The best stress relievers. Guaranteed.

The experts define stress as our body’s way of responding to any kind of external demand or threat. In other words: your life feels out of control.

Stress doesn’t just bother us. It overwhelms us. Stress can trigger other troubling emotions such as fear, anger, irritability, anxiety, depression, isolation, panic attacks loneliness and more.

Our stress response¹ is the body’s way of protecting you. When working properly, it helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert. In emergency situations, stress can save your life—giving you extra strength to defend yourself, for example, or spurring you to slam on the brakes to avoid an accident.

When stress grips our body, what do we want right then more than anything else: rest and peace. Right?

Stress impacts folks differently, depending on the life event causing the stress. A pair of psychologists studied stress and assigned numeric values to a variety of life events causing stress.  They call them Life Change Units, or LCU’s. Here are a few and their numeric values:²

• Death of a spouse–100
• Divorce–73
• Marriage–50 [Shouldn’t this number be higher?]    :>)
• Pregnancy–40
• Trouble with in-laws–29
• Change in sleeping habits–16

¹To review all the LCU’s or evaluate your stress level by the numbers now, click here.

However, all the LCU’s and psychologists and doctors and stress management books and tapes and websites can’t begin to relieve our stress as thoroughly and as quickly as these proven stress relievers.

Try these infallible stress relievers:

You want rest? 

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and humble in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30.

My soul finds rest in God alone;
my salvation comes from Him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation;
He is my fortress, I will never be shaken. Psalm 61:1-2

You want peace?

You will keep in perfect peace
him whose mind is stayed on You,
because he trusts in You. Isaiah 26:3

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; [Talk to God about your stress] and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Here’s another:  In the middle of your struggle and trials with stress, just keep repeating the name, Jesus.  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

A note to ye of little faith in these stress relievers:
You may think just saying scripture is bogus. “No way quoting scripture is going to relieve my stress.”

I would ask you, have you tried it? If not, why? What’s do you have to lose except stress?

If you’ve tried it and it doesn’t seem to work for you: Keep quoting. Keep meditating. Keep memorizing and keep remembering:

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:11

¹ This paragraph taken from HelpGuide.org

² To see statistics for stress indicators, click here.

How well do you know your true self?

What I believe about myself today

Do you suffer from selfie pride?

What’s your LQ–your legacy quotient?

Where will you go when you die?

My brush with death

God performed a bone fide miracle Saturday in front of a dozen witnesses.

My Mom never breaks the law

Dead Or Alive?

Grave Visiting

…you are free from the law of sin and death

Jesus Wept

Walking Dead

A news bite I overheard on TV claimed 16.2 million viewers tuned in to watch the season premier of the new series “Walking Dead”

Our post-Jesus, post-church, post-love-one-another culture continues to glorify sin and death in the most extreme and ungodly ways.Of the 16.2 million people who tuned in to watch that gore, I wonder how many of them were really walking dead, separated from God and without a personal relationship with Jesus.

As authentic followers of Christ we were walking dead once as well.

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins  in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh,  indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. Ephesians 2: 1-3.

But then, praise be to God,

God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:4-6

Those folks walking around out there who are dead are sinners (Romans 5:8,19); enemies of God (Romans 5:10); condemned (Romans 5:18). Do we, as the Church, draw them to Jesus or drive them away? Does the Church reach them, or repel them? Is your life appealing to those who don’t know Jesus? Do the folks walking around dead want what you have? Do they see something in you that attracts them, or keeps them at a distance?

Our answers to those questions could literally make an eternal difference in someone’s life. Is your faith alive so others can see life in you?

Where Is Our Cross?

“Hey, Barabbas, I’m Talking To You.”

The Story Behind It Is Well With My Soul

Many folks have heard and sung the classic hymn by Horatio Spafford, It Is Well With My Soul.  But I would imagine few people know the tragic yet heartwarming story that inspired Spafford to write it.

Meet The Thief On The Cross

Meet the thief on the cross.

He was a thief and a murderer. We don’t know who he killed or why. But the Romans thought he deserved killing so they sentenced him to be crucified.

Why?

No matter how hard I try to figure things out and understand life. . .

Butterflies Are Free

I love to watch butterflies. So fragile, so beautiful, so colorful. So free. I remember warm summer days passing patches of flowers and witnessing kaleidoscope of