For the past few months, God has been helping me to see some things about myself I should have seen years ago – things that have affected my ministry. I won’t go into all of them. It is between God and myself. One thing I want to share with you that we all wrestle with is pressure.
Where does it come from? There are two sources of anxiety producing pressure. First, pressure comes from outside of us. We feel anxious because what our friends are going through, or are doing to us. We feel anxious because pressure from our families, work, the weather, the TV news, or any number of sources. They are all expecting us to act or react in a particular way. “Do this; don’t do that!” The second source of pressure comes from within us. We are tempted to control the uncontrollable; to fix the unfixable; to be everywhere and know everybody. In short, we are tempted to be like God. We place unbearable pressure on us to be perfect as God is perfect or to be responsible for things that are God’s alone.
What did Jesus mean when he said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30)? A few suggestions:
- Come to Jesus in humble prayer. I say ‘humble’ because the temptation is come in prideful prayer. “Jesus, you have given me such a heavy load. Why did you do that? Get me out of this predicament and out from under this pressure. It is more that I can stand!” I have prayed this – haven’t you? Humility is to come to Jesus as a child comes to his parent – knowing that our heavenly daddy will make it right.
- Confess the pressure and it’s source to God. If you can’t tell where it is coming from, ask Him to show you. Once you know, take time to tell God all about it and how you have reacted to it. Feeling the pressure is not a sin, but sometimes how we react to it is.
- Leave it with Him. As I said earlier, some of the pressure we put on ourselves by trying to handle it as God. Besides, you must take off one yoke to put on another. Jesus tells us to take His yoke and put it on. Leave your burdens with Jesus.
- When you ‘put on His yoke’ you are letting Him do the work of handling the pressure. God knows you have relatives and friends that impose on you. He knows you have deadlines to meet and how much time is left. He knows what will happen if you don’t make the deadline and most of the time, it is not as devastating as we may have thought. Putting on Jesus’ yoke is to trust Him to deal with all the things that are in His realm and His alone.
- Work it out with God’s word and in prayer. Coming into God’s presence tends to put all things in perspective.
So, I ask again, “got prayer?”