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W.D. Frazee Sermons Ministry

W.D. Frazee

Key to Stress Control

We're looking at stress again tonight, the key to stress control.

I suggest to you a very simple, simple and obvious fact, and that is that the matter of stress control is dependent not merely on the amount of stress, but on the amount of the power to deal with it.

A little stress can be fatal if there's nothing to deal with it.

A large amount of stress can be met if there is strength to deal with it.

God is developing a group of people who will go through the greatest period of stress that the world has ever seen.

Daniel foretold it, the twelfth chapter of his book.

There shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation.

But at that time thy people shall be what?

Every 1 that shall be found written in the book.

The great purpose of the threefold message of Revelation 14 is to develop a people who can deal with stress, unprecedented stress.

And so it is written, here is the patience of the saints, here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

They're patient, they endure, they do not wilt, they do not faint, they do not fail.

They have the faith of Jesus, the faith of Jesus.

Now, the fourth chapter of Ephesians tells us God's program to get his people ready.

The eighth verse says, when he, that is, Jesus, when he ascended upon high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men.

Have you received yours your gifts, your presents?

He gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying or building up of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Now will you read with me, please, the fourteenth verse?

That we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.

God has a program to get his people ready that they won't be carried about with every what?

The sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.

So the program to resist stress is a program of receiving the gifts of God.

The seventh verse says, unto every 1 of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

May I suggest, friends, that in the Bible God has given us a revelation of his will, which if we study it and accept it and believe it, receive it, it will keep us from all the stresses around us.

But to be of any value for us, that book must be of unquestionable authority.

Now, suppose I give this to Brother Wilson.

But suppose Pastor Finnegan gets looking at that and he's an expert in being a bank teller or something like that, and he looks at that and he says, Brother Wilson, I think what he gave you is a counterfeit.

He's only worth 10 dollars now, isn't he?

Well, what would you give him for it if it's a counterfeit?

You don't know a bargain when you see it, do you?

You see, it's either all or nothing, isn't it, friends?

And that is the way with every message claiming to come from God, my friends.

It is either all to be depended upon, or else it is to be rejected as a counterfeit, a base counterfeit.

It would be too bad to counterfeit a money note of the United States government, But that's child's play compared with a crime, the base crime, of pretending to have a message from God.

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he said that he had met with God up there.

When Daniel wrote his book, he said he saw visions of God, he saw the angels of God, he saw the Son of God, and that what he wrote down was what they had told him to write.

When John wrote the book of Revelation, it closes the sacred canon, we find him telling again and again of his interviews with Jesus and with Jesus' angel, Gabriel.

Now those men who wrote the Bible, my friend, either told the truth or they were base liars.

It is these gifts that God has put in his Church to make us able to meet stresses.

When we read the promises of God, whether we read them in Genesis or the Psalms, or in Daniel, or Zechariah, or Matthew, or Peter, or Paul.

If God is speaking in this Bible, we are reading the Word of the Living God, And that has in it power to meet any stress, my friend.

Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." Isaiah 41.10.

But if all I get out of that is that that's the way Isaiah saw it, this was his view of God.

My friends, that's awful to offer that to a poor sinking soul, isn't it?

Isaiah's been dead, lo, these 2, 500 years and more.

What avails it to give to a dying soul, a sick heart, a diseased experience.

But oh, if Isaiah, although he's dead now, if when he was alive, if what he wrote down is true, if he saw visions of God, if God gave him the message, if what he wrote was the word of the living God, then, friends, that word is still quick, powerful, living, and full of help for every sinking soul.

You see, then, the power to meet stress depends upon whether or not I find this word to be what it claims to be, the word of the living God.

And the greater the crisis, the more important it is.

The greater the stress, the greater must be the power to deal with that stress.

And into the crisis in which we are now entering and will increase, O that God may help us to have all the power of the living Word of God.

He gave some apostles, Peter, John, James, Matthew, others, prophets from Genesis to Revelation, these wonderful gifts of prophecy.

Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, and all the rest.

The New Testament prophets, Peter, Paul, John, James, Jude, all wrote by inspiration.

In fact, the apostle Peter tells us, turn over please to Peter's epistle, 2 Peter, 2 Peter, the first chapter, in the 21st verse.

The prophecy came not in old time, the margin says at any time, by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Well, it's 1 or the other, friend, 1 or the other.

I'm not a prophet, but I can read the words of the prophet and I can preach the words of the prophet.

And when I bring you the words of the prophet, I'm bringing you this says, what men wrote that were moved upon by the Holy Ghost.

But if I didn't believe it, I'd be confused and terror-stricken as I view conditions in the world today.

Men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.

But God's people are not terrorist-picking.

When these things happen, Jesus says, "'Look up and lift up your heads, "'for your redemption draws nigh.'" The very things that are Filling the hearts of men with fear are the tokens of our deliverance, omens of the coming King.

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Key to Stress Control

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