Stress and Faith

Lately I have been so stressed out that I have all these knots in my neck. Today I woke up and I can barely move my neck without excruciating pain. I have been doing a lot of thinking today on what I could do about this stress, some I can control and deal with on my own, while others I have no control over because it deals with other people in my life. Sometimes there is nothing that we can do about the stress in our lives and if we don't do anything about it the stress can lead to depression and I know mine has. Right now I have a heating pad on my neck to help with the pain, but what can I do. Psalm 46 tells us that God is our strength and refuge: always ready to help in time of trouble. That is what I need to put my focus on: back to God not the stress that is in my life. What good is it to focus on stress when there is nothing that can be done about it?

I was reading an interesting post about stress and faith on the faith and health connection blog. Dale Fletcher (the author) was talking about how David's family relied on the strength of the Lord to help them through their heartaches and troubles, why can't we do the same thing? Why do we find it so hard to put trust and reliance on God during our troubled times of stress and depression? We pray to God for guidance and help, then when He sends the guidance we ignore what he says and then get angry at him for it. If God didn't want us to turn to him during troubled times there wouldn't be stories in the Bible of him being there for David, Samuel, Daniel, even Jesus. God craves for us to rely on him and allow him to be effective in our lives and focus our attention on him.

I know how hard it is to focus on God when so much seems to be going wrong in life, but that is partly the point. To struggle to keep our focus on him which would help our strength of faith to grow. What would we be if we didn't have God to rely on and to help us through our hardships?
We need to rely on God more for our stressful lives and learn that God is there to carry us through. Fletcher brings up a good point in his post that the "longer one stays stressed, the more likely the body will eventually pay the price" How many times has stressed cause people to get sick? I know lately my body has been more of rebelling against me because of the stress.