There are lots of things in this world that cause us stress. So many things out there, out of our control that could go either way not to mention our own foibles and insecurities. So what we really need is something that brings us peace.

Well we’re continuing today in looking at the stress in our lives and not just stress but how to deal with it. Last week on the program we’ve been taking a bit of a look at the things that cause us stress because stress is knocking a lot of people around. The statistics on stress are frightening; they say that more than half of all visits to the local Doctor are stress related.

Stress costs our national economies billions each year and as we saw while some stress in life is good, it helps us to rise to challenges and to achieve things, our body and our mind and our emotions and our spirit weren’t made to be under constantly high levels of stress. High stress makes us sick, very sick. Stress causes cravings making us eat the wrong food, it increases blood pressure, it causes us to gain weight, it contributes to heart disease, to stroke and even increases the risk of cancer not to mention the fact that it plays complete havoc with our emotions often sending people into depression.

Stress is a major contributor to suicide so there’s a really good reason why we’re looking at stress on the program at the moment. Chances are you’re impacted by stress and wondering ‘How do I deal with this? What can I do about it?’ Given the choice between stress and peace I don’t think that there’s many people out there who wouldn’t rather live a life of peace.

So up to this point in the series we’ve been looking at the causes of stress, today we’re going to start looking at some solutions and not the world’s solutions. Google is a wonderful thing; it trawls the internet for just about everything on anything. 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 some time with friends, some will even tell you to practice 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 them, they’re a bit like taking an aspirin for a headache, they may well alleviate the symptoms for a short time but they don’t solve the problem by treating the cause. If your headache is caused by a brain tumour aspirin isn’t going to do it right? You need something that goes to the root cause.

The same is true for stress and anxiety. Now the mistake we make when we think about the root cause of our stress is imagining that the root cause is that thing out there that’s causing us the stress. It’s that difficult person, it’s that difficult relationship, it’s the fact that I’m struggling in my finances or I’ve just had a bad medical diagnosis from the doctor, it’s that thing out there that’s causing me stress, if I can deal with 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 that 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 with dealing with our finances is stressful. But a lot of what we stress over is totally manageable except for the fact that we’re stressing over it.

Stress, anxiety, fear, those things immobilise us, they stop us from doing the things that we need to do to deal with the situation. So when I’m talking about dealing with the root cause I’m talking about dealing with whatever is going on inside us that’s causing the stress response. Because each and every day of our lives, pretty much, is going to bring along circumstances, situations, people, things 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 our lives, stressing out over it. So let me share my number one, numero uno stress buster with you right now. Trust in the Lord your God.

It sounds like a cop-out perhaps for some but in a moment I’m going to tell you why it’s the one solution that decisively deals with stress, Proverbs chapter 3, verses 5 and 6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, 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 us 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 if it’s malignant or benign or whether they’re going to be able to operate on it and get it all out.

So much out of your control in that scenario and your very life hangs in the balance, stress. But now bring God into the picture, there are three key facts that I want you to note about God in this stressful scenario. Firstly, He loves you beyond measure, in fact He loves you so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die to pay for your sins to give you eternal life. He loves you so much He wants to spend the rest of eternity with you 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 so then He surely knows what you’re going through and thirdly nothing is outside of His control. If He created the universe He has the power to deal with anything and everything that’s going on in your life.

Now 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 and the power to make it happen. He knows what to do, when to do it and how to get it done and He’ll do it. The Bible has a name for that, it’s called God’s  faithfulness.

The writer of the Book of Lamentations was looking over the destruction and devastation after the Babylonians had completely and utterly destroyed Israel 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 chapter 3, verses 22 to 24:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, they’re 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 devastation and 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 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 some financial worries, some health problems, relationship issues, inadequacies and insecurities, there is more than enough in each week to get you and me to worry ourselves and stress ourselves in an early grave but here’s God’s  advice to you and me today, trust in the Lord your God with all your heart, don’t lean on your own understanding but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths, Proverbs 3 verses 5 and 6.

No amount of relaxation techniques, yoga, TV, dinner with friends is going to come anywhere close to the impact of trusting God with all your heart.

Okay, so there are more than enough things “out there” in our lives to cause us to stress pretty much 24/7. In fact a lot of people live like that but what if we could live our lives with a quiet confidence that everything’s going to be okay. Hey wouldn’t that just be brilliant?

Have a listen to this list of stress reduction techniques that one website puts forward, it boggles the mind. Chew a stick of gum, brew some black tea, try a DIY massage, put pen to paper and write it down, listen to some music you love, take a tech break, close your email down for an hour and finally clean the house.

The website – www.oprah.com. Pardon me for saying so but give me a break. Now that’s like getting a couple of band aids to put on a gaping wound, that’s a shallow, look good, feel great list of superficial things that might, MIGHT alleviate the symptoms of stress for a short time but stress, the underlying condition, the ongoing anxiety and fear that eats away at our thoughts and our emotions and ultimately our health, isn’t going to be solved by having a cup of tea or listening to your favourite song while vacuuming the carpet. Do you think?

And can I say stress affects people far more broadly and much more deeply than we sometimes realise. We think that this whole stress thing belongs to other people. We imagine it’s for that emotional weakling over there, not for me, I’m strong, I have it all together. But sometimes it’s those very strong people who are driven forward by stress, the stress of being seen not to achieve, the stress of failure, the stress of keeping up appearances, the stress of having too many things to do, the stress of a marriage on the rocks that drives the workaholic deeper into his work, normally that’s a he right?

We stress about our kids, about our jobs, about how we look, about what other people think, we stress about tomorrow, what will it bring? We stress about, well we stress about pretty much 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 stress right at this moment. Jesus hit the nail on the head, Luke chapter 6, verse 27 when He asked this rhetorical question:

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 in our lives. They don’t achieve anything positive, in fact quite the opposite is true. Stress and worry often immobilises us from doing the things we can do and indeed need to do to deal with a situation that caused 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.

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 and for me to live my life, would you agree? I mean it’s totally nuts, it doesn’t make any sense, it doesn’t achieve anything good and yet countless people are caught up in chronic repetitive, day after day life long 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, is going to be just fine. What if that was the overriding mindset in life in place of the person who worries about everything? Would that 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 bright because I’m not but because the Word of God has the power to transform your life completely and utterly and if you’ll receive the mighty powerful Word of God into your heart today your life can be utterly transformed.

Hmm, I know what you’re thinking, this guy hasn’t a clue what I’m going through, how can he possibly say that? In part you’re right, I 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, your thoughts and your emotions, your very life but God does.

Have a listen to this; it’s about a guy called Joshua. For the last forty years or so 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.

Problem is Moses has just died, just at the point when they’re about to cross from the wilderness over the Jordan River into the land that God’s promised them. Just at the point where they have to gear up for battle after battle because the Promised Land is full of other tribes and nations and they’re going to have to take it by force. Just at the point when Moses, the proven, trusted, experienced, wise leader dies and Joshua is put in charge. Stress? Absolutely. Stress with a capital ‘S’. This is life and death stress.

If you put yourself in Joshua’s shoes, man you’d be stressing out right? Well he must have been because this is what God says to Joshua right at this point in his life. The Book of Joshua chapter 1 beginning at verse 1:

After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses assistant saying, ‘My servant Moses is dead. Proceed across the Jordan you and all this people into the land that I am giving them, to the Israelites. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you as I promised it to Moses.

From the wilderness and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the great sea in the west shall be your territory. No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses so I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you.

Be strong and courageous for you shall put this people into possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, be careful to act in accordance with the Law that my servant Moses commanded you. Don’t turn from it to the right or to the left so that you may be successful wherever you go.

This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous and then you shall be successful. I hereby command you be strong and courageous, do not be frightened or dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’

No less than three times God says to Joshua ‘Be strong and courageous’ and one of those times He says ‘Be strong and very courageous’. Why? God’s got a plan, God is in this, God will see His plan through despite the overwhelming odds, despite the impossibility of the task, it’s about God and who He is not the enemy and who they are.

And the foundation of Joshua’s confidence is to be God’s Word, stay in my Word, think about it, meditate on it day and night so that it doesn’t depart from you. As you read on through this Book of Joshua you see under his leadership Israel faced many, many life and death stressful situations but God called him to do it with confidence.

Now sometimes our confidence is misplaced, we put our confidence in our strengths and abilities, we put our confidence in money or in other people or in systems or organisations but when we place our confidence in God, when He’s the one we look to and trust and lean on and co-operate with then that confidence is never misplaced.

Hey listen, without faith it’s impossible to please God. God wants us to put our trust in Him, that’s the whole point. We develop this quiet confidence and that’s what carries us through.

It’s one thing to talk about trusting in God when you’re going through something stressful in your life, that’s great in theory but how do you actually do that, how do you lay hold of God’s peace in stressful times? It’s exactly what we’re going to discover today on the program.

You see that’s the question, how many times have you or I heard some preacher preach some great sermon that says trust in God, trust in God and trust in God? Brilliant sentiment, possibly it was a great sermon and it’s certainly good theology, theologians even call it a doctrine, you’ve heard this Scripture perhaps, Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6:

Without faith it’s impossible to please him for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

The problem I have with that is that when you’re going through some stressful situation that particular Scripture verse almost seems to condemn you. It’s like, hang on here I am, I’m worrying, I’m stressing, I’m struggling, that means I’m not pleasing God and that makes the whole thing a bunch worse.

Well fortunately Jesus didn’t come to condemn us, He came to set us free, He came to save us, He came to set us free from the burden of sin and free from this slavery to a life of stress. Of course you and I can react from time to time in a stressful situation. The man who goes to work only to discover that he and a whole bunch of his work mates have just been retrenched. He has a wife, two kids, one on the way, a mortgage, now what? How am I going to make ends meet? How am I going to tell my wife that I’ve just been retrenched?

Is he going to experience stress in that moment? Of course he is. Are he and his wife going to experience stress in the coming days and weeks as they figure out what to do and wonder if they’re going to lose their family home that they’ve worked so hard to get? Pretty certain they are.

You and I are going to find ourselves in stressful situations from time to time, we just are, that’s normal, that’s par for the course. In a very real sense that’s what’s meant to happen and for anyone in a stressful situation right now my prayer is that that gives some comfort. We all end up there from time to time, the question is, what do we do about it? How are you going to respond in that moment of crisis?

Well if you’re anything like me you’ve been taught that the right thing to do is put your faith in God. Hey that’s exactly what we’ve been chatting about on the program so far this week, Proverbs chapter 3, verses 5 and 6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path.

Lamentations 3, verses 22 to 24:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, they’re new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.

Joshua chapter 1, verses 5 to 7:

As I was with Moses so I will be with you. I will not fail you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous for you shall put this people in possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them. Be strong and very courageous.

Those are the Scriptures we’ve been looking at on the program this week and they’re all about pointing us in absolutely the right direction without a doubt. But anybody who has been in a deeply stressful situation, particularly anyone who is right now in that deeply stressful situation, is sitting there thinking ‘Well that’s fantastic Berni, I know those Scriptures too but how do I do that? How do I put my trust in God? How do I be strong and courageous when I feel so weak and so helpless?’

And unless you get answers to those questions then the Scriptures we just read and plenty more of them to boot are just going to make you feel more and more condemned and more and more like you’re failing God, am I right? So today we’re going to get answers to those questions and not from me but from God because as always God has the answers, God knows how you and I can lay hold of that courage and confidence in Him and because He loves us He tells us very clearly, very plainly how we can do that.

To be honest in my walk with the Lord over these past almost twenty years this has probably been the most important ‘how to’ that I’ve ever learned. Are you ready? Here we go, stress buster number three, it comes from Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7:

Don’t worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus

Now this is a very plain piece of Scripture, not a lot of hidden meaning here but you’d be amazed, I mean AMAZED how easily we skate over the surface of it and completely miss the point. I think I’ve told this story once before on the program a few years ago so if you’ve heard it just get over it, just kidding.

I was sitting in a Bible study group with a bunch of people who’d been Christians for years, much longer than me. These were Bible believing Christians. We were studying this particular passage and it was interesting. People hedged around it, this and that but you know we all worry, the discussion went on for ten or fifteen minutes and at the end of it the Bible study group leader summarised it along these lines.

“Well you know, God wants us to have peace but still we’re all going to worry” and the crazy thing was that everybody seemed to nod in agreement with him and we’re about to move on. Well I was only the new kid on the block in this Bible study group but I couldn’t help myself.

I kind of let out this loud agitated NO. I don’t think anybody has done that before because there was stunned silence and all the eyes turned and were looking at me. My wife wanted the ground to open up and swallow us up. So I let them have it with both barrels.

I said ‘Look at what it says, this is a promise from God through Paul who by the way was probably on death row when he wrote this. God’s saying this, instead of worrying, pray. The time that you would have spent in worrying and stressing out is the time that you should pray instead.’

Thank God, let Him know your problems and needs and requests right there in the middle of your stressful situation and when you do that, here’s the promise bit, the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, this peace that in this situation and this circumstance simply doesn’t make any worldly sense, will not just fill your heart it will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

So when worry hits you, when the stress attack hits you, God’s peace in Christ will be standing as a sentinel to the door of your heart and your mind. God’s peace in Christ will guard your very heart. The worry and the stress won’t be able to get in because God’s peace will keep it out. People that’s the promise here.

So do you believe God’s Word or not? Do you believe that this is God’s promise to you or not? Friend it’s either one or the other. I don’t know if they got it but I’m praying that you get it. The way that we appropriate the peace of God, the way that we lay hold of it, the way that we grab it with both hands and hang on to it and own it is by praying with a thankful heart and pouring it all out to God.

Let me tell you something, if you’re in a stressful situation and you take just this one promise and start living it out by making it a habit, to get away alone with God and pray I guarantee that the peace of God which passes all understanding will become the heart and mind sentinel of your life.

So there’s your stress buster, there’s your peace and remember it’s a peace that given your circumstances you really shouldn’t have. It’s a peace that in the face of the stressful situation that you’re facing simply doesn’t make sense to you or to anybody else. Fortunately it doesn’t have to because peace is peace, God’s peace is God’s peace and I’ll take that in place of the world’s stress any day. How about you?

There’s nothing worse than a sad sack, you know those gloomy characters, they never see the good in anything. Such awful people to be around because they just drag you down but here’s question, are you one of those sad sacks?

Yeah sorry to be a bit blunt there but it doesn’t hurt us to look in the mirror every now and then and ask ourselves some tough questions like that. So are you one of those people who exudes joy or sadness? A positive outlook or a negative outlook? Encouragement or discouragement? Which one of them are you? Or do you fluctuate between the two, up on the mountain tops one day, down in the dumps the next?

The reason I’m asking is that if you’re someone who spends more than a little time down in the dumps then it’s having an impact on you, it’s having an impact on the people around you and it’s having an impact on the relationships that you have with them. It’s pretty far-reaching because if we damage relationships we damage career prospects, we damage marriages, we damage children. It’s pretty serious stuff.

This week again on the program we’re continuing in a series of messages that I’ve called Stress Busters. The world wants us to believe that we can wave a magic wand and make stress disappear. The other day I shared some of the superficial rubbish on stress reduction from one very well-known celebrity’s website. Here’s another load from one of these Body and Soul sites, ten quirky stress busters it’s called.

Chew gum, eat chocolate (that will be just fine and dandy when you come down off your sugar high), get a cat, keep a diary, do some yoga, hum a tune, blow up a balloon, snack on walnuts, (well that’s a lot better than sugar filled gum and chocolate I have to admit) have a laugh or ring your mum.

Oh please, stress is so much deeper and so much more profound in our lives than that. It’s a constant companion for many, many people. Everything stresses them or if not everything then they go through prolonged periods of stress over one or two very important issues or situations in their lives.

You’ve probably figured out that eating walnuts, as good as that may be for you, is not going to solve the problems in your life or relieve your stress, at least I’m hoping you have. You see the world’s answer to stress is to conjure something up out of nothing or to apply an external band-aid to heal a deep internal wound.

Have you had this experience? You’re driving along in the car and it’s a bright sunny day so you pop your sunglasses on but gradually the clouds roll in and at some point you’re thinking, ‘Boy it’s a dark and gloomy day isn’t it?’ Then you realise you’re wearing your sunnies so you take them off and it’s only then that you realise that it’s nowhere near as dark and as gloomy as you thought it was. Sure it’s overcast but it’s not dark and gloomy.

The attitudes of our hearts are a lot like those sunglasses. Some people are walking through difficult times with this gloomy dark view of the world and so the whole experience feels about a hundred times worse than it is. God knows that that’s why He’s concerned over the state of your heart. Have a listen to some of the things that He has to say in His Word about what’s going on in your heart. Proverbs chapter 12, verse 25:

An anxious heart weighs you down but a kind word cheers you up.

Chapter 15, verse 13:

A happy heart makes the face cheerful but heartache crushes the spirit.

And chapter 17, verse 22 of Proverbs:

A cheerful heart is good medicine but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

God’s interested in the state of your heart. Now yesterday we chatted about how to get God’s peace guarding your heart and your mind, do you remember, Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7:

Don’t worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

So simply by praying instead of worrying, by giving thanks, by laying out our concerns and needs openly before God He will replace the fear and the stress and the worry with His peace which will actually guard your heart and your mind. Imagine God’s peace standing sentinel outside your heart and your mind to keep worry and stress away. I reckon that’s a pretty good deal.

But what the Apostle Paul goes on to say straight after that, writing as he is from his prison cell on death row, is equally instructive in terms of how to foster that peace and how to keep the cheerfulness and joy that God’s peace brings strong in our hearts. The next two verses, Philippians chapter 4, verses 8 and 9:

Finally beloved whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just or pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there’s anything excellent, if there’s anything worthy of praise, think about those things. Keep on doing the things that you’ve learned and received and heard and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you.

So instead of mulling over the bad stuff and all the things that are wrong think about the good stuff. Now you might say to me, ‘I can’t control what I think about’. Sure you can. When you find yourself thinking about something that’s negative you can choose to think about something positive instead. Try it, it actually works and if you’re struggling you go back to prayer and the Holy Spirit who is remember in the business of guarding your heart and your mind with God’s peace and He’s right there to be part of that and to help you.

And now the exciting thing that happens is that we get benefit from that on the inside but other people, the people around us also get benefit as that joy and that peace and that quiet confidence and trust in God oozes out of us and overflows in their lives. They look at you and go, ‘Wow, what’s that person got, I want some of that.’

Do you want to be glum? Do you want to be down cast? Do you want to be feeling down in the dumps all the time? Well I hope the answer to that is no, so now you implement these two simple things, pray instead of worrying and when you find your mind wandering into those down things and imagining all the bad things that can happen, take control and grab it back.

With the help of the Holy Spirit who is on your side and focus on the good stuff, the stuff that God is about in your life and now you are living a much, much better life on the inside because you’re at peace, your heart is cheerful, Jesus wants you to have a cheerful heart. Remember what He said to His disciples, John chapter 16, verse 33:

In this world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.

So your life is much better but now this peace and this joy is oozing out of you and all of a sudden you can’t help it, you want to encourage others, you’re having an impact on their lives:

A cheerful look brings joy to the heart and good news brings health to the bones.

Proverbs 15:30

So the cheerful look on your face is going to bring joy to someone else’s heart and health to someone else’s bones. The encouraging word that you give to them, the good news that you share with them is going to give life to them. Friend, your joy can touch their lives, your life improves, their life improves, your relationship with them improves all because you took the time to lay hold of the peace and the joy that God has for you.

Man, talk about a stress buster. When you’re in that dark place, when you’re in your death row cell pray with a joyful heart, tell God all your troubles and His peace will guard your heart and your mind and then spend your time thinking about the good things that God is doing and the joy of the Lord will be your strength.

For some people stress is a constant companion, if you can call it that. They wish they weren’t stressed but they are. There’s a reason for that, it turns out that they’re looking down instead of up.

Well over these last few weeks we’ve been chatting about how to deal with the stress in our lives. Not that all stress is bad, some stress from time to time helps us to get things done, to sharpen our game, to deliver, to perform. An athlete about to run a hundred metre dash at the Olympics will harness that nervous energy let’s call it, as they line up on the starting blocks. That’s a good thing, it’s just not good if we’re constantly living our lives under stress.

And so we’ve been chatting in this series that I’ve called Stress Busters about dealing with the root cause of the stress, no band-aid solutions like listening to soothing music or having a nice cup of tea or patting a cat, they’re all nice and lovely but when we’re under real stress all those things do is alleviate the symptoms for just a short time.

What we need is to deal with the root cause of the stress. Now immediately people think, ‘stress – root cause, right, it’s that person, that situation. That medical diagnosis, that thing out there, that’s what I have to deal with.’ Well perhaps but pressure and stress are two fundamentally different things, those things out there put pressure on us but stress is all about how we react to them. So if we’re looking for the root cause of stress it lies inside us in our hearts, in our minds.

So we’ve chatted in this series about some real stress busters, things that deal with the root cause, learning to trust God, learning how to develop a quiet confidence in Him and how to pray the prayer of peace. How to have a cheerful heart, if you’ve missed out on any of those messages you’ll find them in the series Stress Busters on our website www.christianityworks.com.

Today I’d like to bring all of those lessons together in a practical case study, if you will, by sharing the story of a woman called Hannah. She was the Prophet Samuel’s mother in the Old Testament of the Bible but as with many of the great things that God’s doing Samuel’s entry into the world wasn’t an easy one, at least not for Hannah. It was a stressful time, in fact she was so deeply stressed over a long period of time that it wasn’t easy at all.

So just sit back and have a listen to her story, it’s a real stressful situation. Here we go, 1 Samuel chapter 1:

There was a certain man of Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph an Ephraimite. He had two wives, the name of one was Hannah, the name of the other was Peninnah. Peninnah had children but Hannah had no children.

Now this man used to go up year by year from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas were priests of the Lord. On the day that Elkanah sacrificed he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters but to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her though the Lord had closed her womb.

Her rival used to provoke her severely to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year after year. As often as she went up to the house of the Lord she used to provoke her therefore Hannah wept and wouldn’t eat. Her husband Elkanah said to her, ‘Hannah why do you weep? Why don’t you eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?’

After they’d eaten and drunk at Shiloh Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the door post of the Temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. She made this vow.

‘O Lord of hosts if only you will look on the misery of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant but will give to your servant a male child then I will set him before you as a Nazirite until the day of his death. He shall neither drink wine nor intoxicants and no razor shall touch his head.’

As she continued praying before the Lord Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying silently, only her lips moved but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk so Eli said to her, ‘How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.’ But Hannah answered, ‘No my Lord, I am a woman deeply troubled. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Don’t regard your servant as a worthless woman for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.’

Then Eli answered, ‘Go in peace, the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.’ And she said to him, ‘Let your servant find favour in your sight.’ Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband and her countenance was sad no longer.

Beautiful story. You can’t help but feel for Hannah and what she was going through. It was a really big thing in that culture for her not to be able to have a child. They basically believed that if you were a good person who honoured God He would bless you with many children but if you weren’t He wouldn’t. So Hannah was looked down upon by all and sundry particularly by Peninnah, her rival we’re told. The other wife who was delivering plenty of sons and plenty of kids, just imagine how much stress that was putting on Hannah.

Firstly she couldn’t have any children and any woman whose body clock is ticking and who desperately wants kids but can’t have them knows how devastating that is just on its own. Add to it the constant niggling and whispering and derision from her rival, there they were competing for their husbands affections these two women, I just can’t begin to imagine what an awful additional layer of stress that heaped on Hannah.

And then there were the social and religious expectations, everyone treating her just like she was a leper. She could have spent the rest of her life wallowing in the morass of pain and self-pity. But Hannah took some decisive action, she poured it all out to God. Instead of constantly looking down at the terrible circumstances she was in, she lifted her gaze and looked upon Him and deeply distressed we’re told, poured her heart out to God and asked Him to do something.

And before she even got an answer, before she even fell pregnant, listen again to the impact of this prayer on her whole being, on her countenance, on her life:

She went back up to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband and her countenance was sad no longer.

There you have it. The peace that passes all understanding, she did exactly what Paul the Apostle counselled his friends in Philippi to do over a thousand years later. He said:

Don’t worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God and the peace that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians chapter 4, verses 7 and 8.

See we don’t need to clean up our act before we go to God, we don’t have to be full of confidence and self-assured and together before we go to God. He just calls us to come as we are and to pour it all out and we should never ever be afraid to do that. In fact elsewhere in the New Testament Book of Hebrews this is what God says to us about this very thing:

Let us therefore approach the throne of Grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in times of need.

Hebrews 4, verse 16.

Don’t you love that word ‘with boldness’? So as our time in this series Stress Busters draws to a close let me counsel you to do exactly the same. Do what Hannah did. Lift up your eyes, pour your stress out on God and my friend He will act and whatever the outcome to your stressful situation, He will give you peace. It’s just what He does.