1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,000 Hi, I'm Dr. Ryan Delamater with Ocean Water. I'm stoked that you can join us for today's message. 2 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:13,000 If you're new, we follow a simple tool on our phones each day of the week and each time we gather together at Ocean Water. 3 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:16,000 It's called the YouVersion Bible Lab. 4 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:18,000 Step one is you download it to your phone. 5 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:24,000 Step two, you join our daily reading group. It takes about ten minutes a day to read the entire Bible in a year. 6 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:28,000 Did you know the average person spends two hours a day in social media use? 7 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:37,000 If you spend ten minutes a day reading God's word and getting his thoughts, I promise you'll feel a lot better and it'll help your day be much more positive. 8 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:43,000 Step three is each time I speak, we use the day's reading for our text. It's very simple. 9 00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:46,000 Today, we're in 3rd John, chapter one. 10 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:57,000 If you'd like to join our daily group, you can just message me on Instagram at Ocean Water, or you can email me at ryan.oceanwater.gmail.com and I'll get that to you. 11 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:00,000 3 John, chapter one, verse two through four says, 12 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:07,000 Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. 13 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:14,000 It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, telling you how to continue to walk in it. 14 00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:20,000 I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. 15 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:26,000 Today, I want to share with you how to enjoy life when everybody is stressed out. 16 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:32,000 Have you noticed that lately? Stress is a part of our life. If you don't have any stress in your life, you're dead. 17 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:36,000 You need a certain amount of stress in your life to accomplish really anything. 18 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:41,000 Stress is what gives us the energy, the effort, and the ability to actually accomplish things. 19 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:46,000 You know, if you take a violin, you have to put stress on the strings to make music. 20 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:50,000 If you stress it just the right amount, it creates beautiful music. 21 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:55,000 On the other hand, if you tighten it too tight, the strings snap. 22 00:01:55,000 --> 00:01:59,000 We all know that too much stress can be bad for us. 23 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:02,000 Sometimes we're stressed to the breaking point, like now. 24 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:08,000 A lot of us are stressed. We feel like we're going to pop, explode. A lot of people feel like they're falling apart. 25 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:10,000 We all have a breaking point. 26 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:15,000 The Apostle Paul was familiar with this excessive kind of stress. He wrote about it in the Bible. 27 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:17,000 It says in 2 Corinthians 1a, 28 00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:27,000 I think you ought to know about the trouble that I went through. I was crushed, completely overwhelmed, and I thought that I would never live through it. 29 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:32,000 The first thing I wanted to encourage you to do in this time is to release your frustrations. 30 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:41,000 Stress creates all kinds of negative emotions in our lives. It creates anxiety, worry, fear, guilt, depression, and frustration. 31 00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:51,000 We don't like to live with negative emotions. The most common thing that we do when we're under stress is rather than releasing our frustrations to God, we press them down. 32 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:57,000 We sort of push them inside. Some of us are professionals at this. We're like professional stuffers. 33 00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:07,000 No matter how we feel, we push it down, swallow it, we pretend that it's not there, we wear a mask, we ignore the pain of what's going on, we keep pushing it down. 34 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:15,000 Some people think that that's the only way that they can live their life, and it's to push things down when we're feeling a certain way. 35 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:23,000 Well, there is an alternative. And whatever you're feeling, you don't have to put on a smiley face or pretend to be happy. 36 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:32,000 God's actually big enough to hear all of your concerns and your cares in your life. You don't have to manufacture how you're feeling to God. 37 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:38,000 Does God want us to be phony? Well, of course not. Does God want us to feel one way and act another? Not at all. 38 00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:50,000 Does He want us to be two different people? No. God wants us to be real. God understands those emotions. He created you and I and gave us the ability to feel those things. 39 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:59,000 So God wants us to own our emotions, to own our frustrations. He wants us to express them to Him. 40 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:07,000 The Bible says in Psalm 62a, pour out your heart to God, for He is our refuge. That means just lay it all out there. 41 00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:14,000 God, here it is. Here's how I feel, the good, the bad, the ugly. I'm stressed, I'm frustrated, I'm irritated, I'm angry. 42 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:18,000 However it is that you're feeling, the Bible says that we're supposed to pour out our heart to God. 43 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:26,000 You know, if we don't deal with how we feel right now, eventually those feelings and frustrations pile up. 44 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:32,000 If you just pile them up, eventually we all pop. It's like taking a Coke can or bottle when you were a kid and you shake it. 45 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:37,000 And then someday somebody's going to pull the tab and it just shoots up and makes a giant mess. 46 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:46,000 In fact, maybe you've been on the receiving end of one of these experiences where you were just that person that just pulled the tab and somebody popped on you. 47 00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:51,000 And it was really completely unrelated to what was actually happening in the moment. 48 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:54,000 That's what happens when we stuff down our feelings and our frustrations. 49 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:58,000 A lot of us are accumulating those right now in our life. 50 00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:02,000 So what do we do? How do you deal with how you feel? 51 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:07,000 Well, you don't repress it, you don't ignore it or deny it or pretend that it doesn't exist or wear a mask. 52 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:12,000 And you also don't rehearse it where you go over and over in your mind and you obsess about it. 53 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:19,000 It just gets bigger and bigger. God says this, release it. Tell me about it. Pour out your heart to me. 54 00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:26,000 In my distress, God can't see me, but you heard my prayer when I cried out to you for your help. 55 00:05:26,000 --> 00:05:30,000 Have you ever been so stressed out that you thought God's nowhere to be found? 56 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:37,000 God's not even within like 50 miles of me. You know, he's on a vacation. He's off. I just feel super far and disconnected. 57 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:41,000 Well, we've all felt like that at one time or another. 58 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:44,000 But the Bible says that he sees and knows everything that's going on. 59 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:49,000 He says if you want to get well, if you want to lower the stress level in your life, 60 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:52,000 the first thing you've got to do is you've got to release your frustrations. 61 00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:56,000 Now the second thing you've got to do is you've got to resist becoming bitter. 62 00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:02,000 Bitterness is often a byproduct of us finding ourselves stressed to the brink when we start to feel resentful. 63 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:05,000 This shouldn't be happening to you. This isn't fair. 64 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:13,000 Well, the fact is in life, a lot of circumstances, a lot of things and a lot of people are going to happen to us intentionally, 65 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:17,000 and they're going to hurt us. And we're going to be hurt and frustrated by people. 66 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:21,000 But you can't stop them to hurt. You can't keep yourself from being hurt. 67 00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:25,000 You can't say I'm going to build a wall and I'm never going to let anyone around me hurt me again. 68 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:30,000 It just doesn't work that way. You cannot prevent hurt from happening in your life. 69 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:35,000 This is not heaven. And pain comes into your life quite frequently. 70 00:06:35,000 --> 00:06:41,000 Now although we can't control what happens to us, we can control how we respond, 71 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:47,000 our reaction, how we choose to be in a particular circumstance or to a person that's hurt us. 72 00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:52,000 You have to decide at some point in your life, and the earlier on you decide this, 73 00:06:52,000 --> 00:06:57,000 the better it's going to be for both you and I, that we're not going to become bitter people, 74 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:02,000 that we're going to choose to be happy. Now these are choices that we can all make. 75 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:07,000 We have a choice. We have to choose to be happy. It's a choice. 76 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:13,000 But just like bitterness is a choice. You can hold on to hurt. You can hold on to grudges. 77 00:07:13,000 --> 00:07:17,000 You can hold on to resentment. But you have to make the choice. You can't choose both. 78 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:20,000 You're either going to be bitter or you're going to be happy. 79 00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:27,000 Now I've observed over the years that there's no correlation at all between circumstances and your happiness in life. 80 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:33,000 But we don't believe that, but it's true. We like to think if I could just get a certain set of circumstances, 81 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:38,000 then I would be happy. I'd get all my problems solved, then I would be happy. 82 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:42,000 If I could just get married, if I could just live at the beach, or if I could just have kids, 83 00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:45,000 then I would be happy. Or whatever it is that we put into our list. 84 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:50,000 Or if we get a certain career, graduated from a certain school, or had a certain number of degrees, 85 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:57,000 then we would be happy. But the fact is, we all know people who have it all and are really terribly unhappy. 86 00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:02,000 Obviously, it's not a matter of circumstances. It's happiness and a choice. 87 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:07,000 I've known many, many people who have gone through horrible, terrible, devastating crises. 88 00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:12,000 One problem after another, things that would wrench your heart out. One bad break after another. 89 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:19,000 Yet in spite of that all, they've maintained a happy, cheerful, a smile, a good attitude, 90 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:25,000 and a positive outlook on life in spite of the pain. In spite of the problems that they've gone through. 91 00:08:25,000 --> 00:08:31,000 On the other hand, I've met some people who had almost nothing major built bad in their lives, 92 00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:35,000 yet they've complained at every drop of the hat. They gripe. They complain. 93 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:40,000 Every moment they get up and it's kind of like rising wine. 94 00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:50,000 They really have nothing to whine about, but they're so petty and they have just a lot of whining going on. 95 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:54,000 Some people suffer one heartache or one devastation after another, one tragedy, 96 00:08:54,000 --> 00:08:58,000 and yet they maintain a positive, cheerful, happy attitude. 97 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:03,000 People who've had almost nothing go wrong in their lives, but they whine all the time. 98 00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:06,000 The Bible doesn't really teach that. We have a lot of patience for that. 99 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:11,000 The Bible tells us that bitterness is far more devastating to your life than stress is. 100 00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:18,000 In the long haul, bitterness will hurt you more than the actual problem that you're going through, that you get bitter about. 101 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:21,000 It goes on. It's a cancer that eats you on the inside. 102 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:27,000 Something like that takes over your body like a virus and eats you from the inside out. 103 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:31,000 The Bible is very clear about the danger of allowing bitterness to reside in our hearts. 104 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:36,000 Hebrews 12.15 says, watch out that no bitterness takes root among you. 105 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:40,000 It causes deep trouble, hurting many of their spiritual lives. 106 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:44,000 Bitterness never changes anything. 107 00:09:44,000 --> 00:09:50,000 It's not going to change our past. It's not going to control our future, but it's going to mess us up someday. 108 00:09:50,000 --> 00:09:59,000 What you have to do instead of being bitter is you have to learn to accept things in your life that you can't change and you'll never be able to change. 109 00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:02,000 It's called acceptance, accepting them. 110 00:10:02,000 --> 00:10:06,000 Then you have to start focusing on the things you can change and work on those things. 111 00:10:06,000 --> 00:10:09,000 Bitterness just doesn't do us any good. 112 00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:14,000 Is there an alternative to this in life when I'm stressed to the breaking point? 113 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:17,000 Well, yeah, there is, and it's called gratitude. 114 00:10:17,000 --> 00:10:20,000 Gratitude is the antidote to bitterness. 115 00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:25,000 Studies have shown that gratitude is the healthiest emotion you can possibly have. 116 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:29,000 You need to find something in your life that you can be thankful for. Count your blessings. 117 00:10:29,000 --> 00:10:36,000 That's important because you can't be grateful and bitter at the same time. 118 00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:40,000 When you invite gratitude in the front door of your heart, bitterness goes out the back. 119 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:43,000 You can't be grateful and bitter at the same time. 120 00:10:43,000 --> 00:10:51,000 The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5.18, no matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God's will for you. 121 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:54,000 Do you know what God's will is for your life? There it is. 122 00:10:54,000 --> 00:10:57,000 No matter what happens, be thankful. 123 00:10:57,000 --> 00:11:00,000 You don't have to understand it. You just have to be thankful. 124 00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:05,000 It doesn't say that you have to be thankful for all of it, but in it. 125 00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:08,000 You can be thankful no matter what happens. 126 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:13,000 You can always find something to be thankful for even on the darkest day. 127 00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:16,000 Even when you're stretched to the limit, pressed to the breaking point. 128 00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:21,000 Look for something that you can thank God for instead of being bitter. 129 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:24,000 The third thing we can do is we can receive help from others. 130 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:28,000 You know the temptation when we're stressed out like right now? 131 00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:31,000 It's to isolate, and we all feel isolated when we're in our homes. 132 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:36,000 It's to build, it's to crawl, it's to pull away from people, put a shell around us. 133 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:39,000 We want to isolate, and we want to say I don't want anybody in my life, I'm stressed out. 134 00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:43,000 I can handle this all myself. That's a very big mistake. 135 00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:50,000 When you're at your breaking point, when you're stressed to the limit, you need people in your life. 136 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:56,000 You need people that will give you support, strength, most of all, help you with your perspective. 137 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:00,000 When you're stressed, you don't think straight. You don't see the whole picture. 138 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:06,000 You get a limited perspective. You need somebody who can help you see in a wider view. 139 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:10,000 You need people when you're at your breaking point. 140 00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:17,000 That's why I always talk about being a part of a church or a family. 141 00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:23,000 Now, you can be a part of a snorkel. You can be a part of something online. 142 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:26,000 Maybe you've never developed any friendships. 143 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:31,000 You need to build those friendships and find some godly people in your life that care about you 144 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:36,000 and actually want to be around you, take part of your life on a weekly basis. 145 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:39,000 Have you ever been so down that you couldn't even pray? 146 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:44,000 Have you ever been gone through something that you just needed some friends and someone to help you? 147 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:50,000 Because when you can't believe, you need someone to believe for you. You need someone to help you. 148 00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:54,000 We need someone to have faith for us when we don't feel like having faith in ourselves. 149 00:12:54,000 --> 00:13:00,000 We need somebody who will stand up, walk beside us, walk alongside of us, even carry us at times. 150 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:06,000 Those are our genuine friends and people that literally will carry us through the difficult. 151 00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:15,000 Can you name me the four or five people that you know you can count on that will give you good, godly, strong advice? 152 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:22,000 A little pastorly advice. Set up those kinds of relationships before things like COVID-19 happen. 153 00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:26,000 Once you're in it, it's a little harder to establish. 154 00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:32,000 That's why it's important today to reach out to a group of people that you can read God's word with, 155 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:35,000 that you can get into some kind of Bible study during the week. 156 00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:38,000 And if you need help with that, I'll help you get it started. 157 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:43,000 Count on it. In your life, you're going to hit the wall many times. It's called living. 158 00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:48,000 And it's really important to have people around us so that when life starts to spin out of control, 159 00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:50,000 we don't go off the deep end with it. 160 00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:58,000 Galatians 6-2 says this, by helping each other in your troubles, this is the law of Christ. 161 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:02,000 It's called the great commandment. It says, love your neighbor as yourself. 162 00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:07,000 When you love your neighbor as yourself, you're helping each other with your troubles. 163 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:11,000 And we're obeying the great commandment, Christ's commandment of loving our neighbor as ourselves. 164 00:14:11,000 --> 00:14:19,000 First Thessalonians 5-11 says, encourage each other. Never underestimate the power of an encouraging group. 165 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:24,000 The Bible says we are to encourage each other and give each other strength. 166 00:14:24,000 --> 00:14:30,000 A turning point can be when we encourage someone else in our lives. 167 00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:35,000 Never underestimate the power of just a little word of encouragement. 168 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:39,000 Today you might need to pick up a phone and send a text or call someone 169 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:42,000 and just give them a little bit of encouragement in their life. 170 00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:45,000 It doesn't have to be long. It just has to be thoughtful. 171 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:48,000 We've all been the recipients of that in our lives. 172 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:52,000 The fourth thing I want you to do is I want you to refocus on Christ. 173 00:14:52,000 --> 00:14:59,000 Because when we get under stress, we start looking at our problems and we stop looking to God. 174 00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:03,000 Like right now, everyone's stressed out. You can sense it. You can feel it. 175 00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:08,000 And I feel like God's telling us to relax and to look up. 176 00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:15,000 Because right now people just see pain. They see loss of job, change in relationships, change in finances. 177 00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:20,000 This is the perfect time to let go and say, God, help me. 178 00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:24,000 So I want to encourage you to refocus back on God. 179 00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:28,000 Do you remember the story of Jonah? I mentioned it last week. 180 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:32,000 Jonah did everything wrong. Right? 181 00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:35,000 God told him to do this. He went the opposite direction. 182 00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:39,000 He thumbed his nose at God. He said, I'm going to go my own way. I'm going to do my own thing. 183 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:44,000 It's like, forget you, God. God said, go east. Go as far west as he can possibly go. 184 00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:50,000 You know the story. He went down and found a ship going the opposite direction. 185 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:53,000 He was supposed to go headed across the Mediterranean. 186 00:15:53,000 --> 00:15:57,000 A storm came up with the sailors and they thought this guy must be the problem. 187 00:15:57,000 --> 00:15:59,000 They threw him overboard. 188 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:02,000 The Bible says that God had prepared a great fish to swallow in Jonah. 189 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,000 Now, personally, I don't have a problem with that. 190 00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:09,000 If you believe that God could create the whole world, you can believe that God can create a fish. 191 00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:12,000 They had a man-sized compartment in it. That's easy. 192 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:15,000 It does not say a whale. It could have been a whale. 193 00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:19,000 But it just said a great fish was prepared to swallow this guy up. 194 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:24,000 The fish could only stomach him for a few days though. 195 00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:28,000 As this disobedient guy would give even a fish indigestion. 196 00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:32,000 It would spit him up on the beach like I'm standing on right now. 197 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:36,000 Here is a guy who was literally swallowed by his problems. 198 00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:38,000 What do you do when you're swallowed by your problems? 199 00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:41,000 What do you do when you're so overwhelmed? 200 00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:45,000 You just feel engulfed by stress. 201 00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:48,000 Well, you do the same thing Jonah did. 202 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:50,000 In Jonah 2-7 it says, 203 00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:54,000 When I had lost all hope, I turned my thoughts once more to the Lord. 204 00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:57,000 Some of us have lost hope right now. 205 00:16:57,000 --> 00:17:03,000 Finances and work and family and things are very confusing. 206 00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:08,000 But it's not a dead end. 207 00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:14,000 Don't get discouraged. Don't lose hope. 208 00:17:14,000 --> 00:17:20,000 God is wanting to answer this prayer right now for you. 209 00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:23,000 Some of you feel like you've had an illness and you're not getting better. 210 00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:25,000 Or you've lost hope. So what do you do? 211 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:27,000 Well, you do the same thing that Jonah did. 212 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:32,000 He said, once again I turn my thoughts to the Lord and I focus on Him. 213 00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:34,000 Now that sounds good, but how do you do it? 214 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:37,000 How do you refocus your life on Christ? 215 00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:43,000 Well, there's three practical ways to refocus on God today, right now, even as you're watching this. 216 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:45,000 One is to read God's Word. 217 00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:49,000 God's Word is a great stress reliever, particularly the book of Psalms. 218 00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:51,000 Go through and underline. 219 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:57,000 Yes, this is a digital Bible that we use in our homes, but I encourage you to get a physical Bible. 220 00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:01,000 One thing you can underline, I have one at home. 221 00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:08,000 A lot of us turn to temporary things right now, like food, like alcohol. 222 00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:12,000 The problem with having enough food or having enough alcohol is they never change your problems. 223 00:18:12,000 --> 00:18:15,000 They're just little band-aids. 224 00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:19,000 Some of us turn to TV. I know I watch Netflix, and I like that. 225 00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:23,000 But Netflix and TV doesn't make your problems go away either. 226 00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:29,000 They can give you a little bit of rest, but ultimately you've got to ask God to help us with everything that we're going through in our lives. 227 00:18:29,000 --> 00:18:35,000 So I want to encourage you to get a Bible, to read it, underline the verses that are encouraging to you 228 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:39,000 so that when you're at the breaking point, you open it up and there it is. 229 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:42,000 But again, do it before crisis has come. 230 00:18:42,000 --> 00:18:46,000 You see our habits are revealed under stress. 231 00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:50,000 That's why it's so important to have good habits in our life. 232 00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:56,000 And to have those things built in so that when the storms come, we're ready. 233 00:18:56,000 --> 00:19:04,000 We need to do it in advance so that we're ready for the inevitable road, how it winds and it curves. 234 00:19:04,000 --> 00:19:07,000 Second thing is remember God's goodness. 235 00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:13,000 Psalms 27 said, I would have despaired unless I believed I would see the goodness of the Lord. 236 00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:17,000 Be strong. Take heart. Wait for the Lord. 237 00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:22,000 We need to remember God's goodness because the problem is we're usually focusing on all the badness. 238 00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:28,000 And not only do we focus on the bad things in our life, but we tend to exaggerate it. 239 00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:33,000 And so our problems become bigger than they really are. 240 00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:45,000 The whole world is watching and wanting people of peace, people who can have that peace in the sense of a storm. 241 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:47,000 And that's available for us today. 242 00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:51,000 You know, if you're having a difficulty or you feel like a failure, you're not. 243 00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:53,000 Your problems are over-exaggerating. 244 00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:56,000 Extreme stress causes us to lose our perspective. 245 00:19:56,000 --> 00:19:58,000 Well, this is what happened to Elijah. 246 00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:01,000 I mentioned him last week as well. Elijah got burned out. 247 00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:04,000 He says, oh, God, I'm the only one who's living for you. 248 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:06,000 God goes, Elijah, just wait a minute. 249 00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:11,000 There are 7000 other people who have never bowed their knee to a pagan God in the land of Israel. 250 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:13,000 You're not the only one. 251 00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:14,000 But we think we are. 252 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:19,000 What you need to remember is that God's got goodness and force in our life. 253 00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:21,000 No matter how dark the day is, remember this. 254 00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:22,000 God is a good God. 255 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:24,000 He's not changed from bad to good. 256 00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:27,000 God is a good God and he has our best interests to hurt. 257 00:20:27,000 --> 00:20:35,000 God has a purpose for our life that's bigger than all the problems that we're feeling and experiencing right now. 258 00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:41,000 No matter what other people do to you, what other experiences happen to you, it's a virus now. 259 00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:43,000 It'll be something else in the future. 260 00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:47,000 Just remember that God's purpose and plan for your life hasn't changed. 261 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:51,000 We want to move from panic to prayer. 262 00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:53,000 Luke 18 says this. 263 00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:57,000 Jesus said that we ought to pray always and not give up. 264 00:20:57,000 --> 00:21:03,000 I found in my own life I'm usually either praying or giving up. 265 00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:06,000 Praying or holding on. 266 00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:08,000 Praying or quitting. 267 00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:11,000 So the third thing we want to do is we want to rely on God's power. 268 00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:16,000 Second Corinthians says, we saw how powerless we were to help ourselves, but that was good. 269 00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:23,000 For then we put everything into the hands of God who alone can save us for even raise the dead. 270 00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:25,000 That's the ultimate expression of God's power. 271 00:21:25,000 --> 00:21:33,000 If he can raise a dead person, he can raise a dead marriage, raise a dead career, raise a dead anything, 272 00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:38,000 and certainly a dead job situation or a dead business. 273 00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:43,000 What God wants us to do is literally today to put our problems in his hands. 274 00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:48,000 He's telling us to remind ourselves of what he is capable of doing. 275 00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:55,000 That's the key to Christ's control is to let Christ control. 276 00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:58,000 So today say to God, God take this. 277 00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:01,000 You have more power than I do. 278 00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:05,000 Now that's good news because frequently we have power outages in our life. 279 00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:07,000 We run out of steam and energy. 280 00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:11,000 We feel like giving up even though we know the right thing to do. 281 00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:19,000 We just think I'm tired. I'm worn out. I've tried and I don't want to keep going right now. 282 00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:25,000 God understands. If he's just one ask away today, we'll just do that. 283 00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:27,000 So what do you do when you feel like giving up? 284 00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:29,000 What do you do when you feel like you've run out of energy? 285 00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:31,000 You refocus on Christ. 286 00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:36,000 Stop focusing on your problems and start focusing on God's power. 287 00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:42,000 You stop focusing on your situation and start focusing on your Savior. 288 00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:49,000 These things release your frustrations, resist becoming bitter, receive help from others, 289 00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:56,000 refocus on Christ and then the last thing is this you guys, refuse to give up. 290 00:22:56,000 --> 00:23:00,000 Paul talked about this in 2 Corinthians. 291 00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:06,000 He says, I have worked harder, been put in jail more often, then whipped more times, 292 00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:09,000 without number and faced death again and again. 293 00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:13,000 Five times I was given 39 lashes, a whipping. 294 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:15,000 Three times I was beaten with rods. 295 00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:18,000 Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. 296 00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:21,000 Once I spent a whole night and day adrift at sea. 297 00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:24,000 I traveled many weary miles. 298 00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:31,000 I faced dangers from rivers, floods, robbers and from my own people as well as from the Gentiles. 299 00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:37,000 I faced dangers in cities and deserts and storms from men, from people who claim to be Christians but aren't. 300 00:23:37,000 --> 00:23:39,000 I lived in weariness, pain, sleepless nights. 301 00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:43,000 I've gone hungry. I've gone thirsty. I've gone without food. 302 00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:47,000 And often I've shivered with cold without enough clothing to keep me warm. 303 00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:53,000 Besides all this, I had the daily burden of knowing how all the churches are getting along, the ones he started. 304 00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:55,000 That was Paul's experience. 305 00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:58,000 Now look at Paul's perspective in 2 Corinthians 4. 306 00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:04,000 He says, surely God has let us generously keep on doing what he's doing, 307 00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:11,000 not about to throw our hands and walk off the job just because we run into occasional hard times. 308 00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:15,000 Wow. What a perspective. 309 00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:18,000 He calls them occasional hard times. 310 00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:22,000 That didn't sound like occasional hard times to me. 311 00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:27,000 So even though on the outside looking in and things are falling apart, 312 00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:31,000 for us on the inside, God can be giving us a new life. 313 00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:34,000 Not a day goes by without his grace helping us. 314 00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:41,000 These hard times are small compared to the coming good times that God has prepared for us. 315 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:45,000 The things we see now are here today and gone tomorrow. 316 00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:48,000 That's the problems and the pressures. 317 00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:52,000 But the things we can't see are relationship to Christ and our character. 318 00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:54,000 That's going to last forever. 319 00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:58,000 So what do you do when you've done all you can that seems like it's not enough? 320 00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:04,000 What do you say when your friends or your circumstances are very difficult like they are right now? 321 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:07,000 Well, that's easy. 322 00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:10,000 God. He's here to help. 323 00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:12,000 You just stand. 324 00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:15,000 When there's nothing left to do, 325 00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:19,000 you just ask for help. 326 00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:21,000 I do it every single day. 327 00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:24,000 I ask for God's help. 328 00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:26,000 How do I deal with my past? 329 00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:27,000 I ask for God's help. 330 00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:29,000 How do I deal with shame? 331 00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:30,000 I ask for God's help. 332 00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:34,000 How do you deal when you had a dream and an idea and it didn't go the way that you wanted? 333 00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,000 You ask for God's help. 334 00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:38,000 We always ask for God's help. 335 00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:40,000 When there's nothing left to do, 336 00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:42,000 we just simply say one word, 337 00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:45,000 God will help. 338 00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,000 God will you help me. 339 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:57,000 I interviewed Adam Watts this past week and he said the difference between a white belt and a black belt is a black belt is a white belt that never quit. 340 00:25:57,000 --> 00:25:59,000 That was so good. 341 00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:02,000 Are you at the breaking point today or you feel overwhelmed? 342 00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:06,000 Well, God has some answers. 343 00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:11,000 You might be thinking, well, Ryan, you have no idea what I'm going through right now. 344 00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:13,000 But God does. 345 00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:19,000 God is aware of the stress in your life and the cares and the worries and the problems that you have. 346 00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:23,000 And he will take it from you. 347 00:26:23,000 --> 00:26:25,000 Just ask for Jesus' help. 348 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,000 Jesus said it like this. 349 00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:31,000 Are you tired and worn out, burned out on religion? 350 00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:32,000 Come to me. 351 00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:35,000 Get away with me and you'll recover your life. 352 00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:38,000 I'll show you how to take a real rest. 353 00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:40,000 Walk with me and work with me. 354 00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:44,000 Watch how I do and learn the unforced rhythms and grace. 355 00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:47,000 Would you pray with me? 356 00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:49,000 I invite you to pray this prayer with me. 357 00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:54,000 Say, Dear God, you know the level of stress in my heart and life right now. 358 00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:59,000 You know that I'm going through a lot of difficulty. 359 00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:07,000 I've been struggling with doubt, bitterness, wondering how things are going to turn out. 360 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:12,000 Today I need you to help me be refocused on you instead of my problems. 361 00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:16,000 Help me to be grateful for the things that you've done in my life. 362 00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:18,000 Help me to read your word for strength. 363 00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:20,000 Help me to rely on your power today. 364 00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:23,000 Jesus putting everything in your hands today. 365 00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:25,000 I can't do it. 366 00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:28,000 And I'm asking you to help me today. 367 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:35,000 With your help and by your power, I'm going to keep standing. 368 00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:37,000 I'm going to keep persevering. 369 00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:44,000 I look to you and I ask you to help me today in Jesus' name. 370 00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:46,000 I hope that you've enjoyed today's message. 371 00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:48,000 I hope it's been a blessing to you. 372 00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:50,000 I hope you have a wonderful week. 373 00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:52,000 If you need anything from me, please reach out. 374 00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:54,000 I'm here for you. 375 00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:55,000 Have a wonderful day. 376 00:27:55,000 --> 00:28:05,000 Thank you so much.