Pressure

Open your eyes! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in (Revelation 3:20).

If you were taking a ride in a submarine, you might think that so long as the hull remains watertight, you could travel to the deepest parts of the ocean. If you actually tried this, however, you would soon discover how badly you were mistaken. Submarines cannot go too deep; if they do, the weight of the water above will crush them like an empty soft drink can crumpled by your hand. If you want to go really deep, you need to travel in a specially designed deep-sea submersible, fortified by thick armor to resist being crushed at great depths.

Suppose that you did board a heavily shielded research vessel and headed down into the deepest abyss of the ocean. Do you know what you would find there? Fish! Fish with skin only a few millimeters thick. How can fish survive the immense pressure of the deep without protection? The answer is simple: the fish are filled with internal pressure, enough to withstand the water pressure surrounding them. A submarine, filled mostly with air for the crew to breathe, does not have sufficient internal pressure to resist being crushed at great depths.

When confronting the pressures of sin, some Christians try to live like a submarine, shielding themselves from the outside world; they strap themselves into a narrow space where they believe that they are safe from external pressures. They make rigid rules which are designed to reinforce them against temptation. But the deeper that each of us goes into life, the more inadequate such an approach becomes. The pressure brought by sin becomes too great, and eventually we crumple under temptation.

This is why we need to be like the deep-sea fish, filled with positive pressure within ourselves. Rather than simply resisting the pressures of temptation, we need to combat them by building up positive spiritual pressure inside us. We do this by recognizing that the values which the world would impose upon us are nothing but air; they have no substance which can resist evil. Instead, we must heed Jesus who said: Open your eyes! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in. When we let Jesus come into our hearts, we are filled with the power of God Himself, a power that can never be crushed by pressure of sin.