Do You Feel the Pressure?

Do you feel pressure at work? I know I do. And listen, I love my job. I absolutely love being a pastor. I love making two-minute message videos, and writing books and talking to all the brothers and sisters who are walking with Jesus. There are so many wonderful things about being a local church pastor.

But we’ve all got career pressures. Even on the best days, work is still work. No matter how much we love what we do, we will still the feel the pressure of our jobs.

In addition to all the normal work stress, it’s been a crazy year. I realize that with all that’s been going on in the world, work has only become more stressful. For a lot of us, the normal pressure has gotten cranked up. We’re working from home, juggling our lives and our jobs.

Or maybe the stress is the lack of a job. Millions of people in the Western Hemisphere have lost their jobs this year. Many of us have lost our jobs, played the stressful gambit of job hunting, or started a new job, within the last year. All those events ratchet up the pressure that we’re already feeling.

So how do we work with career pressures?

First, remember that work pressure is nothing new. There’s been work pressure since the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, each of them suffered different consequences. This was Adam’s:

Cursed is the ground for your sake,

In toil you shall eat of it

All the days of your life.

Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,

And you shall eat the herb of the field

In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread

Till you return to the ground.

Genesis 3:17-19

Sometimes, it feels like we’re the only ones fighting with difficulties of work, but we’re all going through this in different ways. It’s part of living in a fallen world.

But here’s the second reminder: the story doesn’t end with a hopeless people in a fallen world, but that Jesus entered that fallen world  to redeem it back. I love this because we’re going to feel pressures at work and stress. It’s not always going to be easy.

You don’t need to write off your vocation or work just because it’s stressful, there’s pressure. The Lord wants to do a work of redemption, and our job is to ask, “Lord, how do you want to do a work of redemption right here, right now, through me? When you do that, suddenly, pressure becomes an opportunity.

When you get a glimpse of the Lord’s perspective, you will never see your job or your coworkers in the same way. You walk into every situation as God’s child and messenger. Isn’t that beautiful? So many of us are crumbling under the stress, but God wants to lead all of us into that redemptive mindset as we follow Him.