Cosmic Pressure - Apst. Arome Osayi

The perilous (outrageously dangerous) times predicted in God' word from the days of yore are here (2 Timothy 3:1).  Cosmic pressures, building in all quarters of human endeavor, infecting people with malignant claustrophobia as people feel they are being constantly pressed upon like insects by forces higher than their will. Pressures of all kinds mounting and towering like ominous mountains. People's efforts are not amounting to their desired outcomes. It's a wild, wild world that we currently live in. 

 

This is even more true in Nigeria right now. Pressures: ripping families apart, decimating businesses,knocking down people's faith in God and darkening the land with weighty melancholy. Pressures: making people jump off the 3rd Mainland Bridge in Lagos and causing the whole nation to chant hopelessly in the most pessimistic tone. Pressures: causing saints to abandon the fortitude of God's peace which is powered by the comfort of Scriptures and embrace the barbeturates of vanity etc.

The perilous times have one mission: turn people's hearts and faith from God to themselves, and/or, to factors leading straight to the god of the world (the cold ruthless enemy of our souls) . 

Will  it ever get better in the world? I am afraid not.  Is there a way out? Yes! What is the way out?  Pressing back against these pressures by pressing into God through prayer.  

Oxygen is free but breathing is not.  You have to engage your respiratory system to breathe in order to stay alive. Similarly, God's breath is free but breathing in the spirit in order to build a robust spiritual life is not. You have to engage in the only thing that draws breath from God's bowel to your reins: prayer.  

Sadly,  prayer to many Christians is a personal weapon of war (something they activate when they're experiencing personal peril and deactivate when the lines are falling to them in pleasant places).  This is elementary and not sufficient to take on the territorial devils that keep unleashing shockwave after shockwave of pressures. Prayer has to become a life - like drawing breath! This is the only way we can win against these pressures. 

 

The external pressures of the world are designed to cripple, decapitate and mutilate. There is a constructive pressure that comes from the resident God within us,  by which all worldly pressures are pressed into perpetual insignificance: it's called the burden of prayer. Wouldn't you rather yield to that which builds up your most holy faith than to that which shreds the same? 

Happy new month.

I published this piece hereon 1st August  2018. I find the content even more relevant today.  Be blessed and happy new month! 

Apst. Arome Osayi Pen