Sunday, January 30, 2011

How to Gain Strength in Stress

January 30, 2011

Matthew 11:28

“Come to Me all you that are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.”

Ever have one of those…a bad day? It seems the longer I live, and net number of “bad days” accumulate, it gets easier to become discouraged. William Ward, a British pioneer and Baptist missionary of the 18th century, wrote:

Discouragement is dissatisfaction with the past, distaste for the present, and distrust of the future.

Discouragement is ingratitude for the blessings of yesterday, indifference to the opportunities of today,and insecurity regarding strength for tomorrow.

Discouragement is unawareness of the presence of beauty, unconcerned for the needs of our [neighbors], and unbelief in the promises of old.

Discouragement is impatience with time, immaturity of thought,and impoliteness to God. -

When we are over-stressed, over-worked, over-taxed and over-run, we fall to the attitudes William Ward depicts; we basically burnout. Moving from burnout to balance involves shifting our orientation of thought. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me all you that are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.”

Three characteristics of God Jesus is pointing us to in this morning passage.

1) It’s Invitational 2) It’s Personal 3) It’s Mutual

1) It’s Invitational

This is an invitation; a polite invitation. No one is coercing any of us into a relationship with Jesus. The days of the Inquisition and heresy trials were blind to this key character of God . We lost Joan of Arc. We suppressed Galileo Galilei. We beheaded Thomas Moore among countless innocence tortured in the name of orthodoxy and in direct contradiction to Scripture.

My understanding of this characteristic emerged from, off all places, Ephesians 5 during a pre-marriage class. Ephesians 5 deals with marital relationships. For the husband, Paul tells us, “Husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” Hence, men, we need to ask ourselves what was it that Christ gave up? Nothing less than life itself, and as such our role is sacrificial for the wife.

But then Paul turns to the wife and says, “Wives, love your husbands and submit to them for the husband is head of the wife and Christ is head of the church.” The brakes go on here when ever this is raise. It contradicts our modern family structure.

I mentioned to the class that I didn’t have a clear understanding of this. But a young bride, not schooled in church life or raised in church school, interjected,

“Well wait a minute. I’m wondering if we women need to ask the same question you poised to the men, ‘How is it that Christ is head of the church?’

“It seems to me that Christ is a voluntary association. I choice Christ,because He chose me and in Christ I see all the goodness that I seek to aspire to. So, shouldn’t I also be seeking a husband in whom I see such goodness reflected that I too willingly accept him?”

So it is with Christ. He waits for us in expectation that in Him we will see all such goodness so as all I want to do is voluntarily submit myself to Him. No one coerces me. It is a free invitation. I don’t have to join a club, attend a motivational conference, pass a test, win any election or prove anything. It’s just an invitation.

Just come.

2) It’s Personal

In the Bible people came to Jesus for many different reasons. Some came for forgiveness. Some came for answers. Some people came for healing. Some came for salvation. Some came for eternal life. And too all these Jesus adds, You could come to Me for rest. Rest from the stress, rest from overload.

Jesus says, “Are you weary? Overloaded? Come to Me.” He says “I will give you rest for your souls.” We’ve overloaded in our mind. We’ve overloaded in our emotions. We’ve overloaded in our spirit. We need soul-rest. Release from worry. Release from tension. Release from stress, from guilt, from fear, from bitterness, from anxiety. Soul-rest.

And Jesus says, “If you’re worn out, if you’re tired, overloaded, come to Me and I will give you soul-rest.” Jesus doesn’t say, “Come to my seminar. Come to my house. Come to the movies. Come to Key West.” It isn’t a call, a place, an activity or vacation. It’s personal.

In our Tuesday study we reviewed meditation passages in the bible. The Old Testament is full of the business of meditating. It discusses meditation as the practice of consciously detaching oneself from the daily grind and going about the business of reflecting upon God.

But we also noticed that when we get to the New Testament, the idea of meditation takes a backseat to another activity: prayer. Jesus prays. Peter prays. Paul prayers. We are taught how to pray. Rather than just meditate on the precepts of God, in the New Testament, we are invited to actually talk with God. “It’s not business, Sonny. It’s personal.”

3) It’s Mutual

Oxen work in a team. They are yoked together to share the load. It is a shared burden. Feeling overwhelmed? Orienting your thoughts and priorities to things holy invites a shared distribution of the burden. We don’t have to go at it alone.

You may turn to food when you’re exhausted. You may turn to video games, or prop your feet up and go numb in front of the TV. You may turn to a drink or a pill. But none of these things can help pull the burden, but Jesus can!

It is as if Jesus is declaring the fulfillment of Isaiah has arrived. (Isaiah 40:31 (New King James Version)

31 Those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

How?

If you don’t know how, turn to Matthew 6, or Luke 11

5 “And when you pray, ...6 ... go into your room, ... and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. .. 9 In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors. 13 And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

That’s all it is. Accept the invitation, know that it’s personal, talk to God and God will share the burden.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Meditation and Good Health

DAVID WAS RIGHT!

Psalm 1

1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
and who meditates on God's law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither
whatever they do prospers.

Did you know the more we meditate on God, the better we are physically and emotionally? I’m not talking about some anecdotal story from some pop-psychologists, but hard, verifiable science.

Brief prayer, those short shout-outs to God, has not shown to have a direct effect upon our well-being, and may actually increase depression, as reported in American Journal of Geriatric Psychology (Apr. 15, 2007; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17384312).

However, longer, intense meditation and prayer practiced within the context of weekly religious activities effectively treats, as reported in Complimentary Therapies in Clinical Practice (Aug. 12 2006):

So, if you are feeling out of sorts, depressed, weak, ill… well, don’t be a stranger to the very disciplines God has given us to keep us as whole as possible. Be part of the practices that (get this) even improve mortality! (International Journal of Psychiatry Medicine; 2006).

David was right; but then for the religiously focused soul who is already active in a religious life, this is common knowledge.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

How to Prosper in your Problems

How to Prosper from your Problems

James 1:2-6

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

Scripture doesn't say, "If you encounter problems .” It says, Whenever you encounter problems.” If you don't have problems, check your pulse.

In Alan Alda’s film, Four Seasons, he and his wife (played by Carol Burnett) get into a roaring fight while on vacation in New Hampshire. In defense of his love for his wife, Alan shouts out, “How could I ever be disappointed with you. You’re perfect!”

But his wife barks back, “How dare you say that! As soon as I’m perfect I cease to exist.”

James seems to be delving into that same reality. We exist, we are defined by struggle and imperfection. But in God, it is our joy! We are alive.

Now of course, there are two ways to have trouble.

1. Some we cause ourselves. We are responsible for these.

2. But other just beset themselves upon us with no precipitous initiative. We can feel victimized, powerless, oppressed, alienated, abused and used.

Look again at verse 2, "...whenever you face problems ..." The word "face" in Greek is peripiptw"peripipto,” It is the same word used in the story of the Good Samaritan trekking along the road to Jericho, minding his own business, when he was attached. "Peripipto” literally means "to fall into unexpectedly.”

To this, James speaks God’s wisdom: stay with God!

I knew a psychiatrist, Dr. John Speck who practiced in Boston, who liked to say, “The human is a stress seeking animal.” His point was that we are predisposed in our neurological configurations to struggle. We don’t do well when life reaches a point of equilibrium. One thing I can say is that life itself rarely lets us rest in such a state. Things happen and we, get this, as children of God are in the midst of the battle. That is to say, we are designed to engage the struggle.

To this, James speaks God’s wisdom, and Paul gives us advice: stay with God!

Neurologically we have a pre-frontal cortex that governs reason, logic, thought, wisdom, knowledge. We also have, deep inside, an area brain scientists call the amygdala that fires off the visceral emotions of many fear responses, including freezing (immobility), tachycardia (rapid heartbeat), increased respiration, and stress-hormone release. Left to its own devises and desires, the work of the amygdala is bound to cause a lot of devastation. But with reason, with the thought of God in the cortex, a resonance begins to develop that modulates the visceral reflexes and harmonizes the brain to invoke not retaliation, but reconciliation. Dr. Andrew Newburg, Director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, has observed, “Meditation [on God] has shown to modulate the amygdala.”[i]

In effect, keeping the mind on God modulates the animalistic impulses of evil.

James wasn’t a neuroscientist, but he did know we stand with our feet in both camps of good and evil.

Face my problems, along with God, and I will purify faith. Christians are like tea bags. You don't know what's inside of us until you drop us in hot water.

That’s when the faith is most important. Faith develops when we are challenged.

Is this the joy James is referring to? I think so, that is if we face our problems with a God who will modulate our impulses and hone our compassion.

Face my problems, along with God, and I will fortify patience.

James notes in verse 4, “the testing of your faith develops perseverance." He's talking about staying power; not a passive patience of a bench warmer, but staying power, endurance.

We don't like pressure and we do everything we can to avoid it. We run from it, take drugs, drink alcohol, go to Disneyland, anything to get away from pressure.

Ernest Henry Shackleton, the arctic explorer who became marooned on the ice field of the Wendell Sea off Antarctica in 1915, survived with his entire crewby virtue of his motto, “By Endurance We Conquer.” He named his ship after this motto, “Endurance.”

It is about the ability to keep-on keeping-on, to hang in there, to keep applying oneself with whatever resources we have, to meet the squall head on and tack the ship anyway necessary to ride out the swales.

The Greek here is literally "the ability to stay under pressure."

It is said that when the ship Endurance was being crushed in the ice flows of Antarctica, Shakelton insisted on two things being taken off the boat over and above the necessities for survival, personal journals and the Psalms.

If they were going to conquer the problems, they needed to be focused on, and fortified with ... God.

Face my problems, along with God, and I will gain wisdom to act.

I know it is tempting to say, “Lord, fix this!”

I have financial trouble, “Lord, make my lottery ticket win.”

My marriage is on the rocks, “Lord, fix my wife.”

The company is downsizing, “Lord, give me big severance package.”

I have no doubt that God can, and does, intercede in miraculous ways, but I also worry that to dismiss our role as God’s agents of faith in the face of problems, violates our responsibility to take the world by the horns and direct it to a graceful future.

So I hear James reminding us, as I hear the neurophysiologists confirming for us, that when we face our problems of finances, relationship, health, employment with a mind oriented to the presence of God, then we begin to prosper with a wisdom of godly fashion.

Consistently out of James I see the accentuation of using our knowledge and reason to shape our character and faith in such a way as we become agents of the divine, not antagonists for evil.

· From Job we know that Satan attacks character (Job 1-2).

· From the prophet Zechariah we know Satan wants to oppose the angels of the Lord (Zech 3).

· We know from Matthew that Satan tempts our emotional loneliness (Matthew 4).

· And from Matthew we know that the Evil One inspires us to lie (Matthew 5:37).

Satan wants to use problems to defeat you, but God wants to use those problems to develop you. Which will it be?

But James reminds us that God is more interested in building your character than making life comfortable. God is more interested in developing faith than fortunes, wisdom than wealth, stamina than simplicity, enduring integrity than easy living.

There is a fantastic promise in v. 12

"Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial. When such has stood the test they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love the Lord."


[i] Andrew Newburg, M.D. and Mark Walkman, How God Changes Your Brain,” c. 2010 Ballentine Books, p.52