Pressure Cooker

Pressure cookers are usually used to cook things slow and steady. When used properly, you can create some of the best tasting food. I love a good stew made in a pressure cooker. It is the slow and steady process that makes the food so tender and good. When looking at our spiritual lives, God likes to put us in our very own spiritual pressure cookers when He is trying to take us to a new level in our spiritual growth. The problem is that we can’t stand the slow and steady process that we must go through.

We are in a microwave age where everything has to be fast and convenient. This fast and convenient environment is not good for Christian growth. If the truth be told, the slow and steady process is what strengthens our endurance on this Christian journey. I had a conversation with someone the other day where they had just confirmed a new job position starting in the next few months. This person has always had a dream of working in this field. They were led to finally get the necessary training and certifications by the frustration and stress they felt in their current job. This person is someone who has moved around quite a bit in their profession. They would get frustrated at one place and because they were gifted and talented would have no problem getting hired on someplace else. They would go through this process over and over and over again. In my spiritual perspective, they never really allowed the slow and steady process to have its intended spiritual result. They would remove themselves from the pressure cooker too soon, thus removing them from the heat only half done.

My comment to this person was that I felt they would have gotten to their point of purpose much sooner had they not moved around so much. God had instructed this person over a decade ago to prepare for this field that they were just now going into. It is the true area of their giftedness. This person disagreed with my statement and noted that God removed them from each job because He knew they could no longer deal with the stress and frustration where they were. My response was that God allowed them to move, but did not necessarily facilitate the move Himself. Because God gives us choices, we can choose to stay and endure or we can choose to remove ourselves from the process too soon. The reason I said what I said to this person was because I truly felt that when God removes you from the heat (or the process), we are completely done with the process and we don’t keep going through the same process over and over again. Whereas when we remove ourselves it is almost guaranteed we will repeat the same process over and over and over until we learn the lesson that God wants us to learn. God always gives retest. He only accepts a passing grade. He never allows you to take an incomplete or failing grade. I noted to this person that the frustration and stress they were feeling was God’s way of pushing them towards their destiny. Each time they moved from one job to the next, they were removing God’s hand from pushing them towards their destiny. What they perceived to be frustration and stress was really the hand of God increasing the pressure in the pressure cooker to push them toward their destiny.

Just think if this person had allowed the process to be completed the first time. We often hate the process. It is usually uncomfortable, inconvenient and can hurt very bad at times as we are being stretched and pulled to increase our spiritual capacity. We just want the pain to go away; while God just wants us to grow spiritually. In our physical growth we often experience growing pains. Likewise in our spiritual growth we will also experience growing pains.

What if Joseph had worked his way out of the bondage that he was wrongly placed in by his brothers? What if David had given himself up to King Saul and allowed Saul to kill him? Because Joseph endured the process, he ended up being the number two person in Egypt behind Pharaoh. David held out long enough for God to fight his battle. God took care of Saul for David and made David a path straight to the throne he had been anointed to sit upon.

The next time you feel you are in an unbearable situation, take a moment to align yourself with God to make sure you are not running from a necessary process in your efforts to remove yourself from something that hurts. It could be you are feeling a necessary growing pain that God is using to make you more of the person He wants you to be.

God bless you.