3. FEATURE ARTICLE: Being Stressed out and anxious -- the great challenge of our time
NOTE: The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book "Thriving Leaders: Spiritual Principles for Changing the World Without Wrecking Your Life."
The issue of being stressed out and anxious might just be the most important issue of our time. Everyone wants to be happy, and everyone wants to be at peace. The stress and anxiety many people live under robs them of that happiness and peace.
Overcoming chronic stress and anxiety is one of the
core components of the “salvation” at the heart of the Christian message. Jesus said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
The promise of the spiritual life is not simply the experience of eternal life after we die, but the experience of eternal life starting here and now. This “eternal life” is a different
quality of life: a life marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. These are qualities listed as the “fruits of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22-23 -- character qualities that come into our lives as the result of the Holy Spirit filling us.
Look again at the list of fruits of the Spirit. Most of these qualities are
characterized by a sense of calm and peace. They read like the opposite of the kind of stressed-out, road-raging mentality that so many people live with today. That is why Jesus calls people to come to him to find “rest for your souls.” Some people even call this “salvation rest.”
Who doesn’t want more love in their life? More joy? More peace? More patience? And going
through life feeling worried, harried, and mentally preoccupied with anxieties robs us of that.
The quality of life Jesus offers is a non-anxious experience that is filled with the qualities listed in the Bible as the fruits of the Spirit. People want that experience in their lives, and most of the “ministry” we engage in seeks to offer some dimension of this “Sabbath rest” to
people. Whether it’s feeding hungry people, helping troubled marriages, engaging in healing ministries, helping people find community and support in the midst of life, answering spiritual questions, helping teach parenting skills -- the list goes on -- each of these is in some fashion an invitation for people to experience a new quality of “salvation rest.”
Even when
the primary need that we’re meeting seems to be a physical need, meeting that physical need also helps people experience “rest for their souls.”
You can’t give what you don’t have
Okay, why is this so important for people who are leading or caring for others? It’s important because of the truism that you
can’t give what you don’t have. If you don’t have peace inside you, it’s going to be really hard to help other people find it. If your soul is not at rest, how can you help other people find rest for their souls?
This is the problem that is killing the supposed “mission” of many “missional” churches and missional Christians. They are trying to meet the needs of
people around them out of a storehouse that is empty.
Dealing with stress and anxiety is the problem that many people in our world today are struggling with; it’s the very issue they want help to overcome! How ironic and sad that so many spiritual leaders are so caught up in it themselves -- their own stress, burdens, and unmet needs -- that they are not able to offer
help to anyone else. They are like morbidly obese people trying to run a weight-loss clinic. They may be knowledgeable about spiritual things, charismatic in their teaching, but lacking credibility about the core issue that the people they’re working most desperately long for -- living with internal peace.
People who are sensitive and aware will either tune these
“helpers” out or take them with a grain of salt, because they realize that the leaders and teachers -- the ones supposedly with “the answers” -- are no better off than they are. What can you or I teach another about dealing with a problem that is so obvious in our own lives?
