Everybody feels the pressures of life, regardless of age, stage, or station in life. The short, biblical answer to the proper handling of it is found in 1 Peter 5:7, “Casting all your care upon Him, because He cares for you.” There are some common-sense intermediary steps we can, and should, take, but ultimately our ticket to living abundantly is going to be our ability to cast our cares on Jesus.

The most elementary step in being able to do this is to know Jesus in personal relationship, then committing ourselves to trust Him completely. It is important that it be a settled matter in our mind and heart that God is good, that He loves us, and that He will shoulder our burdens for us.

As to the common sense things that we need to do, we need to realize that we can’t be everything to everybody, and we can’t do everything that everybody might want us to do. In short, we are to make priority decisions by focusing on what God would have us to do. What would God have our number one priority to be? What should be second? Third? Once we learn this, we must focus on these things and not let other things, no matter how worthy they might seem, to detour us from our top priorities.

The other thing that I will mention here, is that we must seek God’s will for the decisions we make. A large portion of the pressure that comes upon us is a result of decisions that we have made on our own, or the decisions that we are trying to make on our own. Before Jesus called His disciples, we are told in Luke 6:12 that Jesus prayed all night. This was a big decision with far reaching effects, so He sought the will of the Father in an all night prayer meeting. There is a lesson there for us, also.

God does not intend for us to be so pressured that we get high blood pressure, and a host of other problems. He intends that we have peace that passes understanding and joy unspeakable and full of glory.