i can do it all…

if you’re going to have less stress, you have to check your schedule and your words but at some point you have to go a little bit deeper and check your heart. you have to ask the question, “why do all of our strategies for dealing with stress and lessening stress and getting rid of stress all the magazine articles written, all the books written lining shelves, why don’t they work?”

well it is because while practical strategies for dealing with stress are important, we also, at some point, have to get to the heart of the matter. that creates stress too.

proverbs 12.25 (niv), an anxious heart weighs a man down. there’s weight that comes with anxiety that’s in our heart. we take stress and we push it out, we get rid of it. we quit the job. we change our lifestyle. we move to a new place and then slowly but surely the stress creeps back into our lives.

why does that happen? because there are some holes in our heart that allows the stress to come creeping back in. how do i know it’s a hole in my heart and not just some practical problem that i need to deal with?

if you only have to deal with it once, it’s just practical. if you have to deal with it again and again, there’s a heart problem. if you overload your schedule one time and you learn the lesson and never do it again, it’s a practical lesson. we all make mistakes. but if you overload your schedule again and again and again and you tell yourself “i’m never going to do that again,” and yet you do it again, there’s something going on in your heart. you have to ask yourself why?

now there are some attitudes that you need to watch out for.

for one watch out for the attitude of pride. that’s the attitude of “i can do it all.” why do we keep over scheduling and over committing? i think it’s because we really believe we can do it all.

proverbs 16.18 (niv) is about this attitude of pride that we all struggle with, pride goes before destruction; a haughty spirit before a fall. some of you experience the drama of that verse everyday of your life. you wake up and think, “i can do it all!” and at the end of the day you think, “why couldn’t i get it all done?” the pride of “i can do it!” the fall of “it didn’t get done.” to deal with stress you have to deal with this attitude.

it’s a great stress reliever to admit i may not get everything done on my to do list today. when you admit that, then you do the most important things first – things about your relationship with GOD and then your family and then the most important things in your job you focus on those priorities first because you realize, “i may not get it all done.” it is a great stress reliever to admit that you have limits.

just a thought from the front porch…