“Examine me, O Lord, and try me; Test my mind and my heart.” -Psalm 26:2

“Lord, all my desire is before You; And my sighing is not hidden from you.” Psalm 38:9

Do you, like me, ever feel “programmed” to respond to life circumstances in a certain way?

While we must take responsibility for our response to life, in a way we have been “programmed”, to some extent, by our past experiences, circumstances and life choices.

Please don’t hear that as me saying we have an excuse for how we act. I am saying that past life circumstances, experiences, and how we responded to it impacts how we respond to current life.

All of it comes together with our flesh and heart to produce the abundant life with Christ, or…something else. Do we choose to respond with fleshly ingrained responses or by yielding to the Holy Spirit in our spirit?

Through a combination of personality, circumstances, environment, and relationships, we have unique vantage points from which to perceive the world.  Along with that, we’ve each developed our own set of automatic thinking habits that prepare us to respond to our circumstances in particular ways.

Were your parents easily angered or stressed?  You may have developed this tendency too.

Did they actually teach you this tendency? Most likely, not on purpose!

We just tend to copy the behavior of adults around us. We respond as we see them responding, and over time our response becomes an emotional habit. By our teen years, most of our emotional habits are so ingrained, we simply react when we are exposed to a stressful situation. When we feel anger, worry, fear, or depression, we can often respond with our habit rather than stopping and evaluating our behavioral options. In a sense, it is as if we are “preprogrammed” for an ingrained stress reaction.

We are not without hope, though!

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  -2 Corinthians 5:17

In Christ, we are part of a new creation of people being made new – more and more like Christ, able to turn away from sin and/or unhealthy habits and more and more to Jesus.

He helps us and enables us to live more and more like Him. Yet we are still in this flesh, aren’t we?

It might be helpful to know that we attach an emotion in our brains to every event or experience we have in life.  We don’t simply remember an experience—we remember how we felt at the time of the experience.

Do you have good emotional memories?

I remember how I felt when I birthed my children and married my husband.  These are both wonderful emotional memories.

But there are other times when the emotional memory is not anywhere near wonderful.  Have you felt rejected, abandoned, betrayed, hurt, depressed, anxious, or angry? The resulting emotional response of the memories of those times can be as powerful as the first time the emotional signal was received.  In fact, they can be so powerful that you can experience the same degree of emotional intensity upon remembering as you did when it initially happened.  Over time, emotional habits and patterns to these negative situations become established in us.

If we are trying to shape our lives to be less stressful, here is an important fact to remember.  A person doesn’t need to personally experience an event that triggers an emotional signal. The signal might be triggered indirectly by simply watching another person or even by watching someone act out a situation on television! A person doesn’t need to have ever been violated, punched, beat up, yelled at or abused in order to feel as if he or she has been. My choice of music, television (the news!), and even friends impact me greatly.

Our perceptions will impact how we look at our circumstances and the world around us.  It is our perception of people, work, events, problems—not the actual people, work, events or problems in and of themselves—that influence how we react. And it is our willingness to evaluate those perceptions and consider the reality that they might be sinful and/or unhealthy in nature.

Perceptions can become distorted and determine whether something is positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy. That is not to say that there aren’t very real stressors in our lives. The problem, though, in many of us who are stressed, is that we are ingrained with perceptions to the point that even small events or stressors can trigger a big response.

We often try to manage our stress without getting to the real heart of the stress. We get a prescription, take a supplement, use relaxation music, take a vacation or practice stress-management.  All of which are good and things I may even suggest that we try some in this series. But without also turning toward the Lord and without cooperating with Him toward changing our mental or emotional habits, the perceptions that promote stress go unchanged.

Let’s bring Jesus into our stress! The following exercises can help us move toward that this week…

1.Let’s think about the past…not dwell on it…but just think over it. We want to pray that the Lord would lovingly make us aware of past stressors that may impact our stress levels now.       

-Life Choices that have put stress on your life

-Past Experiences that have put stress on your life                           

-Family of Origin stress (The family that you grew up in and how that added stress to your life)                   

-Pray that the Lord would remind you of and make you aware of important past stress events in your life that impact you now.

2. Let’s pray that God would give us awareness to stress in our life right now and take time this week to notice how we are perceiving the people and situations around us. When do I feel the most anxious, stressed, fearful, worrisome and/or angry?  Some of your stressors may be things that we think shouldn’t stress us out. That is OK., just write them down, no matter how strange they may seem. To do this exercise, keep a notebook or take notes on your phone or tablet.

and…

3. Let’s think about future concerns that cause stress. Again – we don’t need to worry about the future – but it is good to be aware of what may be causing you stress in regards to the future. Make notes about what the Lord brings to mind.

 “Search me, O God, and know my heart!
  Try me and know my thoughts!
  And see if there be any grievous way in me,
  and lead me in the way everlasting!” -Psalm 139:23-24

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” -Romans 12:2

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