Participants: Skip MacCarty, Don Mackintosh
Series Code: HFAL
Program Code: HFAL000091
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00:45 Hello and welcome to "Health for a Lifetime"
00:47 I'm your host Don Mackintosh 00:49 and today, we're going to talk about STRESS 00:51 Joining us is Dr. Skip MacCarty 00:53 He's written a new seminar called "Stress Beyond Coping" 00:56 and this is a fascinating seminar. 00:58 I've really appreciated reading through it, 01:00 and preparing with you for this. 01:02 I've noticed something that really 01:04 gripped my attention though, 01:05 and that was that stress pyramid. 01:07 Tell us a little bit about that. 01:08 Well Don, I wanted to show the 7 keys to managing stress on a 01:12 hierarchical formation based on the research that I've done, 01:15 and so I developed the stress pyramid, 01:17 and it starts at the bottom with eating healthy 01:19 which is very important for health... 01:21 very important, but it's not more important than 01:23 exercise for stress management purposes, 01:25 and exercise isn't more important than time management 01:27 and organization which isn't more important than relaxation 01:30 and so forth right on up... 01:31 loving relationships, a healthy viewpoint, a healthy attitude, 01:34 a positive attitude toward life... 01:36 And finally, the spiritual integration at the very top 01:39 of the pyramid that affects everything else in our lives; 01:41 I put it at the very top. 01:42 And this is on the basis of... 01:44 It's on the basis of not only just my own experience, 01:47 but on the basis of research. 01:49 Dr. Dale Matthews at the University of Georgetown, 01:51 also with the National Institute for Health Care Research 01:56 The National Institute for Health Care Research 01:57 has researched over 200 or 300 now, scientific research 02:04 programs based on the relationship of 02:07 spirituality and religious involvement in health 02:10 and it has found a 10 to 1 correlation of 02:12 positive to negative results; it's just overwhelming. 02:15 I noticed in the material that you gave me to prepare for today 02:18 that you were the opening speaker for the 02:20 "Eleventh International Congress on Stress" in Hawaii 02:23 and was it related to this.. is this what you talked about? 02:28 It was Don, and I'll tell you the story... 02:30 Back in 1998 when our church, at Andrews University 02:33 was involved in "Net 98" 02:35 I had had a practice for several years during a major 02:39 evangelistic campaign and reading through the Book of Acts 02:41 Well I had done all this research and the seminar was 02:44 was just about to be published and I was going 02:45 through the Book of Acts this time and I was noticing 02:48 things related to stress I had never seen before, 02:51 and I wondered... Could the whole Bible have this 02:54 much in it about stress? 02:55 So I started with Genesis 1:1 02:57 About 1-1/2 years into that project, 03:00 I got our annual newsletter, 03:01 I'm a fellow of the American Institute of Stress, 03:04 and I received our monthly newsletter, 03:07 and it was calling for papers for the next 03:08 International Congress on Stress 03:10 to be held in Hawaii in December of this last year, 2000 03:14 and I had never read anything in the Bible and stress, 03:22 and so I called them and found out if it was possible to 03:25 submit an abstract and they said "yes," so I did, 03:28 and on the Bible as a resource instrument for stress, 03:32 and they accepted it and finally as it got closer to the time, 03:38 found out that I was the opening speaker for that congress 03:41 on "The Bible as a Resource for Stress Management. " 03:43 Amazing... So did you get stressed out about 03:45 that invitation? 03:46 You know, I had so much wonderful help in putting 03:48 that together and so much prayer behind me, 03:50 that I went into that thing so confident... 03:52 Yet when we got there, it was just a LAVISH hotel 03:55 and we were going down to the 03:57 opening banquet on Sunday evening, 04:00 and we got in the elevator, the first people we met 04:04 at this hotel in Hawaii, got in the elevator, 04:07 on our way down the elevator, these people, 04:09 we were exchanging names and why we were there, 04:12 and I said, "We're here with the 04:13 Stress Congress, " they said, "We are too" 04:15 And they said, "What's your name?" and I told them my name, 04:17 and they said, "Skip MacCarty, you're doing that presentation 04:20 on "The Bible as a Resource for Stress Management" 04:25 And I said, "Yes" He said he teaches 04:30 stress management at a college and he said, 04:31 "We came for THAT very presentation" WOW! 04:34 It happened to be the most attended session 04:37 in the entire Congress. 04:38 Amazing, what a blessing that is It was incredible! 04:41 So what does the Bible have to say about stress? 04:43 Well it's got a lot to say about it and I've got several points.. 04:47 First of all, starting out, in the Bible, 04:52 the word that's used for salvation is the same word 04:57 that's used often for healing... 04:59 and that is the Greek term "sozo" 05:02 In fact, sometimes, Don, in the very same verse 05:05 when it's referring to healing and salvation, 05:10 that same word is used and it's used interchangeably, 05:13 in other words, translators have to make a determination 05:16 as to how it should be used. 05:17 Whether "heal" or "save" 05:19 For instance, in James when he says, "Call for the elders 05:22 of the church and they'll anoint you with oil, 05:25 and the prayer of faith will save the sick" 05:29 Some translations have "save" 05:30 Other translations have heals, the word "sozo" 05:33 So there's a direct correlation in the Bible between 05:35 spirituality and health. 05:37 So stress management really, or dealing with stress is 05:41 a healing type thing... 05:42 But is there really a stress management program 05:44 in the Bible per se? Would you say? 05:46 You know, it was a surprise to me to find that the first 05:52 stress management program given in the Bible 05:54 was the ONLY part of the Bible written by God Himself. 05:57 I had gone through the Ten Commandments; 05:59 first, I just started with Genesis 1:1, 06:01 and went all the way through Genesis, 06:03 found some tremendous material. 06:04 I was going through Exodus and went through 06:08 the Ten Commandments and caught several things 06:09 in the Ten Commandments but then it just dawned on me 06:11 one day, every one of the Ten Commandments is 06:14 somehow calculated to prevent us from having too much stress 06:19 or the wrong kind of stress and so forth. 06:21 The Ten Commandments, and the one that is so beautiful 06:25 is the Sabbath! 06:27 The Sabbath gives us a pressure-relief valve 06:30 par excellence! 06:32 It says when Friday night comes at sundown, 06:34 you just turn everything off... 06:35 And you can rejoice in the Lord, 06:37 you can enjoy your family, 06:39 you can remember what life is all about. 06:40 Why are we working 6 days? 06:42 What's the point of working those 6 days? 06:44 The Sabbath is a GIFT of GOD in TIME 06:46 for us to kind of rejuvenate. 06:47 Built-in stress release. Perfectly! 06:49 So all these Ten Commandments then have to do with 06:52 relationships either to God or man and they are meant to 06:55 make sure we don't have STRESS in those, is that true? 06:58 Too much stress - overload stress, 06:59 and the wrong kind of stress, 07:01 the damaging stress, the DISTRESS. 07:04 Okay, so if you break the Commandments, 07:06 then that would be SIN... the Bible would call it probably 07:10 Isn't sin itself stressful? 07:11 In fact, let me just begin this list here, 07:16 the Ten Commandments is the first program for 07:21 stress management in the Bible, 07:23 and the second is this very issue of sin and forgiveness. 07:26 There are many places in the Bible where sin and forgiveness 07:29 are related to stress and healing. 07:33 In Psalm 32, David prays... 07:38 "When I kept silence, my bones wasted away" 07:42 "My strength was sapped" 07:44 ...talking about physical illness and distress. 07:48 Isn't that when he was involved with someone he shouldn't 07:50 have been involved with... someone else's wife? 07:52 That's right... And he didn't want anybody to know about it. 07:54 And then in the very next breath he says, 07:56 "Then I acknowledged my sin to you, 07:58 and did not cover up my iniquity. " 08:00 In other words, he confessed his sin, 08:01 "I will confess my transgression to the Lord, 08:04 and You FORGAVE the guilt of my sin" 08:06 There's the pressure-relief valve again. 08:08 Acknowledging our sin, getting it out into the open, 08:12 and then letting God just take that away to forgive me. 08:14 Is this why some of these criminals and thieves, 08:16 I mean they've never been caught, 08:18 but they come forward and they say, "I DID it" 08:20 and they're releasing their stress... do you suppose? 08:22 Undoubtedly, yep it's a huge pressure-relief valve for them. 08:25 So the Ten Commandments and then sin and forgiveness 08:27 ...So the Bible doesn't want us 08:29 to have any stress then... would you agree with that? 08:32 It was interesting, after I got months into the study, 08:35 it just began to dawn on me that the Bible really 08:37 does not set as a goal of life to get relief from stress. 08:42 There are 2 kinds of material in the Bible... 08:46 One kind of material is like the Ten Commandments... 08:49 it protects us from stress that has no transcendent meaning, 08:54 no transcendent purpose, no higher purpose to it. 08:56 Harmful stress... Harmful stress, the distress, 08:58 just purposeless stress, I call it. 09:00 There's another whole set of information in the Bible 09:04 that, in fact, CALLS us to live a life of purposeful stress. 09:08 It calls us to sacrificially give of ourselves 09:13 for other people... give of our time, 09:14 give of our money to help other people. 09:16 It calls us to live by certain values even though 09:19 living by those values may cause persecution 09:22 ...even martyrdom in some cases. 09:24 And there are many evidences in the Bible 09:26 that God's honor guard, so-to-speak, are people who were 09:29 persecuted for standing up for what was right. 09:32 So Christ, Himself, when He came to this world, 09:34 that wasn't really a stress reduction program for Him... 09:36 That's right. It was for US! 09:38 Life is not about, simply, stress reduction. 09:41 It's about committing ourself to the values 09:43 that make the stress that we DO have, 09:45 the transcendent stress that really counts for something 09:49 from the Biblical prospective. 09:50 Something purposeful or meaningful. Exactly! 09:54 What about BAD things? 09:57 The stressful things that happen to us in life... 09:59 Does the Bible address that? 10:01 You know, why BAD things happen to good people... 10:03 or that's kind of the phrase. 10:05 That is one of the beautiful components of 10:08 stress management in the Bible. 10:09 It describes meaning to the trials that people have 10:13 when they're attempting to live for God. 10:15 In fact, it will describe meaning to all kinds of trials. 10:18 I love the story that Rick Rice tells about this sculptor 10:21 who has this block of marble, and he tells in his book 10:25 why bad things happen to God's people. 10:27 He has this block of marble and he's chiseling away 10:30 everything that doesn't fit this masterpiece in his mind 10:33 and this beautiful sculpture, 10:36 and when he gets into it, he finds a major flaw 10:40 in the marble. 10:42 And, at that point, he kind of draws back, thinks about it 10:46 for a couple of days, comes back to work on it, 10:49 and when he gets done, he has a BEAUTIFUL work of art 10:52 and it actually appears as though that flaw in the marble 10:55 was designed into it originally. 10:58 God can take ANY, even BIG mistakes that 11:01 we've made in our lives, 11:03 and He can change things... 11:04 He can craft a mission for us, a purpose out of that 11:07 that actually makes it look like it was BENEFICIAL 11:11 ...even though it may have been a foolish mistake we made. 11:14 And, we have so much evidence in the Bible 11:17 of trials having meaning. 11:19 Like... give me an example... 11:21 Well one of the greatest is in the Book of Genesis... 11:25 The Book of Genesis covers 2500 years of history, 11:28 and yet one-fourth to one-third of that book 11:33 is committed to one man; 11:35 it's the story of Joseph. 11:37 Joseph is the stress management par excellence. 11:41 He had some rough stress, didn't he? Absolutely! 11:43 He was committed to his values no matter how far he went down. 11:47 Living by his values got him into more trouble. 11:50 It created more stress for him. 11:51 He stayed by his values and at the end of the book 11:55 ...It's incredible when his brothers, who had 11:59 sold him into slavery... he meets his brothers, 12:01 and he tells them he has forgiven them... 12:03 And not to be distressed, he actually uses the terminology in 12:06 the Bible - "Don't be distressed 12:08 ...In the New International Version, anyway... 12:09 because God meant this for good" 12:11 And when their father dies, they come back again 12:13 and they beg him, "Please don't now take vengeance on us" 12:16 because they think he's just doing it for dad's sake. 12:18 And he begins to weep because he realizes that they never 12:23 did really accept his forgiveness to start with... 12:25 But then he says this to them, 12:28 "Don't be afraid; am I in the place of God?" 12:31 "You intended to harm me but God intended it for good 12:34 to accomplish what is now being done the saving of many lives. " 12:37 It's the Romans 8:28 principle 12:40 that ALL things can work together for good 12:42 to those who put their trust in God. 12:43 It is so awesome! 12:45 So He can use the crack in the marble 12:47 to make a beautiful masterpiece of your life. 12:50 Don, in 1979, I went through a very, VERY traumatic divorce. 12:55 I thought I was going to die during that period of time... 12:57 And out of that whole trauma, I thought my life was over, 13:01 my career was over, everything was over. 13:03 Out of that, this seminar, this stress seminar, 13:08 and the research that I've been doing on stress... was born, 13:11 and now it has been a blessing to thousands of people. 13:15 So one may say, "Scars could become stars" 13:20 and you know those... they really seem like clichés, 13:23 but it really is the truth when you start to 13:25 understand what the Bible has to say about stress. Powerfully 13:29 This was probably well-received there at the conference as well. 13:32 It was the most well-attended session of the Congress. 13:35 It was the first session but never had more people 13:39 than that first session; it had a tremendous response to people. 13:42 We've been talking with Dr. Skip MacCarty 13:44 We've been talking about stress. 13:46 Maybe in your life, you've been experiencing some of the 13:49 stressors that we've talked 13:50 about at the beginning of this program. 13:53 You're going to want to join us when we come back, 13:55 and continue to talk about what the 13:57 Bible has to say about stress. 14:01 Have you found yourself wishing 14:03 that you could shed a few pounds? 14:04 Have you been on a diet for most of your life 14:07 but not found anything that will really keep the weight off? 14:10 If you've answered "yes" to any of these questions, 14:13 then we have a solution for you that works! 14:15 Dr. Hans Diehl and Dr. Aileen Ludington 14:18 have written a marvelous booklet called... 14:20 "Reversing Obesity Naturally" 14:23 and we'd like to send it to you FREE of charge. 14:25 Here's a medically sound approach successfully used 14:28 by thousands who were able to 14:30 eat more and lose weight permanently without feeling 14:33 guilty or hungry through lifestyle medicine. 14:36 Dr. Diehl and Dr. Ludington have been featured on 3ABN 14:40 and in this booklet, they present a sensible approach 14:42 to eating, nutrition and lifestyle changes 14:45 that can help you prevent heart disease, diabetes 14:47 and EVEN cancer! 14:49 Call or write today for your free copy of... 14:51 "Reversing Obesity Naturally" 14:53 and you could be on your way to a healthier, happier YOU! 14:56 It's ABSOLUTELY free of charge, so call or write today. 15:02 Welcome back! We've been talking with 15:04 Dr. Skip MacCarty about stress... 15:06 And we've talked about the Bible and stress today. 15:10 It has real things to say about stress, 15:11 and we're happy that you can share those insights you've 15:14 gained over the last 20 years. 15:15 And really, I've been really blessed by the seminar 15:18 "Stress Beyond Coping" 15:19 I hope it is available and I'm sure that it is available 15:22 for people to get a hold of. 15:23 We were talking about these different stressors 15:28 and how the Bible relates to them. 15:29 We talked about the first stress program in the Bible... 15:32 that being the Ten Commandments; 15:34 avoiding those things which are harmful, 15:37 and then having purposeful stress. 15:39 But I notice here, you have something about PEACE. 15:42 Can we have PEACE? 15:43 That's right, Don, that's the next one on the list. 15:45 The Bible promises peace in the midst of stress. 15:49 In other words, it never guarantees we won't have stress. 15:53 In fact, it guarantees you WILL have stress. 15:55 Paul said that... "It's through many tribulations 15:58 we must enter the Kingdom of God. " 15:59 So maybe if you're not a Christian, 16:01 maybe you can live a stress-free life, I don't know... 16:04 I doubt it because there is no peace, Isaiah said to the wicked 16:08 But for sure, if you're a Christian you're going to have 16:11 some stress and distress even. 16:13 And yet, you can have peace in the midst of that stress... 16:16 The Bible promises peace, 16:17 "Perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon Him" 16:20 And I had a medical student who came to me a few months ago; 16:26 he had been living with somebody, he wasn't a Christian, 16:28 and living with somebody for a period of time, 16:30 and then that person moved out on him, 16:33 and he just went to pieces. 16:34 He had to take time off of medical school; 16:35 in fact, he was in rotations by then, 16:37 and his brother brought him to talk to me 16:39 because I do some work with stress, 16:41 and he talked to me for a couple of hours, 16:45 and he had had a religious background as a child, 16:50 but I gave him a copy of the Bible. 16:52 We talked a little bit about some of the 16:55 issues involved and what he was going through. 16:56 I gave him a copy of the Bible and asked him to begin 16:58 to read in the Book of Matthew. 17:00 He came back a couple of weeks later and had been reading, 17:03 and read already 27 chapters in the Book of Matthew 17:05 and he said, "Nothing has done for me - Nothing has done for me 17:08 what that has" He was still struggling 17:11 but he said, "That has brought 17:13 a deeper peace than anything I've ever known" 17:14 Do you find that just reading the Scriptures brings peace? 17:17 You know what Don, I am absolutely convinced now 17:20 after the research I've done, on the Bible as a resource 17:23 for stress management, starting with the 17:24 Book of Genesis and just working through verse by verse... 17:26 I don't care where somebody starts 17:27 reading anymore... it doesn't matter. 17:29 They're going to find something 17:30 to help them with stress. It's EVERYWHERE! 17:32 It's in the Book of Leviticus, it's everywhere. 17:33 Just READ the Bible, you're going to get help. 17:36 And that's what this man was doing. 17:38 You know the Apostle Paul, talking about 17:39 peace in the midst of stress... 17:41 The Apostle Paul was persecuted over and over and over... 17:45 He was flogged and we know how awful flogging was. 17:47 He was stoned. He was caned. 17:50 He was shipwrecked. 17:51 All those things happened and yet listen to what he wrote: 17:56 Here in the Book of Philippians... 17:58 "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances" 18:02 "I know what it is to be in need. " 18:04 "I know what it is to have plenty. " 18:05 "I've learned the secret of being content in any 18:07 and every situation whether well-fed or hungry 18:10 whether living in plenty or in want, 18:12 I can do EVERYTHING through Him who gives me strength. " 18:14 He found that peace... He found it. 18:17 It doesn't matter what you do or DON'T do... 18:19 Or what's happening to you... Yeah 18:20 It's not dependent on what's happening to you. 18:22 You know, I've often thought about Paul... 18:24 You know, what if he hadn't gotten in all these problems, 18:26 he wouldn't have had time to write these things. 18:28 You know, and so through his STRESS, 18:32 we have the keys for success, you could say. Yeah... Amazing 18:36 Okay, besides peace then, 18:38 we've looked at several different things... 18:41 You teach that social relationships 18:42 are important as well; talk about that a bit 18:46 Well the Bible teaches that. 18:48 The Bible has always brought believers into communities. 18:51 In Israel it was the Old Testament. 18:53 And even when somebody who wasn't a Jew was converted 18:56 to the God of the Bible, they were to become 18:59 part of that community of faith. 19:01 In the New Testament, it's the church. 19:05 Listen to how the Book of Acts, 19:07 in Acts 2, describes the church 19:09 and what a supporting group it was. 19:11 By the way, a LOT of research today, 19:13 amazing amount of research today showing 19:15 that social relationships are one of the greatest 19:19 benefits and supports for stress. 19:22 Listen to this, "All the believers were together 19:25 and had everything in common, 19:26 This is in Acts 2. 19:27 ...selling their possessions and goods, 19:29 they gave to anyone as he had need. " 19:31 Talk about a community... 19:33 If you had stress, people were there for you; they helped you. 19:37 The Apostle Paul said that the church is like a body... 19:40 If one member suffers, the whole body suffers with it. 19:42 It's like the human body; I injure my finger, 19:45 my body martials just to save my finger 19:48 and heal my finger. 19:51 It's like that in a community. 19:52 I've experienced that for myself. 19:54 Do you think the churches today, by and large, have that... 19:57 they offer that kind of support? 19:59 Have you ever experienced it? 20:02 We don't offer that support to the same degree that 20:05 the early Christians did. 20:07 We don't sell everything we have and everybody - that's anything 20:11 We don't do that, but let me tell you a story... 20:13 When I was going through... I was remarried by this time, 20:17 and my wife and I, we blended 6 children. 20:21 They did better than we did. 20:23 We were having real struggles there for a while. 20:25 I remember one Sabbath, I was sitting out in my car 20:28 ...It was up at the St. Joseph Church, 20:30 there near Andrews... I was half-time pastor at Andrews 20:34 and half-time pastor at St. Joe... 20:36 so that Andrews, our University Church there could have a 20:39 missionary community... 20:41 I was sitting out in my car there at St. Joseph, 20:43 trying to figure out which of these 2 sermons I had preached 20:46 before was least inappropriate to be preaching that day. 20:48 I had had such a stressful week! 20:50 It was SUCH a difficult week... 20:52 I had never had anything QUITE like that... 20:55 And I went into the pulpit that day still not knowing, 21:00 when I got up to speak, which sermon 21:02 I was going take and I actually heard myself 21:04 describing a little bit about the week I had... 21:07 how difficult it was and I really did not have something. 21:09 I wasn't going to fool them into thinking I really had 21:12 something for them today and I would just 21:15 pray for them and I sat down. 21:16 No sermon, no word from God or anything... WOW 21:20 And the head deacon stood up and he said, 21:23 "Folks, I think we ought to pray for our pastor" 21:26 And that church formed a circle all the way around that church. 21:29 They took my family, we all held hands 21:31 all the way around the outskirts of the church; 21:34 they prayed for us and then... 21:37 Everybody went to the potluck, we went to the potluck. 21:39 They never mentioned that. 21:41 We pastored that church for several years after that; 21:43 they never mentioned that incident again. 21:45 They were SUCH a HEALING FORCE. 21:47 I found all the way through the most difficult times 21:49 in my life, the church has been a TREMENDOUS resource 21:52 for healing and help. 21:53 I can almost imagine the conversation on the way home, 21:56 or maybe the lack of conversation but just the 21:58 healing that went on! Tremendous - powerful. 22:01 So, social relationships, having peace... 22:05 You also believe that worship is a key component, 22:09 and that, of course, takes place, 22:10 at least in some sense, in a church setting. 22:13 Worship... You know this was one of the surprises to me in my 22:19 research in the Bible and stress management. 22:21 I got a large way through the Bible before I 22:24 realized the power of worship. 22:25 I was reading through the Psalms... 22:27 Worship is a tremendous stress reliever for the believers 22:32 in the times of the Bible. 22:33 It's like alcohol is an escape for people, 22:36 and drugs can be an escape for people to get them 22:38 out of their problems for a little while, 22:40 then they gotta come back to them again. 22:41 But in worship... and many of the Psalms 22:45 by the way, they start with distress... 22:48 People are complaining and they're in great distress; 22:50 you can tell that when you begin to read the Psalms 22:52 But what happened in worship was, they were lifting their 22:56 distress up before GOD. 22:57 They were reminded they were in the presence 22:59 of the God - the Creator the universe, 23:00 and they seemed drawn up into His presence. 23:02 And suddenly they were in the presence of 23:04 One who made the universe, 23:06 and their problems, in His presence, 23:08 seemed so insignificant... 23:09 When they came out of that experience of worship again, 23:12 and then offering those Psalms, they'd break into praise 23:15 before the Psalms were read, they'd break into praise 23:17 and they'd come back again... 23:18 Rather than coming back like off a hangover or 23:21 something like if you had an escape with alcohol 23:24 ...Worship is in a sense, an escape from deep, deep 23:27 trouble and distress, but then you come back 23:29 EMPOWERED... you come back assured that God is on the 23:32 throne and He can take care of these things. 23:34 Another thing about worship is that the Bible portrays God 23:38 as One who suffers with us. 23:40 Jesus, himself, when He came here, 23:42 suffered to the ULTIMATE for US. 23:44 In Isaiah 53, I'll never forget when I went to Isaiah 53, 23:48 I was clipping through like 1 or 2 chapters a day 23:50 in my research and when I got to Isaiah 53, 23:53 it just stopped me in my tracks 23:55 because here was this suffering GOD, this suffering Servant 23:58 that just towered and you realize... in Isaiah 53, 24:05 and here is this suffering Servant just towering up above - 24:08 We realize that we have not suffered as much as our God. 24:11 Our God UNDERSTANDS us, He suffered with us 24:14 He has ALL the resources to help 24:17 us through whatever we're going through. 24:18 So worship then, a transcendent worship that just drives you 24:23 ABOVE! Exactly 24:24 What a responsibility for those leading worship as well, 24:28 and, of course, the Lord wants to do that. 24:30 What about the Bible's teaching about the soon return of Jesus? 24:34 That is an awesome stress-reliever. 24:37 In fact, looking forward to something at the 24:41 end of something will help you go through a 24:43 very distressful period of time. 24:44 When we were backpacking with my kids, 24:46 and they had a hard time along the trail, 24:49 I would describe the meal we we're going to have, 24:51 the marshmallow roast we're going to have 24:52 at the end of the trail, the pudding cups, 24:53 and the things we were going to be eating 24:55 at the end of the day when we had our tent pitched 24:57 and we were around the campfire, and that just helped us; 24:59 it gave us the extra energy we needed to go on. 25:01 In the Bible, looking forward to the 25:03 second coming of Jesus Christ has been the 25:05 GREAT HOPE... it's called the blessed hope in the Bible, 25:07 and it is for the believer. 25:08 It just gives them strength and motivation to go on, 25:11 and to go into the future. 25:13 We have about 2.5-3 minutes left, 25:17 what would you say if you had just to give a single text 25:20 from the Bible, what text would it be 25:23 that would help us with stress management? 25:25 Don, there is one... 25:28 It is SO awesome! 25:38 Wow, that's a beautiful promise! 25:39 I tell you what, when you focus on that, 25:41 and focusing on God, and just RESTING in GOD 25:45 realizing He is the Great Creator... 25:47 He's the one who suffered more than we have. 25:48 He's our Great Resource... it is absolutely powerful. 25:52 And one other I would add to that... 25:54 It's one that comes from both the Old Testament 25:57 and New Testament; it occurs in the Old Testament 25:59 and it's quoted again in the New Testament in Peter 26:01 ...In the New International Version 26:08 And let me tell you a story... 26:09 I was at church going up to my office 26:13 through the long sanctuary at the Pioneer Memorial Church 26:16 one day and I was BUSY, I was TENSE, 26:18 I had so many things on my agenda... 26:20 I didn't know how I was going to get through it all. 26:23 I was a little short with people as I was going through 26:25 the office, picking up my mail 26:26 I'm sure no one watching has EVER had that kind of a day... 26:30 It was quite a day... I walked into the sanctuary 26:34 and as I walked in, I heard this beautiful, beautiful 26:37 child's voice... It was Olivia Nutt, 26:39 the daughter of Esther Nutt 26:41 who was up in the balcony underneath 26:44 the stained glass window of Christ carrying a little lamb 26:47 with the parent sheep looking up at Christ 26:50 carrying this lamb so gently... 26:51 And Olivia Nutt was singing this song... 26:54 "I cast all my care upon you, 26:58 I lay all of my burdens down at your feet" 27:01 She was singing it, it just was so pure and powerful 27:05 She was up there singing it. 27:06 I walked right into that. 27:08 And suddenly, my stress just totally drained out of me. 27:12 Just instantly drained out of me and I just felt at peace. 27:16 By the time I got to the back of that sanctuary, 27:17 I was at peace, I was ready for the day. 27:19 It just brought everything back into perspective. 27:21 God is so powerful and the Bible is such a rich resource 27:25 for managing stress. 27:26 Ummm, ummm... indeed it is! 27:29 Boy, thank you so much for sharing with us. 27:32 These have been very helpful to me personally. 27:35 And I know that you that have been watching, 27:38 I HOPE that you have found some real KEYS 27:41 when we look at God's Word for surviving, 27:44 and really, like your seminar is entitled... 27:47 "Moving Beyond Just Coping With Stress" 27:49 THRIVING as a result of these concepts. 27:52 We hope that as a result of today's program 27:54 you have health that lasts for a lifetime! |
Revised 2014-12-17