Good morning!
I was tired this morning, but now after prayer time, a workout at the gym, and breakfast, I’m ready for the week ahead. When our lives are in balance, then we give and receive in such a way that the pressure lightens and whatever is starting to run out gets filled up again. How you fill up and how you release the pressure is different from person to person. What is the same for everyone is that without balance, pressure will build up until it breaks you.
I have preached on being “under great pressure beyond your ability to endure” two Sundays in a row now. You can be under pressure for different reasons; it is just a matter of closing the door and blocking all the exits. Sometimes we do it involuntarily. Like a child who is being bullied. The rage is suffocated, the screams are silenced and the pressure that builds up gets internalized when it has no outlet.
Or, on the other side of the spectrum, you give and you give. To your children, to your spouse, your friends, at work, and there is never time to fill up. Eventually you get burned out. That happened to Paul, too. “I won’t be able to come,” he wrote to the Corinthians. “You have to understand, we were under pressure beyond our ability to endure.”
There always has to be a balance between what’s coming in and what’s going out.
You know, sooner or later you will end up in your own Gethsemane. Your friends have fallen asleep, so you have to make the decision on your own. You are under pressure beyond your ability to endure. Anxiety, sleeplessness and distress are hanging over you.
In your walk with God, you might end up there many times. Every time you take a crucial step in your relationship with him, there will be a test. Nobody wants to take the path that leads through Gethsemane. If you’ve been there once, then you’ll ask if there is some other way.
But you will make it through, because God is going to show you the purpose. He’ll show you what is beyond the test. The rest is perseverance. But once it’s over, when the victory is there – then you will realize that it was worth it all. But right when the olive press is getting tighter and tighter, it sure doesn’t feel that way. All of us who have been there know that!
Good morning,
Tommy
