How to Handle Pressure

Box 260, Lindale, Texas 75771 or calling 214-963-8626. None of these messages are copyrighted and you are welcome to make copies for free distribution to your friends. Psalms.

Amen. Psalms 55. Amen.

Are you ready? Psalms 55. Give ear to my prayer, O God, and do not hide thyself from my supplication. Give heed to me and answer me.

I am restless in my complaint. Now, I don't know if you're restless tonight, but did you know that there is a spirit of restlessness? And we're going to talk about that tonight. David was restless.

I am restless in my complaint and I am surely distracted. Because of the voice of the enemy. Because of the pressure of the wicked.

The pressure of the wicked. In fact, there's where I get the title to my message. I want to talk to you tonight about how to handle pressure.

How to handle pressure. Because of the voice of the enemy. Verse 3. Because of the pressure of the wicked.

For they bring down trouble upon me and in anger they bear a grudge against me. My heart is in anguish within me. The terrors of death have fallen upon me.

Fear and trembling come upon me and horror has overwhelmed me. And I said, oh that I had wings like a dove. I would fly away and be at rest.

Behold, I would wander far away. I would lodge in the wilderness. And then he says, pause.

Think about that. I'll read one more verse. I would hasten to my place of refuge from the stormy wind and tempest.

Now, I'll stop right there. But keep your Bible open because we're going to deal with the whole 23 verses there. As we talk tonight about how to handle pressure.

Let's ask the Lord to bless his word. Lord, we thank you tonight for your presence. You are worthy, Lord.

We sang of your worthiness. You are worthy to be praised tonight. And as we look into your word, we pray that you would anoint it to our hearts, your people tonight.

Speak, Lord, to the spirits of restlessness in people. Speak to us, Lord, about the fact that you will want to anoint us and empower us to handle life's pressures. The daily struggles, the normal daily struggles of life.

As well as the great battles when the enemy comes against us. We thank you that we can stand against it. And you are our peace in the midst of the storm.

Bless your people tonight, we pray. And bless us around this altar in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now this psalm, in the words of David, are from a man who is experiencing very extreme pressure. We might say stress and anxiety as well. And perhaps there are only two other men besides David who face more pressure in their lifetime.

And that would be Jesus and Moses. Think about Moses. If ever a man was under pressure, Moses had the daily pressure and burden and frustration of leading tens and thousands and thousands of grumblers and complainers and rebels and backsliders.

Leading them around in circles. Waiting for the generation that had come out of Egypt, the Egyptian born. Waiting for them to die off in the wilderness because of their disobedience.

Moses was probably the world's all time number one funeral director. I don't know how many adults came out of Egypt but they died in the wilderness. Now Moses handled that pressure very, very well.

Except for one major lapse of faith. You recall that in anger he smoked the rock instead of seeking to it. And thus was not permitted to go into the promised land.

And Moses is an example of how some people operate or how they react to pressure. They get angry. They lash out.

They strike back. Instead of speaking to the rock, instead of speaking they lash out. Elijah went under pressure and threat from wicked Jezebel, Bob preached on it Sunday morning.

He reacted to stress by wanting to be alone. He went off into the wilderness and did not even want his trusted companion and servant to be with him. And solitude and silence was Elijah's reaction to pressure and to conflict.

And I can identify with that. My reaction also to pressure is silence. If you don't believe that you ask my wife.

Sometimes when I come home it's like I wear an imaginary sign on the front and the back. It says give me 15 minutes. Or don't talk to me for 30 minutes.

I want to be alone. I want silence. Job handled pressure or he tried to handle it by reacting to it the way that some of you do.

When you're nervous or you're under pressure Job talked a lot. Now some people must be under pressure an awful lot. Because they talk and they talk and they talk.

It's nervousness. But you know some people you may be one under pressure. Talk, talk, talk.

I knew I'd get a few amens on that. And Job talked and said some things he might have regretted. As many of us do when we're under pressure.

We say things you know how it is. They go out there as soon as they're out. You wish you could bring it back.

Listen to Job. He said my soul is weary of my life. I will leave my complaint unto myself.

Now that's one good mark. At least he left his complaint with himself. He said I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

Here's how some others speak when under severe trials. As Job did. Here's some more words of Job.

Oh that I might have my request. And that God would grant me the thing that I long for. And listen to what Job longed for.

Even that it would please God to destroy me. That he would let loose his hand and cut me off. And another place Job said, Job 311.

He said why did I not die at birth? Why did not I, when I came forth from the wound, why didn't I expire? Why was I even born? And then he also, he talked and he identified with the one who longs for death but there is none. Did you ever wish that you could find a legitimate way to die? Without committing suicide? Now in Psalms 55 is David's reaction to pressure. In another very familiar way, a very popular way.

He wanted to escape. He wanted to get away from it all. He became sort of a runaway.

And David under certain pressures which are listed in Psalms 55 and which I'm going to address myself in this message, David tried to get away from it all by doing something that many of us do. He looked to buy a ticket on an airline and fly the friendly skies. Now this particular airline is not listed in your phone book.

It neither does it land at any of the major airports. Nevertheless, it takes off every day and many of you book a flight or try to book a flight on it. It's called Dove Airlines.

Did you see it in verse 6 there? David said, oh that I had wings like a dove so that I could fly away and be at rest. Let me get away from it all. Now of course this airline exists only in our imagination.

The slogan of this airline is we'll take you wherever your mind desires. But unlike other airlines, you'll notice this flight usually only takes off during extreme weather. In verse 8 it said, I would hasten to my place of refuge from the stormy wind and the tempest.

In other words, David's circumstances were such that he said, oh find me that airline. Book me a flight on Dove Airlines. Let me get away from here.

Let me escape all of this. And throughout scripture you'll find the same desire expressed. This need to escape, to flee, to get away from it all, from the pressures and strains of life.

It's a familiar theme in the scripture. There are kings and prophets and Bible heroes. You see, they were men and women of like passions as you and I. Their hearts beat like ours beat.

They felt life's joys and sorrows. They experienced hopes and fears as well. They had the same fights of weariness and discouragement that we fight.

They fought them as well. We get tired of the pressures, of the daily pressures of life. Some of it is just the sameness, the routine of life that goes the same job, the same thing day after day.

Oh yes, there are moments of excitement. There are moments of enthusiasm. There are moments of rejoicing.

And thank God that we're children of God that we can come to the house of the Lord here and we can rejoice in the Lord. But there are many more hours of dreariness and weariness and conflict. And worse, as Bob has said tonight, being alone.

And some of you live alone. Live a lonely life. And in light of this, we feel like David many times that all that I had wings of a dove and in our mind we picture a better place somewhere.

And old historians said that no man has ever lived yet without coming to the day in his life when he cared nothing if he were to see no tomorrow. Martin Luther, the reformer, said this. He cried out this, and I quote.

He said, I am weary of life. If this can be called life, there is nothing much worse. I am utterly weary.

I pray thee, O Lord, I am not weary of thy work, but in thy work. Let me speak for thee once more, then seal thy truth and let me die. Deuteronomy 28, 67, Moses expressed the feelings of others who were, in fact, he was talking about judgment.

But it applies to pressure as well. He said, in the morning you shall say, would that it were evening. In the evening you shall say, would that it were morning, because of the dread of your heart, which you dread, and for the sight of the eyes, which you see.

Job, under pressure, also said that he experienced a lot of sleeplessness. Job 7, 4, he said, when I lie down, I say, when shall I rise? When will morning come? But the night continues, and I am continually tossed until dawn. Job was talking about a long, long night.

Now, what were David's pressures? What was the cause and the conflict for which he sought to book escape on Dove Airlines? Well, first of all, he was upset, and he felt the pressure and the burden of conditions in the land that was about him. Look at these words. Look at verses 9 through 11, Psalms 55, and tell me if you cannot identify with this.

Tell me if this is not familiar language to those of us that live in this city. He said, for I have seen violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go around her walls, and iniquity and mischief are in her midst.

Destruction is in her midst, oppression and deceit do not depart from her streets. Now, if that's not a description of New York City, I don't know what is. You and I live in the constant pressure of life in a crime-filled, drug-infested, violence-ridden city, and listen, it takes its toll on the saints.

Brother David said many times, this is a city that wears men down. And we look up bad at my... I'm like Bob. I read the paper sometimes, and I have a feeling of burden on one hand, of disgust on the other hand, and shake my head.

But you know, the Bible says that it rains on the just and on the unjust, and we're affected by the things that we see about us. And like Bob, when I read of the violence that's going on, the schoolteacher that was beat up in the schools, and now today they announced a program. Now, the violence in the schools has been going on for a long time.

It's just now made the news. But when you read that, if you've got children that are in schools, my heart goes out to you. Or I read in the paper of an automobile that comes up on the sidewalk and hits into a pregnant woman, and we see her picture in the paper.

But there's a picture also of the driver of it. When they find the driver, he's got a needle in his arms, a drug addict, stoned, and comes up onto the sidewalk and hits into a woman. Or you hear of senseless killings of some young boy, or that woman in Queens the other day, who they shot at her windows.

And you understand how David felt and why. He said, oh, he said, when can I get away from it all? And we as Christians, they say, oh, come quickly, Lord Jesus. There's a young man here Sunday night, a worker in one of the ministries, one of the churches here in this city.

He drove me to the service. I preached at his church Sunday afternoon. And a few weeks ago, he was going into his room over in Brooklyn, got out of his car to go to his, where he lived.

And two men in a gown came and robbed him, stuck him up, and tried to steal his car. They were going to take it, and the only thing is, it had a stick shift, and they couldn't drive it. And so they made him drive it.

And at gunpoint, they took him to Queens. Got out of the car, shot, and I believe they killed a man and shot at a man's wife. And I'm not sure I have all the story correct, but as I understand it, they did what they set out to do, made him drive him there.

They did their thing, and then had him drop him off somewhere, and they finally left him. He was all right. They robbed him, of course, but didn't do him any damage.

And how true it is in verse 11, destruction is in her midst, oppression and deceit do not depart from her streets. Now you can become calloused in this city and to this city. You can get hard-hearted.

You can get uncaring. You can have a see-no-evil mentality. But if like David, you really care about what goes on around you, you're going to feel the burden of these things.

You're going to feel the pressure and the anxiety of it that it causes you, if nothing more than the fear that it puts in people's hearts as you read about it. Now some people are what we call low-world, low-world, sociologists will say this, that some people are what is called low-world, low-view people, low-world view. They have a low-world view and other people have a high-world view.

Low-world view people care only about their own little world. They only care what's going on right around them. They care about nothing else.

But high-world view people care about national events. They care about international events. They care about what's going on around them, in the city.

They carry a burden for it and as Christians, we ought to be that way. I heard a fellow one time say that he and his wife had a good marriage because he said, I make all of the big decisions in life and my wife makes all of the little decisions. He said, I make the big decisions like should the United States sign an INF treaty? Should we go to war in Nicaragua? Or what should we do with Noriega? I make all those decisions and my wife makes all the little decisions like where we live, what car we buy and those type of things.

Well, my friend, if you're a Christian, you ought to have a concern about what goes on around you. David did. He saw conditions in the land.

And if you're involved in caring and carrying a burden for abortion, for drug addiction, for the homeless people, there will be times that you will feel, yes, come to the Friday night meeting and express your burden to the Lord. But if you really get involved in some of these things, you're going to feel the pressure, the frustration of it all and you're going to need to get away and want to get away from it all at times as David expressed. Listen to the stress in David's heart.

Again, we read it. Read it again. Because of the voice of the enemy, because of the pressure of the wicked, for they bring trouble down upon me.

He was talking about himself as well. In anger they bear a grudge against me. My heart is in anguish within me.

The tears of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me. And horror has overwhelmed me.

And it's in the next verse that David's response is that he wants to fly away and go to his lodge in the wilderness. But not only David, but Jeremiah expressed the heart-wrenching cries of the weariness of the wickedness of the world. Jeremiah said, why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do the faithless live at ease? Jesus expressed the same daily burden of seeing what was going on about him, the actions, the sins of the people.

He said in Matthew 17, 17, and Jesus answering and said, oh, unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? I can say amen to that. As I look around, I feel the same thing. But there was another reason, a personal one, why David wanted to escape and fly away on a weekend special.

David had been betrayed by a once trusted, loyal companion. Look at verses 20 and 21. It says he, speaking of that companion, said he has put forth his hands against those who were at peace with him.

He has violated his covenant. His speech was smoother than butter, but his heart was war. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.

And all the time, he was pretending to be David's friend. And yet he was consorting against David to lead a political overthrow. In fact, go with me to 2 Samuel.

You'll read about it. Let's read the whole account in 2 Samuel. And you have to read this to understand.

When you read this and you put Psalm 55 next to it, you begin to understand what David was going through. And it's important that I read this in order to set the setting for what I want to share with you. 2 Samuel 15, it says, Now it came about after this that Absalom provided for himself.

2 Samuel 15, verse 1. It came about after this that Absalom provided for himself a chariot and horses and 50 men as runners before him. And Absalom used to rise early and stand beside the way to the gate. And it happened that when any man had a suit to come to the king for judgment, that's meaning the king, meaning David, that Absalom would call to him and say, From what city are you? And he would say, Your servant is from one of the tribes of Israel.

Then Absalom would say to him, See, your claims are good and right, but no man listens to you on part of the king. Moreover, Absalom would say, Oh, that one would appoint me judge in the land. Then every man who had any suit or cause could come to me and I would give him justice.

And it happened that when a man came near to prostrate himself before him, he would put out his hand and he'd take hold of him and kiss him. And in this manner, Absalom dealt with all Israel who came to the king for judgment. So Absalom stole away the hearts of the men of Israel.

And it came about at the end of 40 years that Absalom said to the king, Please let me go and pay my vow, which I have vowed to the Lord in Hebrew. For your servant vowed a vow when I was living in Gishar in Aram saying, If the Lord shall indeed bring me back to Jerusalem, then I will serve the Lord. And the king said to him, Go in peace.

So he rose and he went to Hebron. But Absalom sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel saying, As soon as you hear the sound of the trumpet, then you shall say, Absalom is king in Hebron. Then 200 men went with Absalom from Jerusalem who were invited and went innocently and they did not know anything.

And Absalom sent for Ahithophel, the Gileadite, David's counselor. And he offered the sacrifice and the conspiracy was strong for the people increased continually with Absalom. Then a messenger came to David saying, David, there is a political coup going on underneath our nose.

David, your son has risen up and your number one counselor in your palace who used to talk to you, his words were as smooth as butter, but he was plotting your overthrow. Verse 13, he said, The hearts of the men of Israel are with Absalom. Then David said to all his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, Arise, let us flee, for otherwise none of us shall escape from Absalom.

Go in haste lest he overtake us quickly and bring down calamity on us and strike the city with the edge of the sword. Now, this was a terrible time for David. He's an aged king.

And here we find him going off, having to escape all of this because of the overthrow, because of the conspiracy against him. Now, it was to David's credit, I want you to note something. It was to David's credit and it was the measure of a man that his first complaint and cry as to the effect of what was going on, his first cry was, Lord, what's happening in the land? What's happening to my people? He said the streets, the effect of this judgment, this is what grabbed his heart first of all.

But then he also felt the effect of it upon him personally. It was a deep personal blow to David to find out that his very own son, who I believe he knew and he saw the seeds of it in his own son, what he was doing when he was meeting with the children of Israel as we read it there, as he would hear their cases. I believe David knew that was going on.

But the thing that really got to him is that his most trusted counselor, his loyal friend, his loyal servant, all the while that he was smiling at David, all the while that he was pretending loyalty, he was a part of the conspiracy. He was plotting as well. And I believe that this probably broke his heart more than anything else.

Now, I said all of that to say this, that personal rejection, and that's what David was experiencing. Personal rejection is one major cause of our anxieties and our stress and the pressures that we feel. David said that the very one who he had sweet fellowship with, look at it, it's, I believe in verse 14.

He said, we had sweet fellowship together. He said, this betrayer, he said, he was my companion, he was my familiar friend. Verse 12, he said, for it is not an enemy who reproaches me.

He said, if it would, if it was, I could bear it. Nor is it one who hates me who has exalted himself against me. Then I could hide myself from him.

But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, and my familiar friend. We had sweet fellowship together, verse 14. We used to walk to the house of the Lord together.

Now, let me ask you this tonight. Perhaps you've been through what David experienced. Rejection is a bitter pill to swallow.

And some of you may have been through it in a marriage. You may have been through it because your own loved ones turned against you when you received Christ into your life because you served the Lord. You know that kind of rejection.

Or you once had a circle of friends and when you found the Lord, of course your friends will turn against you very quickly if you really stand for the Lord. Or perhaps like David, there were those of you that you walked in the house of the Lord with. You may have worked together with him in the church, but at one point in time, God did a work in your heart and you quit compromising.

Maybe you even started coming to this church and other people turned against you. You see, rejection is a wound that cuts deep and it's often slow to heal. And David said his betrayers did so while they pretended to be with him.

He said his speech was smoother than butter, but his heart was war. His words were softer than oil, but they were, at the same time, they were drawn swords. And I believe tonight that there's some of you that sit here tonight.

You're going through a period of rejection in your life. Somebody has betrayed you. A friend turned out not to be a friend.

A coworker put his own interest ahead. A church or a pastor turned out to be a Saul rather than a David. And even worse, you may have, like David, be experiencing the hatred of those who you once stood in such a close relationship with them, but tonight you feel the rejection.

Now, what did David do to handle and to overcome the pressures that were around him? The pressures in the land, the pressures of the society, as well as the personal one that he was going through? Well, he said that he was going to get away from it all. He said he was going to fly Dove Airlines to his favorite hideaway, and he did go, and there's nothing wrong, listen to me, there's nothing wrong with getting away from it all once in a while. But David did not mishandle pressure.

He did not run from pressure. And Psalms 55 is a prescription for facing pressure, and it shows us how David faced it. Look at verse 16, because verse 16 is a turning point.

David starts out in the Psalms, he's praying, and then he begins to open his heart, his emotions begin to come forth. And when you get down there to verse 6, that's when he said, oh, he said, I just can't handle it anymore. I want to get away from it all.

And he tells us why. But then in verse 16, listen to what David said. He said, as for me, I shall call upon the Lord.

Hallelujah. Others can strike out in anger like Moses. Others can fly off the handle.

Others can curse the day that they were born. Others can talk nonsense when they go through pressure. Or like Peter, they can cut off the high priest's servant's ear.

Or worse, others use pressure, or because of anxiety, they use it as a justification to drink, or to slip off and to have a cigarette, or to smoke some pot, or to go back to cocaine. And let me tell you something, there's no more cowardly, foolish, and selfish resource for comfort from pressure than the bottle, or the weed, or the pill. There's no more cowardly way than that, my friend.

And maybe that's your method. That's how the world handles pressure, of course. You look at it after work every night.

You see where they go to handle the pressures of the day. You see what they do on the weekends. You can see them heading off.

Or others sometimes use some more legitimate means. It may not be an outright sin, but it can be costly. I've seen some women and men react to pressure by, you know what they do? They turn to plastic for comfort.

You know what I'm talking about? They turn to plastic for comfort. They get out their visa and their MasterCard, and they go out on a spending binge. And every husband said amen.

And they buy something to make themselves feel better, to relieve their pressure. And they do. They relieve it for about 20 days, or 30 days till the bill comes in.

But David found a better way to handle pressure. You'd ask David, David, how do you spell relief? You know what he would say? He said, I spell it J-E-S-U-S. He said, as for me, I will call upon God.

Now David flew away for sure, but he flew on the wings of faith and prayer that carried him to a divine refuge. Hallelujah. You see, the idea that rest is found in a place is a fallacy.

Refuge and rest is found in a person, not in a place. It's not even found in a church. It's found in a relationship to Jesus Christ.

Hallelujah. The prevailing idea today is fly away, or listen, to change your job, or to change your location, or to change church. Listen, some people are addicted to it.

They are literally addicted to it. But the teaching of divine revelation is altogether contrary to the idea of finding peace in a location. And you'll remember, if you've heard me here, I want to remind you of my own proverb.

This is called the Don Wilkerson proverb. If you're the type of person that looks for an answer to change your address, to change your job, to change your church, or to change your clothes, or to change your location, and run off some other place, remember the Don Wilkerson proverb that wherever you go, there you are. Now think about that for a few minutes.

Wherever you go, there you are. It's not a change of location that you need, it's a change of heart. And what we cannot find in any place, we find in Christ and what he gives.

David said in verse 8, he said, I would hasten to my place of refuge from the stormy wind and tempest. And listen, you can never find refuge by trying to escape from the storm. You know where the peace is in a storm? It's right in the middle of it.

And Jesus is the very center and core of that storm, hallelujah. And you know what the Lord's put on my heart, especially if you don't hear anything else tonight. If you don't hear anything else, the Lord has put on my heart something that I want to share and pray the Holy Spirit will anoint me tonight.

That there is in the people of God and there is in the people on the streets, but it also happens that maybe it's something that plagues you. And that there is some people who have a spirit of restlessness. And I want to tell you in the name of the Lord and by the authority that God has given to me tonight, I want to say to you, I come against the spirit of restlessness that may be in you.

And the Holy Spirit would say to you tonight, stop, stop. Some of you have gone from place to place, from here and there. You've gone from church to church and you keep, you have a spirit of restlessness and it's not the spirit of God.

You've run, some people have run all of their lives. Every time you face a conflict, every time you face a pressure, you catch Dove Airlines and you're gone. You may go from one job to another.

You may go from one relationship to another. I've seen it already. It's happened.

We've been here long enough in this church. The honeymoon has worn off for some people and they're gone. They were here for six months.

They were here for three months. They were here faithfully and they're gone. And they heard the word of the Lord.

They heard something that could change their life, but they didn't yield to it. And now they think their answer is to go someplace else. And if you've been that all your life, if you've moved from church to church, I ask you tonight, make Times Square Church your last stop.

Not just because we want you in this church, but because you need it and you need to overcome that spirit of restlessness that's within you. Hallelujah. Hallelujah and amen.

Daniel said in the last days, many will run to and fro. You need to see that restlessness for what it is. There is an evil spirit of restlessness.

I've known long enough. I've seen it. I've worked long enough with runaways and others that it's a spirit.

Luke 11, 24 says, an unclean spirit is a restless spirit. And it isn't a time that some of you quit running. It's time to find the strength and the faith to face your conflicts and your pressures and once and for all.

Brother Victor, you've been teaching about the armor of God and what's it say? There having done all to stand. Some of you run long enough. I heard a chorus the other day that I've been singing ever since I heard it and I'm working on a message on it.

It says, Jesus on the inside working on the outside. Jesus on the inside working on the outside. And once you got Jesus on the inside, he'll help you to work on the outside to face the pressures of life that you're under.

Look at David's prescription for handling pressure. This is what it was. Look at verses 16 through 18.

David's prescription for handling pressure was this. He said, take three of these a day and then call me. He says, take three a day and rest.

Look at it, verse 16. As for me, I shall call upon the Lord and the Lord will save me. Evening, that's number one.

And morning, that's take number two. And at noon, that's number three. He said, I will complain and murmur.

He's talking about to the Lord. And he said, and he will hear my voice. Hallelujah.

David took three prayer breaks daily. Evening, morning, and noon. Hallelujah.

This is the end of side one. You may now turn the tape over to side two. Giving him everything that is within us, he says he wants our fat.

Hallelujah. And if we have not presented a pure heart, a holy life to the Lord, it doesn't matter if we stand on 42nd Street and pass out tracks all day long. If the fat is missing from our offering to God, God will.

Verse 18. He will redeem my soul in peace from the battle which is against me for they are many who strive with me. I think I told one time about one day at the Teen Challenge Center, we had a psychologist came in to find out what makes Teen Challenge work and what the program is all about.

And I knew he was very skeptical and he wanted to interview one of the residents to find out if this is for real. And so I picked out a particular young man and I said, Hey, go in the room. He wants to ask you a lot of questions, answer whatever he wants.

And so he did. And the bottom line of it all was, he said, I want to know what do they give you here that you didn't get in the jail or hospital or prison or some other therapeutic community. And his answer is a classic.

He said, Well, sir, they give us God in the morning, Jesus in the afternoon, and the Holy Ghost at night. And that's what David said. He said, Evening and morning and at noon.

He said, I will complain and murmur to the Lord and he will hear my voice. Hallelujah. David took the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Hallelujah. That's his prescription. I don't know how you spell relief.

Sunday night a young man came to me from another church. He said, I work in this church, but he said, I must confess to you. He said, I've had a relapse.

I've gone back this last week and used cocaine. He said, I've been clean, but he said, I went back. And I prayed for him and he wept.

Really had tears of repentance in his heart. And I told him this. I said, Listen, in 30 days, he said, I want you to go to your pastor.

In 30 days, I told him, I said, I want you to go to your pastor and I want you to tell your pastor what happened 30 days ago and what you did and told me tonight. And you go not with a confession, but you go with a testimony. And I said, And every time the devil comes to you, you remind the devil that you've got to face your pastor in 30 days and you're not going to go there and you don't want to go there with having to make a confession of failure, but you want to go there with a testimony of success.

Hallelujah. And David said, Take three of these a day, then call me. As for me, I shall call upon the Lord.

And if you'll call upon the Lord first, instead of having to call the pastor to confess failure to sin, you'll be calling to give testimony. Hallelujah. And say, I stood against pressure.

Hallelujah. The Lord kept me under pressure. Now, one other thing.

David not only called upon the Lord, he did one other thing. He cast his pressure upon the Lord. Look at verse 22.

He said, Cast your cares upon, cast your burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain you. You see, it's not enough to call upon the Lord. We must believe that we can lay our burdens before him and that he will strengthen us for the battle.

And whatever else those words mean, they mean that the Lord is to be used. Whatever pressures are upon me in any way and troubles me, I am to take it off my shoulder and I am to let the Lord carry it for me. You know, there is a bridge in Switzerland.

One of the places I go to minister every once in a while or over the years, I've had the privilege of going to Switzerland, a beautiful country, and ministered there. And I'll be flying there in another month or so into Zurich and getting a car and driving into Budapest, Hungary to visit the first rehabilitation center or teen challenge type of rehab center which is in the communist country. It's in Budapest.

It's a girl's center there, and I've been involved in that for a number of years and I'll be going there. But in Switzerland, there is a bridge across the Rhine River and you can, from the hotel room, you can look across it and you can see it and right in the middle of the bridge is a chapel. And you can stand in your hotel and you can watch the ladies there go to market every day.

They go by every day, the market, and you can see them coming across the bridge with their burdens, you might say, the things they're carrying. They come to the chapel, they lay them on the stairs and they go in the chapel and say a few prayers and they come back out and they pick up their burdens and they go again. And when I think of that, it reminds me of what a lot of people do when they come to this altar.

And we've said that so many times. You've come and we've said, now do you believe the Lord? Have you turned it over to the Lord? And many of you are just like those women. You come to the middle of the bridge, you go in the chapel, you go to the Lord and then you still carry your burden.

And you know how I know that. There's something I see happens in this church every once in a while that sort of disturbs me. First time it really disturbed me but the Lord's given me a little more victory over it now.

Somebody will go to one of the pastors and ask for prayer and so I'll watch the pastor praying for them. They'll turn right around in 30 seconds or one minute and I'll see they've approached another pastor and said, would you pray for me? Now the first time it happened, I got a little paranoid and thought, well, my goodness, I guess my prayer wasn't good enough. But I saw Bob pray for somebody one time and that person turned right around and came to me and so I felt better.

No, I didn't feel better because I realized what was going on. You see, they were not taking their burden to the Lord. They were not leaving their burden to the Lord.

The scripture says, cast all of your cares, cast your burden upon the Lord and he will sustain you, hallelujah. And then there's one more thing and I'll close with this. He said one more thing in verse 22.

One more reason for David's basis of faith and confidence, the reason that he could stand up to pressure, he said he will never allow the righteous to be forsaken, excuse me, to be shaken. He will never allow the righteous to go around like this. What does the Bible say? As thy day, so shall thy strength be.

As thy need, as thy pressure, as thy trial, so shall thy need be. Now listen, the promise is not that he's gonna take away the pressure. The pressure may be there, it was there yesterday, it'll be there today and some of it will be there tomorrow.

You go to work tomorrow and some of the very same pressures that you were under today are gonna be there. Now remember a fella told me one time he got saved out of drugs and he said I went back to my neighborhood and he said nothing had changed. He said same old thing, he said nothing had changed and then he smiled, he said except me.

It says he will never allow the righteous to be shaken or stumble and tonight the Holy Spirit wants to break through and heal in your life. Some of you who have had a pattern that you've had in your life. It's a pattern of running.

It's a pattern of quitting. It's a pattern of panic. It's a pattern of giving up.

It's a pattern of caving in under pressure. Let your testimony be as Apostle Paul, he said none of these things move me. I shall not be, I shall not be moved.

Hallelujah. Let that be your testimony. Or again, therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the evil days and the pressure and the anxiety and the stress comes you may be able to stand your ground and having done everything to stand.

Hallelujah. To stand. God's people stand up to pressure.

They don't cave in and run and give in and God wants to give you that kind of power in your life. Hallelujah. I got to tell you a testimony.

I've told it in this pulpit before and I just feel I should share it again tonight and I'm going to close with this. To me it's one of the classic testimonies that I've seen in the life of ministry that David and I have been involved in many years at the Ministry of Teen Challenge. A young man got saved about four months in the Lord and he was going to go back to Spanish Harlem, El Barrio to visit relatives or family and he had a four-hour pass and before he went he came to me.

He said, Brother Don, he said, I'm scared. He said, this is the first time I'll be out on my own. He said, I know I'm going to face temptation.

My old friends and he said, what do I do? And I said, what do you mean what do you do? He said, well, what can I do? I'm going out there and I said, you don't have to do anything. You've already done it, haven't you? I said, you're saved? He said, yes, I'm saved. I know it.

I said, all right, greater is he that's within you than he that's within the world. I said, go. Well, he went in the chapel, said a word of prayer, went off and came back and told me this story.

He said, Brother Don, when I got to my neighborhood, got off the subway and walked down the street very carefully and under a lot of pressure, he said, I looked around and I was just waiting for temptation. But he said, even though the street was very crowded, he said, none of my friends were there. None of the old pushers, none of the old prostitutes, none of the old pimps were there.

He said, I got all the way to inside my building, got inside the apartment, sat down on my chair. And he said, I just breathed a sigh of relief. And I said, Lord, thank you for clearing the streets for me.

And he thought that that was God's way of having him handle temptation and handle pressure. But it wasn't. He finished his meal, had a nice fellowship at home, and it was time to come back to Brooklyn.

And he came out on the stoop and he looked down one side of the street and down the other to see if he would see any of his old friends, and he didn't. And so very happily and very carefully, he started walking down the street. Was about to go down the stairs to the subway when almost, he didn't see where the guy came from, almost out of nowhere came an old drug pusher.

And of course, they start talking, and one thing led to another, and of course, he was offered some drugs. And when the drugs were offered to him, he did something and he said something, which I'll tell you, but first of all, I want to tell you what he didn't do. And I also want to stop the illustration for a few moments to explain to you that every one of us and every one of you have been in the same position.

Oh, maybe with drugs, most of all, probably most of you not with drugs. But you've been there under pressure, be it the pressure of the enemy, be it pressure of life, be it pressure of circumstances where you have to make a decision how you're going to act and how you're going to react. And this fellow, he didn't do this.

He didn't panic. He didn't say, oh, this is it. This is it.

This is temptation. What do I do now? What do I do now? Where's my notes? They covered this in class. Where's Brother Victor's notes? Where's Brother Bob's? They covered this in class one day, and they told me, you know, there's a certain thing you do right now.

What do you do? He didn't have time to call for anybody to pray for him. But he had what I call a Holy Ghost reaction. When the fellow brought out the drugs, he froze for a moment, and then he said, no, thank you.

I have my own stuff. And the pusher looked at him, and he said, oh, yeah? He said, where do you get yours now? He said, I get mine in Brooklyn. He said, oh, Brooklyn.

He said, you know, I go over to Brooklyn once in a while. He said, what's the address? And the fellow said, it's 416 Clinton Avenue. That's the address of Teen Challenge.

And they kept talking, and the fellow, you know, he said, well, you know, you have a name? You know, who do you connect with over there now? He said, well, he said, I'll be glad to give you a name. He said, it's Jesus Christ. And the pusher looks at him.

He said, man, he said, you're crazy. He said, no. He said, you're crazy.

He said, I don't need what you have anymore. And he went off, and he came back, and he shared the story with me. He said, Brother Don, he said, God showed himself to me on that street corner.

He said, now I know whom the Son has set free is free indeed. It's having done all, having done all. It's wearing the arm of the Lord.

Sorry, I'm teaching your class tonight, Brother Victor. I didn't mean to do that. But it's having done all to stand in the face of pressure.

Hallelujah. Listen, the world is caving in, and people are caving in all around you. There ought to be something different about a child of God.

A child of God stands up. Hallelujah. Having done all to stand and to be able to handle pressure and say, he will sustain me.

Hallelujah. As for me, I will call upon the Lord. Praise His name.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Let's bow in a word of prayer.

Steve, come and prepare. Thank you, Lord. Our crucifixion qualifies us with capacities that make it possible for us to reign with Him.

But we've got to touch all of the bases. To go Christ's way is to be conformed to His likeness. And this means reaching glory through suffering and participation in His cross.