Do you consider your life stressful? Welcome to the club. We thrive on stress and anxiety. We are bored without it.

When doctors tell us to avoid stressful situations and anxiety, we hurt. We con fuse good stress and bad stress, good concerns and harmful anxiety. During Vietnam, vets often volunteered to return. They were addicted to the stress of violence. Home life was too boring.

We might think our stress is unique, our lives are the hardest, our anxieties are the most justified. “Nobody has it as had as I do. Nobody has it as hard as I do. Nobody under stands the pressures I have.” There is boasting and arrogance in these words. Paul frowns on this kind of talk. “Since many boast according to the flesh, I will boast also” (2 Cor. 11:18). Paul lists his hardships (vv. 21-27). He also exclaims, “I speak as if insane” (v. 23). It is not sane to boast in your hardships. It is extremely self-centered. It takes your eyes off of Christ. It contributes to anxiety.

On the other hand, proper concern and good stress focus us on Christ. “I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger anti thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure upon me of concern for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:27-28). Separate from the external things of food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and how and what I will say, there is “concern [anxiety, worry] for all the churches.”

As previously noted, Paul seeks undistracted devotion to God. He wants us to be free of sinful concern. “I want you to be free from concern [worry]. One who is unmarried is concerned [anxious] about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:32). It is good to be concerned about the things of the Lord. In the same way, Paul speaks of “the daily pressure upon me of concern for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28).

Stress can be good; it motivates us. Concern or anxiety can be good; it prods cis to action. The focus, however, must he on Christ. Such focus does not eliminate peripheral vision. Focus on Christ does not eliminate secondary and tertiary needs. Family needs exist. Work needs exist. Yet Christ is primary. “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

Our ultimate concern and anxiety should therefore be for the church and the things of God. Paul was pressed to the limit by external circumstances. “We do not want you to be un aware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in Got! who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:8-9). He was pressed so fully he thought death was the only escape. His only hope was Christ and the resurrection of the dead. Again, note Paul’s focus.

The internal pressure Paul experienced was his anxiety over the Church. Was this good stress? Christ condemns all other anxieties except concern for things of the Lord and anxiety for the Church. Why do we not have the concern, the anxiety, regarding the Church that we have for other things? Are anxieties over food, clothing, the future, speech, job, home, children, and relationships pressing you? Your problems are not unique. The very thing about which Jesus warned is over taking you (Matt. 13:22). Your life need to be re-focused (Matt. 6:31-33).