One of the most famous psalms in all of the Bible, and one of the most well known passages, is the 23rd Psalm. It is a psalm that has given rest, refreshment, and even revival to untold numbers of people. But someone has written another version of this psalm that I believe is a great reflection of the day and age in which we live.
The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest.
It makes me lie down only when exhausted.
It leads me to deep depression.
It hounds my soul.
It leads me in circles of frenzy for activity's sake.
Even though I run frantically from task to task,
I will never get it all done, for my "ideal" is with me.
Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me.
They demand performance from me, beyond the limits of my schedule.
They anoint my head with migraines.
My in-basket overflows.
Surely fatigue and time pressure shall follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the bonds of frustration forever.
A famous author once wrote these words:
Whoever dubbed our times "the aspirin age" didn't miss it very far. For it is correct to assume there has never been a more stress-ridden society than ours…the easy-come, easy-go lifestyle of the farm has been preempted by a hectic urban family going in six different directions …existing on instant dinners, shouting matches, strained relationships, too little sleep, and too much television.
Add financial setbacks, failure at school, unanswered letters, obesity, loneliness, a ringing telephone, un-planned pregnancies, fear of cancer, misunderstanding, materialism, alcoholism, drugs, and an occasional death; then subtract the support of the family unit, divide by dozens of opinions, multiply by 365 days a year, and you have the makings of madness! Stress has become a way of life; it is the rule rather than the exception.1
There is no question that we are living in the mess of stress. The word stress comes from a Latin word that means "to be drawn tight." One of the most popular phrases used to describe us today is to be "all stressed out." I know a lot of people who are all stressed up and have no place to go.
Seven out of ten people told a US News / Bozell Survey, that they feel stressed at some point during a typical weekday.
43% of all adults suffer noticeable physical and emotional symptoms from burnout.
Somewhere between 75 and 90% of all visits to the doctor's office stem from stress.2
Stress is costing American business over $150 billion dollars a year in healthcare cost, lost work time, and poor quality of work.3
Stress is now known to be a leading cause of heart disease and cancer. It causes depression and can lead to migraine headaches, hypertension, chest pains, ulcers, gastritis, colitis, and heartburn.
I must admit that I need to hear this sermon if no one else does. Because in a recent Los Angeles Times article, psychologist, Richard Blackmon, says that pastors are the single most occupationally frustrated group in America. About 75% of pastors go through a period of stress so great that they consider quitting the ministry, and 35 to 40% actually do. Incidents of mental breakdown are so high that insurance companies charge about 4% extra to cover church staff members compared to employees in other professions.4
Our society, both inside the home and outside the home is filled with stress inducers. For example, one guarantee to stress me out are these recorded messages that businesses use to direct you to where you need to go. Quite frankly, I'm becoming convinced that these are devil-invented and demonically possessed.
I read about a counseling center hotline that used the following voice mail message: "Thank you for calling. If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press one repeatedly. If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press two for you. If you have multiple personalities, please press three, four, five, and six. If you are paranoid-delusional, remember that we know who you are; even while you have been holding, we have been tracing this call. If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press. If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press; no one is going to answer. Have a good day."
Well, stress was no stranger even to the saints in the scripture. Moses, as we are going to discover, was the first "stressed out" person in the Bible. He was a classic case of burnout, and from him we learn exactly how to handle the mess of stress.
I. Sense Your Limits
What exactly is the problem of stress? It is the gap between demands that are placed upon us in everyday life, and the strength we have in meeting those demands. Different people call it different things. Some call it the stress factor; some call it the stress ratio; some call it the stress components; some call it the stress formula.
Basically, it's the gap between my "ought to's" and my "can't do's." When my "can do" can't keep up with my "want to," frustration, tension, and stress set in.
That was exactly the problem with Moses.
"And so it was, on the next day, that Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood before Moses from morning until evening.
So when Moses' father-in-law saw all that he did for the people, he said, ‘What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit, and all the people stand before you from morning until evening?' And Moses said to his father-in-law, ‘Because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a difficulty, they come to me, and I judge between one and another, and I make known the statues of God and His laws.' So Moses' father-in-law said to him, ‘The thing that you do is not good. Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself.'" (vv.13-18)
Moses was having to learn that even as great a man as he was, he could not do everything. Dirty Harry was right when he said, "A wise man knows his limitations." There are limits to what any one person can do, and a wise person must sense those limits.
Now Moses was not lazy. He was getting into the office at the crack of dawn, and he was not leaving until the close of dusk. He was working six days a week with no vacations and no time off. He was the first workaholic in recorded history. His fuel tank was empty.
There's an old Greek motto that says: You will break the bow if you always keep it bent. There is nothing, I believe, that perhaps causes more stress than simply trying to overload the load that we can carry.
In the 19th Century the maritime industry was having a difficult time with recorded ships sinking in heavy seas. In 1880 Samuel Plimsoll of the United Kingdom, tackled this problem successfully. He submitted a bill in Parliament insisting that a line be drawn around the outside of the hull on all British ships. When the ships were loaded with freight and reached the level where the line hit the water, the ships were not allowed to load anymore freight. That marking on a ship's hull became known as the Plimsoll Line. Now the truth is, we all have Plimsoll lines.
We all have limits. Have you ever noticed when you get behind a huge tractor trailer that is carrying a lot of cargo or freight, there is a sign that tells the load limit that that truck can carry. Well, you can be sure if those gigantic trucks with those huge engines have load limits, so do we.
This was exactly Moses' problem. Now on the outside Moses looked very impressive; eating on the run, ripping from one end of the camp to the other, planning appointments, meeting deadlines, seeing people; but on the inside he was dying on the vine. He had a wise father-in-law that recognized it.
Moses was literally stressed out. Nerves frayed, little sleep, bags under his eyes; he was just looking for a place to sit down so he could have a complete breakdown. He was burning the candle at both ends, and his wax was almost gone. In fact, his father-in-law said to him, "You are wearing yourself out." The Hebrew word for wearing out literally means, "to become old." Moses was growing old well before his time, wearing himself out and the people around him.
Did you know that a typical concert piano has over 240 strings that when tuned and tightened create a pull of 40,000 lbs. on the frame? Now without that tension there can be no beautiful music. But if those strings are drawn too tight and you exert too much pressure, it will crack that piano and destroy its sound. What is true for a concert piano is true about you. If you get overcommitted and overloaded it can knock you out of tune and rob the music from your life. So, first of all, sense your limits.
II. Share the Load
Let me make something plain. Stress is not totally bad. We all need some stress. We all need some pressure. It is the pressure of a deadline that forces you to complete a task. It is the pressure of a championship that forces that football player to dive a little harder to make that goal line. It is the pressure of a championship that causes that baseball pitcher to rare back for "a little extra." But that is also why not only must the limits of stress be sensed, but the load of stress must be shared.
I read one time about a Stevedore who was unloading a ship down in New Orleans. As he was walking down the gangplank, the gangplank broke and he sank into the Mississippi River.
Well, he went down once, came up and yelled for help. He went down the second time, came up and yelled for help. He went down the third time and came up and said, "If somebody doesn't come help me I'm going to have to drop one of these anvils that I'm carrying."
That was Moses' problem. The anvils needed to be carried, but he could not carry them by himself. So listen to the advice his father-in-law gives him:
"Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And let them judge the people at all times. Then it will be that every great matter they shall bring to you, but every small matter they themselves shall judge. So it will be easier for you, for they will bear the burden with you." (vv. 21-22)
In other words get others involved so they can help share the load. When it comes to doing heavy work, two hands are better than one; but six hands are better than two. You see, the size of a work is never a problem as long as there is the sharing of a work.
One of the greatest leadership lessons I have ever learned is this—Delegate to others what others can do, so you can focus on the things that only you can do. Nobody is indispensable, but everybody is important. So look for ways that you can share loads with others, not only that they might get under the burden of the work, but also they might enjoy the blessing of the work.
III. Simplify Your Life
This was the third lesson that Jethro taught his son-in-law Moses. Find out what you need to do, what you should do, and focus on those things and delegate the rest to others. For example, in v.19 he tells Moses: "Stand before God." In v.20 he says: "Teach them the statues and the laws." In other words, he basically told Moses to give himself to "prayer and the ministry of the Word."
Now you may not be familiar with this, but in the book of Acts the sixth chapter, the apostles recognized they were trying to do it all, and that is exactly what they told the church. They said, "You find men who can wait on tables, serve the needs of widows, and we will give ourselves to the main things of prayer and the ministry of the Word."
What would be the result? "If you do this thing, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all this people will also go to their place in peace." (v.23) Look at all the benefits Moses would get when he would begin to handle the mess of stress. He would live longer, he would work smarter, everybody would be happier, nobody would be exhausted, and all that is needed to get done would get done.
Let me say a word about burnout. I believe burnout is totally out of the will of God for any life. I don't believe we ought to burnout; on the other hand, I don't believe we ought to get lazy and rust out. I believe we ought to last out. Quite frankly, I don't want to wear out, I want to work out.
The problem is, we crowd the calendar and clutter our lives with so many things that our hard drive just shuts down and we can't function. There was a housewife who went to her doctor and he said, "What's wrong?" She said, "I feel rundown." After he examined her he said, "Lady, you're not rundown, you're too wound up." That's exactly what happens when we try to do too much; we get all "wound up."
Years ago we bought a grandfather clock. We hired a professional who works specifically with these types of clocks to deliver that clock to our home. When he brought it to us he said, "Now there are two dangers you need to avoid with this type of clock. (1) Don't let it run down; (2) Don't wind it too tight." Well, that's exactly why we need to simplify our lives because we're too rundown and wound too tight.
When you've got tons of people and appointments and phone calls and mail vying for your attention, you can experience a paralysis of personal energy. Do you know why animal trainers carry a stool with them when they go into a gage of lions? Now they will have a whip and most of them will have a pistol. But invariably what they usually use is a stool, and they can pretty much mesmerize that lion and make that lion do what they want it to do. It's the most important tool of the trainer.
If you've ever noticed, he holds the stool by the back and thrusts the legs toward the face of the wild animal. Now why is this so effective? Because that lion will try to focus on all four legs at once. In the attempt to focus on all four, a kind of paralysis overwhelms him and he will become tame, weak, and disabled because his attention is fragmented.5
Not even a Moses, as great a man as he is, can do everything. It's a great man who can do the work of ten men, but it's an even greater man who can get ten men to do the work. Dirty Harry was right—"A wise man knows his limitations."
IV. Seek the Lord
The first piece of advice that Jethro gave his son-in-law was this one: "Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel, and God will be with you: Stand before God for the people, so that you may bring the difficulties to God." (v.19) Here was the root of Moses' problem. He had been spending too much time talking to the people about God, and not enough time talking to God about the people.
I want to say it another time. The best thing you can do to handle the mess of stress is to begin everyday by spending time with God. As Psalm 46:10 puts it, "Be still and know that I am God." Did you know that God sometimes uses stress to force you to have that quiet time with Him?
Dr. Vance Havner once made a wise observation. He said, "There is no work that is more likely to crowd out your quiet hour with God than the very work that draws the strength from that quiet hour."6
There may be some things that you cannot handle, but there is nothing that you and God together cannot handle. You just have to make sure it's the things that God wants you to handle.
Let me tell you a couple of things to do, practical and yet spiritual, that will help you handle the mess of stress. First of all, celebrate God's presence. Ps. 46:1 says, "God is our refuse and strength, a very present help in trouble." That word trouble in the Hebrew language literally means "to be restricted or tied up in a narrow cramped place." In other words, it means to be "between a rock and a hard place."
When you feel like you're between a rock and a hard place; you're being pressed in on all sides; you're being squeezed in from every direction; that is stress doing a number on you. But remember, that in the middle of that stress God is your refuse and God is your strength.
Second, appropriate God's power. You cannot meet stress on a day-to-day basis in your own strength. Listen, stress will sap your strength, but His strength will sap your stress.
You know there are two ways of handling pressure, and one is illustrated by a bathysphere, a miniature submarine that is used to explore the ocean in places so deep that the water pressure would crush a conventional submarine like an aluminum can. Bathyspheres have been known to dive up to 37,000 feet into the ocean.
Scientists did not know what they would find when they first invented the bathysphere, and it began to descend to depths previously unknown. But they discovered to their amazement that when the lights were turned on and they looked out the tiny thick plate glass windows, they saw fish!
They were amazed because they did not know how fish could survive at that type of water pressure. You see, the bathysphere compensates with plate steel several inches thick. But these fish had extremely thin skin, yet they remained supple and free. They finally figured out that the fish compensate for the outside pressure through equal and opposite inside pressure.
I want to tell you that you don't have to be hard and thick skinned to handle the mess of stress. But if you will appropriate God's power within, it will more than equal any pressure that comes without. You and God together can indeed handle the mess of stress.
1 Charles Swindoll, Stress Fractures, N.P.
2 "Time Out," U.S. News and World Report, Dec. 11, 1995.
3 "Spiritual Total Stress Includes Guilt, Doubt," The Christian Index, January 3, 1991.
4 "Pastoral Pressures Take Their Toll," Pastor's Weekly Briefing, Feb. 12, 1999 (Vol. 7, No. 7) pp. 1-2.
5 John Maxwell, Developing the Leader Within You, p. 31.
6 Vance Havner, Just a Preacher, p. 102.