There are all sorts of things in this world that cause us stress. And I’ve heard so many ridiculous ways of relieving it – have a cup of tea. Take a hot shower. Okay – so they might relieve the symptoms for a short while. But what we need are some powerful solutions to the root cause of our stress.

Trust in the LORD

When you Google stress relief, mostly what you discover is relaxation techniques. Take a hot bath. Watch some television to get your mind off things. Spend more time with friends. Some will even tell you to go and practise yoga and meditation. Play stress relief games. Identify your stress responses and manage them. Well, it all sounds great, but here’s the problem I have with all of those things. They’re a bit like taking an aspirin for a headache. They may alleviate the symptoms for a short while, but they don’t solve the problem by treating the cause. If your headache is caused by a brain tumour, hey; aspirin just ain’t going to do it. You need something that goes to the root cause.

The same is true with stress and anxiety. You know, a mistake we make when we think about the root cause of our stress is we imagine that the root cause is that thing out there somewhere that’s causing us stress. It’s that difficult person; it’s that difficult relationship; it’s the fact that I’m struggling with my finances or I’ve had a bad medical diagnosis from the doctor. It’s that thing out there that’s causing me the stress. If I can get rid of that, then I won’t have any more stress in my life. That’s our rationale. That’s what we think, but stress is our response to a situation. Stress is something we do to ourselves.

Of course, sometimes scary things happen. Someone we love dies, and the process of grieving is stressful. We lose our job, and the process of dealing with our finances can be stressful, but a lot of what we stress out about is totally manageable, except for the fact that we’re stressing out over it. Stress, anxiety, fear ... Those things immobilise us. They stop us from doing the things we need to do to deal with the situation, so when I’m talking about dealing with the root cause of stress, I’m actually talking about dealing with whatever’s going on inside you that’s causing the stress response, because each and every day of your life and mine pretty much is going to bring along circumstances and situations and people and stuff that have the potential to cause us stress. It’s one thing to have an initial response of fear or shock when something potentially stressful comes our way; it’s another thing entirely to spend the rest of the week, the rest of the year, the rest of your life, stressing out about it.

So let me share my number one, numero uno, stress buster with you right now. Trust in the LORD your God. I know it sounds like a cop-out; it sounds like a platitude, but in a moment, I’m going to tell you why it’s the one solution that decisively deals with stress. Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.

The thing that causes us stress by and large is when something that has the potential to negatively impact our lives is completely outside our control. Would you agree? The doctor tells you that she’s detected a tumour on your scan, but she doesn’t know yet whether it’s malignant or benign, or whether they’re going to be able to operate on it and get it all out. So much is out of your control in that scenario, and your very life hangs in the balance. Stress!

Now bring God into the picture. There are three key facts that I want you to note about God in this stressful scenario: Here’s the first one. He loves you beyond measure. In fact, He loves you so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die and to pay for your sins, to give you eternal life, so there’s absolutely no question about how much He loves you.

Secondly, nothing escapes Him. He never fails to notice what you’re going through. If He knows exactly how many hairs you have on your head, and He does because the Bible tells us that, then He surely knows what you’re going through, and the third thing is that nothing is outside His control. If He created the universe, friend, He has the power to deal with anything and everything that’s going on in your life.

Now, you put those three facts together and what you have is a compassionate, loving God who completely understands, and who has just the right plan for your life. He knows what to do, when to do it, and how to get it done, and He will do it. The Bible has a name for that: It’s called faithfulness. The writer of the book of Lamentations was looking over the destruction and the devastation after the Babylonians had completely and utterly destroyed Jerusalem, and taken God’s chosen people into captivity as slaves. He pours his heart out, which is why the book is called Lamentations, but then despite what he sees, despite the devastation and the pain and the stress that he feels in his heart, he comes to this conclusion. Lamentations 3:22-24:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The LORD is my Portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him.

My friend, no matter what you’re going through at the moment, no matter what lies ahead, no matter what the devastation and the ruin that your eye can see, your God is faithful; and when you put your trust in Him, all of a sudden, the stress goes away because He can and will act to make sure that His steadfast love plays itself out in your life. Look. Each one of us is going to die sooner or later, and along the way, each one of us is going to have financial problems, health problems, relationship problems, inadequacies, insecurities ... There are more than enough in each week to get you and me to stress ourselves into an early grave. Listen. Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.

Let me tell you, no amount of relaxation techniques – yoga, TV, dinner with friends, hot showers, hot cups of tea – none of that stuff is going to come anywhere close to the impact of trusting your God with all your heart. He knows what to do; He has the power to do it; He loves you so much. Ok, we are going to die one day. That’s part of His plan, but in the meantime, friend, He loves you so much. Whatever you’re going through, He’s in that place with you, and He is worthy of your trust.

Develop a Quiet Confidence

We kind of stress out about our kids and our jobs and how we look and what other people think. We stress out about tomorrow. What will that bring? We stress out about ... Well, we stress out about just about anything or everything. Let me ask you this. What are you stressed over right now? What’s the thorn in your side that keeps on making you worry about this or that? Pretty much everybody can name at least two or three things that are causing them to stress out right at the moment. Jesus hit the nail on the head when He asked this rhetorical question. Luke 6:27:

Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life?

Well, that’s pretty much it. That right there just shows us how utterly useless worry and stress are. They don’t achieve anything positive. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Stress and worry often immobilise us from doing the things that we can and need to do to deal with that situation that’s causing us the pressure and the stress in the first place. We just kind of sit there on the sofa worrying about it, when getting up and doing A or B would actually reduce the risk or fix the problem altogether.

Now you can call me crazy; plenty of people do ... Call me crazy, but let me throw this out there for you to think about. This is absolutely no way for you to live your life, or for me to live my life. Would you agree? I mean, being stressed all the time is totally nuts. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t achieve anything good, and yet countless people are caught up in chronic, repetitive, day-after-day, lifelong stress, and for what?

So let me ask you, what if you could replace that with a quiet confidence? Not some false bravado; just a quiet sense of confidence on the inside that you know it’s going to be fine. What if that were the overriding mind-set in your life, in place of the person who worries and stresses about everything? Would it be a worthwhile thing to achieve? Well, that’s what I’m aiming for in your life today, not because I happen to be particularly smart or insightful or brilliant; I’m none of those things, but because the Word of God has the power to transform your life completely and utterly. If only you will receive this mighty, powerful Word of God in your heart today, your life can be utterly transformed.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. ‘This guy hasn’t a clue what I’m going through. How can he possibly say that?’ And in part you are right; I absolutely don’t have a clue, but God does. I don’t have the wisdom, but God does. I don’t have the power to transform your heart and your mind and your thoughts and your emotions or your life, but God does.

Have a listen to this. It’s about a guy called Joshua. For the last forty or so years, he’s been playing second fiddle to a guy called Moses, leading God’s people (probably over a million of them) through the wilderness: Relying on God for food, and for water, and for protection every step of the way. Moses (the leader) has just died, just at the point when they’re about to cross over the Jordan river into the l...

Three Ways to Eliminate Stress // Stress Busters, Part 3