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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Modern Calamity, Ancient Remedy

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It Is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

It's 1 of the most significant health challenges of the 21st century.

And the more we learn about it, the worse it seems to get.

Now, the thing is, there is something you can do about it, something God recommended thousands of years ago.

But even though this divine prescription is extremely well known, over time it has become less popular.

The world-renowned Mayo clinic says that stress can affect your mood, your body, and your behavior.

It can cause headaches, muscle tension, chest pain, fatigue.

It can impact your libido, cause stomach upset, sleep problems, and a weakened immune system.

It can cause anxiety, restlessness, memory problems, a lack of motivation or focus, grumpiness and sadness, and can prompt overeating or under-eating, angry outbursts, drug or alcohol misuse, tobacco use, antisocial behavior, and on and on.

Most people deal with stress, which can be brought on by financial, or social, or medical, or any number of situational reasons.

Can't decide what to order and someone is telling you to Hurry up?

These things which cause stress are everywhere.

A little stress is fine, good for you in fact, but too much stress and you could easily get sick, have serious health problems, and end up in a very bad way.

And along the way, your quality of life can suffer significantly.

But looking down through the stream of time, God in His wisdom and with a heart full of love saw that stress would 1 day be a major issue, and so he built into the calendar a remedy for stress.

The children of Israel had just come out of Egyptian slavery.

God was leading them to the Promised Land.

They were on their way to take up their role as God's very own people in their very own land.

This would be a fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham, and from this people would come the Messiah.

So God communicated to them the principles of His kingdom, and in doing so, revealed just what He was really like.

Remember, they'd been enslaved for 400 years.

They hadn't been the masters of their own destiny.

So God would give them guidelines, rules for living.

He said, "...I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." In other words, I have liberated you, freed you.

So, now that I've done that, you shall have no other gods before me.

That's Exodus 20, verses 2 and 3, which stands to reason.

God was their Creator and their Liberator.

He'd sent the 10 plagues, intervened with the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, and then had opened up the Red Sea and destroyed Pharaoh and his armies." This was pretty obvious.

There's only 1 God, so have no other gods, because any other god would be a false god.

In short, don't make graven images, statues and so forth, and don't bow down and worship them.

Why would you worship the creation when you're able to worship the Creator?

And therefore, it diminishes you as a child of God.

Then a third commandment, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain." Clearly connected with the first 2 commandments, dealing with the holiness of God and a person's relationship with God.

This has to do with respect and remembering that God is God, not cheapening God in any way.

And as well as this being about not using God's name as a common curse word, it also means don't take His name in vain by claiming to be His follower while you're not living like you're His follower.

That kind of misrepresentation is taking God's name in vain.

So, let's look at this in terms of a remedy for stress, the silent killer.

What would it do for you to know that you have a God, a sovereign God, the Creator of all things.

You could cast all your cares upon Him, knowing that He cares for you.

You could come to Him if you labor and are heavy laden, know that He would give you rest.

You could Be still and know that He is God.

And where it says, be still, in Psalm 46 and verse 10, that means to let something drop, or to relax.

This trust we're to heaven, God goes way beyond mental assent or just recognition.

The comfort you to experience in knowing that God is God is to be accompanied by a certain action.

And we find that in the fourth commandment.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

6 days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.

In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, Nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.

For in 6 days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." Now look at what God did.

Right there in humanity's moral code, God placed a remedy for stress, a divine prescription.

He knew that 2, 000 years after Jesus walked the earth, the devil would have everybody so busy, we wouldn't have time for God.

So God gave us time, a 24-hour time period, every single week, where you can release the pressure valve on life and let off some of the steam.

Years ago it was common for people to cook with a pressure cooker, a tightly sealed pot that uses high pressure to cook food more quickly.

The liquid inside the pot becomes steam, increasing the pressure in the pot, increasing the temperature in the pot, and therefore cooking food more quickly.

Now what I remember about the pressure cooker my mother had was that it was heavy and hazardous.

I remember it was red, but I don't remember more than that.

It wasn't uncommon for the valve on a pressure cooker to clog, and then a gasket might blow and the lid could go flying.

There's so much going on, so many demands, so much pressure.

And that pressure can build until someone blows a gasket.

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Modern Calamity, Ancient Remedy

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