Follow Me: Grace Under Pressure

Experience bears out the adage: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” We should know by now to expect the unexpected. Why then do we allow ourselves to become paralyzed when the unexpected happens? Allow me to be frank: Disciples of Jesus Christ are not exempt from a challenged life. It’s true that God lovingly watches over us, but we are not promised a Teflon-coated existence in the here and now. Jesus Himself was no stranger to adversity and dire circumstances, but He rose above the moment with His eyes on eternity for us (Hebrews 12:1-3).

How can we prepare for that which unexpectedly comes and not allow circumstances to drag us down, but rather take the opportunity to emulate Jesus’ example and heed His invitation of “Follow Me”? (See Matthew 4:19, emphasis added throughout.)

Playing through on one string

Allow me to share a story from nearly 200 years ago. The famed violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini took to the stage before an adoring audience, not realizing the challenge it would bring. Playing on his four-stringed instrument with orchestral accompaniment, its strings began to snap one by one until only one remained, and yet he played on. The audience roared its approval. At the end, he again offered a solo encore with his beleaguered one-string violin.

Paganini could have left the stage at the first string’s snap. And surely by the third string’s demise he could have called it an evening, smiled (or frowned?) and exited. But there was that moment of personal inward encounter in which he determined to stand his ground. He afterward related, “I always thought the music came from my violin, but tonight, I realized the music comes from me.” This episode, which could have been disastrous, became a demonstration of grace under pressure.

It’s amazing when one individual perseveres under stress from the unexpected to create a meaningful impact on others—especially in spiritual terms, inspiring people to commit to do their utmost and play it through. By God’s grace that person can be you. Oh, we may not be a celebrity like Paganini, but we are called from Above to be a child of our Heavenly Father and learn to play off the greatest example ever set—that of Jesus the Messiah! In a sense God has elected at this time to select “one-stringed human instruments”—far less than perfect like Paganini’s violin—“that no flesh should glory” (1 Corinthians 1:26-29), with His melody of life flowing through us to others.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Easier read than done.” But let’s face it—there will be hurdles. The question is how we will meet a sheer moment of encounter that might stop us in our tracks and paralyze our witness of Christ living in us (see 2 Corinthians 13:5). It may be an argument with your spouse, dealing with a defiant teenager or the unruly neighbor across the street, or the rear tire found flat just as you’re leaving for vacation. How about a rift between you and someone you were close to in church after a perceived wrong was shared with everyone else instead of the two of you talking it out and realizing it was a misunderstanding?

Advancing despite the obstacles

We may not have intentionally planned the moment, but how do we display grace under pressure when “the best laid plans of mice and men,” and of developing disciples of Christ, go awry—when the violin strings snap?

Here are a few steps along the way to press forward as we heed the invitation of “Follow Me.”

Step 1: Face up to the duty of your calling.

Reflect on Mordecai’s refrain to his adopted daughter Esther, now queen of Persia, as the door of encounter was set before her, where standing up for her people the Jews meant putting her life on the line: “Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). When the moment of challenge comes, grab hold of your calling as a citizen of the coming Kingdom of God that now awaits in heaven (see Philippians 3:20) to be a witness of a better way rather than what comes so naturally left to our own devices. Always remember that Jesus never said it would be easy, but He assured us it would be worth it.

Step 2: Stop, look and listen.

Slow down and spiritually breathe. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychologist who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” A related quote often attributed to Frankl declares: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Choosing the right response in that space requires the proper frame of mind. As 1 Peter 3:15 tells us: “Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear [or humility and respectful reverence]” (American King James Version). James 1:19 further cautions us to “be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” In that space between stimulus and response we have a choice over what will dominate our heart—focus on the fleeting present moment or eternity with God.

Step 3: Strive to be prepared.

We don’t find our values in trial; we take them into the fray with us and hold on. Meeting the moment doesn’t just happen! We need to be ready beforehand. Shakespeare in his play As You Like It penned, “All the world is a stage, and all the men and women mere players; they have their exits and their entrances . . .” How do we enter the stage of life prepared for the telling moments that will come and exit in a manner that glorifies God? We must learn and hold on to His Word. This will strengthen our spiritual impulses, helping us to be forearmed as we heed the grand invitation from Above of “Follow Me.”

The psalmist prays to God in Psalm 119, “Let Your hand become my help, for I have chosen Your precepts” (Psalm 119:173). Yet notice earlier in the same psalm how deeply the safekeeping of such help from Above saturates the petitioner: “With my whole heart I have sought You; oh, let me not wander from Your commandments! Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (Psalm 119:10-11).

Consider how these verses played out when Jesus was “alone on stage” in the temptations of the wilderness during a physically weakened state of a lengthy fast (Matthew 4). Here He was buffeted by Satan, who employed the same seemingly surefire traps he used as the serpent in Eden to snare Adam and Eve in Genesis 3—“the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). Humanly, as the Son of Man, this would have been a breaking point—but all played out so differently from Satan’s objective.

Each time ordinary human strings would have snapped, Jesus hit the note of “It is written” in three movements, answering every challenge with remembered Scripture (Matthew 4:4-10). In every downbeat, the living Word (John 1:1-3) showed us “the what and the how”—that the music was within Him and not merely notes on a page on a shelf back in Nazareth. It’s not what you know but what you are—expressed in what you do or don’t do. It’s at such critical moments yet ahead for us to meet them in harmony with the example of the One who goes before us and bids us, “Follow Me.”

Until next time, keep looking up and press on in your calling to follow Christ—letting the grace of God flow through you, His instrument of choice.