Stress from Worry | Mike Mazzalongo | BibleTalk.tv

• Okay, so here we are, “Stress Busters” lesson number two. I said we were going to study particular things that cause stress in the lessons that we’re going to be doing from here on in and this lesson number two we’re going to talk about stress from worry, stress from worry. Let’s do a little review of the last lesson that we had before we get into today’s material, a couple of things. First of all, we learned everyone experiences stress which is the body’s way of preparing us and to help us carry through various activities that are demanded of us. So stress all by itself it’s a good thing, we need stress because it helps, you know, motivate us and push us to do various things.

00:53 - Another thing we talked about when we are in the stress mode too long and too intensely, then we become overstressed and the danger there is burnout. Also said that there are certain symptoms for a burnout. Burnout from overstress has a variety of symptoms including stomach problems, headaches, muscle aches, chest pains, anxiety, anger, depression, whole lot of things like that we talked about. We did mention panic attacks, and we said that panic attacks have the same symptoms as overstress, but they were caused by chemical imbalances in the brain and not necessarily lifestyle. Sometimes there might be some psychological reasons and combinations that lead to that condition called anxiety disorder.

01:55 - We said also that burnout victims needed certain things. So people who were burned out because of constant overstress needed three things for rehabilitation. First, knowledge of their condition. Why am I like this? Why have I, you know, gotten to this point? For those who are in burnout denial is usually a big problem. Secondly, change towards a more realistic view of who and what we are and what our limits are. A very simple idea, people who are in burnout have to accept that there really is only 24 hours in a day.

02:41 - You think that we would know that, but that’s usually a big problem for folks who are suffering from burnout. And also to accept that we can’t do what we used to do, or what we want to do, or what we should do sometimes, you know, we just can’t do it, we just, you know, it’s a bridge too far, it’s a mountain too high to climb. And sometimes we just have to accept that we have certain limits that we can’t go beyond, and if we do go beyond them there’s a price to pay. So this course was organized to help shed knowledge on the problem as I said from a Christian perspective. So this time we’re going to talk about stress caused by worry, stress caused by worry.

03:31 - All right, so what about worry? Let’s try for a definition of the word worry. First of all, it’s a feeling, isn’t it? Worry is a feeling, it’s a feeling of fear or unhappiness regarding someone or something. Usually it’s a negative speculation about something that may happen in the future, You know, maybe something that happened in the past, something we regret, something we’re ashamed of, something we’re guilty for. But a lot of times it’s a fear about something that’ll happen in the future whether it’s one minute in the future or one year in the future. A lot of times, you know, we worry about stuff that are in the future.

04:20 - We regret things and we feel guilty about things that happened in the past, but we worry about things that happen in the future. What are some of the things that we worry about? We’ve asked people this and the most common, the top three if you wish that people worry about, they worry about their health, they worry about their family, they worry about their security. A lot more things to worry about, but those three come up quite often in tests, in questionnaires, health, family, security. We’re able to worry about anything that we focus our negative speculation on. So if we focus in negative speculation on our hair, we’re going to worry about our hair, if we got, you know, we’re having a bad hair day.

05:10 - We can worry about our reputation, we can worry about the car driven by our children and so on and so forth. We need to realize that there’s a difference between worry which is a negative thing and concern, a difference. Concern is focused attention. I can be concerned about something and that’s a good thing, you know, to be concerned about something. Worry is quite different. The main difference between concern and worry is that focused concern can produce something, worry doesn’t produce anything positive. It does accomplish certain things, but none of them are positive. So let’s take a look at that.

05:55 - What does worry accomplish? Well, it produces nothing except overstress and this is the only tangible thing that worry producers. It’s amazing when you think about it, you know, that the only tangible thing that worry produces is overstress. You think, you know, we do less of it, but we don’t. Worry also saps us of energy and it wastes our time, it’s discouraging, it robs us of enthusiasm. Many times, you know, we need energy to spend on positive projects and worry saps all the joy out of any positive project.

06:42 - You know, some people invest a lot of energy into worry and the problem is that we only have so much energy. If we had limitless energy, well, I suppose we could waste some of it worrying, but we don’t have limitless energy, we have just so much energy. And if we invest most of it into worry which is, you know, which doesn’t produce anything positive, then we have really wasted our time and wasted that energy. We worry about tomorrow, but we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. If we did, we could do something about it, we could change step into action, but we don’t know and so what we do is we waste energy and time worrying and we create unneeded stress that leads to burnout. That’s the problem with worry.

07:37 - I mean, it’s not only wasteful, but worry generates stress, overstress, and overstress of course leads us to burnout. Now we know all of this, but we continue to worry. So is there anything that we can actually do? Is there something positive that we can do? And we can of course, I’ve chosen two individuals, Jesus and James, and some of the things that they teach us about worry and how to convert this negative energy into something more positive. So if you have your Bible, get your Bible out to Matthew 6, and I want to read a passage here where Jesus is speaking, and He says the following in Matthew, beginning Matthew 6, verse 25, He says, “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried.” So we know right away what He’s talking about, right? “For this reason I say to you, “do not be worried about your life, “as to what you will eat or what you will drink, “nor for your body as to what you will put on.

08:52 - “Is not life more than food, “and the body more than clothing? “Look at the birds of the air, “that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, “and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. “Are you not worth much more than they? “And who of you by being worried “can add a single hour to his life? “And why are you worried about clothing? “Observe how the lilies of the field grow, “they do not toil nor do they spin, “yet I say to you that not even Solomon “in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, “which is alive today “and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, “will He not much more clothe you? “You of little faith! “Do not worry then, saying, “‘What will we eat?’, “Or “‘What will we drink?’ “Or “‘What will we wear for clothing?’ “For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things “for your heavenly Father knows “that you need all these things. “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, “and all these things will be added to you. “So do not worry about tomorrow, “for tomorrow will care for itself. “Each day has enough trouble of its own.

” 10:10 - What I want you to notice that in this passage Jesus deals head on with the problem of worry. He says it right at the beginning, right? Don’t worry, which suggests that stress caused by worry is not just a 21st century problem that people in every generation worried about something. And in dealing with worry Jesus gives us the correct perspective on how, as well as excuse me, gives us the correct perspective as well as an alternative action that can be taken. And I want to, you know, emphasize the idea, think now for a moment, this is happening in like 1st century 2000 years ago and Jesus is talking about worry, that people were worried. And what were they worried about? They were worried about food, they were worried about clothing, they were worried about where they lived or how they would live.

11:16 - Don’t that sound familiar? I mean, aren’t these the same types of things that people worry about, obsess about even to this day? So to this problem Jesus gives an alternative action and an alternative perspective. First of all, a correct perspective. The new perspective that Jesus gives is found in verses 25 to 32 of the passage that we just read, and basically it’s the following, Jesus says understand that God knows exactly what it is that you need in every area of your life. That’s the correct perspective. Realize that God knows what you actually need in every area of your life. Whether it’d be food, or clothing, or work, or housing, or sex, or medical help, or family, or recreation, God knows, God cares, and God is able to provide everything that you need. The problem of course is many times the thing that you think you need is not the thing that God knows that you need, this is why many times there’s a disconnect.

12:38 - We think God’s not answering our prayers because He’s not providing the need we think we need, instead, He’s providing something else. When we look into the future and we begin to worry about having the wherewithal to finish the job, or to provide for our families, or the strength to face illness or death, we’re taking on a responsibility that actually belongs to God. He is the one who’s responsible for the future, and He is the one that has promised to provide the resources to meet that future when it comes. I can be attentive to the future that’s a good thing, and I can prepare for the future that’s a good thing, and I can even be hopeful about the future especially because of the promises, you know, that God has made to me, but worry about the future is not only futile, but sinful because Jesus says do not worry. And we’re kind of brushing that aside, you know, and we’re going to go ahead and worry.

13:49 - It don’t matter what you say, Lord, you’ve promised to take care of us, you’ve promised to fulfill our needs, you’ve promised, you know, all these other things you’ve promised, but we’re going to kind of, you know, set that aside and we’re going to choose to worry instead. We’d rather worry than take your word and your promise. So once we have a correct perspective, and that is using today’s resources to take care of today’s needs because God always provides enough today for today, we need to shift our attitude to accept this idea. You know, our problem is we take the energy, the spiritual and emotional energy that we’ve been given to take care of whatever is happening today, and we invest that energy into worrying about tomorrow, or obsessing about the past. You know, it costs energy, it burns up energy both emotional and spiritual and physical energy when you worry and you only have so much for one day.

15:06 - And the message that God is saying to you is, look, I’m going to give you enough spiritual, emotional, physical energy, resources to take care of whatever takes place today, and then tomorrow I’ll refill that bucket, I’ll give you enough for tomorrow. I want you to live one day at a time, use the resources that I’ve given you today to take care of today’s problems. And what we do is we take the energy and the resources that we have for today’s problems and we invest them in worrying about tomorrow’s problem. So what happens then? Well, we got nothing left for today. And because of that, that worry, that wasted energy drops us further and further and further down emotionally, spiritually, or if we want to use our graph it sends the needle further and further into the red zone.

16:15 - So we need to change our perspective about reality. Reality is that God provides everything we need for today. That’s reality. That’s not an alternative reality, that is the reality. And so we have to, you know, tune in to the reality, the true reality. And then the second thing is an attitude change, a correct perspective, and an attitude change in verse 33.

16:52 - You know, for those who are overstressed the major attitude in their lives is usually that of worry about the past or the future. Jesus explains how things are in the real world, and in the real world, God supplies what we need one day at a time. If you don’t know this, you worry about having enough or being okay, or surviving in the home, or work, or society because you’re the one that has to make it happen. What happens is that we look at ourselves, we examine ourselves and we see, oh, I may not have what it takes to take care of everything ‘cause I got to take care of everything. But once you presented with this fact about God and His providence, your attitude needs to shift from worry to faith, and your lifestyle needs to shift from an acquisition lifestyle to a righteousness lifestyle.

18:05 - Let me explain that a little further if I may. We worry because we think we are responsible for providing everything and in this world that’s a pretty scary thing because so many fail at it. So we focus on acquiring, we focus on stockpiling, so that we’ll be safe, so that we’ll have enough, that will be secure. And this attitude and this activity creates worry which produces overstress, which leads to burnout. You see my point? I got to provide for me and my family, I have to do all this, it’s on me, so therefore I have to accumulate wealth, I have to stockpile, you know, I have to fill this barn and then I have to fill the bigger barn.

18:54 - And the more full barns I’ve got, the more security I have. See, this is the rat race, this is the, you know, the cycle that people are on. But to avoid the overstress that comes from worry, we need to concentrate on God’s promise to provide each day what we need on that day and change the focus of our lives from creating and maintaining wealth, to creating and maintaining a pure conscience before God. You see the difference? What is my task as a Christian? My task each day as a Christian is to maintain a pure conscience before God. This is the true work of a Christian doing the will of God.

19:49 - What is God’s will? It doesn’t mean I quit my job, doesn’t mean I stopped doing what I have to do, but the focus of my spirit, the focus of my life is righteousness. The thing I’m focusing on is am I doing God’s will, you know, am I interacting with other people in a way that is pleasing to God? Am I conducting myself in a righteous manner? This is my focus, it’s my work, it’s my task. Not, am I making enough money? Am I acquiring enough? Am I stacking up? You know what? I need high enough. Is what I have, will it last me throughout my entire retirement? If my emotional and spiritual energy is focused on that, I’m eventually going to be so stressed, be overloaded that I will blow a fuse. But I won’t be stressed and I won’t blow a fuse if my focus is on righteousness and pleasing God.

21:04 - This means that, you know, we will have the normal stress that comes with working at challenges that face each of us each day, but we avoid the overstress that comes with either the concern that we have to be alone to provide, or the worry over non-existing concerns of tomorrow. When my focus is on righteousness, when my focus is on knowing and doing the will of God, the effort for this does not lead to overstress, it doesn’t lead to burnout, it leads to something better, it leads to joy because in doing this we convert stress to joy. James, this is the second person I want to mention who has something to say about this, James his approach to worry and stress is to demonstrate that even negative things that happen to us don’t have to create worry and consequently overstress and all of the negative things that come from it. So we read from his book, James 1:2-4, he says, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, “when you encounter various trials, “knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. “And let endurance have its perfect result, “so that you may be perfect and complete, “lacking in nothing.

” 22:40 - And so in verses two to four, he explains how to short circuit worry and its negative effects. Understand that when trials and these could include all kinds of things, they can include, you know, physical things, or temptations, or disappointments, or failings or whatever, he says, understand that when trials come your way, they can be the cause of some good in life. He says, if one meets them with perseverance, meaning patients. The word patience means the willingness to bear under. So he says, if one is willing to meet the trials of life with perseverance, with patients, then the constant perseverance mode, instead of worry mode, will eventually produce a mature character and experiencing this mature will bring us peace and joy and love and patience and kindness. And it will be a joyful thing.

23:52 - You see what I’m saying? The same person has a choice. There’s no worry free, I mean, you know, there’s no trial free life, there’s no life where there’s, you know, there never any problems. So he’s saying the difference is some people meet these trials with worry and stress and we’ve already talked about all the negative things that this produces. What James is saying is, the same life and the same trials except you meet them with perseverance instead of worry, you meet them with patients, you meet them with the willingness to bear under trusting that God will sustain you. And he says, if you meet the same trials with that attitude, then that attitude will produce a mature spiritual character in you.

24:53 - And that spiritual mature character will yield fruit, will yield results, just like worry yields results, right? It yields the result of burnout. Well, spiritually mature character it also yields something, but it doesn’t yield burnout it yields joy, and it yields peace, and it yields other encouraging things in one’s life. Wholeness, maturity is what our spirit craves for whether we realize it or not, but we’re usually distracted by the things of this world. We read in verse five to eight, this is James again, and he says, “But if any of you lacks wisdom, “let him ask of God, “who gives to all generously and without reproach, “and it will be given to him. “But he must ask in faith without any doubting, “for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, “driven and tossed by the wind.

26:04 - “For that man ought not to expect “that he will receive anything from the Lord, “being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” So here in verse five to eight, James explains that doing this is not always easy, you know, meeting trials and tribulations with perseverance, with patience, he says doing this is not always easy. And so if a person desires to do this and has problems, he should ask God for help and he should do so with faith knowing that God who provides for each day’s needs will also provide spiritual help for each day’s challenges as well. You know, so many times we won’t quit a bad habit, or we want to attempt to give up a sin which is blocking our spiritual growth because we feel we’ll never be able to bear an entire lifetime without that particular sin. I remember when I was a smoker, this is 40 years ago, but, you know, I used to smoke a lot of packs of cigarettes every day and I enjoyed smoking, it was my favorite thing.

27:15 - And when I became a Christian, I realized, you know, this is not something I can continue doing, you know, I couldn’t imagine myself coming to God in prayer and so on and so forth and continuing this habit that I had. And the thought that was in my mind was, man, can I go like a whole lifetime with never having a cigarette ever again? Well, of course that was the devil talking, that was the snake, you know, saying that to me, you’ll never make it, are you kidding me? You can hardly go a day without a cigarette, imagine two days, five days, oh, never again smoking, never having that pleasure again, how will you survive? Well, of course I did survive. I prayed about it, I asked God to help me. But that’s the argument. People who are addicted to pornography, they often say, but what am I going to do if I give this up, you know, I don’t know if I could go without it for a lifetime. You know, they don’t realize that the God will give us the help that we need one day at a time to face the troubles that we have one day at a time.

28:32 - According to the Scriptures we’ve just studied, we should get help for only today, and we will and tomorrow God will provide the help that we need for tomorrow’s temptation if we’ll still need it. You know, the same strategy works for the help we need to develop our talents, or the help we need to reach our goals, or to convert our family, or to convert our friends. So James tells us that trials don’t have to be our enemy, they don’t have to produce only pain and inconvenience, but they can also, rather they don’t have to only be worried about and thus produce damage and overstress and burnout in our lives. You don’t have to live that way. He says, no, trials they can be used in other ways, they can be used to develop the spiritual maturity that we need and desire and which will result in peace and joy. And when we know this, we short circuit the worry that is caused by trials because we have the power to choose how we’re going to react.

29:53 - Are we going to react with worry, or are we going to react with perseverance and faith? We get to choose that. And what I’m saying to you is, if you choose to worry then you will naturally receive the result of that choice which is overstress and all the negative things that come with that. But if you choose to meet the trials of everyday living with perseverance, you know, I choose to persevere, I’m going to get through this, God will help me get, if that’s how you choose to face each day’s trial, then there will also be a reward for that. And the reward for that is a spiritual maturity and spiritual maturity yields joy and peace and patience and kindness and all kinds of good spiritual fruit that reinforce our desire and our ability to meet various trials in a positive, faithful and spiritual way. And so the stress that comes from worry is caused by two things, right? One, we worry about the responsibility to provide for ourselves whatever that is.

31:12 - And two, we worry when trials interfere with our efforts to acquire and hoard in order to provide for ourselves which we think will make us happy. Do you see what I’m saying? We think what we got to do is, you know, acquire, hoard, keep, save up, build bigger barns, you know, and we’re worried about that, and then all of a sudden something interferes with us. We break our leg, we get COVID, I don’t know whatever happens and oh, oh, something’s interfered with me, you know building, you know, my load of cash or my security and now we really worry. It’s a terrible cycle. And to break out of that cycle, the Lord and His earthly brother provide us with the answer for those who are stressed out because of worry. And the answer of course is that God will supply what we need each day when we focus our attention on doing His will rather than just focusing our attention on acquiring and hoarding.

32:20 - And secondly, we shouldn’t worry about the suffering brought about by trials, we should invest our energy into perseverance when we suffer. If we worry, it’ll make the suffering worse and it’ll accomplish absolutely nothing. However, if we choose to persevere however, it will create in us a greater maturity and joy which will help us endure the pain and lower the stress level caused by the pain. All right, so some thoughts about stress that is caused by worry. Next time we get together we’re going to talk about stress that happens from work, the kind of stress that work produces in us.

33:10 - Well, as I say, you know, online on the website, you’ve got two resources, you’ve got, you know, the worksheet that comes with every lesson, so you can follow along, take notes and stuff like that, and this particular lesson here we also have bonus material and that is a small group discussion about stress from worry that you can use for yourself, or if you have a family or a small group that would like to use this material, well, you can use that bonus material to start a discussion and have a good small group discussion over that. All right, well, that’s the end of our lesson, we will continue next time that we will be together for stress busters. All right, see you then. .