PRESSED, BUT NOT CRUSHED

It seems like many of us and those around us, are facing tremendous challenges. Many are facing serious financial challenges, political, family type challenges such as issues with troubled children, aging parents, marital issues such as infidelity or spouses with troubling issues, addictions and more. Most of these issues stem from godlessness and rebellion. If Jesus was the true Lord of the troubled situations, all of them would level out for the good. But people rejecting the Lord and His ways, lack the discernment for a good life.
 
What can we do as believers? We can keep pressing on, we can keep praying and keep praying Scripture over the situations. We can even fast and pray, doing spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is not prayer but rebuking and hindering the enemy so that our prayers can be answered. God does not force His will on anyone, but many are blinded or bound by the enemy and need help getting free to be able to choose God and His ways.
 
The first thing we all need to do is so logical and easy but for some reason, oftentimes it takes us a while to do it, and that is: look up, to look up to the Lord who has the answers.

• Psalms 121:1-2 I will lift up my eyes to the hills-- from whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

 
If we keep staring at the problems, they can look bigger and bigger. Why not go to the One who has the best solution? We need to look up. He sees and knows the entire situation each of us is facing, He sees the seen and unseen. Why try to solve anything without His help, without His wisdom and direction when He is here to be our God, our Father and help us through this troublesome world.
 
Anyone who has read the New Testament has read of the Apostle Paul’s trials and I doubt that any of us in our right mind would choose such suffering as Paul endured. Let us consider what he wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians.

• 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us,

 
He had even more to say in chapter four, about the great trials and stresses he was under.

• 2 Corinthians 4:7-10 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed-- always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.

 
We have a treasure working in us, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We were never meant to handle life’s challenges alone. Consider the Lord Jesus when He was here. He was human and yet God in the flesh. And did He pray? Yes, He prayed all the time and stayed in constant communion with the Father and Holy Spirit. How much more do we need to do the same?

• 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 

 
Life is not challenging just to be challenging. God uses the troubles of this world for multiple reasons. He uses them to draw us to Him. He uses them to teach us and He uses them to refine us. We may not realize that we are in the lifetime process of refinement, but we are. Each time or each situation brings about another opportunity to discover something in us that needs to be dealt with. If it were not for the heat of the fire, we would not have known it was there. And for each time we get some more of the “dross” out, we become closer to the Lord. And we become stronger in Him and more of an encouragement to those around us to also call upon the Lord and rely on Him.
 
Look at the life of King David. Had it not been written, who would know how human he was but also how God-dependent he lived his life. The Psalms have brought more encouragement to people for close to 3000 years than any of us could know. Did David have faults? Of course and so do we. But David kept the faith. When he failed, he repented and got back on track. Lord help us to do the same. Help us to call on You, to rely on You, to listen when You speak and stay close to You today and always. We love and need You Lord!

​E. Cockrell​