So how do you truly deal with the daily pressures of life?
How do you stop it from transcending into stress and a complete breakdown?
‘He keeps in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on him, because he trusts in Him’ Isaiah 26:3
Pressure can be triggered by anything from a deadline, horrendous traffic, long queues at the check out, a recurring nightmare, fear of failure, tragedy, pleasures of sin, or consistent physical, sexual or emotional abuse. Pressure can be self inflicted or transferred.
Is there anyone in the house?
KING DAVID
“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants…..But David remained at Jerusalem…..It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.”
(2 Samuel 11:1 -2)
For David, this was the beginning of trouble.
How do you deal with the pressures offered by life’s pleasures?
And from ‘just looking’ David ended up committing adultery. The beautiful woman, a wife of a neighbour, ended up pregnant for David and David began to fret and stress!
How could they explain the pregnancy when the husband was away?
Headlines would read Scandal! And people would call for him to resign or step down.
Stressed and petrified, David arranged for the husband to be brought back home to have intercourse with his wife. Why? So he could transfer the pregnancy. When the husband came home he refused to go in to his wife, pressure turned to stress and when David couldn’t handle the stress any longer, David murdered the innocent husband!
The pressures and the stress of pleasure.
Brian Tracy once said that ‘a person’s contentment and happiness is directly proportional to the extent to which the person is in control of one’s life or situation.
If you’re in full control of your life, you make rational decisions and feel fulfilled, but if you are not in control of your life, health, finances, circumstances, career, marriage or relationship, you feel sad, dejected and discontent.’
So are you in control of your finances?
Are you in control of your career?
Are you in control of your bills?
Are you in control of your marriage?
Are you in control of your health?
Are you in control of your circumstances?
HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH ‘IT’ WHEN YOU’RE NOT IN CONTROL OF ‘IT’?
I remember my daughter growing up and staying home during her first few years of life. She followed her big brother everywhere, so naturally she always wanted to follow him to school, but she was not of school age.
Each morning she would wake up at a specific time and would insist on joining up in the drive to school. As soon as the brother exited the car at the main door of the school, my daughter would just stare at him until he disappeared, turn around, pick up the same blanket (she always brought from home) hold on to it and put a dummy in her mouth.
Whatever you do, don’t try taking the blanket and/or dummy off her. She was learning to cope with the stress of going the next few hours without the brother.
The blankets stayed with her all day until the brother returned from school.
What about you?
What are your comfort blankets during stress?
What is your coping dummy when under pressure ?
Where is your place of refuge in times of stress?
WHAT DID JESUS DO?
I’ll share with you three things Jesus did when faced with pressure and I’ll be done
“Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee.”
(Matthew 4:12)
Jesus was preaching and doing his thing when he received news that Herod had arrested John the Baptist, his cousin and fellow man of God.
He knew that Herod was going to kill his cousin and he couldn’t do anything about it,
so Jesus was shaken. Stressed and under pressure from his disciples, John’s disciples and the fellowship of the brethren, Jesus withdrew to Capernaum, by the sea.
1) CHANGE LOCATION, MOVE, AND PATTERN INTERRUPT.
Sometimes you need to change your location and the scenery. You need to exit the location of stress and undue pressure and just renew your mind, in serenity.
Jesus removed himself from the problem and the location.
Get away. Take a break. Escape for the weekend. Interrupt your set routine, pattern interrupt. Turn off the phone, put it on silent, stop texting, don’t take calls. Get off social media. Do nothing. Leave the environment.
It’s amazing how you can change everything by just switching off and shutting down.
“Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)
How do you respond to tragedy?
How do you deal with unexpected loss?
When told about the unexpected death of his friend Lazarus, Jesus wept.
2) LET GO OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONS
Emotions are like carbonated fluids, sealed up in a clear bottle. If you keep putting in and sealing it, if the pressure is not released gradually, the bottle may open up of its own accord someday and cause damage to anyone around it.
By weeping, Jesus had let go completely and released the pressure. He faced his emotional trauma. What about you?
Are you letting go on a daily basis or are you just stock piling and bottling up emotions by the day?
You May not be aware of it, but sometimes the challenges affecting you in one area of your life may be influencing your actions in another area. A problem at work may be influencing your behaviour at home. A tragedy in the family may be negatively influencing other relationships. A health challenge may be telling on your other relationships. Can you just let go and let God?
Learn to cry, weep, let go. You have to do this occasionally in order to keep your sanity.
If you can’t do it in public, do it privately, but let go….
“And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed,” (Luke 22:410-41)
Facing the most difficult situation of his life, death on a cross, Jesus decided to share the secret of taking control, ‘pray’
3) PRAYER IS THE KEY TO OVERCOME PRESSURE
You may not be in total control of the situation, but you are always in total control of your self.
So how you react to what life throws at you is more important than what life throws at you.
Jesus led by example. He first admonished the disciples to pray, so that they may not enter into temptation and crumble under pressure, then he himself withdrew to practise what he just taught them.
Someone once said that “life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it”
Do you respond with prayer or do you just focus on the problem?
Do you pray about ‘IT’ or do you just keep complaining about ‘IT’ ?
Jesus prayed.
In closing, I remind you the three things Jesus did under pressure, that kept his sanity intact.
1. He moved from the problem by changing location and pattern interrupting.
2. He let go of negative emotions
3. He Prayed.
I hope you’ve been blessed.