Deal With It!

“People with integrity have a firm footing, but those who follow crooked paths will slip and fall.”  Pr. 10:9 [emphasis added]

Stress is a combination of different emotions; worry, guilt, fear, bitterness, anger, tension, or anxiety, strictly based on the way we think. Yet God’s Word says we should keep a clear mind how often? When the country is epidemic free? When your workload is reduced? When the economy has stabilized to one naira to one dollar? Keep a clear mind in every situation. What situation is stressing you right now? God wants you to keep a clear mind and be stressless. Over the next few days, we will be looking at the stress of compromising, the stress of conflict, the stress of competition, and the stress of commitment.

The Stress of Compromise: This is the stress you feel when you are pressured to do something you know is wrong or something you do not want to do. Things you feel like your parents must never find out about and even Jesus must not find us in. Many of us can remember the first time we felt stress or peer pressure: the pressure to drink, to lose one’s virginity, to let someone cheat from your paper during an exam, or to be the one cheating in an exam. I was a science student in the university and they insisted that we must all take one foreign language course. For some reason, even though I was not saved at the time, I just hated cheating in an exam.

So my colleagues concluded that the only reason I hated cheating was because I always passed my exams. The day of the exam came and everyone was waiting to see how I would survive without cheating. I felt the pressure. My friends were willing to let me cheat with them but I knew they would talk about it forever. So I decided not to cheat. And somehow, I do not know how, I passed the exam. It must have been the Holy Ghost, even though I did not know Him at the time. Even in the business world, you are pressured to compromise and drop ethical standards that God will have us keep. So how should we deal with the stress of compromise? In dealing with the stress of compromise the first thing is to, Do the right thing!

Prayer: Holy Spirit, please help me not to cave in under pressure but to always do the things that are pleasing in the sight of God, in Jesus Name.