“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths. “ – Proverbs 3:5-6
A lot of things are going on in the world that affect us on a daily basis, if that’s our job, our friends or family, the election or even the possibility of us going to war with another country. I seriously woke up this morning to what it felt like a Million memes and posts on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube about how their scared of being drafted into the service and possibly being sent to the Middle East. Now I know some of these are people joking, but I know that some people are actually worried and maybe even some of them that are posting, are hiding their stress and anxiety behind their jokes. Some are scared and stressed out of their mind and some don’t even know what I’m talking about, so they obviously don’t worry about it.
We all have our stressors that give us the most anxiety. For some, it’s the pressure to appease their family, or to make Everyone happy, or ‘adulting’ as some people call it, while others its to be successful or keep a certain lifestyle and so they worry about their finances more than others do. The finances do stress me out sometimes and then I remember that I’m fine and that I’ll be taken care of. But at the end of the day, though we all get stressed and some stress is good to keep us alert, we don’t need to be too stressed. This is especially the case if we are Christians and that Christ can help us through our stress and hard times.
So many times when people are stressed, it is because they are trying to keep the status quo and keep up the way they live and are worried that they will lose their lifestyle. This could be directly, by being worried about finances that affect how much you can buy or indirectly, such as trying to appease your friend group or family or trying to be perfect on all of your assignments. This can affect you indirectly in that, if you aren’t perfect in your assignments then you see yourself as a failure and then put more stress on yourself and then can’t go out and have fun with friends and family so you can fulfill this idea in your mind that you have to be perfect when you don’t have to be, not saying don’t push yourself, just don’t put too many expectations on yourself.
Like earlier when talking about putting too many expectations on yourself, that is generally the source of our stress. We have certain expectations to keep our current lifestyle, whatever that lifestyle is. I am not minimizing someone’s stress or life situation, but rather putting our stresses( especially in western culture) into perspective. The problem is that we generally have too high expectations for our lives that are not in line with the Word of God. If we read the Bible, we would find out that we are not promised a great peaceful life, I mean even the apostles all died a martyrs death except for John the author of Revelation, and even he got exiled at one point. So if even the the Apostles, the ones that walked the earth with Jesus and were his most loyal followers didn’t have a great life, what should we expect when even our symbol for our belief is that of Jesus on a tool of execution called the cross.
This is where we decide if we trust Jesus or not. A lot of our stress comes from depending on our own strength, mind and our own understanding when the Bible says in Proverbs to rely on the Lord. Now, is Jesus calling all of us to die a martyrs death? No, but he is calling us to live out the great commission said in Matthew 28 and to follow and have a relationship with him in our everyday lives. So, even if you have a good life or bad, keep your eyes on the Lord and trust in him for his thoughts and plans are higher than what we could fathom.
I’ll give an example in my own life, my grandfather died a little over a decade ago and since I was close to him and depended on him, it hurt a whole lot for both of us when he was battling cancer. After that, I ended up going to church more often and eventually surrendering my life to Christ and now I’m a pastor and helping others through their lives. Did my grandpa know that when he got Cancer and eventually died, that it would be used for Good in my life and possibly in others lives in the future? No he probably didn’t but now he’s in Heaven. And if you don’t like my story, read in the Book of Genesis where the story of Joseph is told about him being sold into slavery to eventually save his family from a famine. God works in mysterious ways and we will never fully know why he does the things he does that give us stress in our life, but we can speculate and trust that his plan will be fulfilled in this world.
So at the end of the day, whatever stresses we have, we can trust God and lean on him for guidance in prayer and reading of the Bible. We don’t need to do everything by ourselves and have too many expectations but rather depend on God. I can personally tell you that my most peaceful times in life were when I was reading the Bible and talking to God about my day in prayer and asking for help and guidance. If anyone wants to talk about life, or has a problem with my post, please message me and I’ll try to respond as quickly as I can. Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day and life.
The Bible Life 