Scripture: For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding [and] eternal weight of glory {2 Cor 4:17}.
Author: Revd Michael Bradley
The Apostle Paul went through many of what we today would call troubles, trials, testings and temptations. As a man of God he suffered shipwreck, flogging, mobbing, near death assaults etc which he could have written off as being unfair to him, strangely though, he didn't do this; rather he claimed that all these ill-fated happenings were just light afflictions compared to the eternal glory that he will receive from the hands of Christ his Lord and Master.
Paul was as it were, being pressured on every side but did not desist or detour from his God given assignment. He knew that if he would just 'wait out' the pressure then he would truly see a fitting reward and we as contemporary believers should also cast our gaze in this direction.
Not only should we look for the blessing which is to come at Christs return, but we should also look at the benefits of enduring pressure while we are here on earth. We try to it avoid almost at any cost and many times run right back into it, PRESSURE, PRESSURE, PRESSURE, sometimes it would seem as if there is no ease of it, as if it is a continuum on which we are stuck, a constance from which there is no freedom, a rut from which we cannot be lifted. To this end we often wonder why me? why do I have to be the one to endure this? Questions to which there might not be any definite answer.
Nevertheless, I would not have you ignorant my friends on the issue. If grapes were not pressured then we would not have the novelties of grape juice or for the more liberal, fine Italian grape wine; if coffee was not pressured then we would not have the luxurious taste of its mild but potent compounds and its enchanting aroma, if gold ore is not pressured then we would not have the privilege of fine gold or that of adorning ourselves with them.
I say this to say that especially for us as Christians, pressure is inevitable, but if we endure then we will be acceptable in the eyes of God, we will offer praise to him that will rise like a sweet aroma and we will be his adorning glory in the earth until he comes. So let us each go through our pressures to the glory of God, for if we faint not; then we will reap a reward.