The alarm stage is the fight-or-flight emergency system that God created in our bodies for survival. The brain sends a signal to the pituitary gland to release a hormone that activates the adrenal glands. Adrenaline then sends the body into high alert. The brain becomes focused, the eyesight sharpens, and muscles clench as the body prepares for fighting or fleeing. This amazing alarm system has enabled multitudes of people to survive vicious attacks from animals, auto accidents, and other traumas. The body’s hormonal system returns to normal when the perceived attack is over.
However, this alarm reaction is being activated hundreds of times a day in many Christians due to deadlines at work, financial pressures, arguments with a spouse or children, traffic jams, as well as all the common stresses of modern life. In other words, frustration, anger, guilt, grief, anxiety, fear, as well as most other emotions, will also set off this alarm system, which can then lead to a heart attack or stroke.
Dr. Selye’s second stage of stress is called the resistance stage. When someone is undergoing a chronic stress such as having a child on drugs or alcohol or in jail, long-standing marital problems, a chronic illness, long-term unemployment, or some other situation over which he feels he has lost control over an extended period of time, [this] generally leads to the resistance stage of stress. This is another emergency system that God has placed within us so that we may survive periods of famine, disease, and pestilence. During this stage, our cortisol and adrenaline levels become elevated. Cortisol is very similar to the medication cortisone, which doctors give to treat asthma, arthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, as well as numerous other illnesses. However, release of cortisol can lead to elevation of blood sugar, which can eventually lead to diabetes and weight gain, especially in the abdominal area. Over time, it can result in bone loss, which can lead to osteopenia and osteoporosis. Elevated cortisol also leads to hypertension, memory loss, sleep deprivation, and a compromised immune system.
The resistance stage is similar to having the accelerator of your car stuck to the floorboard. Your system is all geared up and is unable to gear down, even at night. Individuals in this resistance stage generally have insomnia, or they wake up at two or three in the morning and find it very difficult to fall back to sleep. After patients have been living in the resistance stage for months or years, they will eventually enter into stage 3 of stress, which is the exhaustion stage.
People have entered the exhaustion stage when they feel burned-out. Examples of this stage are individuals with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, most autoimmune diseases including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, MS, and usually cancer. In other words, these people have had the accelerator pressed to the floor for so long that eventually they run out of gas, and the powerful, robust bodies that God has given them, which He designed for health, begin to degenerate and die. The body is more prone to bacterial and viral infections, allergies, candida, environmental illness, inflammation of joints, and severe fatigue.*
It is obvious from this report that stress destroys the body’s immune defense system. Once the immune system breaks down, it can be a difficult and lengthy process to restore it back to full health.
To restore the immune system, people have to do what they should have done to begin with: Get lots of good rest; eat good-quality food, not junk food with no nutritional value; maintain peaceful lifestyles; and live balanced lives, which include worship, work, rest, and play. And people need to exercise as their systems permit them.
But we shouldn’t wait until we are forced into doing the right thing. Let’s act voluntarily and keep our health. The symptoms of stress are real, and though we can take medicine to mask or alleviate them, the root cause of many illnesses that we have is simply a stressful lifestyle. Unless we deal with the lifestyle, we will always have a new symptom pop up in some new way. The world will not change, so we must.
Dr. Colbert instructs people who are suffering from stress to avoid overcommitment and learn to be satisfied in order to circumvent overspending. He writes,
The majority of our stress comes from the demands everyday life places on us and our choosing to walk the frustration-walk instead of the love-walk: by trying to enforce unenforceable rules. By simply walking the love-walk instead of the frustration-walk, one will be able to pull the roots of stress out of his or her life.
Stress depletes our bodies, our immune systems become weak, and sickness and depression can set in. Some stress is actually good for us; you might say it exercises various organs in the body. God designed our bodies to handle a certain amount of stress; it is only when we continually push ourselves beyond reasonable limits that we break down under the strain. It is when we get out of balance that we open a door for sickness in our lives. Excessive stress over a long period of time eventually causes our organs to just plain wear out.
Each time we say, “I am exhausted,” we should realize that we are exhausting something in our bodies also. We recover from normal stress through proper rest; however, we can cause irreversible damage when we don’t get needed rest.
We live in stressful times, but by following Jesus’ advice and casting our cares on Him, we can live stress-free in a stressful world. If we will exalt Jesus, lift Him up, and put Him first by following the leadership of His Spirit, we will not end up exhausted.
Is Jesus exalted, or are you exhausted? To exalt someone is to put him above other things, to make him first. To be exhausted is to be completely worn-out, having no energy and being susceptible to sickness.
There is a popular worship song entitled “He Is Exalted.” I was trying to sing this song once during a time when I was extremely tired, and I got my words mixed up and sang to the Lord, “You are exhausted.”
He stopped me and said, “No, Joyce, I am exalted. You are the one who is exhausted.”
Remember, God will always energize us to do what He leads us to do. It is only when we go beyond His will to follow our own will or other people’s that we are likely to get exhausted. Second Corinthians 2:14 says that God always “leads us in triumph.” It is not His will for us to live defeated, weak lives; He wants us to be more than conquerors. His will for us is strength, not weakness and sickness.
ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM EXHAUSTION?
Are you excessively tired all the time, and even after sleeping, do you wake up feeling tired all over again? Do you go to doctors, but they cannot find anything wrong with you? You may be experiencing some of the symptoms of exhaustion, or what I call burnout. Long periods of overexertion and stress can cause constant fatigue, headaches, sleeplessness, gastrointestinal problems, tenseness, a feeling of being tied in knots, and an inability to relax.
Some other signals of burnout are crying, being easily angered, negativity, irritability, depression, cynicism (scornful, mocking of the virtues of others), and bitterness toward others’ blessings and even their good health.
Burnout causes us to be out of control, and when this happens, we are no longer producing good fruit in our daily lives. Burnout steals our joy, making peace impossible to find. When our bodies are not at peace, everything seems to be in turmoil.
God established the law of resting on the Sabbath to prevent burnout in our lives (see Mark 2:27). The law of the Sabbath simply says we can work six days, but by the seventh, we need to rest and spend time worshiping God. Even God rested after six days of work. He, of course, never gets tired but gave us this example so we would follow the pattern. In Exodus 23:10-12, we find that even the land had to rest after six years, and the Israelites were not to sow in it the seventh year. During this rest, everything recovered and prepared for future production.
Everything rested on the Sabbath: people, servants, and domestic animals. These were days of complete relaxation for the mind, emotions, and body. In Leviticus 26, we see that much turmoil and trouble come due to ignoring God’s ordinances.
Today in America, almost every business is open seven days a week. Some of them are even open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a wee
k. I have heard that after the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock and began to establish America, a drummer walked through the streets, signaling everyone to go to church on the Sabbath. After church, they rested the entire day. Sabbath-breakers were actually arrested!
People say we are free from the law of the Old Testament and that keeping the Sabbath was part of that old system. That’s good, because people who broke the Sabbath then were stoned. Thankfully, we are not to be legalistic about it, but we do need to honor the spirit of the Sabbath principle. Jesus said the Sabbath was designed for man, which simply implies that we must rest at least one out of seven days. When we make ourselves available 24/7, we are in danger of burnout.
People today are quick to argue that they cannot afford to take a day off, but I say that they cannot afford not to do it. We often hear, “I am too busy to do that. I would never get everything done if I did that.” My answer is, “Then you are too busy, and something needs to change in your life.”
When we are too busy to obey God’s ordinances, we will pay the price. Remember, the Bible says we reap only what we sow. If we sow continual stress with no rest to offset it, we will reap the results in our bodies, emotions, and minds.
If someone says, “Well, my boss insists that I work seven days a week,” then I would say to get a new job. I learned from the story of Epaphroditus, who was working with Paul in the ministry and became so sick from overwork that he almost died, that even if I am overworking “for Jesus” (in my way of thinking), I will still pay the price for abusing my body.
Regular time set apart for God is one of the quickest ways to restore a tired mind and body. Jesus invited us to rest when He called for those “who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened.” He promised to ease and relieve and refresh our souls. He even offered “recreation and blessed quiet” for our souls (Matthew 11:28-30). Just lay your burdens on Jesus, spend time with Him, rest in His presence, and you will experience a glorious restoration. God delights in restoring all things.
DON’T WAIT UNTIL IT IS TOO LATE
The question is not Do you have stress? Everyone has stress. The question is Are you managing your stress? Use wisdom, which is really sanctified common sense. Realize you cannot spend something you don’t have. Spending what one does not have is what causes financial stress and ultimately financial collapse. Spending energy we don’t have has the exact same effect except it’s on our physical health, rather than the financial realm.
Our bodies warn us when they are running low on energy. We should respect them. I can remember conferences in which I conducted five sessions consisting of three hours each, and instead of going home to rest like I needed to, I went to the shopping mall.
Of course, I felt extremely tired, but I would not go home. My head hurt, my feet hurt, I was grouchy and often felt discouraged, but I would not rest. I was not respecting my body; I was not listening to the warning signals it was giving me. I have since learned better. If I am out doing anything and I start to feel I am running out of energy, I don’t wait until I am completely depleted. I go home while I still have some strength. I have learned the dangers of total exhaustion and have a reverential fear of abusing my body.
I ignored warnings in the past and paid the price. I am encouraging you not to wait until it is too late, and you have lost your health. Begin right now to respect your body, and treasure the health God has given you. I am grateful to be able to say that God has restored me, and I feel good most of the time. I also must say that I will probably have to be extra careful for the rest of my life. Once we push our bodies past where God intended them to go, we have weaknesses that will show up quickly with the slightest provocation.
Faith and prayer work. God will restore. He is the God of restoration, but we must also realize that we cannot continually ignore warnings. God is merciful, but He is also just. He put natural safety alarms in our bodies to indicate when we need rest, and He teaches us what to do when those alarms sound. He means what He says: We are the dwelling places of the Holy Spirit, and we should not do anything to hurt God’s temple (see 1 Corinthians 3:17, 6:19).
FREQUENT UPSET DAMAGES YOUR HEALTH
I spent many years getting upset frequently. There were probably very few days when I did not get aggravated about something, and often I did so several times each day. As I studied God’s Word and gained wisdom, I began to realize that this required a lot of energy. I was tired most of the time and didn’t have any energy to spare, so I knew I had to calm down. Jesus told His disciples, as recorded in John 14:27, that they were to stop allowing themselves to be “agitated and disturbed.” He told them, in essence, to relax.
I don’t know how much energy is required to get really upset and then to try to calm down, but I am sure it is a lot. It takes energy to resist getting frustrated, but not nearly as much as going through the entire cycle.
Eventually I learned to resist becoming upset as soon as I felt distressed. I learned to talk to myself and actually calm myself down by doing so. I asked God for help each time I started to feel that I was losing my peace. I was learning to “hold” my peace, just as Moses told the Israelites to do. He reassured them, “The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:14 KJV). Frequently losing our tempers or having fits is damaging to our health.
What we often do to our bodies reminds me of a rubber band: When you stretch it too far, it breaks, and you have to tie it into a knot for continued use. Let this occur several times, and eventually all you have is knots. Like a rubber band, we can be stretched only so far, and then we ultimately break under the strain.
All the upset stretches us beyond our limits, and ultimately we break, so we tie a knot and keep going, then another and another until we go to the doctor and say, “I feel as if I am tied in knots and cannot relax.” We don’t know how accurate the statement really is.
Psalm 39:4-6 says, in essence, it is useless to be in turmoil, and how true that statement is. It does no good at all. The only one fulfilled when we get upset is the devil. He sets us up to get us frustrated anyway, so of course, he is delighted. He is the thief who only comes to kill, steal, and destroy. He wants to kill us, steal our health, and destroy our bodies and minds. We should do as Jesus did and say, “Get thee behind me, Satan. You are an offense, and you are in my way.”
We might look at our bodies and energy levels as a bank account. We have enough for our lifetime. But if we spend it all early, we will feel depleted in our later years. I hate to see young people abusing their bodies through eating junk food excessively, never resting, and even perhaps using damaging chemical substances. I have tried to speak to a few, but I always get the same response. “Oh man, I feel great, got all kinds of energy.” They don’t understand that if they overspend today, they will do without later on in life.
LEARN TO SAY NO
One of the reasons I previously found myself stressed-out, burned-out, and sick was from not knowing how to say no. We all want to please people, but we might kill ourselves trying to do so.
I wanted to take every ministry opportunity that came my way, but it just was not possible. We must all learn to let God’s Spirit, and not other people’s desires, lead us. Frequently people tell me that God has showed them that I am supposed to come to their churches or conferences and be their speaker. There was a time when that would pressure me because I thought, If I say no, then I am, in reality, saying they didn’t hear from God.
Other people cannot hear from God for us. We are individuals and have the right to hear from God ourselves. I started realizing that no matter what they thought they had heard, I could not do the engagement with peace and confidence if I had not heard it myself. Remember, God has no obligation to help me finish something He did not tell me to do.
Dr. Colbert teaches that many people are unable to say no because they have passive personalities. He explains that most people fall into one of three personality categories: passive, aggressive, or assertive. He wrote the foll
owing scenario to show a typical situation for a passive person:
If you are passive, you usually have problems expressing your thoughts and feelings and find it difficult to stand up for yourself. Other people, especially the aggressive type, tend to walk all over you; they are able to manipulate and even make decisions for you. Passive individuals usually feel guilty and like they have to apologize. They usually have poor self-esteem and maintain poor eye contact or look away and down to the floor when you talk with them.
I have found so many Christians who are passive, and much of the stress that they are under is directly related to their passivity. You see, when someone is passive, other people’s problems become his problems.
For example, a passive person will not be able to say no when people ask him to do something. An aggressive person at work may ask a passive fellow employee to stay later to help him finish his work because he has an important appointment. The passive individual is unable to say no, so he stays overtime, doing the other person’s work. This may create problems with his spouse, since he comes home late from work, and this trend continues because the aggressive person will continue to put more and more on the back of the passive person, and the passive person allows it. Many times this is because the passive person has a good heart and good motives, and he lets the fear of rejection control his life. Instead he should assert his feelings and ideas and risk not being accepted.*