Get the Pressure Down

Matthew 6:7-8 And when you pray, don't be like the people who don't know God. They say the same things again and again. They think that if they say it enough, their god will hear them. Don't be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

The medicos will tell you that stress can make you sick. I mean, really sick. Stress is known to contribute to the three big killers: heart attack, stroke, and cancer. On top of that, it leads to irritability, anxiety, depression, headaches and insomnia.

But … how? I mean how does something emotional end up impacting you physically?

The other day I realised that I’d dropped the ball on something really important. Now what? So … I put myself under a lot of pressure to hit a deadline. I could feel the adrenaline pumping, so I grabbed my blood pressure monitor, to see what it was doing to me.

Now normally, my blood pressure hovers around a very healthy 115 over 70. But under pressure, with the adrenalin of stress literally pulsing through my veins, with my cortisone levels, my fight or flight hormone levels going up through the roof, my blood pressure had rocketed up to 140 over 90. Not good.

Pressure is often at times unavoidable. But stress, which is our response to pressure … is something we can do something about. We worry, we stress out, we go to God and ramble some useless prayer, completely forgetting that God already has things under control.

This is how Jesus put it:

And when you pray, don’t be like the people who don’t know God. They say the same things again and again. They think that if they say it enough, their god will hear them. Don’t be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:7-8)

So the next time you find yourself under pressure, and you respond with that toxic mix of worry, panic and fear that we call stress, remember this: Your Father in heaven already knows what you need, even before you ask Him.

Jesus also said:

 who, by worrying can add a single hour to their lives?

We now know how right he was. Stress and worry are worse than just useless, they’re destructive and instead of adding an hour to your life, they in fact end up cutting your life short, right?

On the other hand, a quiet faith in the middle of the storm, the realisation that God’s already seen your problem, He already knows what you need … that’s a much better, a much more effective response, don’t you think?

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.

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