Will You Choose Character or Failure?

I had an old song from ZZ Top in my head the other day and it was the “Under Pressure” song. Yeah, yeah, I was reminiscing about the old days of music, but then I started thinking about the word pressure.

This is such a powerful word that causes men to make rash decisions or great ones. When the pressures of life happen to us personally, we feel like the world is crushing us and there is no clear way to go.

This is a time to be a man of character or become another statistical notch of failure.

Here is where we need to learn how to become tempered in our lives. Our manly nature typically wants to go solo in this arena, but this is when we need to have that brother to walk us through it together in Christ.  

Second Corinthians 1:3-11 (NIV) says:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”

God wants you to know that whatever trial you face, it is only through Him that we are able to receive the real comfort and hope needed to go through it. When we see our brothers going through tough times, we are to be there and share our strength with them.

It is by our testimony that others are helped through their trials. Verse 4 clearly states what our role in ministry is—that Jesus Christ “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

Next time you hear your brother call for some help, be there for him. You just may be the one to have the right words to say that provides the victory he needed that day, and what a blessing it is to see that happen.

For the original blog post, visit nomatterthecost.org.