"Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, Whom you have received [as a Gift] from God? You are not your own, You were bought with a price [purchased with a preciousness and paid for, made His own]. So then, honor God and bring glory to Him in your body" (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

The word "stress" was originally an engineering term used to refer to the amount of force that a beam or other physical support could bear without collapsing under the strain. In our time, the word has been expanded to refer not only to physical pressure but also to mental and emotional tension.

As human beings, you and I are built to handle a normal amount of stress. God has created us to withstand a certain amount of pressure and tension. The problem comes when we push ourselves beyond our limitations, beyond what we intended to bear without permanent damage.

Everyone is under stress. Stress is a normal part of everyday life. As long as we keep that stress within reasonable limits, there is no problem. But when we allow it to exceed its reasonable limits, trouble begins.

There was a time in my life when I was under stress because I was doing an excessive amount of all kinds of "good works" - church work and other activities related to spiritual things. I was going to Bible studies and prayer meetings. I was counseling people. I was running from one seminar to the next, preaching sometimes twenty or twenty-five times a month.

Besides the physical strain I was placing on my body, I was fighting the mental pressure of learning to run a new ministry with all the challenges involved. I was also dealing with the emotional tension that goes along with having a family and a ministry.

As a result, I was constantly having headaches, backaches, stomach aches, neck aches, and all the other symptoms of stress. Yet I would not recognize or admit that I was under stress so that I could deal with it.

You may be pushing yourself beyond your physical limits as I was. If we abuse ourselves in the name of doing Jesus' work by pushing our bodies beyond God's intentions, we will suffer results similar to the ones we would if we were exhausting our bodies in the pursuit of wealth, fame, success or any other goal.

As we saw before, everybody has some stress. None of us can get through the day without experiencing stress of one kind or another. In handling or overcoming stress, it is important to recognize it for what it is, learn how to control it and make it work for us rather than against us.

Source: Help Me I'm Stressed by Joyce Meyer
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers