Have you ever felt like you were in a pressure cooker? Everywhere you turned something was pressing down on you. There just wasn’t enough time in the day to get everything accomplished. The kids were experiencing problems at school. Your elderly parents needed your help. Your spouse’s job was uncertain. You weren’t feeling well. The car broke down . . . again. On and on the pressure continued, building until you felt like you couldn’t deal with one more thing.
Do you know what a pressure cooker’s job includes? It is to make tender. Without the pressure cooker affect at times in our lives, we wouldn’t be tender either. Our hearts wouldn’t ever know how it felt to be human.
How we should thank God for sending just the right pressures into our lives at just the right times. Sure, pressures from all sides aren't enjoyable, but since we know God is sending them and since He is using them for our good, we can endure . . . maybe even rejoice . . . by His grace. And as we come out on the other side of the
pressure, perhaps He can use us to bless others in ways only He can imagine.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh.
II Corinthians 4:8-11
Heavenly Father, please help me to see Your kind hand behind every pressure in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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