Coping with Stress

Posted on October 29, 2013 by dkoop

Less StressIs stress a part of your life?  You’re not alone!  We will address it on Sundays over the next five weeks plus you will find more stuff here.  Today, we are looking at how to manage stress.

It may seem that there’s nothing you can do about stress. The bills won’t stop coming, there will never be more hours in the day, and your career and family responsibilities will always be demanding. But you have more control than you might think.  Managing stress is all about taking charge, with God’s help: of your thoughts, emotions, schedule and the way you deal with problems.

To identify your true sources of stress, look closely at your habits, attitude, and excuses:

  • Do you explain away stress as temporary (“I just have a million things going on right now”) even though you can’t remember the last time you took a breather?
  • Do you define stress as an integral part of your work or home life (“Things are always crazy around here”)
  • Do you define stress as a part of your personality (“I have a lot of nervous energy, that’s all”).
  • Do you blame your stress on other people or outside events, or view it as entirely normal and unexceptional?

Until you accept responsibility for the role you play in creating or maintaining it, your stress level will remain outside your control.

Look at how you currently cope with stress

Think about the ways you currently manage and cope with stress in your life. Unfortunately, many people cope with stress in ways that compound the problem.

 Unhealthy ways of coping with stress

These coping strategies may temporarily reduce stress, but they cause more damage in the long run:

Start a Stress or Prayer Journal 
A stress/prayer journal can help you identify the regular stressors in your life and the way you deal with them. Each time you feel stressed; write it in your journal.  Ask God to help you in each one.  This will help you identify each stress and more importantly, give it to God, ask for His help, and not feel alone in your struggles. As you keep a daily log, you will begin to see patterns and common themes. Write down:

  • What caused your stress (make a guess if you’re unsure)
  • How you felt, both physically and emotionally
  • How you acted in response.  Ask God to help you respond better.
  • What you did to ease the stress.  Ask God or someone to help.

Learning healthier ways to manage stress

If your methods of coping with stress aren’t contributing to your greater emotional and physical health, it’s time to find healthier ones. There are many healthy ways to manage and cope with stress, but they all require change. You can either change the situation or change your reaction. When deciding which option to choose, it’s helpful to think of the four As: avoid, alter, adapt, or accept.

Since everyone has a unique response to stress, there is no “one size fits all” solution to managing it. No single method works for everyone or in every situation, so experiment with different techniques and strategies.

Dealing with Stressful Situations: The Four A’s

Change the situation:
  • Avoid the stressor
  • Alter the stressor
Change your reaction:
  • Adapt to the stressor
  • Accept the stressor

The Four A’s are general, but in our next post we will look at specific strategies managing stress.  Each strategy will go into more detail about how we can change either our situations our reactions or both.

Stress is normal; but how we manage it is what helps us get better or get worse.  God’s power and presence can through prayer and through the support of people can help immensely.   Don’t face stress alone, God cares and we do too.  Connect at The Ridge this Sunday.

Darrell

www.RidgeFellowship.com

Sources:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles

http://www.helpguide.org  (A trusted non-profit resource)

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/stress_management_relief_coping.htm

 

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Stress, its causes and effects

Posted on October 28, 2013 by dkoop

Less StressAre you stressed out?  We’re beginning a new series on Stress this Sunday November!   Stress was our 3rd most asked for series topic from our annual Message Survey after forgiveness and anger.  Be watching for the print version of our Message Survey to be in programs soon.  Or to take a short, anonymous online survey, just click here.

Since stress is such a huge topic, we will tackle it on Sundays over the next five weeks plus I will keep lots of information on this blog.  We’ll start now with what is stress, what causes it and how does it affect us.

We generally use the word “stress” when we feel that everything seems to have become too much – we are overloaded and wonder whether we really can cope with the pressures placed upon us.

Anything that poses a challenge or a threat to our well-being is a stress. Some stresses get you going and they are good for you – without any stress at all many say our lives would be boring and would probably feel pointless. However, when the stresses undermine both our mental and physical health they are bad. We will be focusing on stress that is bad for you.

What are the causes of stress?

We all react differently to stressful situations. What one person finds stressful another may not at all. Almost anything can cause stress and it has different triggers. For some people just thinking about something can cause stress.

The most common causes of stress are:

  • Bereavement (loss of anything)
  • Family problems (conflict, misunderstanding, divorce, etc)
  • Financial matters
  • Illness
  • Job issues
  • Lack of time

 The following are also causes of stress

  • Abortion
  • Becoming a mother or a father
  • Conflicts in the workplace
  • Driving in bad traffic
  • Fear of crime or loss
  • Losing your job
  • Miscarriage
  • Noisy neighbors
  • Overcrowding
  • Pollution
  • Pregnancy
  • Retirement
  • Too much noise
  • Uncertainty (awaiting laboratory test results, academic exam results, job interview results, etc)

It is possible that a person feels stressed and no clear cause is identified. A feeling of frustration, anxiety and depression can make some people feel stressed more easily than others.

 How we respond to stress affects our health

1. We do not all interpret each situation in the same way.
2. Because of this, we do not all call on the same resources for each situation
3. We do not all have the same resources and skills.

Some situations which are not negative may still be stressful.  It’s because we think we are not completely prepared to cope with them effectively. Examples being: having a baby, moving to a nicer house, and being promoted.  All are wonderful things but are still sources of stress.

It is important to learn that what matters more than the event itself is usually our thoughts about the event when we are trying to manage stress.

*How you see that stressful event will be the largest single factor that impacts on your physical and mental health. Your interpretation of events and challenges in life may decide whether they are invigorating or harmful for you.

A persistently negative response to challenges will eventually have a negative effect on your health and happiness. Experts say people who tend to perceive things negatively need to understand themselves and their reactions to stress-provoking situations better. Then they can learn to manage stress more successfully.

 Some of the effects of stress on your body, your thoughts and feelings, and on your behavior:

Effect on your body

 Effect on your thoughts and feelings

  • Anger
  • Anxiety
  • Burnout
  • Depression
  • Feeling of insecurity
  • Forgetfulness
  • Irritability
  • Problem concentrating
  • Restlessness
  • Sadness
  • Fatigue

 Effect on your behavior

  • Eating too much
  • Eating too little
  • Food cravings
  • Sudden angry outbursts
  • Drug abuse
  • Alcohol abuse
  • Higher tobacco consumption
  • Social withdrawal
  • Frequent crying
  • Relationship problems

Keep in mind that the signs and symptoms of stress listed above can also be caused by other psychological and medical problems. If you’re experiencing any of the warning signs of stress, it’s important to see a doctor for a full evaluation. Your doctor can help you determine whether or not your symptoms are stress-related.

How do you respond to stress?

It’s important to learn how to recognize when your stress levels are out of control. The most dangerous thing about stress is how easily it can creep up on you. You get used to it. It starts to feels familiar even normal. You don’t notice how much it’s affecting you, even as it takes a heavy toll.

Another problem is that often our ways of coping with stress can be unhealthy, unproductive and compounds our problems.

The first step in reducing stress is recognizing that you have stress and how it may be affecting you.   The next step that we will look at in the next blog post is our responses, good and bad.  Then future blog posts will examine some practical strategies.

Two of the best overarching strategies of dealing with stress is first, our attitude and second our support system.  Our faith will hugely impact both! That is why I want to encourage you to pray, asking God to help you and speak to you and attend the series Less Stress.  We cannot handle stress alone, thankfully we don’t have to.

Darrell

www.RidgeFellowship.com

Sources:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/145855.php

http://www.helpguide.org  (A trusted non-profit resource)

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Is God personal?

Posted on October 25, 2013 by dkoop

Explore GodWe’re wrapping up our series Explore God this Sunday.  One of the great questions of the series is, “Can I know God personally?”  I pray the following article from www.ExploreGod.com is helpful.

Is there a personal God whom people can know and experience? Some say yes. Learn more and decide for yourself.

Suppose you ask a friend for money—an amount to tide you over until you receive a promised paycheck. Your friend kindly obliges, and you both agree to terms. You have made what might be termed a personal loan.

What makes it personal? The loan exists between two persons: you and your friend. You know him, and he knows you. A relationship exists between the two of you. The loan provides context for some ongoing interaction between you.

In these ways, your arrangement can be called personal.

Now suppose you have a great respect for and knowledge of an historical figure—say, Martin Luther King, Jr. You’ve studied Dr. King’s writings, you’ve read books about him, and perhaps even spoken with persons who knew him. You can quote him and tell others about his life and work.

Is your relationship with Martin Luther King personal? Not quite. Why not?

You never interacted with Dr. King in the past, and it is impossible for you to do so now. Your connection with him would not be termed personal. Informed, yes. Inspirational, perhaps. But personal, no.

What Does “Personal” Mean?

Before we can wrestle with the question of whether or not God is personal, we must first understand the term itself.

We say something is personal when it involves relationship—particularly a binding, transactional, or socially acknowledged relationship. Furthermore, if something involves the actual presence of or interaction with another individual, then it is deemed personal. In this way, a personal relationship is not possible with an inanimate object, an intangible force, or an abstract idea.

For a thing to be personal, it must be particular and knowable. A teakettle is not personal; neither is a meteor shower nor “higher education.”

We may also describe something as personal if it involves our private life, our most intimate thoughts, or our emotions—something that touches us at a deep level. This definition is in play when we respond to a particularly probing question with the deflecting phrase, “That’s personal.”

The Christian Understanding of God

Of the many religions of the world, only three claim a singular, specific deity: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Each of these faiths believes that God is a being (not simply a force of nature) who can be known.

But of these religions, only Christianity proclaims a God who is relational within himself. Christians understand God as one God in three persons. The Trinity and the incarnation are exclusive to Christianity—and both are personal concepts, indeed.

The God Who Is Never Lonely

The triune God that Christians worship is three distinct persons in one being, revealed in history and in the pages of the Bible as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Because of this, God was, is, and will always be in relationship. He is never alone and never lonely. His loving overture to mankind is simply the outflowing of the love that already exists within himself, for himself!

The personal salvation that Christians experience “is reconciliation with God the Father, carried out through God the Son, in the power of God the Holy Spirit.”1 God’s triune nature demonstrates the kind of personal relationship he longs to share with man.

The God Who Reaches Out

Christians worship a creator God who proactively enters into relationship with his created beings—a God who even refers to himself in the context of his human relationships: “I am the God of Abraham…the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” he says, identifying with the people to whom he made—and kept—great promises.2

Christians believe that God’s promises to his people demonstrate his desire for loving, personal relationships with them. He didn’t want simply to rule over them or micromanage their behavior.

He said over and over again that his desire was for them to be his people and for him to be their God.3 Such a God is “lovingly-loyal and loyally-loving to the works of His hands. He loves what He is committed to; He is committed to what He loves.”4

The God Who Became a Man

The crux of Christianity is this: the “good news” that God became a man to save men. Christians believe that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”5

What better way to relate to men than to become a man? According to the Christian belief, Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man. As a result, there is no human situation or emotion that God cannot fully understand or feel empathy toward. Jesus Christ makes God personal to man:

Seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal described it this way:  “Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ, we do not even know ourselves except through Jesus Christ.”6

The God Who Pursues People

Through the ages, God’s loving overtures to mankind have compelled individual responses. Even self-professed atheists and skeptics have responded in faith to the God who lovingly pursues them.

Francis Collins, the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute and current director of the National Institutes of Health, recalls his personal response to God more than thirty years ago, after reading C.S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity:

I struggled with that for many months, really resisting this decision, going forward, going backward. Finally, after about a year… on a beautiful afternoon hiking in the Cascade Mountains, where the remarkable beauty of the creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt “I cannot resist this another moment. This is something I have really longed for all my life without realizing it, and now I’ve got the chance to say yes.”

So I said yes. I was 27. I’ve never turned back. That was the most significant moment of my life.7

Personal Stories about a Personal God

Experiences like Francis Collins’s offer the strongest evidence of a personal God. Similar testimonies have come from millions of men and women over the past two thousand years who have experienced a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Those who share this experience testify that God is real and that knowing him is the adventure of a lifetime.

Ask someone who is a Christ follower  about how they came to know God. Then explore for yourself this God who knows you and wants to be known by you.

What do you think?

www.RidgeFellowship.com

Footnotes

  1. Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything(Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2010), 9.
  2. The Holy Bible, New International Version ©2011, Exodus 3:6.
  3. For examples, see The Holy Bible, Exodus 6:7; Leviticus 26:12; Jeremiah 7:23, 11:4, 30:22; Ezekiel 36:28.
  4. David Naugle, “Developing a Biblical View of Life,” The Christian Worldview Journal, April 5, 2010.
  5. The Holy Bible, John 1:14.
  6. Blaise Pascal, Pensees (Berwyn, PA: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910), #548, 177.
  7. Francis Collins, “The Question of God: Other Voices,” PBS.org, accessed December 21, 2012.

 

By:  Leigh McLeroy

 

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How is Jesus Different?

Posted on October 14, 2013 by dkoop

Explore GodWe’re continuing our series Explore God.  Each campus will explore how Jesus is different from other religious leaders.  Below is an article from www.ExploreGod.com to get us thinking on the topic.

Jesus stands apart from other prominent religious leaders in some unique ways.

A popular assumption is that all religions are pretty much the same—several paths to the same destination. By this logic, religious leaders, then, must be essentially identical. But are they?

There are, of course, many similarities among the founders and leaders of major world religions. Muhammad (Islam), Buddha (Buddhism), Joseph Smith (Mormonism), and other historical religious figures all claimed, like Jesus, to speak prophetically and offer insight into the human condition.

Yet Christians believe that Jesus stands apart from other prominent religious leaders because of several peculiarities about his life, teachings, death, and resurrection.

Living a Different Life

The Bible claims that Jesus is the only man to have ever lived a perfect, sinless life. Whether or not you believe the Bible to be true, it can’t be denied that in the writings composed about them, no other religious leader makes such a statement or is credited with such a life.

Consider the questionable actions of a few major religious leaders, even though they were generally considered to be good people:

  • Moses, one of the main leadership figures in Judaism, murdered an Egyptian.1
  • Muhammad, the founder of Islam, reportedly killed many who disagreed with him.2
  • Krishna, of the Hindu faith, allegedly murdered his uncle.3
  • Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, abandoned his wife and son to achieve “enlightenment.”4

Well, regardless of the reasons for actions like these, all religious leaders have said it is best to avoid this behavior. But only Jesus actually did that.

He is the only one who can profess perfection. Even his followers backed up his claim through their testimonies. Peter said that Jesus “committed no sin”6 and John likewise stated that “in [Jesus] was no sin.”7

Jesus’ ability not only to promote faultless actions but to live into perfection sets his life apart from that of all other people.

A Different Message

Then there is Jesus’ unique teaching. While other religious leaders pointed toward some other person or entity for inspiration, Jesus pointed to himself and claimed to be God in bodily form.8

Muhammad confessed to being only a man and directed people to Allah.9 Buddha never claimed the ability to save people himself but pointed them to the Noble Eightfold Path that saves.10

But Jesus declared, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”11 He did not profess to show people merely the way to salvation, but asserted that he himself is salvation.

Jesus made many other unique claims: He claimed not to be from this world but from heaven.12 He claimed to preexist Abraham, a man who had lived over 1,800 years before Jesus.13 He claimed to be “one” with God, which was recognized by the Jews as a claim of divinity.14

No other religious leaders to date have made such bold, radical, and—some would say—crazy statements about themselves.

Life After Death?

Yet undoubtedly, the most important—and odd—distinguisher between Jesus and all other religious leaders is his alleged resurrection. Both Buddha and Muhammad got sick and died. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was shot and killed.

Every other religious leader in history has died—and remained dead. No one claims otherwise about those leaders, not even their followers.

When it comes to Jesus, however, the message is different. The followers of Jesus throughout the centuries have claimed that after his crucifixion, Jesus conquered death and was made alive again.

Philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig offers four lines of evidence that point to the truth of the resurrection story:

  1. Jesus’ burial
  2. The empty tomb
  3. The fact that multiple people, often in groups, claimed that Jesus appeared to them after his death
  4. The origin of the followers’ belief in his resurrection15

Though other theories could explain each of these facts individually, Craig argues that the best—indeed, the only—explanation for all four is that God did in fact raise Jesus from the dead.16 The resurrection is the central idea upon which Christianity stands.17 That is, if it is true that Jesus defeated death to live an eternal life, then it follows that everything else Jesus said about himself must also be true.

Delusional or Different?

Sholem Asch, an early-twentieth-century Jewish writer who actually promoted Christianity, wrote, “Jesus Christ is to me the outstanding personality of all time, all history. . . . Everything he ever said or did has value for us today, and that is something you can say of no other man, dead or alive. There is no easy middle ground to stroll upon. You either accept Jesus or reject him.”18

Those who investigate his life, message, and alleged resurrection agree that ultimately Jesus is different from other religious leaders. His outrageous claims and supposed life after death limit our ability to place him in the simple “good moral teacher” category of most religious leaders.

There is not much room to argue that Jesus did not distinguish himself as a different kind of leader. Whether he was delusional or God incarnate, however, is left to each person to judge.

What do you think?

www.RidgeFellowship.com

·        Footnotes
  1. The Holy Bible, New International Version © 2011, Exodus 2:12.
  2. Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 464.
  3. Edwin H. Bryant, Krishna: A Sourcebook (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 290.
  4. Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (New York: Grove Press, 1974), xv.
  5. The Holy Bible, Exodus 32:25–29.
  6. Ibid., 1 Peter 2:22.
  7. Ibid., 1 John 3:5.
  8. Ibid., John 10:30.
  9. The Qur’an, Surah 18:110.
  10. Rahula, 1.
  11. The Holy Bible, John 14:6.
  12. Ibid., John 8:23.
  13. Ibid., John 8:58.
  14. Ibid., John 10:33.
  15. William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman, “Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?” March 28, 2006, debate transcript, College of the Holy Cross (Worchester, MA), http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_william_lane_craig.
  16. William Lane Craig, On Guard (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), 219–220.
  17. The Holy Bible , 1 Corinthians 15:14–19, 32.
  18. Frank S. Mead, “An Interview with Sholem Asch” Christian Herald, January 1944, quoted in Ben Siegel, The Controversial Sholem Asch: An Introduction to His Fiction (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976), 148.
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