Strategy 8: Your Pressures (Reclaiming Peace, Rest, and Contentment)

• Fervent Reading: Chapter 8: Your Pressures
• Bible Reading: Luke 10:38-42, Matthew 11:28-29

"If I were your enemy, I'd make everything seem urgent, as if it's all yours to handle. I'd bog down your calendar with so many expectations you couldn't tell the difference between what's important and what's not. Going and doing, guilty for ever saying no, trying to control it all, but just being controlled by it all instead…If I could keep you busy enough, you'd be too overwhelmed to even realize how much work you're actually saving me."

Notes from the study:

Life is busy! Especially with kids. Life is full of pressure! Especially with kids. As wives and mothers, we are needed on the front everyday. The thought of a day where we take our blanket, book and glass of iced tea and sit in a meadow or by the pool, without a care in the world (like "where did my two year old disappear to?" and, "What am I going to make for dinner tonight?" and "What time do we need to leave here to make it there on time?") seems like a distant memory in our past. And if family and household pressures are not enough, as Christians we are expected to be here and do that and get involved. And Facebook is telling us we need to go there and get our kids involved in that. And friends around us are planting gardens, raising chickens, planning vacations, signing their kids up for karate and soccer and music lessons, going to this co-op and this art camp and this is the burden of the 21st century. 

Let's get more specific:

• What are your responsibilities each week? (List these in order of priority)

•  What additional event/activities do you often find on your calendar?

• What does a typical week look like for you? (on Monday, on Tuesday…)

• Do you feel you have a good balance between work/activities/duties and rest?

•  When do you typically rest in a day? In a week?

•  What is truly restful to you? (nap, reading, warm bath, sitting in nature?)

• Do you feel guilty when you take a break?

•  Do you often compare your accomplishments with other women/moms?

• Do you get discouraged when a day passes and all you did was "keep the status quo"? 

• What are some of the main pressures you face? 

"Pressure. 

Pressure to keep up. Pressure to keep going. Pressure to stay ahead, stay afloat, stay relevant. Pressure to do for others what they maybe ought to be doing for themselves. 

Pressure to plan for your retirement years. Pressure to lose weight and stay young looking. Pressure to take on another ministry project at church. Pressure to always be the one they can count on to say yes. Pressure to jam another activity for your kids into the schedule. Pressure to do a better job of keeping a journal, organizing your pantry and closets, getting your Christmas shopping done early…then posting your clever thoughts and carefully posed pictures on Instagram when you're finished. 

Pressure to perform a certain way, look a certain way, dress a certain way, be interested in certain things. To be the perfect parent, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, the perfect employee, the perfect party planner, the perfect image of everything that everybody else expects you to be.  

Oh, and the pressure not to be the first one who cracks.

Under the pressure."

-Fervent

Personal Story: I am a doer. All my life, I would measure the success of my day based on the amount of accomplishments I would have. Then kids came and I did not consider changing diapers, changing bedding, sweeping floors, picking up toys, cooking dinner, cleaning marker off the couch or mud off the carpet as accomplishments. Those were merely keeping "the status quo." I still expected myself to perform above those tasks. To run a company, get projects done and advance in my day. To basically be "superwoman." 

Enter Migraines. 

Frequent migraines were God's chosen lot for my life to keep me from being able to accomplish ANYTHING in my day, showing me that His purposes would still come to pass. To realize that all that mattered is what God wanted done in a day. And for those things, He provided the grace, strength, ability, time. I learned to rest in God's plan for the day. That no matter the interruptions or what didn't get done, I could be content in Him. I now challenge myself to view a day of minimal accomplishments as rich—so long as the needs of my family were met and my God worshipped.

Living life to the fullest does not mean filling our day to the fullest, but rather living in the fullness of God…seeking Him in stillness, knowing Him and His way, being who God created you to be! 

Someone said, "If all I do is read my Bible and pray, the day is not wasted." Busyness. The rush and the hurry. This keeps us from our devotion to God and our worship.

"You are only as spiritual as you are rested." -Dr. Jim Berg 

A friend of mine in college would hear me talk about my busy schedule and would often say to me: "Jolene, REST is worship too." 

Lessons from Martha's sister, Mary (cc Luke 10:38-42):

Jesus did not disapprove of Martha's role of serving, but of her attitude and neglecting of a more important role. Our primary role is to sit at Jesus' feet, to know Him. This is when we learn His purposes for us and for our day. If we do everything else first, we will never have time for this. Wise financial planners will encourage people doing a budget to take care of their giving and saving FIRST. Otherwise, there never seems to be enough money left at the end of the month to take care of these areas. It is the same with our time with God. 

"We can get caught in the same performance trap, feeling as though we must prove our love for God by doing great things for Him. So we rush past the intimacy of the Living Room to get busy for Him in the Kitchen—implementing great ministries and wonderful projects, all in an effort to spread the good news. We do all our works in His name. We call Him 'Lord, Lord.' But in the end, will He know us? Will we know Him?"

-Joanne Weaver, Having a Mary Heart in Martha World, p. 9

When we want to please God, but don't take the time to know Him, we busy ourselves doing what we think He wants rather than what we know He wants. This is when the pressure starts to build. We hear ourselves screaming inside at those important things, "Not now! I have to do this and I am needed here…" All our doing is then full of care and is in vain. 

"So often we give God the gift we think He needs rather than take time to find out what He desires.… 

Jesus' words to Martha are words to those of us who are overextended in service as well: "Only one thing is needed." We must take time to sit at Jesus' feet, to worship Him, to get to know Him better. When we put that first thing first, then He delights to reveal His will and our part in fulfilling it." 

- Joanne Weaver, Having a Mary Heart in Martha World

When our responsibilities and large to-do lists are like a wagon full of rocks, weighing us down, our Bible reading and prayer time become just another "rock" that I have to get done and dump off the wagon to lighten the load.    

"I cannot do everything, but I can do 'ONE THING'." - Joanne Weaver 

In the book, "The Resolution for Women" by Priscilla Shearer she explained that when she was a young wife, new mom and in the ministry—feeling the strain—an older godly woman in ministry encouraged her to think of the different activities in her life as individual clear boxes. Our tendency, she told Priscilla, is to keep these boxes "equally full with identical amounts of ourselves and our effort." "This, we think, is what balance looks like. But in reality, this is the picture of a woman overworked, frustrated, and exhausted. A life out of balance."

"The way we achieve balance," she said to Priscilla, "is to consider prayerfully God's priorities for us in this current season of life and then rearrange the boxes accordingly—pushing some of them into the background, bringing others to the front. Into these primary boxes we place the best of ourselves and our effort, while perhaps totally emptying some of the others—at least temporarily—not because they're of any less overall significance but because they're not where we need to be allocating the best of our abilities and attention for the time being." 

Lessons from a Grape Vine (cc. John 15:1-5):

It was said of Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China: "He was a joyous man now, a bright, happy Christian. He had been a toiling, burdened one before, with latterly not much rest of soul. It was resting in Jesus now, and letting Him do the work—which makes all the difference!" 

Hudson Taylor experienced this change in his life after receiving a letter from a fellow missionary, John McCarthy. In the letter, McCarthy wrote:

"To let my loving Savior work in me His will, my sanctification is what I would live for by His grace. Abiding, not striving nor struggling; looking off unto Him; trusting Him for present power; trusting Him to subdue all inward corruption; resting in the love of an almighty Savior, in the conscious joy of a complete salvation; willing that His will should truly be supreme—this is not new, and yet 'tis new to me. I feel as though the first dawning of a glorious day had risen upon me. I hail it with trembling, yet with trust. I seem to have got to the edge only, but of a sea which is boundless; to have sipped only, but of that which fully satisfies. Christ literally all seems to me now the power, the only power for service; the only ground for unchanging joy. May He lead us into the realization of His unfathomable fullness." 

Some time after receiving this letter, Hudson Taylor wrote to his sister:

"As to the work, mine was never so plentiful, so responsible, or so difficult; but the weight and strain are all gone." 

-They Know the Secret, Hudson Taylor  

I heard it once said of Jesus, "Is He worried? Is He troubled? Is He distressed? There's no wrinkle on His brow. No least shade of anxiety. Yet the affairs are as much His as mine." Jesus drew all His energy from the Father.  

This lesson is not necessarily about simplifying our calendars or learning to say, "No"—though some of us may need to sit down and prioritize and get rid—it is about releasing ourselves from the pressure to do all these things to please others or ourselves. It is about getting on our knees and saying "God, what do you want me to do today? Is this ministry opportunity in your plans for me? Will these things I'm planning to do bring you glory?" And then waiting for Him to show you. Prayer is where we release all our pressures to God and let Him take over. When we neglect prayer—seeking God first—we forfeit the carefree heart. 

"Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls." 

-Matthew 11:28-29 

It is interesting to note the connection between meekness and rest in the above verses. Many of the pressures we face—especially those with people—would not be there if we would learn to follow the example of our Lord, and to allow Him to reign in our circumstances.

"The word [burden] Jesus used means 'a load carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion.' Rest is simply release from that burden. It is not something we do; it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is rest. 

There is the burden of pride. The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart's fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest.…Such a burden is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. 

He develops toward himself a kindly sense of humor and learns to say, 'Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispers that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing…Come on, humble yourself and cease to care what men think.'…[The meek man knows that he is] in himself, nothing; in God everything. That is his motto.…As he walks on in meekness he will be happy to let God defend him. The old struggle to defend himself is over. He has found the peace which meekness brings." 

 -A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God: Meekness and Rest  

According to the chapter we read this week, our pressures attack our:

1. Freedom

We are not often tempted to bad things, but Satan can enslave us to good things. We read about the example of the Israelites as slaves and how God set them free and gave them the gift of rest, the Sabbath. We are now free from the pressure to do things because they are REQUIRED of us. Instead, we can now live out of love and appreciation for all the Lord has done for us. Our love for God should determine what fills our plate!

"Enough can be enough—not just on our calendars but in every area of our lives. Then we can sit back in the freedom that helps us start again tomorrow with our spirits rested, alert and renewed. 

We are called to serve, and serving often requires sacrifice. Not everything we're tasked to do should fit conveniently into our day. But a free woman possesses the God-given ability to know when He is truly asking her to do something—as well as the God-given ability to know when He's not. Then she has the God-given discernment to know her limits and the authority to know when she needs 'to cease, to stop, to pause'—accepting the gentle yoke of Jesus instead of the tyrannical yoke of slavery." 

-Fervent  

2. Significance 

We often tie our core value as a person to how much work we do. We turn busyness into a badge of honor. And we post it all on Facebook! 

We no longer know how to sit still. We're rarely satisfied with where we are or what we have. 

"It's why we can't embrace the one thing we're doing now because of the dozen other things we're not doing while we're over here doing this.

You've already received approval from the only One whose approval really matters. He has stamped His value on you, and that is enough. Even the activities He gives you to steward are not given to see how many balls you can juggle, but instead so you can participate with Him in staking a kingdom claim on the patches of ground where you live. Sure, there's sweat involve. Sore muscles. Dirt under your pretty fingernails. But these endeavors and hobbies and accumulated possessions of yours are meant to bring joy, to enhance relationships, to develop your gifts, to swell you with His blessing and contentment."  

-Fervent 

Pressures/Busyness keep us from:

1. Our devotion to God - "Be still and know" (Ps. 46:10) 

2. Contentment, peace, rest - ("If you would get a contented life…be sure of your call to every business you go about. Though it is the least business, be sure of your call to it; then, whatever you meet with, you may quiet your heart with this: I know I am where God would have me.…What God calls a man to, in that he may have comfort whatever befalls you. God will look to you, and see you blessed if you are in the work God calls you to." -Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment) 

3. Knowing God's daily will - "Thy will be done" (Mat. 6) Giving the control of our day over to God. God's will does not need to be written in the sky. It is the natural response of the heart seeking Him. 

So…take your calendar—prioritize, pray about areas to simplify, insert intentional times for rest and worship, and feel guilty only if you have not sought time with God today! Because, once you seek Him, you will know what to do next.

"They that seek the Lord understand all things." 

-Proverbs 28:5

 Before Next Week:

• Read Chapter 9: "Your Hurts"
• Write a Prayer Card
• Pray!!!