God has a way for living a more stress-free life, but there is a posture that comes along with it that challenges us to the core. It confronts our mindsets, decisions and the pressures we allow to dictate our lifestyle.
Most of the time, we do not activate this posture until we hit our heads against the wall, the stress has risen to epic levels and we are already witnessing a rapid breakdown in some area of our life.
But this stress-free posture is still available for the overcomer.
The Posture for Stress Relief
The greatest step to revolutionizing your stressful, pressure-packed life, is to humble yourself.
If you want to take on the pressures of the world, have at it. But we all know that everything we take on extracts energy and steals the fruitfulness of our lives. But the posture of humility will position you for a stress free life like nothing else.
1 Peter 5 is a great chapter for breaking out of stress living. He gives us a power instruction:
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time.” 1 Peter 5:6 (NIV)
Overcomers have learned to humble themselves before God; to submit and come under the dependance of God, who is able care for us and work in our lives. When you humble yourself, a whole set of dominos get put into motion.
- You let go of holding onto pressure.
- You surrender and trust God’s process.
- You let go of taking everything into your own hands.
- You position your heart to be taught.
- You address the faulty mindsets that keep you in stress.
Humility can be an instant stress relief, because it allows you to let go of all that you are seeking to control. You place ultimate trust in the hands of your Father to work on your behalf.
The Challenge of Humility
The problem is that humility challenges every part of our being. It shakes our survival mechanisms and overturns the idols of our hearts. But it also becomes the furnace of identity formation, by which we can arise, shining forth as powerful sons and daughters.
Humility speaks of lowering yourself before someone else. It makes you more pliable under God’s hands and clarifies your ability to obey him.
I often find there is a link between humility and obedience. When I humble myself, I am more prone to hearing what God is saying while I become willing to act on it in obedience.
Humility and Obedience
When I speak of obedience, I am not just talking about doing good things and not doing bad things. Humility causes us to face areas of our character and heart life that we need to face with God and experience change. The obedience leads us to take humble action steps that change who we are and develop our trust muscles with God.
The trust part is huge. Humility says, “God, I make a decision to trust You, to help me become in Your time what You want me to be. I am going to shift my focus from what I wish I was and what I wish I had, to what You say about me.”
Humility says, “I am going to shift my focus from the stage of life I wish I was in and I’m going to shift my focus and my desire and my intentions into walking humbly before You. I surrender the desire for success or the pressure to see my life at a certain expectation. I hand that over to You. I want my mindsets, my lifestyle and habits to all come under Your process for me. I’m going to trust You with my life and allow You to advance my life, in Your timing and according to Your schedule.”
If you are doing all you can to find stress relief, but nothing’s changing, you may just need to take a step of humbling yourself before God.
God Wants to Advance You
God says that in the humility process, He will “lift you up in due time.” Many translations use the word “exalt.”
God actually wants to exalt you. We often forget this in our journey.
Do you know what this means? God is incredibly involved in manifesting your destiny. In fact, He is the one who designed your destiny. Behind it all is a loving desire to build you up and display who you are as a reflection of His divine power and majesty.
God seeks to lift you up and bring you to a higher place. So don’t think that your prayers for increase, favor and enlargement are counter to God’s heart for you.
Stress Relief and God’s Timing
There is just one thing we need to learn. Humility teaches us that this whole thing will happen “in due time.” Not my time or the time expectations of people around me, but in His timing.
One thing I have learned about God is that His relationship with time is so far out from any expectation I have.
Timing is the biggest factor that stretches us the most. God uses it to build our character like nothing else.
The passions that are stirring in your heart are things that God wants for you. But His process goes against the grain of how we think it will pan out. It rubs against every cell of our fast-paced culture.
Many times we feel like God’s timing ADDS stress to our lives. We think, “God, if you would just break through, it would relieve this pressure in my life.” That is why humility is so critical. Otherwise, we will end up stuck in a stress filled pressure cooker.
Your Stress Relief Challenge
I’ve worked in the trenches of helping people for decades and I hear the resistance. I’ve had my own share of agonizing waiting and cries of “how long?” There is a push back that kicks up against the humility posture.
I hear many saying things like, “I’ve got gifts. I’ve got talents. I’ve got to get out there. Life is passing me by!”
Many people are being hit with how old they are in comparison to where they think they should be in society. I am working with countless people who feel they are in a place of demotion or setback. They’re in some version of a mid-life crisis. They may be in retirement age, thinking it’s too late for them.
Yet what seems like taking steps back is actually God’s great work of formation. Many of you are in a life “pit stop,” where it seems you have been taking out of the game or you have been set back. God is actually in the work of teaching you to humble yourself. He’s working on your identity and reforming some areas of your life.
If you are not careful, you will think God has left you hanging, that you have missed out on great things and life has passed you by. In that vulnerable place, fear and compulsion will creep in, tempting you to preserve whatever you can.
You are probably right where you need to be. Don’t panic. Promotion and exaltation may be right around the corner, but you may just need to lean into the humility process. Trust that God is at work and come into agreement with His formation and development of you.
In Due Time
God is not against progress, nor is He against advancement or even achievement. He is not against you moving into new stages and chapters of life.
Be careful that you don’t see His process as demotion or ignoring you. He just works in a timing that we cannot understand, especially while we are in it.
What God is against, is making the promotion and success your focus or an idol. He also knows that when you do things completely in your own timing, you can make foolish decisions. You can end up compounding unnecessary levels of stress that ruin your relationships and sabotage the process.
God is saying to you, “I will lift you up. I will exalt you . . . in My timing.”
That is the part we do not like. As each generation passes, we develop a culture that gets access to results quicker and quicker. The “in due time” challenges our culture. It calls us to get into the culture of the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world.
The Fruit of God’s Timing
If I was to interview all my web subscribers and ask about their God testimonies, we would all hear of breakthroughs and God-given fruit. Each story would have a unique version of how God’s timing stretched the person, but His faithfulness shined through.
But we could also share with each other about times and places where we made decisions based on fear, control and compulsion. God’s timing and process was too uncomfortable, so we took matters in our own hands.
Im sure you could look back at decisions where you jumped into something sooner than you should have and now you may be living with the consequences. You end up living with the stress of that decision.
God is saying, “I am not against you moving forward. But I am trying to save you from unnecessary stress. And what I want you to do is focus on living humbly before Me. Keep your focus on what is in front of you and keep growing in who I say you are. In My timing, since I know you inside and out . . . I know what’s coming down the pike . . . before you were born I knit you together in your mother’s womb . . . since I know the past present and future . . . live humbly before Me, and in due time I will lift you up. It’s gonna happen.”
Stress Relief in Your Career
The greatest place this tension manifests is in the marketplace. In fact, the humility process challenges everything that drives the workplace environment.
Many times, Christianity gives a false message regarding their jobs, career and calling. Too many times we say, “If you humble yourself and obey God, you will get promotions and all the favorable opportunities.”
That may be true. But most of the time, the opposite happens at first. We don’t prepare people for ugly side of business and the pain we experience while trying to live with integrity. And many humble sons and daughters of God get run over in the rat race of business. And it’s not always because you lack faith or you don’t have a success mindset.
You will see all kinds of people who cheat, steal and make dishonest decisions, who walk right past you into promotion. Many times you will see them get the bigger paycheck and higher influence. Meanwhile, you are doing all the work and making decisions that honor God.
In that moment, you will be tempted to say, “God, what’s up with this?”
Some of you would say, “Mark, in my industry, if I were to take this humility thing seriously, people would be zooming by me all the time!”
You are right.
Just like Joseph in the Bible, you will witness injustice and be left hanging. There will be opportunities that seem to pass you by. This is where the rubber meets the road of what choice you will make.
Two Roads – Two Decisions
So you have a decision to make; two roads to choose from when it comes to stress.
The first option is to take matters into your own hands, make foolish decisions or just ramp up the RPMs, which will add layers of stress upon stress to your life. Over time, you will lose who you are in a sea of seeking success and your relationships will deteriorate. Your relationship with God will seems distant and your potential will get robbed.
And see that’s the way our society is. And let’s face it, that’s where many of us as believers are today. At times, we bought into the lies. We allowed the world’s system to set the pace of our lives and we are living with the consequences. And one of those consequences is that we are the most stressed-out generation of all time.
God is whispering to you, “I know it seems so strongly against what everyone else is doing. I know the people around seem to be moving into progress and you feel left behind. But you are right where you need to be.”
But it takes a special mindset to stay plugged into this. Humility is the only posture that can keep you there.
The second and better option is to humble yourself and lean into God’s Exaltation Program for you. It’s not going to be a carbon copy of the person’s process next to you. Each of has our own journey with unique timing and learning curves attached. But when you lean into it, you discover God and your potential in a way you never would have otherwise.
Just as a parent wants to see their child grow and succeed, you’re Heavenly Father wants to see His blessed children grow and fulfill His wondrous plan, which He said, “Eye has not seen nor entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
I am praying for a generation that will break through the stress barrier and enter into God’s process of supernatural growth and divine promotion. It happens under His hand and in His timing.