EB Family Day Blog

Life is moving faster today than even a couple of years ago! It is not a figment of your imagination! There are so many potential stressors today and most have been with us since humans have been on the planet. For instance, a new baby in the family was just as stressful three thousand years ago as it is today. Let’s take a quick look at a number of relatively new stressors that even our grandparents had little knowledge of or experience with:

INFORMATION OVERLOAD – the ever increasing knowledge base is growing so rapidly that no one can keep up, not even those who look like they are! Information overload is a serious stress reality today and each of us has to find a way to manage all the information to our own advantage or it will overwhelm us.

CONSTANT RAPID CHANGE – coming out of the information explosion is constant rapid change. Change is not new to life on this planet but never has it been so constant and rapid. We humans are creatures of habit and changes tend to always be stressful, even changes we perceive to be positive. Learning the skills needed to manage the rapid pace of change today in the family, at work and in society is essential to managing our stress.

DECISIONAL OVERLOAD – information overload and constant change leads to decisional overload. Consider all the choices and options we all have every day. Whether it is our work, social opportunities or variety of food products, you cannot but be faced with literally hundreds of choices and decisions every day. Someone said a few years ago that we are bombarded with over 2000 advertising messages every day, probably more now. We can easily become overwhelmed and while we block out most of these messages we must develop effective strategies so we can thrive in this new, every changing and multi-opportunity world.

THEN THERE IS TECHNO-STRESS – one lady said the power when out in her house for five minutes and she had to set twenty-three clocks. Ever present worldwide news, cell phones, pagers and the list goes on and on, invade our world with relentless negativity and urgency. Add to all of this: global terrorism, global epidemics and major natural disasters. We can easily worry ourselves into a frenzy day and night. How can we manage these new stressors? Here are a couple of stress management tips.

1. LEARN HOW TO MANAGE THE INFORMATION EXPLOSION, daily flowing in and out of your life. Find ways to sort out the essential from the interesting and the urgent from the important. The internet is a wonderful tool but we must learn how to use it effectively otherwise it can waste a lot of valuable time and frustrate you at the same time.

2. LIMIT THE AMOUNT OF CHANGE IN YOUR LIFE WHERE YOU CAN. Do you really need to move into that new house this yeareven though you can afford it?

3. FIND WAYS TO LIMIT THE AMOUNT OF DECISIONS IN ANY GIVEN DAY. Delegate or eliminate as much as possible. I remember years ago reading about a habit of Ann Landers when if she found a particular dress she liked. She would buy two or three in different colors to limit her shopping decisions. Not a bad idea or example.

4. MAXIMIZE THE POSITIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGY. Must you have every new gadget that is produced? Remember also that technology can run 24/7 but you can’t.

5. TAKE A MEDIA FAST OCCASIONALLY. Maybe weekly, for a few hours, a whole day, and sometimes longer, possibly for a week or two. World problems will all continue without you knowing about them. The stress break can do wonders to help you relax.

6. REFUSE TO ALLOW ALL THE NEGATIVE LOCAL AND WORLD NEWS TO MAKE YOU PESSIMISTIC, CYNICAL OR PARANOID. Choose to be positive and optimistic even when life is difficult. For more help on managing these new stressors consider signing up for my FREE e-course entitled, 7 Days to Enjoying the Stress of Your Life, to receive click on link below.

Cameron Johnston is an author, speaker and stress fitness coach. He is a burnout survivor who has inspired tens of thousands of individuals to live it up without being washed-up. Through his articles, books and speaking, employees in hundreds of organizations have mastered the stress hardiness tools needed to thrive and succeed in our fast-paced, 24/7 world. He has a Masters of Science Degree in Public Health and has developed the Cooling DownThe Stress Soup Stress Management System. Cameron is the author of three books on stress management including, Don’t Eat The Soup As Hot As They Cook It! Here he has distilled all the stress management essentials into eight powerful and very doable ways to cool off the stress soup. He is President of WellChoices

Today we are living in a time when the family is under great attack, the rate of divorce is just as great in the church as outside the church. So many families are broken and need to be healed and restored, many going for years trying to figure out what is wrong and too embarrassed to ask for help.

God designed the perfect plan for the family, but if the family you were born into is dysfunctional, the plan was not implemented. God’s plan has always been for the fathers and mothers to teach their children the ways of the Lord. The home should be a divine school where God’s Word and Godly principles are taught and lived out on a daily basis. The parents are responsible for establishing a standard for righteousness, a standard for what is right and what is wrong.

Where do you start? Start with love. God is love; therefore, the ways of God cannot be learned apart from the love of God; His ways will appear to be just a set of rules. However, a home where love is present is the perfect environment for a child to learn God’s ways. A home that is in alignment with the ways of God is a home that is blessed.

So, to come into alignment for the full blessings of God, we must come into agreement with Him and learn His ways. When a family has the love of God, even the laws of God will be viewed and embraced as guidelines that ensure God’s blessings. We keep His commandments because we love Him. He, in turn, blesses us because He loves us.

Just as there are laws in the land to keep us safe, there are spiritual laws that God has set to keep us safe. Psalms 74:17 tells us, “It was You who set all the boundaries of the earth….” However, unlike the laws of the land, we are always subject to spiritual laws and will always pay the consequences for breaking those laws.

Spiritual laws are much like natural laws. Take gravity; if a pencil is thrown into the air, it will fall to the ground every time. Just so with a spiritual law – break it and the devastating consequences must be paid, every time. This is true if we believe in God’s laws – or if we don’t. In fact, it is Satan’s aim to destroy families by destroying the belief in the absoluteness of God’s laws.

The following four spiritual laws are keys that will restore any family:
The Law of Honoring
Deut. 5:16 “Honor your father and mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with you on the land which the Lord your God gives you.” (Ps. 119:1-3; Ps. 19:7-10; Eph 6:2)
To dishonor our parents will bring trouble to our own lives.

The Law of Judging
Matt. 7:1-2 “Do not judge lest you be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.”
We judge another because we see in them (speck) what we have in our life (log). When we pass judgment on the speck we are also condemned for the log.

The Law of Reaping
Gal. 6:7 “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.”
A man reaps what he sows. Sow bitterness, you reap bitterness. Sow anger, you reap anger. Sow joy, you reap joy. Whatever you sow, you will reap. This is much like the natural law: For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.

The Law of Increase
Hosea 8:7 “For they have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.” (Gal 6:7)

We sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. If bad seed is sown and not immediately unearthed, years later it will produce an entire crop of devastating consequences.

For ways to stop the domino effect go to full article on Restoring the Family at livingwatersministry.com

For full article on Restoring the Family go to
http://www.livingwatersministry.com/articles.php?viewtype=read&trans=21

Denise Boggs is an author, teacher, and director of Living Waters Ministry.
She writes a daily devotional call The Path Called Righteousness.
http://www.livingwatersministry.com/devotionalsubscribe.htm

For daily devotional

http://www.livingwatersministry.com

[tags]dysfunctional, families, healing, family restoration[/tags]