Philippians 3:7-11

Philippians 3:7-11 
English Standard Version (ESV)

  Every night, there's pressure to come up with something to cook for dinner.  Hungry kids want to be fed.
  Every day, there's pressure to perform at my job, to keep up to the standard, to push forward for the client.
  Every morning, I'm pressured to exercise, to find some new level, to reach a new height and keep myself in shape.
  Every day, you're feeling the pressure, too.  Every day, someone or something is pushing you, pressuring you. 
  How much of a relief is it when someone else steps in and relieves that burden?  When they drop dinner at the door.  When they help you on a project.  When they exercise with you to motivate you.  When they ease the burden -- it's a huge sigh of relief.

  Here we are, brothers and sisters, standing at the edge of a chasm, feeling the pressure to find a way across.  We want to find a way across the abyss created by sin and death, the canyon that separates us from God, and there is immense pressure to figure it out...
  Until God steps into the gap and sends Jesus Christ to die on a cross, so that we might be brought across the gap, ferried on the back of his atoning sacrifice, back into right relationship with God.  You have been saved by grace through faith.
  What a relief.  What joyous salvation.
 
  Lately, I've been praying from Psalm 51 a lot.  Lord, restore to me the joy of my salvation.  There's so much pressure to get everything right, and it presses down on us until we can barely lift our heads, and faith often falls to the end of the line, as it can seem less pressing than everything else.
  Lord, restore to me the joy of my salvation.  May the sweet gift of faith restore us, animate us, and bring us to a place of such joy that each breath is lived in gratitude to God!