The Bane of My Existence: Stress, PT 3 (1 Corinthians 10:13)

God the Wire Artist
In PT 1, we discussed the place that stress has in a healthy Christian walk. In PT 2, we talked about how to differentiate between the good stress and bad stress in our lives. Now we’re going to explore the calculated precision of the stress that God allows to enter your life. His purpose, and His control over what "final product" you project to be- a Christian enjoying the endless love of God, a Christian who has accepted the evil ways of the world, or a lost soul that will be forever separated from the Father's love. In chemistry terms, the variables that govern your belonging in one of those three categories are surrender, trust, and faith in God. Remember I said that God allows us to be stressed- bent and shaped like a wire- in the ways of His wonderful will. A wire does not necessarily want to bend easily, but the metal worker puts strain on it and shapes it to his liking. Almighty God allows trials and tribulations to shape us to His liking- in accordance to His perfect plans for our lives. The wire art of God is beautiful in the truest sense of the word; however, if we resist His attempt to craft us into the children He wants us to be, we miss the bus on the opportunity to be molded by our Holy Father. The wire does not easily bend to the desires of the artist, as we do not always surrender to the will of God; the artist must then test the wire, finding ways to make it bend properly. He can hammer it, apply more pressure to it, or twist it. In the same way, our God must test us through trials and tribulations (what we could collectively call stress) to shape us. But we can rest assured that our Father, as the author and illustrator of my salvation, will never bend the wire too far as to snap it. He will only bend the wire as far as far as it can be bent without snapping. Our loving Father will never ask us to do anything He has not already made possible for us to do, and in regards to temptations, 1 Corinthians 10:13 says,
“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
O how God loves us! He tests us to see if we will either trust Him and be shaped to His pleasing or if we will resist His pristine artistry and become a disfigured mound of steel. And our God knows that being bent is neither painless nor effortless, thus He gives three means by which we can surrender our stress to Him- prayer, meditation, and praise.
In the next installment, we’ll discuss prayer as a means for dealing with stress the Christian way in greater depth.
As a brief overview,
Prayer- Philippians 4:6-7- We’ll discuss the importance of persistence in prayer.
Meditation- Matthew 11:28-30, John 14:27- We find peace in the promises of God in His Word.
Praise- James 5:13, Psalms 103:1-5- We remember those powerful promises and know that they reign over this universe from the beginning to the end.