STRESSED?

Philippians 4:6-7 NLT Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.    

I read this comment recently which made me chuckle. It said “The reason we eat ice cream, chocolate and cakes when we’re stressed, is because ‘stressed’ spelt backwards says, ‘desserts’!  That explains everything!🤣

Seriously though, when we’re stressed the answer isn’t comfort eating, tempting though it is, but there has to be a better antidote and there is!

God’s stress busters come in different shapes and one of them is His supernatural peace which we don’t go to the chemist to buy, it’s available as a free gift and we don’t even have to queue up to receive it. God has already placed it inside us as one of the fruit of the Spirit and it’s in there for us to tap in to at any time, but when we’re under pressure we tend to forget Jesus said, “My peace I leave with you…” We have it, so let’s use it and put it to work!😊

Other stress busters are God’s promises. When we worry about paying bills, we need to remind ourselves God has promised to provide all our needs by Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19). When we’re stressed with fear, and panic wants to set in, we remember God is for us, that He is the Almighty who is in us, beside us, holding us up and nothing can separate us from His love. God is for us so who can successfully be against us? No one!

Our verse above reminds us to pray about everything and anything with a thankful heart, so whatever is trying to stress us out, we can take a deep breath and talk to our heavenly Dad who loves us and ask for His calm to fill us.

And let’s remember we can call on the name of Jesus our Champion, who defeated every devil in hell, who is interceding on our behalf with the Father. When we call out ‘Jesus’ He is right there with us and angels are assigned to rush to our aid. 

So next time we’re stressed out, don’t let’s go to the cake tin, but call instead on the Holy Spirit to help us overcome whatever it is trying to stress us out in that moment, and then when we’ve overcome maybe we can have a cake to celebrate our victory.🤣 Amen.

Photo by Imad 786 on Unsplash

WHEN LIFE HAS US PUZZLED

James 1:5-6 NLT If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.

I saw this photo of two jigsaw puzzle pieces and thought they’re a bit like life when we feel ‘puzzled’ or when we can’t seem to work things out.😊 

We all have times when things don’t appear to want to come together, when we have more questions than we do answers. So what do we do then?

Well there’s only one Person who knows all the answers so we go to Him. The Holy Spirit is our Counsellor and our Helper and He tells us what to do in the verses above. Divided loyalty is when we ask every Tom, Dick and Harry for their input and we become confused. It’s only God’s input we want!

The trouble is, do we ask but then forget to stop and listen for the answer? Do we dash off to do the next thing? Maybe we could all do with learning to give God the courtesy of sitting and listening long enough to receive the answer. It’s a bit like ringing the doctor and asking for advise and then putting the phone down before he draws breath to reply! Or listening to the answer then ignoring the advice!

Have we ever asked God but already decided what we want to do before hand? Or we didn’t like the answer so we delayed doing it?  Jesus said the Holy Spirit would show us things to come, that He would give us wise counsel but He doesn’t always answer on our time table! I heard of one lady who asked the Holy Spirit to speak to her and she waited and waited and had no response so she fell asleep waiting. Later that night the Lord woke her right up, and what she heard changed her life.😊

God does answer us but it may not come when we expect, it may come as an impression to do something, or a verse of scripture or through some other way, but He has promised to answer us, so this is to encourage us to make sure we’re still listening and willing to do as He says, even if it’s not always what we wanted to hear!😊 Amen.

Photo by Vardan Papikyan on Unsplash