I’m not telling you there won’t be trouble on the outside. Certainly there will be trouble. As a matter of fact, Paul said he was troubled by circumstances on every side…but on the inside he was not distressed.
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).
Paul fixed his attention not on external circumstances, but on his inner man because that’s where the excellency of God’s power is. “We’re perplexed,” he said. The Greek word translated perplexed means “to be cornered by the circumstances.” “But we’re not in despair.” In other words, even when it looks as if there’s no way out, I can find a way out if I look on the inside.
Persecuted, but not forsaken. If I’m persecuted on the outside, how do I know God hasn’t forsaken me? Because when I look on the inside, I can see Jesus saying, “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you, even to the ends of the earth.”
Perplexed…persecuted…cast down. There’s no doubt about it, Paul was under more pressure than most of us today will ever experience. But he handled it…and so can you if you’ll do these three things:
- Remember where the pressure is coming from. (The outside!) And remember where your life force comes from. (The inside!)
- Stop running on a spiritual deficit. Take time to feed your inner man with the Word of God. Fast your body if necessary and feast your spirit on the Word so your inner man can get stronger more quickly.
- Focus on Jesus inside you until your inner picture of Him is bigger than the outside situations you’re facing.
If you’ll build up your spirit man in those three ways, when pressure comes it won’t affect you like it used to. Problems that once knocked you flat won’t even bother you anymore.
Think about it. A 5-foot, 140-pound bully who scared you silly when you were in the second grade couldn’t even make you blink now that you’re 6 feet tall. You’ve grown. You’re stronger now. That second-grade bully isn’t a threat anymore.
That’s what happened to Paul. He grew! He kept feeding on the Word until the image of Jesus within him grew bigger than the pressures around him. He grew up so much that just a few years after he wrote about being “pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life” he wrote, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (2 Corinthians 1:8; Philippians 4:11, 13).
Don’t let the bullies get you down. Just keep feeding your spirit man on the Word. Get strong on the inside. One of these days, when the circumstances are putting the squeeze on you and someone asks how you handle the pressure, you’ll look at them with surprise and say, “Pressure?…What pressure?”
