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Stress and sin


GreyDestiny

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I have started a new job recently. As my grandma would say, take what job you can get, THEN look for the job you want. I honestly don't know if i can appreciate following such advice.

This job has only stressed me out. One of those jobs that puts you down for part time but is just shy of 40 hours, so they get lots of work out of you without having to pay you benefits. People apparently quit often, and I can see why. My feet are sore, my back is in such a pain that it hurts to stand up or even just stand, and I am exhausted. I can't seem to rest; I try to relax but my body won't quit quivering. I find myself praying under my breathe just so I can get through the day. I can see it in their eyes, they expect me to stay. I'm currently trying to find another job in the hopes of escaping any corners/traps they might try to use to keep me there longer.

In any case, alongside all this stress, i've found any grip on my thoughts and feelings lacking. Any focus I can have is messy and limp. As such, I have found myself relieving the stress by... Sin. I don't wish to specify, but it feels terrible because I know it is wrong and i do not wish to do it. I do not feel it's right to blame the job for my own wrongdoing, as it is MY wrongdoing. I just find myself uncertain and unfocused. I am grateful for the opportunity to work, but not much else.

So, what i'm wondering is, if anyone has any advice on how to deal with stress? Like I said, i'm looking for other job options (I wish I had more time to), but I just need advice on how to get through this. I hardly have time to myself, let alone think.

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I see you are in a seemingly difficult position. I have been there myself so I do understand.

I did not do so well as you might. But I decided to go the whole hog and do my very best.

So my advice is to become indispensable to the people you work for. Think of it as you are working for the Lord. If possible do it with a good humor and do not sin. That puts you in more of a trap than the job. Satan wants you to fail, but you have the tools to rise above that. The Lord does NOT want you to fail.

Just give it your best shot and try not to injure your back further,  just be sensible about it all.

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Seek first for the kingdom of God, and all things will be added unto you.

If your job is causing you to sin, CUT IT OFF AND CAST IT INTO THE SEA!

A horrible job that gives you no pleasure, furthers you from God, grieves the Spirit, is a job that needs to be quit right away.

The greatest matter in life is God! If your daily life/actions do not revolve around God, then reconsider your life!

Not one of these obstacles against the narrow way, are worth falling over!

Even if you made $500k a year, and had your dream job, but it caused you to sin. CUT IT OFF!

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Want to avoid sin? Work more! Want to avoid even more sin? Then volunteer when not working. Never sit and dwell and lament.

Stop thinking of compensation by the hour, by the week, and stop thinking about benefits! 

All you need to know is how much money you have in your pocket because that is what the grocer, the landlord, the car dealer, the insurance company, wants to know- they couldn't care less about your time off, nor your stress issues.

Go out and make money for yourself doing any honest endeavor and when you do be responsible with it. Thank God for the opportunity. You will then have no time for stress nor sin.

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I know exactly what you're talking about, i've been in this cycle before, this 'stress -- sin -- stress -- sin' cycle.

Instead of doing that, try to take a relaxing bath, people often recommend "cold showers" to take those urges away, if not that, walk around the house/neighborhood, talk to friends, do not give in to the urge -- find other avenues to 'decompress', when the sinful nature becomes a frequent habit, that is when it will become extremely hard to break and it took me 1.5 years of constant struggle to shake it off.  

There are two communities that can help deal with your response to stress, frequent them and keep in mind their suggestions:

Both offer great insights in learning how to deal with stress and manage the urges to do what is wrong.  

Edited by Steve_S
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I can relate, been there, done that. First may I say and honest job or labor to support yourself / family is an honorable job.

I use to have nightmares at one of the jobs I held for seven years, and here's just a few of hundreds of examples. I used to deliver propane, both bulk and cylinder to the poor sections of E. Saint Louis that was crime ridden and insanitary. Normally in the winter when I delivered it, they were completely empty and always had to prepay with cash. Since they were out of propane, I was required to relight their furnaces, stoves and hot water heaters when requested. You wouldn't believe some of the things I've experienced and witnessed working in poverty and high crime areas.

I once had to go into a basement to relight a pilot light. As soon as I opened the basement door, I knew something wasn't right. Halfway down the basement stairs I seen what the problem was. The sewer company had evidently cemented of closed off their water and sewer service for non payment. Their solution, cut off the toilet drain pipe and use the basement for a septic tank. Thought I was going to get fired for not going down there and lighting the furnace but it would have been a blessing if I did.

Standing out in a puddle, 37 degree air temperature and cold rain drenching me, with pipe wrench in hand to loosen a propane line to a 100# propane tank to change out. I was getting stung by wasps all over all of a sudden. After touching the tank again for a second time, the wasps returned and were eating me up? What's going on here, it's winter and much too cold to be getting severely stung like that? No, no... It can't be what I'm thinking, no way!

I went inside of the house to where the propane line came through the wall, at a gross kitchen counter. There sat one of those old two burner electric plates. Looked between the counter and wall and saw the bare wires of that heat plate touching the propane line. Yep, I was drenched in water standing in a water puddle outside and being electrocuted! 

I can't tell you of the 'hundreds' of times I opened the top of a stove to light a pilot, open a cabinet or whatever, and literally thousands of roaches came scrambling around and on me. I won't go into the feeling of walking around with thousands of dollars in my pockets in a high crime area.

The Lord blessed me and I hung in there, and went to night school at the Junior College and changed occupations to one much, much better. Thirty years later I still have the occasional nightmare about that job, but it supported my family. All things work out for good for those that love the Lord

Edited by Dennis1209
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2 hours ago, GreyDestiny said:

I have started a new job recently. As my grandma would say, take what job you can get, THEN look for the job you want. I honestly don't know if i can appreciate following such advice.

This job has only stressed me out. One of those jobs that puts you down for part time but is just shy of 40 hours, so they get lots of work out of you without having to pay you benefits. People apparently quit often, and I can see why. My feet are sore, my back is in such a pain that it hurts to stand up or even just stand, and I am exhausted. I can't seem to rest; I try to relax but my body won't quit quivering. I find myself praying under my breathe just so I can get through the day. I can see it in their eyes, they expect me to stay. I'm currently trying to find another job in the hopes of escaping any corners/traps they might try to use to keep me there longer.

In any case, alongside all this stress, i've found any grip on my thoughts and feelings lacking. Any focus I can have is messy and limp. As such, I have found myself relieving the stress by... Sin. I don't wish to specify, but it feels terrible because I know it is wrong and i do not wish to do it. I do not feel it's right to blame the job for my own wrongdoing, as it is MY wrongdoing. I just find myself uncertain and unfocused. I am grateful for the opportunity to work, but not much else.

So, what i'm wondering is, if anyone has any advice on how to deal with stress? Like I said, i'm looking for other job options (I wish I had more time to), but I just need advice on how to get through this. I hardly have time to myself, let alone think.

Stay in prayer to God. Do not try to control your life and all the circumstances but give your life and everything in it to God.

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I left my last job because of stress.  I had been in one job for about 20 years (about 8 different managers, 5 different owners, 1 bankruptcy, more downsizings/reorgs than I can remember), and God finally had me leave.  As it turns out, during my last two weeks, notice came through that the location would be closed in the next year.  I was at my last job (a Christian non-profit) for about 1.5 years.  For the first year it was a dream job.  The last 3 months was a nightmare.  I started having panic attacks.  One day it got so bad that I almost fainted on my daily walk at lunch when I was trying to calm down.  I went home that day and took the rest of the week off.  Come next Sunday, I couldn't bring myself to go back so I basically sent an e-mail that I was planning to leave and that I was taking another week of vacation.   During that week, I remember sitting on our porch snuggling with our dog at about 2AM in the morning and just having a sense that God was telling me to let it go that it was no longer my responsibility.  They couldn't wait to rush me out the door when I came back.  As it turns out, the last of the team was gone within a few weeks as well.  2 PhDs and an MA degree all leaving within a short time of each other pretty much describes it.  The three of us (all Christians with about 60 years of work experience between us) had lunch later to catch up and we discussed it.  We all shook our heads at what had been going on and we all decided that it was the weirdest situation we had all ever been in in our careers and were all happy to be out of there.  I left on my own and the other two were let go.  I suspect the organization was happy I left so they didn't have to pay unemployment.  I had been willing to work until they got a replacement but they wanted me out the door.

There are times to hang in there.  I did that for  20 years.  There are times to leave.  The main thing is to follow God's lead.  The place I hung with for 20 years set me up with some unique professional skills that I've been leveraging into some nice consulting work.  As it was, I could have done a lot worse career wise.   The nonprofit was a career change and gave me some good skills as well.  At this point, God seems to be moving me toward semi-retirement to start doing some writing.  I had planned on being with the non-profit for perhaps a decade or so and retiring, but God obviously had other plans.

Stress can be a killer in the long run (literally).  After the last job, it took me several months before I could sleep normally.  I had gotten used to getting up a few times per night and reading for a few hours to try to calm down to go back to sleep.  It was about 8 or 9 months later that I had slept through the night 2 times in a row and realized I couldn't remember that last time I had done that.  I'm now regularly sleeping through the night, and perhaps getting up and reading for an hour or so one night or so every week or so.  I found that my mind and emotions stopped racing.  I could enjoy living in the present instead of worrying about tomorrow.  I had reached a point I could not enjoy life when I was away from work.   I had regularly felt my heart racing and pulse throbbing and I had started to get minor headaches, now I rarely have any of these symptoms.  A month or so ago, I had a somewhat stressful day and started feeling awful.  I then remembered that that was how I had usually felt all of the time and usually even worse than that.  In the past 3 years, I've lost about 50 pounds without much change in diet or exercise habits.  I think that most of that was due to simply not being stressed all the time.  As part of my role in the last job, I was looking at the health insurance expenditures of the organization.  Before I left (due to rising levels of stress in my life), I had tried to point out that one of the biggest issues in the organization was that an unhealthy culture of constantly running from emergency to emergency and always putting out fires and letting passionate people work excessive hours to keep things afloat was driving stress levels through the roof, causing turnover, and causing many long term people to develop chronic health problems due to lack of balance in their lives.  That was basically ignored even though the anonymous employee surveys that I processed were clearing pointing to some problems in that area.  

After a trip to the ER for a panic attack (a few hours after I left the door on the last day at the last job), my doctor recommended counseling about dealing with stress and I saw a Christian counselor for a meeting.   He recommended a book that I found very insightful and helpful.  SOS: Help for your emotions by Lynn Clark.   God used this book to show me that I had been suppressing a lot of anger.  As it turned out, I was not angry at people (or I immediately would have recognized it as a problem), I was angry at systems, procedures, and organizations.  I was angry at things that didn't work well that I wanted to fix but was unable to.  In other words, most of my stress was being driven by being mad about stuff I had no control over.  I had no clue that this was so unhealthy and indeed I had mistaken it as a positive passion and caring about things.  Instead, it was an unhealthy obsession with stuff that God was not calling me to worry about.  He put me in that organization to recommend changes and provide guidance and wisdom.  It was not my responsibility to worry about whether people listened or not.  I had let the thousands of people served by this organization and the thousands of jobs riding on my analyses consume me.  The team I was on were all looking at information and data about the organization and independently coming to the same conclusions (which we later figured were unwelcome to some people which was probably why we were all pushed out).

Hang in there.  Worry about the things God has put on your shoulders and don't add extra burdens.  His yoke is easy and light; the extra stuff we add ourselves is the real burden.  Consider what you can learn and gain from your current position.  There is no job so awful that you cannot be learning something form it (even if it is in the form of why some things are the wrong way to do things :) ).   Look ahead to where God wants you to walk with Him.  Are there new skills, new areas, or other things you can start working on at on your own time?  Do you have a sense of the direction forward?  God usually doesn't have us escape from problems, but rather has us move forward toward solutions and new adventures.

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5 hours ago, GreyDestiny said:

I just need advice on how to get through this. I hardly have time to myself, let alone think.

Blessings to you in Christ Jesus GreyDestiny;

First I'd change your profile name to SunnyDestiny, as  we are much of the time what we think.

You are a child of God Redeemed and blessed by His ongoing Mercy & Grace for you.

 

I feel for your concerns, and if something is causing you to sin ,then it is important to find how to let go of this sin that is caused by stress.

If you quit your job would you still be caught up in your stress/sin?

If your job has caused you enough stress to develop more sin in your life, then I would seriously evaluate leaving a job that causes you that much aggravation/stress that you turn to sin.

Gods desires us to overcome our sins, one by one, step by step.

Some people are not made to work for others, and are best becoming their own boss by making their own business (however humble) through a learnt skill/trade.

Some people work best having a learnt a particular trade, thy can either work for themselves or work for a company that needs their skill.

Usually when you can choose a trade, it is something you like to do. It will make going to work a pleasure rather than an obligation.

That is what i did, I chose a trade and had my own humble little business. I always liked what i did. Sometimes i may not have always enjoyed having to go to work, but once at work, I enjoyed my work because I liked it and saw the value in it. I also could make my own hours.

Perhaps taking time to find a trade is something for you to consider?

Even having a small business like making wood bird houses, becoming a barber, shoveling snow with a truck in the winter? landscaping in the summer, cleaning houses, painting houses, becoming a handy man, becoming a pet walker, starting your own coffee stand business, making prosthesis, from teeth to eyeballs to limbs, there are skills/trades to be learnt, any type business that you would be happy doing, it can be something humble to more complex but always satisfying.

Only you know these answers, but for sure God does not want you involved in something that causes you to sin.

Ask God, through much prayer to show you what to do.

In Christ Jesus;

1to3

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by 1to3
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On 1/20/2018 at 3:11 PM, 1to3 said:

First I'd change your profile name to SunnyDestiny, as  we are much of the time what we think.

You are a child of God Redeemed and blessed by His ongoing Mercy & Grace for you.

Oh, lol. My two favorite colors are brown and grey. I went with grey because BrownDestiny sounds odd. 

i have struggled with this particular sin before, as I lived in it daily for multiple years before I found God. This loss of control has diminished somewhat now though; my body isn't quivering as much, so i'm able to have some semblance of relaxation. 

I've considered taking up a trade before. I've thought about making furniture, stained glass, or perhaps becoming a translator/language teacher. I'll keep that in mind for the future, but for now, i'm just going to seek out a factory job. All of my immediate family work in factories and they love it, so I assume it's in my blood.

Thank you for your post. God bless you.

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