“The pressure is getting to me!”
That’s a statement all of us, except those in extreme denial, can relate to. And 2020 certainly has turned the heat up even more than usual.
Even Paul admitted being in a similar situation. The trouble that came upon him at one point was so severe he was utterly burdened beyond his own strength. He even felt a sentence of death had been passed on him. Later he talked about being afflicted but not crushed. The latter word refers to being stuck in a mountain pass so narrow you had to squeeze through it. He had squeezed his way in, but didn’t know if he was going to get out. For someone slightly claustrophobic like me, that’s a nightmare scenario.
Pressure leads to fear, anxiety, depression and all sorts of nasty things. That’s why it always used to grate me the wrong way when a close friend came up with a phrase he used to throw at me: “Pressure is my friend.”
Friend? I don’t think so. Mortal enemy is more like it.
And yet he had a point. If we follow on from where Paul talks about his near-death experience, he concludes with a starting discovery he made: there was a purpose to it all. The purpose was to make us rely not on ourselves but on the God who raises the dead.
How hard it is to trust God when we feel helpless. Lots of folk, including us, have had to wait outside hospitals this year while their loved ones were ill or being operated on. Lots of folk, including us, have been separated from our kids and limited in our ability to help them when they could have done with some.
It may have been a bad year for everything else, but it’s been a bumper year for pressure.
There are two things we need to know. First, it’s awful when you’re going through it. Don’t feel you’ve failed God when your feelings hit the skids. And second, it will end. God will not fail to help you.
I once saw a cartoon with the caption, “When you get to the end of your rope, just tie another knot and hang on.” Let’s be on the lookout for people in that position and come alongside to help them any way we can.
But in the end, it all has a purpose. Paul put it this way: it drew him into deeper dependency on the Lord, and hence into deeper relationship. It built a foundation of security and strength in his life. It increased his capacity by deepening his dependency.
That is the opposite of the spiritual self-help theology that suggests your faith will empower you to float effortlessly above any hardships. If I were to summarize the account of Paul’s struggle as he wrote to the Corinthians, I would put it like this: God meets us in the trouble to bring us out of it.
My preference would be that God had kept me out of trouble in the first place, but then I’d never have known him as the God who rescued me from it.
My friend, as it turned out, was right.
CONSIDER PARTNERING WITH DAVID & ELAINE CAMPBELL IN HELPING TO SUSTAIN THEIR ACTIVE MINISTRY.
AWAKENING MINISTRIES // FOUNDATION of FAITH Project
Foundation of Faith Project is strengthening generations in faith and bringing beautiful changes to the communities around them. Through teaching, mentoring and coaching, many are finding out who they are and who they are destined to be. They are bringing more to their world. David Campbell is the key leader in this initiative and you can support him financially directly through Awakening Ministries.
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