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Third in a series about managing change in healthy ways
Distress. Just the word brings anxiety and pressure to mind. You can feel the strain from exhaustion or anguish that penetrates your soul when you're distressed, worn out, and pulled in different directions.
Change and Distress
"Stress" and "distress" are not the same, even though the terms are often used interchangeably. Stress is your response to change - the disruption you experience in body, mind, and spirit when changes arise.
Distress is just one response to change. ( Eustress - "good" stress - is another.) When the change is intense ... lasts for a long time ... is overwhelmingly negative ... you can struggle to adapt. That struggle to overcome is distress.
In the face of change, distress seeps in subtly. Your well-being is compromised. Peace flees and confusion reigns. Your mind may race to strongholds of worry and anxiety. When you're distressed, you question your ability to manage the change.
But if you're a Christ-follower, distress is not the place God intends you to be.
The Lie about Distress
In classical Latin, "distress" was a legal term. It referred the seizure of a person's property (what was rightfully the owner's) to obtain satisfaction for a wrong.
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Image: Kentwood Baptist Church
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Imagine the owner's trauma when his property was taken from him against his will.
The same vulnerability and fear are what the enemy uses today to cultivate distress in Christ-followers. In the midst of a change, Satan seeks to seize, steal, kill, and destroy what is rightfully yours: life. Whispers in your ear allow you to buy into the enemy's lie that you must pay and you cannot be victorious. It's such a widespread lie that you may not even question it. Once he has managed to distract you with this lie, Satan goes on to cultivate futility, fear, anxiety, and confusion.
The Truth about Distress
The lie leaves a wake of distress, robbing you of life and blinding you into thinking you cannot manage the change, especially if it is intense or lasts a long time.
But the truth about distress is this: Jesus has already paid for your wrongs that need to be made right. As a Christ-follower, an abundant life is rightfully yours (John 10:10), and God supplies everything you need in the midst of stress so that you can experience victory in His strength.
While Satan lies about change (telling you distress is the only response) God answers Satan's lie with these truths:
- Where the enemy cultivates futility, God grants you His power (2 Peter 1:3).
- Where the enemy plants fear, God sows a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).
- Where the enemy brews anxiety, God imparts peace (Philippians 4:7).
- Where the enemy fosters confusion, God gives understanding (2 Timothy 2:7).
Choose the Lie or Choose the Truth
Yes, you will experience stress during life's changes. But you needn't experience the trauma of helplessness in the process.
You can choose to buy the familiar, accepted lie about change that says you must pay and you cannot be victorious.
Or you can choose to buy the truth instead: "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4, ESV).
The choice is yours.
Part 1: Change: Is It a Pain or Is It a Gain?
Part 2: Stress - Your Body's Response to Change
Growth Point
Jesus gives life and victory even in overwhelming times of change.
Scripture
He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. (1 John 4:4, ESV)
Prayer Points - Recall a time of distress. Did you question your ability to manage it?
- Why is the lie about distress - that you must pay or you cannot cope - so effective?
- Meditate on one biblical truth about change. Ask God to show you how to implement that truth into your life.
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"I just can't win in this situation." Chances are you have felt that way at one point.
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