The Effects Of Stress On Christians

Stress is a difficult aspect of life that everyone deals with. However, the opportunity that Christians have to rely on God in stressful times, is one of the greatest gifts God has given His people. Relying on God in stressful situations has helped so many people get through many difficult times in their lives, whether it be struggling with their past or a situation they are currently going through. New Christians see the most benefit from this because they have gone through their whole lives trying to deal with stress on their own and only really being able to rely on themselves, friends, and family. Research shows Christ can help Christians with stress. The articles are very helpful to those figuring out how to handle stress through God for …show more content…
PTSD is known as a mental struggle when someone is trying to deal with stressful situations. Many experts have focused on the mental aspect of PTSD. Relying on Christ has been shown to cause mental calmness. This is a result of Christians being able to rely on Christ and have less of the stress burdening them (Wortman, 2011). These difficulties can have long term effects on someone. Long term stress is harmful to the mind physiologically and PTSD being primarily being a mental health condition emphasizes the importance of relying on Christ in these types of situations. These spiritual struggles not only can affect people mentally but it can also have serious effects on people’s physical health as well. Spiritual struggles cause a stress response and reliance on God has shown to reduce the negative effects of the stress response (Clements, …show more content…
Prayer is one of the main ways Christians can communicate with God which is a great way to relieve stress. The benefits of prayer are difficult to measure through scientific studies, because prayer is based of faith and not science. There was a study done with cancer patients to see the results of their cancer treatment, when they prayed. The study did not find that prayer made the patients instantly better. It did show that the women who did pray showed more of a positive attitude about their cancer treatments. (Levine, 2009) Prayer can be a difficult thing for someone who has never prayed before. A lot of Christians have been a Christian for the majority of their lives and prayer sometimes seems second nature to these people. However new Christians can really struggle at first to learn how to talk to God and how to fully surrender to him to be able to rely on him in stressful