  to strike out (for the final out) in the bottom of the ninth inning during game seven of the World Series, causing his team to lose.

Stress can inhibit the thought processes that normally flow so abundantly. It can be like a gigantic weight that pulls your mind, soul, and body into the pits of persecution. It can cause "burn out" and lead to a complete mental breakdown.

C. Critical Pressure

In effect, stress can cause you to be totally useless. It can make you ineffective on the job. It can crush your marriage to the breaking point. It can ravage your relationships with your children. It can even diminish, or efficiently neutralize, your effectiveness as a Christian.

III. Appreciate The Provision of Stress

The Great Physician has already given a definite antidote for turning stress into success. He has given a remedy that cannot fail. According to the Bible, the problem of stress needs to be converged with the provision of strength. Isaiah 40:31 says to us, "But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength." The word renew is a picturesque Hebrew word, which literally means "exchange."  And so the Christian life is an exchanged life as well as a changed life. I am to exchange my weakness for His strength. The Lord Jesus spoke to the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, "And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

God knows the tensions, the traumas, and the troubles that we face on a daily basis. However, God, in His grace and in His goodness, has already provided His strength and equipped us with His power to meet the stresses of everyday life. This is not just average strength, nor is it just average power. God has promised every one of His children the extraordinary, supernatural strength they will need to meet the stresses of day-to-day living.

A. Endeavoring Power

The first thing we are instructed to do is to "wait on the Lord" (Isaiah 40:31a, NKJV). The Psalmist said precisely the same thing in Psalm 27:14: "Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord!" According to the Prophet Isaiah, the secret to dealing with stress is found in "waiting on the Lord."

However, don't pass over that too lightly. The word "wait" as used by Isaiah is not a passive term; it is an active term. As a matter of fact, I used to think that waiting on the Lord meant to just sit calmly in the midst of your adverse circumstance and wait on the Lord to do something about it.

But I was stunned to learn that to wait on the Lord does not mean that we are to wait on the Lord to do something for us. It means that we are to do something for the Lord.

Have you ever gone into a department store just to shop and have someone approach you and say, "Is someone waiting on you?" Now what they mean by that is: Is someone serving you, is someone ministering to you, is someone endeavoring to help you, is someone attempting to meet your needs? That is precisely what it means to wait on the Lord. When you are waiting on the Lord you are in pursuit of Him. You are aiming for the Lord. You are endeavoring to please Him, and to serve Him, and to minister to Him.

What does a "server" do in a restaurant? He doesn't sit in some kind of a bewildered trance waiting for you to get your own food and water. No, he waits on you. He serves you.He is there for one reason and that is to satisfy you.

The first step to dominating and defeating stress in your life is to get a handle on just exactly whom it is you are trying to please, and whom it is you are trying to serve. We have been put on this earth to serve and glorify God before we have been put on this earth to serve and glorify others.

Part of the approach to serving God is to be still before Him. It is to have that daily "quiet time" with Him. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 8:34, "Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors." He gives a depiction of a man who is guarding the gates of his master's home. He is waiting at the very doorstep of his residence. He is willingly awaiting his daily task, ready to spend time with his master, and to serve his master.

The first thing you need to be doing every day is to be still before God, to spend time with God. If you do not have a regular quiet time with the Lord, you are going to undergo stress. To tell the truth, God sometimes uses stress to compel you to have that quiet time.

Dr. Vance Havner once made an astute observation. He said, "There is no work that is more likely to crowd out your quiet hour with God than the very work that draws the strength from that quiet hour."

There was a prominent pastor who recently went to his doctor. The doctor asked him what was wrong. He said, "I feel rundown." After the doctor examined him, he said, "Brother, you're not rundown, you're too wound up." That is just what stress is - being too "wound up." My wife's grandfather gave us an antique Gilbert wall clock shortly after we married. When he gave it to us, he said, "There are two dangers you need to avoid with a clock. 1) Don't let it rundown. 2) Don't wind it too tight."

Understand that your body is more important to God than a clock. God neither wants your body to be rundown, nor wound up too tight. The most important way to prevent this is to have that quiet time. That time when you just get alone with Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and let Him make you lie down in green pastures, let Him lead you beside still waters, and let Him restore your soul.

B. Elevating Power

The Prophet Isaiah goes on to state, "They shall mount up with wings like eagles" (Isaiah 40:31b, NKJV). One of the most mesmerizing creatures on earth is the golden eagle. There are some very intriguing facts you should know about the eagle. While most birds depart from a storm, the eagle seems to be drawn to the storm. Why? Because the thermal underdrafts of that storm can cause the eagle to soar higher and higher than he can under ordinary circumstances.

The storm also forces him to fly higher and faster. On average an eagle can fly about 50 miles an hour. But when he is in the strong wind currents of a storm he can fly up to approximately 100 miles an hour. These turbulent winds allow an eagle to stay up longer because he uses the winds to soar and to glide for longer periods of time. Furthermore, these storms and these turbulent winds allow the eagle to use less exertion because the wings of the eagle are intended to glide in the wind.

That is why at different times of our lives we are all going to be shaken by "stress storms." However, what we must keep in mind is that as we wait on the Lord and rely on the Lord, He will not only take us through the storm, but He will, in effect, lift us above the storm. He will actually elevate us above the problems and pressures of life.

C. Enduring Power

Isaiah 40:31 goes on to say, "They shall run and not be weary." God not only gives us stature to triumph over obstacles, but He gives us support to meet opportunities. Therefore, please realize that stress is not totally bad. Some stress is needed. Some pressure is good. It is the pressure of a deadline that forces you to complete a task. It is the pressure of a division championship that causes that baseball pitcher to rear back for "a little extra" and strike out the batter. It is the pressure of a Super Bowl that forces the football player to dive a little harder to make that goal line.

Opportunity knocks at our door only so often, and when it knocks it knocks swiftly. When opportunity knocks we have to not only be quick to answer, but ready to act on those things that God has called us to do.

D. Everlasting Power

Isaiah concludes by telling us "they shall walk and not faint" (Isaiah 40:31c, NKJV). Now what is the prophet saying here? Merely this: As the hammer of stress incessantly pounds against the door of your life, don't give in and don't give out. Keep walking, keep pressing on, no matter how hard the trauma, how deep the trouble, how great the tension.

Maybe the greatest ability a person can ever have is dependability. If you will wait on the Lord, He will give you the kind of abiding power that will help you to keep walking when you don't think you can take another single step. Did you know true victory is not in how fast you can run, but how long you can walk? The only religion that really matters is the religion in your shoe leather. In fact, the Lord is much more impressed with that Christian who just keeps walking with Jesus Christ, step after step, day after day, month in and month out, never giving up, finishing just as good as he began, as He is with many of these alleged "rocket Christians" who go up like a rocket and come down like a rock.

"Those on the heights are not the souls

Who never erred nor went astray,

Who trod unswerving to their goals

Along a smooth, rose-bordered way.

Nay, those who stand where first comes dawn,

Are those who stumbled - but went on."

That is really the only thing that matters to God. That is the only thing required by God. Micah 6:8 says, "He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Conclusion

Now let me share with you three indisputable, irrefutable, stress-busters.

First of all, perceive God's presence. When your stress seems to be insufferable, do not forget that God is with you.

Deuteronomy 33:27 says, "The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He will thrust out the enemy from before you, and will say, 'Destroy!'" Remember that in the midst of that stress, God is your refuge, God is your strength. When you are under that stress and you feel as though you are being pushed down into the ground, God is constructing a tent of refuge around you. He is protecting you and surrounding you with His power and with His presence.

Then, you should receive God's power. You cannot meet stress on a daily basis in your own strength. Stress will deplete your strength, but His strength will deplete your stress.

Finally, believe God's promises. As you confront the storm, the stress, the strain, and the strife of life, consider Isaiah 41:10, "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God, I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand."

Finding strength in God, you can turn stress into success.

_________________________________________

[9] "How You Can Tell When It's Going to Be a Rotten Day." Accessed 19 March 2005 at http://www.bible.org/illus.asp?topic_id=1711.

[10] Kenneth Jernigan, "The Bell, the Clapper, and the Cord: Wit and Witticism" (Baltimore: National Federation of the Blind, 1994), 80.

[11] "Why Is There More Stress Today?" Accessed 29 October 2005 at http://www.stress.org/problem.htm.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Dale H. Peterson, M.D., "Stress Management." Accessed 19 March 2005 at http://wellnessprotocols.com/articlePage.htm?aId=6&dId=78155.

[14] "Stress: Why You Have It and How It Hurts Your Health?", MayoClinic.com, 23 September 2005. Accessed 29 October 2005 at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress/SR00001/FORCESSL=false&.