Which One ?

If you could ask all the folks who ever had strokes, high blood pressure, eating or sleeping problems, and perhaps even heart attacks, "what was the single factor that lead to your situation?" my guess would be that the answer for the majority would be "stress".

What is stress?  I'm certainly no doctor, and I won't get into a medical discussion about it, but I'm pretty sure I can offer a simplistic everyday man's opinion....from my own experience:

• "stress is what I feel as a result worrying or fretting about things over which I have no control, to the point that it affects my attitude, my behavior, and my well being, and in doing so it also affects my relationships with others around me as well as driving a wedge into my spiritual foundation.  Stress is self inflicted....it is not communicable." 

Being the broken humans that we are, one could also say that stress also has a role in that little game we play "I want it now".  Doesn't stress kind of make you believe that everything has to happen right now?   If it didn't, would not we all be just supremely patient? 

There is only one antidote for stress that I know of.  Sure, there are all kinds of medications prescribed, but aren't those primarily for the conditions that arise out of an overload of stress?  Stress is a head and heart condition, and the only remedy for it that I know of is faith.  You can't buy faith at Walgreens.  You get faith from living a relationship with the Lord, by living for Him and trusting solely on Him. 

YIKES !!!!  Doesn't that mean giving up control of my life?  You bet it does.  Look at it this way.  Has your way worked really, really well?  Has your way relieved stress or added stress?  I know about me.....my way=stress.  That's just the way it is.  But I have found that the more I embrace the Lord as my guide, the less stress I have.

 

my way = stress

His way = faith

 

While I may not always like it (and perhaps you won't either), faith reassures me that everything will happen in God's timing.  And just to clarify, at those times I'm not liking it it is because His clock is different than mine.  It's hard to drop that "want it now" thing.

 

So the bottom line question is simply this.  Which one?  Stress or faith?  Seems pretty simple to me.