Sometimes our energy reserves get depleted long before our day is over. We may find ourselves, for example, lacking the sufficient "oomph" to make it through to the end of the day. I see this a lot.
I talk to some people who just sit there while I'm talking, and I can tell their mind is a thousand miles away. They've had it. Their energy has been sapped. They might as well have gone home at one o'clock for all the good they did that afternoon.
In the secular arena, this is something called "tension anxiety," which is simply stress. Stress is not something new. Both the Bible and the world agree that stress is bad. God puts it this way: "Don't take cares upon yourself; instead, cast them on Me" (1 Pet. 5:7). Moreover, secular professionals agree that excessive stress is detrimental to your health and is the greatest energy drain in the workplace.
Of course, as believers, we have an advantage over the secular world. We have the Word and God's Holy Spirit to help us combat stress. God's Word puts it the following way:
Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.This is God's answer for the stress and anxiety that so commonly drain energy and divert good intentions. God always reminds His people to cast their stress on Him, and He will renew their strength.
He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
(Isa. 40:28-31)
"To wait" in the Hebrew means "to expect or look for." We need to expect the Lord to come through for us. We need to look for the Lord to give us the resource of strength to get us through the day. Expect Him to take care of any circumstances that are potentially draining.
Get rid of the idea that your success depends solely on you. Realize that you're a steward for God, not for yourself. Therefore, it's His problem. You're just His hands and feet in this process of His plan. It's not your care; it's His.
Expect and look for God to remove the stress from your life, and He will.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers
Mac Hammond is the senior pastor of Living Word, a large and growing church in Brooklyn Park (a suburb of Minneapolis), Minnesota. He is the host of the Winner’s Minute, which is seen locally in the Minneapolis area on KMSP Channel 9 at 6:44 a.m. and 11:11 a.m. He is also the host of the Winner's Way broadcast and author of several internationally distributed books. Mac is broadly acclaimed for his ability to apply the principles of the Bible to practical situations and the challenges of daily living.
