A calm and undisturbed mind and heart are the life and health of the body… – Proverbs 14:30, Amplified Bible (AMP)

According to the Mayo Clinic:

…stress symptoms can affect your body, your thoughts and feelings, and your behavior… Stress that’s left unchecked can contribute to health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and diabetes. [It can also lead to] Lack of motivation or focus, irritability or anger, sadness or depression… angry outbursts, drug or alcohol abuse… social withdrawal

In short, stress can have very negative effects on one’s physical, mental, and spiritual health, and to ignore this fact is terribly unwise.

Although we should eliminate from our lives any unnecessary sources of stress, the reality is that no one can live a stress-free life. If there are no stressful circumstances in your life right now, just wait. There will be. Sometimes those circumstances will be intense, and the intensity may last for an extended period of time. Other times the intensity will be less, but if unchecked, the stress can still take its toll on our health. If we’re not careful, stress can take us to an early grave.

What is stress? Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines stress as “a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation.” When stress does contribute to disease causation, it does so because stress prevents our hearts and minds from working in the environment that God intended. When God made Adam and Eve, He made them in a perfect environment free of danger, fear, and doubt. There was nothing to be stressed about. Adam and Eve began their existence with pure relationships, a perfect home, and all of the provision they’d ever need.

But, with their sin came strained relationships, concern over negative circumstances, and all of the stress that comes with such things. Our hearts and minds now become anxious and disturbed on a regular basis, so they constantly work in an environment for which they were never created, in which their functions are not optimized, and because of which bad health can result.

So how do we deal with stress? Unfortunately, most of us carry it ourselves. But Jesus Christ wants us to cast our stress upon His shoulders, just like we cast all of our sin upon His shoulders when we were saved by His grace. Only Christ was able to pay the penalty for our sins, and only Christ is capable of bearing up under the burden of the stress caused by our cares. We cannot always escape the circumstances that cause our stress, but we can always escape the stress itself if we will but take Christ up on His offer to take our cares upon Himself.

Casting the whole of your care [all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully. – 1 Peter 5:7, Amplified Bible (AMP)

So, why haven’t you cast your burden upon Him yet?

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