People today are quick to argue that they cannot afford to take a day off, but I say that they cannot afford not to do it. We often hear, “I am too busy to do that. I would never get everything done if I did that.” My answer is, “Then you are too busy, and something needs to change in your life.”
When we are too busy to obey God’s ordinances, we will pay the price. Remember, the Bible says we reap only what we sow. If we sow continual stress with no rest to offset it, we will reap the results in our bodies, emotions, and minds.
If someone says, “Well, my boss insists that I work seven days a week,” then I would say to get a new job. I learned from the story of Epaphroditus, who was working with Paul in the ministry and became so sick from overwork that he almost died, that even if I am overworking “for Jesus” (in my way of thinking), I will still pay the price for abusing my body.
Regular time set apart for God is one of the quickest ways to restore a tired mind and body. Jesus invited us to rest when He called for those “who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened.” He promised to ease and relieve and refresh our souls. He even offered “recreation and blessed quiet” for our souls (Matthew 11:28–30). Just lay your burdens on Jesus, spend time with Him, rest in His presence, and you will experience a glorious restoration. God delights in restoring all things.
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The question is not
Do you have stress?
Everyone has stress. The question is
Are you managing your stress?
Use wisdom, which is really sanctified common sense. Realize you cannot spend something you don’t have. Spending what one does not have is what causes financial stress and ultimately financial collapse. Spending energy we don’t have has the exact same effect except it’s on our physical health, rather than the financial realm.
Our bodies warn us when they are running low on energy. We should respect them. I can remember conferences in which I conducted five sessions consisting of three hours each, and instead of going home to rest like I needed to, I went to the shopping mall.
Of course, I felt extremely tired, but I would not go home. My head hurt, my feet hurt, I was grouchy and often felt discouraged, but I would not rest. I was not respecting my body; I was not listening to the warning signals it was giving me. I have since learned better. If I am out doing anything and I start to feel I am running out of energy, I don’t wait until I am completely depleted. I go home while I still have some strength. I have learned the dangers of total exhaustion and have a reverential fear of abusing my body.
I ignored warnings in the past and paid the price. I am encouraging you not to wait until it is too late, and you have lost your health. Begin right now to respect your body, and treasure the health God has given you. I am grateful to be able to say that God has restored me, and I feel good most of the time. I also must say that I will probably have to be extra careful for the rest of my life. Once we push our bodies past where God intended them to go, we have weaknesses that will show up quickly with the slightest provocation.
Faith and prayer work. God will restore. He is the God of restoration, but we must also realize that we cannot continually ignore warnings. God is merciful, but He is also just. He put natural safety alarms in our bodies to indicate when we need rest, and He teaches us what to do when those alarms sound. He means what He says: We are the dwelling places of the Holy Spirit, and we should not do anything to hurt God’s temple (see 1 Corinthians 3:17, 6:19).
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I spent many years getting upset frequently. There were probably very few days when I did not get aggravated about something, and often I did so several times each day. As I studied God’s Word and gained wisdom, I began to realize that this required a lot of energy. I was tired most of the time and didn’t have any energy to spare, so I knew I had to calm down. Jesus told His disciples, as recorded in John 14:27, that they were to stop allowing themselves to be “agitated and disturbed.” He told them, in essence, to relax.
I don’t know how much energy is required to get really upset and then to try to calm down, but I am sure it is a lot. It takes energy to resist getting frustrated, but not nearly as much as going through the entire cycle.
Eventually I learned to resist becoming upset as soon as I felt distressed. I learned to talk to myself and actually calm myself down by doing so. I asked God for help each time I started to feel that I was losing my peace. I was learning to “hold” my peace, just as Moses told the Israelites to do. He reassured them, “The L
ORD
shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:14
KJV
). Frequently losing our tempers or having fits is damaging to our health.
What we often do to our bodies reminds me of a rubber band: When you stretch it too far, it breaks, and you have to tie it into a knot for continued use. Let this occur several times, and eventually all you have is knots. Like a rubber band, we can be stretched only so far, and then we ultimately break under the strain.
All the upset stretches us beyond our limits, and ultimately we break, so we tie a knot and keep going, then another and another until we go to the doctor and say, “I feel as if I am tied in knots and cannot relax.” We don’t know how accurate the statement really is.
Psalm 39:4–6 says, in essence, it is useless to be in turmoil, and how true that statement is. It does no good at all. The only one fulfilled when we get upset is the devil. He sets us up to get us frustrated anyway, so of course, he is delighted. He is the thief who only comes to kill, steal, and destroy. He wants to kill us, steal our health, and destroy our bodies and minds. We should do as Jesus did and say, “Get thee behind me, Satan. You are an offense, and you are in my way.”
We might look at our bodies and energy levels as a bank account. We have enough for our lifetime. But if we spend it all early, we will feel depleted in our later years. I hate to see young people abusing their bodies through eating junk food excessively, never resting, and even perhaps using damaging chemical substances. I have tried to speak to a few, but I always get the same response. “Oh man, I feel great, got all kinds of energy.” They don’t understand that if they overspend today, they will do without later on in life.
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One of the reasons I previously found myself stressed-out, burned-out, and sick was from not knowing how to say no. We all want to please people, but we might kill ourselves trying to do so.
I wanted to take every ministry opportunity that came my way, but it just was not possible. We must all learn to let God’s Spirit, and not other people’s desires, lead us. Frequently people tell me that God has showed them that I am supposed to come to their churches or conferences and be their speaker. There was a time when that would pressure me because I thought,
If I say no, then I am, in reality, saying they didn’t hear from God.
Other people cannot hear from God for us. We are individuals and have the right to hear from God ourselves. I started realizing that no matter what they thought they had heard, I could not do the engagement with peace and confidence if I had not heard it myself. Remember, God has no obligation to help me finish something He did not tell me to do.
Dr. Colbert teaches that many people are unable to say no because they have passive personalities. He explains that most people fall into one of three personality categories: passive, aggressive, or assertive. He wrote the following scenario to show a typical situation for a passive person:
If you are passive, you usually have problems expressing your thoughts and feelings and find it difficult to stand up for yourself. Other people, especially the aggressive type, tend to walk all over you; they are able to manipulate and even make decisions for you. Passive individuals usually feel guilty and like they have to apologize. They usually have poor self-esteem and maintain poor eye contact or look away and down to the floor when you talk with them.
I have found so many Christians who are passive, and much of the stress that they are under is directly related to their passivity. You see, when someone is passive, other people’s problems become his problems.
For example, a passive person will not be able to say no when people ask him to do something. An aggressive person at work may ask a passive fellow employee to stay later to help him finish his work because he has an important appointment. The passive individual is unable to say no, so he stays overtime, doing the other person’s work. This may create problems with his spouse, since he comes home late from work, and this trend continues because the aggressive person will continue to put more and more on the back of the passive person, and the passive person allows it. Many times this is because the passive person has a good heart and good motives, and he lets the fear of rejection control his life. Instead he should assert his feelings and ideas and risk not being accepted.
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Are you saying yes with your mouth while your heart is screaming no? If so, you will eventually be stressed-out, burned-out, and possibly sick. We just cannot go on like that forever without ultimately breaking down under the strain. Be true to your own heart.
Don’t be afraid to say no. Don’t fear the rejection of others. No matter how many people you please, there will always be someone who will not be pleased. Face it now, and get it over with.
Learn that you can enjoy your life even if everyone does not think you are wonderful. Don’t be addicted to approval from people; if God approves, that is all that really matters.
Don’t try so hard to keep other people happy that it costs you your joy, peace, and health. None of the people who put pressure on you will stand before God and give an account of your life; only you will do that. Be prepared to be able to say to Him, “I followed my heart to the best of my ability.”
Being committed is very good, but being overcommitted is very dangerous. As I said earlier, know your limits and don’t hesitate to say no if you know that you need to. Tell people when you don’t have peace about being involved in a certain activity or project. They should respect your rights and want you to have peace in your life. If they don’t, then it is clear they are not thinking of what is good for you.
Remember that people can be very selfish. It is good to be a blessing, to do things for others and serve them, but not to the point that we get sick trying to keep everyone we know happy. I am not saying that we should never do anything we don’t want to do. There are always times when we will serve others sacrificially, but we must not let their desires control us and push us into exhaustion and high levels of stress.
God has assigned a life span to each of us, and although we don’t know exactly how long we have on earth, we should certainly desire to live out the fullness of our years. We want to burn on, not burn out. We should live with passion and zeal, not with exhaustion; we should be good examples to others.
Learn to say no when you need to—it will help you stay healthy!
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People with aggressive personalities have their own sets of stress inducers that can work havoc in their health. Dr. Colbert writes:
People with aggressive behavior generally dominate, intimidate, and bully others, and they are very confrontational. They tend to view their own needs as priority, and they stop at nothing to get what they want. Most of us have encountered aggressive drivers who cut us off in traffic or shake their fists at us.
God desires for Christians to be neither passive nor aggressive, but
assertive.
Assertiveness allows people to communicate confidently, boldly, and clearly their thoughts, feelings, and desires. But unless they were raised in loving, stable home environments where they received encouragement, freedom to express themselves, and discipline with love, support, and acceptance, most Christians never learn assertiveness.
Many Christians grew up in dysfunctional families. Instead of being programmed for success, they were programmed for failure. They heard they were no good, that they would never amount to anything, that they were losers. Some children responded passively to this environment; some became angry and aggressive.
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While we can see the danger of being too passive, we can also see that being inflexible and aggressive will not lead to healthy situations. Learning to be adaptable, considering the welfare of those around us, is one way we can keep peace.
Don’t expect the world to adapt to you; be ready to bend before you break. When you start to feel stressed because things aren’t going your way, and you sense peace ebbing away, quickly see what you can change to relieve the pressure. Most often you will need to simplify, simplify, simplify. The more simple your life, the more peace you will enjoy.
Keep in mind that being assertive is the healthy goal you are working toward. Assertiveness is like leather: It is tough to tear apart and will show only a small indention under the impact of a hammer, while aggressiveness is like brittle sandstone that easily crumbles if it is struck with a hard blow. Likewise an aggressive person’s temper easily breaks or snaps under pressure, but an assertive person is able to stay flexible and in one piece.
We can see from pondering this comparison why Satan’s plans can thrive in the life of an aggressive person. He intends to break us by applying force and pressure. However, he will not succeed if in the process we are willing to bend and remain flexible. His plans cause the stiff-necked or stubborn individuals to crumble easily, so they fall apart.