April 1 - Rest When You’re Stressed

Rest When You’re Stressed

”Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:29)

Someone once said, “Stressed is Desserts spelled backwards.”  I’m not sure that changes our anxiety, but God can specialize in turning our challenges around if we let Him.  It has been estimated that 98% of people today experience stress in one form or another…the other 2% are lying!

One person said, “Anyone who isn’t completely stressed out these days simply isn’t paying attention.”  Amen! A USA Today Poll about stress a few years back asked, “How often do you experience stress in your daily life?" The answer were telling:
               1.   42% = Frequently
               2.   38% = Sometimes
               3.   18% = Rarely
               4.    2% = Never

We are all affected at one time or another and there is no getting around it…and the price has been severe.

It has been estimated that 75-90 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 but stress levels have also escalated in children, teenagers, college students and the elderly for other reasons, including: 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, the loss of other strong sources of social support that are powerful stress factors. However, light stress or in the most anguishing challenges you can ever face, Christ calls us to Himself.  

Norman Vincent Peale once told of a visit he made to Belgium after World War 2. He went to a place called Breendonk. During the war, Breendonk had been a notorious prison in which the Nazis had incarcerated loyal, patriotic Belgians who had resisted the invaders. The Nazis had treated the Belgians like animals, keeping them in miserable little cells, torturing them and trying to crush their spirits. But the prisoners kept up their courage even when times were the most difficult. After having walked through one of the dark, dismal passageways of the former prison, Peale said he asked his guide: "How could they stand it? How could they stand up under the terrible stress of trying to survive in this horrible place?" The guide told Peale to follow him and he would show Peale how they survived. Taking Peale back into one of the darkest cells of the prison, the guide showed Peale a crude outline of a man’s face that had been carved on the stone wall of the cell. It was someone's representation of the face of Jesus.   "When things were the hardest and our people were about to give up because they thought they could stand it no more, they would come in here," the guide said. "They would put their hands on the face of Jesus to remind themselves that they were not alone." The guide told Peale that one night the Nazis came and took away the guide's own father. They never saw him again. They learned after the war that he had been imprisoned at Breendonk and, though they couldn't be sure, they felt he had probably died there. "My father was a devout Christian," the guide said. "We were told that often he came here to place his hand over the face of Jesus."
             

We attempt things through our own abilities…but Christ calls us to tap into His ability. We try so many thinks before we come to Him. If I can get a vacation or get some rest.  We travel long distances and feel more tired than when we left. If I could just nap.  If I could drop some of my responsibilities.   If I can get this thrill rush through drugs, relationships, lust, or activities. But the true answer to rest comes through an abiding relationship with Jesus. 

Jesus gave a perfect picture to us in John 15:4-5 "Take care to live in Me and let Me live in you.  For a branch can't produce fruit when severed from the vine.  Nor can you be fruitful apart from Me.  I am the vine; you are the branches.  Whoever lives in Me and I in him shall produce a large crop of fruit."  A branch is totally dependent upon the vine. When it is cut off from that vine, it won't bear any grapes, or figs, or anything else. A branch cannot produce fruit by itself. It's got to be connected.  Jesus is saying, that's the way we have to be with God.  We have to be plugged in.  He adds in Matthew 11:29, ”Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” God has the power.  But it's not automatic.  It's when you're plugged in, tuned in to God that the power comes through you.  He is our unlimited source no matter what stress we might face.  Anyone for some dessert?

Terry Risser

Reflections:

1)    What has been your greatest point of stress in the last month?

2)    When you take time to turn in over to Christ, what is He able to offer you?

Consider reading the Word today:

 

Copyright 2014- Terry Risser