What Do You See?

I was just reading an article on Yahoo! Shine about stress and how our perception of it and how it affects us can make a difference in our health. It’s an article by Beth Greenfield of the Shine staff, titled “Why You Should Take Stress More Seriously.” I talk about stress with people in the health and wellness workshops I teach, and I give them stress reduction techniques and discuss how the foods we eat and the amount of sleep and physical activity we get has an effect on our mood as well. But I’ve never thought about what this article is talking about which is our perception of stress and how that can affect us in different ways.

In the article, Dr. Paul Rosch, founder and board chairman of the American Institute of Stress, is quoted as saying, “We’ve known for a long time, to quote the Greek philosopher Epictetus, that men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them. You can show definitively that people have a higher rate of heart attack if they feel they have too many demands on them at work or in life, whether it’s true or not. So if you perceive something, it’s as good as the real thing.”

That got me thinking about faith, and how faith can be an antidote for stress. If we believe that there is a God who loves us, who cares for us and watches over us, if we believe that He is there to fight our battles for us, that He is on our side, that we don’t have to worry because He told us we don’t have to, that those who rise against us unfairly will fall, that vengeance belongs to Him so we just need to pray and bless those who curse us, that love covers all – if we really believe that, if that is our perception of every situation, it doesn’t really matter what the situation is because we make a difference in it by what we believe is true.

I’m not saying we should walk in front of traffic because we believe that God will save us from harm. When Jesus is tempted by the devil in the wilderness, and the devil tells him, “If you be the son of God, cast yourself down: for it is written, 'He shall give his angels charge concerning you: and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest at any time you dash your foot against a stone,” Jesus replies, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” There was a movie like that once, when a man survives an airplane crash and suddenly afterward for a period of time he is able to do things that he used to be afraid of, even eating strawberries which he’s allergic to. At one point he walks in front of traffic on the highway and cars swerve around him, but that’s not the kind of perception of reality I’m talking about. The name of the movie is “Fearless,” and that’s not what I’m really talking about either. We might still have fear but know that the Lord says to “fear not,” and so we hang in there and keep talking to Him about what’s going on until we can get through it to the other side. We might not walk in front of cars on the highway or eat something we’re allergic to, but we might just be able to stand in the face of our enemies and keep on standing, even if we are feeling stress.

I’ve gotten to have a kind of, I don’t know what to call it, a “stress sense” maybe. I can tell now when the enemy is going to attack, though sometimes I don’t recognize the feeling for what it is until after the attack comes. I was having a really hard time sleeping on Thursday night – I doubt if I slept much at all really – and I woke up a little earlier than I needed to and felt so tired that I tried to get back into bed and did sleep about 45 minutes more. But it was a very restless night, a very stressful one, and I wasn’t really sure why. I had to deal with someone on Friday who has been stressing me out, but I wasn’t really stressed about that at the time. I couldn’t figure out why, but I just couldn’t sleep. Then I saw this person and they started in on their same old stuff, and I was all right through it, and then they hit me with something completely unexpected and underhanded. It was only afterward that I put the lack of sleep together with this extra attack. In some weird way I could tell that the enemy was gearing up for another hit, and that’s something I’ve gotten to have a good sense of if I only can pay attention to it so I won’t be surprised.

That’s really when stress seems to hit me – when the rug is pulled out from under me, when someone I trusted starts acting awful, when something that seemed secure suddenly isn’t, when I don’t know where the next punch is coming from. But at times that’s what the Christian walk is like. “Your enemy prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8). I heard that passage preached on once when the Pastor said that it’s important to look at the word “like,” because the enemy doesn’t really have the power of a roaring lion, he just acts like one. He tries to frighten and intimidate us, but if we have our faith together and we’ve put our armor on, we won’t be scared of him at all because we’ll know who our God is and that He’s much bigger than anything that the enemy can throw at us.

But that’s really the key. We have to know who our God is and know how much He loves us. We have to know that no matter what the person who is after you is doing, if they’re not doing the right thing, God will take care of it. Ecclesiastes 10:4 tells us, “If a ruler’s anger rises against you, do not leave your post; calmness can lay great offenses to rest.” It is how we respond to situations, how we feel and show our feelings, that is the key to how the situation can play out. We can fly up in anger, we can respond in the same way we are being treated, we can tell people off, walk off in a huff. We can be stressed or angry or bitter or disappointed. Or, and I know this is a big or, we can choose to listen to what the Lord tells us and be still and know that He is God. (Psalm 46:10)

I don’t know how the situation I am dealing with will turn out, and it can be stressful when we’re dealing with people we can’t trust. But God tells us not to trust in people but to trust in Him. All the way home on Friday night I kept talking to Him saying, “I just don’t know what to do!” and He kept saying, “Do you trust me?” something that He says to me from time to time when He knows that I’m getting stressed out. And I do trust Him and I answer that I do, but that I don’t trust the person I’m dealing with. But that’s ok because He tells us that we don’t have to worry about what people do, all we have to do is put our focus on Him and do what it is that He is asking us to do. If we can do that, if we can keep on walking in His way no matter what anyone tries to do to push us in another way, we’ll make it through and past and far beyond the situation we thought was hopeless. God has a way of making a way where there is no way, and if we can remember that, we’ll make it through the Red Sea and be able to walk on dry land.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan