Stress
To the chief Musician on Neginoth, A Psalm of David. “Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer. O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? Selah. But know that the LORD hath set apart him that is godly for himself: the LORD will hear when I call unto him. Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the LORD. There be many that say, Who will shew us any good? LORD, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased. I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.”
Psalm 4:1-8
The number one contributor to health issues in the United States is stress.
Some doctors say that up to 80% of health issues are stress related. The word stress itself is not in the King James Bible, but that doesn’t mean that the Scriptures don’t address the topic. In our text, we see the word distress, and of course it isn’t hard to see that the root word here is, in fact, stress.
According to the Oxford Dictionary this word means, “The action or fact of straining or pressing tightly, strain, stress, pressure; fig. pressure employed to produce action, constraint, compulsion;” The last part of this definition intrigued me: “pressure employed to produce action”. Stress certainly does produce action in us, but generally not the type that it should. In our Psalm, David says that God had enlarged him when he was in distress, which is an interesting statement. The implication is that God wants to use stressors in our lives to cause us to grow, or as the definition says, to put pressure on us to produce action. The problem is that we often allow it to produce the wrong actions.
