When you write a blog named Christianity 201, you expect each day to post items which will dig a little deeper for devotional or Bible study content. But taking it to the next level for many people involves digging a little deeper in terms of the work that God wants to do down deep in our hearts; dealing with our own spiritual deficiencies and allowing God to do a work of inner healing in our lives. Ideally, a blog like this would be a 50-50 split between deeper teaching and encouragement toward a deeper revolution in our hearts.
I was thinking about that tonight when reading Jeff Leake’s piece on Stress at his blog, The Launch Pad, which he called What’s Stressing You Out.
Yesterday, I was asked a question about staying healthy in ministry over the long-haul. Basically the question was, ‘what have been the keys to dealing with stress and sustaining personal health in ministry over the past 20+ years of your life?’
There are two sources of stress:
EXTERNAL STRESSORS – some of these things can can attempt to control – our schedule, our pace, our priorities. Some of these things we cannot control – our circumstances, the response of the people around us, the impact of events and happenings in our world. There are some keys to managing external stressors:
- Learning good time management skills.
- Scheduling in a date nite, exercise, family time.
- Keeping a sabbath (a day set aside unto God every week).
- Developing a consistent devotional habit.
- Learning what and how to delegate & how to manage people and systems.
INTERNAL STRESSORS – my sense is that it is the internals not the externals that stress us out the most –
- What we believe about ourselves and about God
- How we process criticism, failure, perceived rejection
- Learning how to choose joy in the midst of trials
- Giving ourselves time to grieve when loss happens in our life
- Being able to forgive ourselves when we fail and access God’s forgiveness
- Maintaining purity and accountability so that we are not unnecessarily weighed down by guilt and sin
The first ten years of my ministry I worked primarily on trying to master the management of the EXTERNALS – but I never really worked through some of the stress on the inside. Several years back after the stress in my life caused boughts with migraines – I took the time and did the work to deal with the INTERNAL sources of my stress.
Both are necessary. But I think my choice to rigorously deal with what was going on – on the inside has produced in me a greater degree of peace and the capacity for sustainability over the long-haul. I say that with an awareness that this is something that you can never stop paying attention to and must continually depend on God for his sustaining grace.
~Jeff Leake
Christianity 201 