Author’s Note: This article is dedicated to my late brother by marriage, Paul Weaver III. Paul’s example of glorifying God under the pressure of a fatal battle with cancer constantly inspires me to become, by God’s grace alone, the kind of person whose content of character will yield only “good things” for God under the pressure of the most difficult circumstances in life.
“Contents under pressure.” You see it on many household items—from cans of hair spray, whipped cream, and furniture polish, to propane tanks. It’s part of a warning that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires on self-pressurized containers.
The outcome of a life under pressure is determined by the contents of the life under pressure.
Most all of us can relate to those seasons of our lives in which we feel like the contents of our soul are under pressure. During those times we feel the pressure of illness or financial hardship or work responsibilities or broken relationships or loneliness or grief or loss or some combination of several of the above. Sometimes the pressure is so soul-crushing, we wonder if we will survive at the same time that we wonder what not surviving even means.
Observation of how God created the world yields evidence of a great truth about the physical world. The outcome of something under pressure is determined by the contents of what is under pressure. If you pressurize explosive contents, the container will explode. If you pressurize mild contents, the container will endure.
Examination of Scripture yields evidence of a great truth about people’s lives. The outcome of a life under pressure is determined by the contents of the life under pressure. We see in the Bible that when those who engaged a deep relationship with God were placed under pressure, the result was a life that glorified God and fulfilled the person.
Job, under pressure, said, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him…” (Job 13:15). David, under pressure, said, “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God” (Psalm 42:11). Paul, under pressure, said, “I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). But, Judas Iscariot, under pressure, betrayed Jesus and “went away and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5).
Of course, how we respond under pressure determines, to a great extent, what the outcome of a pressurized situation will be. But, what we bring to a pressurized situation is often overlooked, and yet is so absolutely crucial. As Dallas Willard has said, “We cannot behave ‘on the spot’ as Jesus did and taught if in the rest of our time we live as everybody else does.”
It’s a certain kind of person, with a certain content of character, who can respond under pressure in the way that Job, David, and Paul did. The ability to respond with grace under pressure is dependent upon the contents of the life under pressure. If we want to respond well under pressure, we do best to engage the whole of our lives in such a way that we become a new kind of person in Christ—a person who, under pressure, will yield only “good things out of the good they stored in their hearts.”