I always go through an interesting situation daily when preparing my daughters for school. While the older one dresses by her self, I would have to dress the younger one. While dressing Faith, she would not want Grace to ‘first’ her. “Daddy, she is ‘firsting’ us”, was her usual language. She does not always focus on her dressing but that of Grace. I do my best to tell her to calm down and not be under pressure.

Friend, life is in phases and men are in sizes. God wants you to enjoy where you are on the road to where you are going. He wants you live in His pleasure and not under life’s pressure (Psalms 16:11). Living under pressure is not a function of what is happening around your life but what is happening in you. You can be in the midst of turbulence and still be at peace (Mark 4:37-38, 2 Corinthians 4:7-12, Philippians 4:6-7).

It is not the pressure on the outside that crushes us but the emptiness on the inside (Proverbs 24:10). You need to build the right values and capacities that would help you to go through life. Until your faith fails you are not yet a failure (Luke 22:31-32). Being under pressure is a choice. You may not always determine what happens to you or around you but you can determine your response.

In your journey to fulfilling divine vision, you must not be under stress. When stress begins to set in, you are living beyond the provision of God for you at that time. While we all need to stretch to the capacity of greatness available for us in God, we are not to be stressed. We stretch to fill our measure in God but we become stressed when we try to go beyond our measure (2 Corinthians 10:12-15).

Don’t let people put you under pressure and don’t be under the pressure of performance (SOS 1:6). That others are doing stuff does not mean that you should do it and it does not mean that you are a failure. It is a sign of folly to compare yourself with another (2 Corinthians 10:12). Everyone has his or her own time under God; our trajectory of growth and greatness would be different.

If we all follow God and His processes, we would all fulfil our destiny of greatness in God. But it does not have to be at the same time or in the same way. John looked like a failure when Jesus was giving Peter an assignment in John 21:17-22, but you would not know that he too was critical to God’s program until you read John 19:25-27, and Revelation 1:1. Don’t be under pressure. Stay with God, grow with God, move at His pace and fulfil your destiny.

© ‘Demola Awoyele
Lead Pastor,
Destiny Impact Church
Akure, Nigeria