Every Monday night at my fraternity house, one block away from the UCLA campus, we would hold something we called Chapter. All 120 of us would cram into the basement—which we called the Chapter Room—and conduct the business and rituals necessary to run our fraternity. The most notable thing about Chapter nights was how formal they were.
Everyone came dressed in coat and tie—or you didn’t eat. The house chaplain would pray over the food, which was served in three courses. House officers—the president, vice president, and so on—were seated at the head table, and dinner was served by pin number, or seniority, in the fraternity.
Whenever we had guests, such as parents or friends, they were grandly introduced to the assembly, and any female visitors were serenaded by 120 voices. Fraternity members were only allowed to pin their girlfriends on Monday nights. Pledge training, along with Formal Chapter, as we called it, were mandatory, and we held initiation ceremonies on Chapter nights.
As a navy brat, I loved all the formality. As a Christian, it was one of the few nights the guys would act civilized and well-mannered. I was often asked to pray before meals, which allowed me to be a light. But I’ll never forget a Chapter night during my junior year that was different from all the rest.
We were politely polishing off our last bites of steak and au gratin potatoes when a gorgeous young blonde dressed suspiciously in a trench coat came waltzing into the dining hall. On her right arm was a bulky guy in sunglasses holding a boom box. As she stood seductively before us, one of the brothers stood up and announced that as a birthday gift to his little brother, we would be treated to a special performance by Miss Trench Coat in the living room after pledge training. Talk about a carrot and a stick.
This red-meat announcement was greeted with a wild outburst, high-fives, whistling, and applause. Meanwhile, I steamed from my seat at the head table. One thing was for sure: in less than an hour, the boom box would be turned on and the trench coat would come off. Va va voom!
God taught me a powerful lesson that day: pressure is a good thing, because it never leaves you where it finds you.
The little brother in this case was a pledge, and I was his pledge trainer. This meant that the main audience for Miss Trench Coat would be a group of young men I met with every Chapter night to impress upon them the more “noble” principles of our fraternity. During those sessions I quizzed them on fraternity history in preparation for initiation at the end of the quarter.
After Miss Trench Coat’s unexpected appearance, however, I felt like Daniel in a pagan palace asked to swallow food offered to idols. I could not stomach this, nor could I participate in it. But what else could I do? It was just me against a tidal wave of testosterone.
One hour later, my pledge class was over. Lo and behold, in walked Miss Trench Coat and her personal security officer. Here we go.
I stood up and informed the pledges that they did not have to stay for the performance. Then I exited, stage right. Wanna guess how many came with me? Right—zero out of twenty-five—and other fraternity brothers filed into the room. When I realized that I led a parade of none, I stomped up to my room on the second floor, my blood boiling and my mind spinning. Part of me wished that I was still on the other side so I wouldn’t have this intense battle raging inside. The other part of me said, Fight!
From my room, I heard the fast-paced music with a heavy beat come on. Lord, what do I do? I paced about my room and actually thought about going downstairs and ripping out the plug. That would go over real well. I figured that one of my fraternity brothers had paid good money to see some live flesh, and he’d rip me a new one if I interfered. So I prayed: Lord, what do I do? What am I going to do about this?
Suddenly, a searing thought landed like a grenade in a foxhole: Pray Miss Trench Coat out of there. I bowed my head and prayed: Jesus, greater are You who is in me than He who is in the world. In the name of Jesus Christ, I come against every evil in this house and command it to be gone.
I listened for the music, which was still blaring. I could hear the bass beat and the roars of the guys. Five minutes passed by, so I prayed again: Lord Jesus Christ, make this evil go. Make her leave, and You will receive the glory. Make her go. Get her out of this house in Your name.
The music was still going strong as another five minutes passed—five minutes of live nude action that would be imprinted on their minds for a long time. Lord Jesus, make the boom box break. Make it break. Do something to stop this in Your name.
Suddenly, the music stopped. I listened closely and could make out some kind of commotion downstairs. I bolted down the staircase and uncomfortably walked into an unhappy mob of eighteen- to twenty-two-year-old men who looked like they just got their chocolate cake taken away after one bite. I watched Miss Trench Coat, who was still wearing her trench coat, stride purposely for the front door with the big goombah bodyguard fast on her heels.
“What happened?” I exclaimed.
“The boom box broke,” said one of the plebes, “and she didn’t want to continue.”
I don’t know who was more in shock—me or them! Miss Trench Coat’s short-circuited performance was over. Done. Bye-bye!
God taught me a powerful lesson that day: pressure is a good thing, because it never leaves you where it finds you. What I mean is that there were only two directions I could have taken. I could have joined in the fun and compromised. Or I could make the best stand under the circumstances and fight with the tools God gave me. In the end, I faced ninety minutes of pressure—from the announcement during dinner to the striptease act, but I received a clear view of God’s awesome power.
When similar situations come your way, think of how God wants to use this pressure to make you a new man. Most young men have a one-sided view of pressure, temptation, and trials—a negative one. But that’s how the world, the dark side, and Satan want you to see it. God wants you to see it His way:
So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.… “But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.”
But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved. (Hebrews 10:35-36,38-39)
God’s plan to make you a man doesn’t include a provision to remove you from pressure. In fact, He’s most likely to throw you into pressure-packed situations, because He knows that will increase your faith and grow your character in Christ. More often than not, you’ll have to choose God and trust Him with the results. God tests you because you’re still growing up.
Ask guys a few years older than you, and they will agree when I say that young men experience a lot of growth from the time they leave high school to the time they finish college or start a job. Up to this point, your faith has probably been insulated from any real pressure because of the protective forces of family, friends, or church. But when you land in a secular school or join the ranks of salaried men, your faith will be tested. You’ll see things you never saw before—or be asked if you want to see things you never saw before. You’ll likely experience ups and downs and the occasional face plant, but that’s okay because you aren’t perfect (nor am I). Only one man scored a perfect ten on earth, and He’s not you! So just chill out and cut yourself some slack, because God certainly does. Listen to His encouraging voice speak to your journey:
• “For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again” (Proverbs 24:16).
• “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:12-13).
• “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
• “The path of the righteous is like the light of the dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day” (Proverbs 4:18, NASB).
God sees you like a boxer who keeps getting knocked down but rises again to continue fighting, just like Rocky Balboa. Hear what He’s saying: Stumbling is expected, but rising makes the man.
God sees you like a miner, covered in black, who continues to work in the mines, chipping away until he comes out with the gold. Hear what He’s saying: Go back down in there in the pit and come out of the darkness with My purpose in your hands.
When you see pressure the right way, you become very dangerous for God’s purposes.
God sees you like a running back, straining to get outside so you can turn the corner and turn on the jets à la Priest Holmes or Marshall Faulk. Hear what He’s saying: Keep running hard for the goal, and I will keep throwing some key blocks to get you out of the red zone and into the end zone.
God sees your spiritual journey like sunrise coming over the mountains that gets progressively stronger until you hit your goal of becoming God’s young man. Hear what He’s saying: The sun doesn’t start out at the top of the sky. It’s a progression of brightness.
God wants you to be both realistic and optimistic. He wants you to fight and push hard every time He hands you the ball. Sure, you may get gang-tackled every now and then, but ready yourself for another run at it. Take the long view and remember:
• When you see pressure the right way, you become very dangerous for God’s purposes.
• When you see pressure the wrong way, you set yourself up for failure.
• When you accept pressure as a steppingstone to growth, you will be encouraged and empowered toward victory.
• When you perceive pressure as a stumbling block, you will get deflated and depressed over your mistakes.
• When you feel pressure and choose God’s way, you will experience relief.
• When you allow pressure to build up, it will either crush your faith or explode your witness.
Scuba divers know all about pressure because their lives depend on it. Author Scott Larson wrote about this phenomenon in an article in the magazine Men of Integrity. He explained exactly why these deep-sea daredevils must get the pressure equation right:
If you were to breathe air at the surface, hold it, and then submerge twenty feet or so, your lungs could collapse. That’s because pressure at the surface is much less than the pressure in water twenty feet deep. In the same way, if you breathe in air at twenty feet below the water’s surface and hold your breath until you come to the surface, your lungs could explode because the pressure around you becomes less and less and the air in your lungs expands to equalize. A scuba regulator equalizes the pressure of the air you breathe from your tank to match the pressure in the water around you, but it doesn’t help if you don’t keep breathing.1
You need God’s overpowering strength within you to equalize the pressure being put on you by the culture, the dark side, and the devil. Lots of young men I meet are under huge spiritual pressure, grappling with their faith to make sense of their temptations, their choices, and various issues in their lives, such as:
• divorcing parents
• family problems
• isolation
• loneliness
• masturbation
• grades
• sexual discontent
• spiritual responsibility
• parents who can’t be pleased
• breakups with girlfriends
• sexual boundaries with girlfriends
• friendships that pull them down
• guilt from living a double life
• failing in school
• identity crises
God might have you at the crossroads, and if He does, He wants you to look up and read this sign before you make one more choice: “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12). This signpost of Scripture clearly shows: Perseverance under pressure pleases God. The way you persevere is by choosing to match the pressure on you with pressure going back out. For you this may mean:
• staying with God’s way in spite of your feelings
• trusting God with things outside your control
• continuing to turn the pressure over to God and asking Him to relieve it one way or another
• letting go of a relationship and putting it in God’s hands
• not missing your accountability group
• continuing to work hard in school
• confessing a sin to another brother
• forgiving first
• keeping your word
Charles H. Spurgeon, an English evangelist from the late 1800s, once said: “I owe more to the fire and hammer and file than anything else in my Lord’s workshop.” His point: success and growth as God’s servant can only come through looking into the fires of life and allowing God to put you into them, knowing you will come out stronger for His purposes and more prepared for His plan.
Perseverance under pressure pleases God.
This is why God never wants you to run from pressures or problems. Perseverance is a core discipline of a young man, so don’t cheat yourself out of becoming a strong God’s man by bailing. Instead, work it till it hurts. View the pains of growth in your character not as things that cramp your style or steal your fun but as signs that you’re growing stronger every day. See your growth pain as spiritual gain. See pressure as the road to progress:
Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. (James 1:2-4, MSG)
It’s been said that those who fail to plan, plan to fail. We’ll take a look at how God’s young man plans to win in the next chapter.
1. Scott Larson, “Pressure,” Men of Integrity, August 10, 2004.