I heard yesterday that stress can rob us of our spirituality - that when we're worried about the concerns of life, we have a harder time focussing on Christ and striving to be righteous. I don't know if this is strictly true, but it certainly makes sense to me. How many times have we gotten angry and lost the Spirit because we were stressed out or frustrated? Which came first - getting angry, or losing the Spirit?
I think that Satan is constantly trying to influence us by putting negative thoughts in our minds. Most of the time, the Spirit keeps him at bay, but life starts to feel like it's too much for us to handle, either we start thinking negative thoughts that drive away the Spirit, or we drive away the Spirit, and then the enemy is allowed to put negative thoughts in our minds. Either way, if we're stressed, we'll have negative thoughts and not the Spirit, but if we have the Spirit with us, we won't have (many) negative thoughts or be (as) stressed.
How we keep the Spirit with us when life is hard is the same as how we keep the Spirit with us normally - it's just harder to do it. We keep the Spirit with us by praying, reading the scriptures, doing good, and striving to be Christlike. This is harder during the trials of our lives because we have more pressing matters to take care of than our scripture study, and we have other things to worry about than how righteous we are or should be. These times are great times to pray, to allow God to calm your heart and mind and help you focus on the tasks at hand, but when we're in these situations, we're normally not in the mood to pray.
God lets trials happen to us for a number of reasons. Sometimes, two of those reasons are to test our spiritual strength and help us grow spiritually stronger. It's sometimes as if God says "You're pretty good at being righteous most of the time, but let's see how righteous you are when you're facing adversity." He does this not to torment us, but to strengthen us. God wants us to be spiritually strong enough to remain righteous no matter what, just as Job did.
The holidays are stressful times for most adults, and those of us who are in school may have noticed that we're starting to get closer to Finals. It'd be fairly easy to get stressed out and let a lot of negativity into our lives right now, which is ironic considering what the holidays are supposed to do to people's hearts. Instead, let's try to keep the Holy Spirit with us, and possibly catch the spirits of thanksgiving and Christmas while we're at it. Life is hard sometimes, and at those times, it can be hard to keep the Spirit with us, but if we can keep the Spirit with us, He can help us get through the hardships of life. It takes spiritual strength to do that, but we'll gain spiritual strength if we try. Let's try to be righteous through the holidays so we can gain the strength we need to also get through the other storms of life.
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