My Dear Friend,

We all admire spiritually strong leaders. They are thick-skinned, durable, indefatigable, unphased by opposition of all kinds. And their works produce enduring fruit.

Whatever pressure Satan applies, these master overcomers withstand it. And keep walking closely with Jesus. And keep moving forward. And keep being led by the Spirit. And keep pursuing their foreordained kingdom labors. How do they do it?

They are spiritually pressurized! They have been reformed by the Holy Spirit's training to withstand any pressure the prince of darkness brings upon them. Not only that, their persisting ministries apply steady pressure on the kingdom of darkness. Instead of fearing the devil, the devil fears them!

Psalm 113:7-8 describes these pressurized Christians. "He raiseth up the poor out of the dust . . . that he may set him with the princes, even with the princes of his people." The "poor" are God's dependents, believers who know that without Him they can do nothing (John 15:5). Therefore, they seek Him - His Word, Spirit, presence, and approval - and lean on Him daily. Hourly. Every moment. This psalm reveals their spiritual training ground, the place and condition in which God finds such leaders and from which He raises them to extraordinary spiritual strength and fruitfulness: "the dust!"

Dust? That's strange. How can this be? Let's go deeper.

The Dust

Used figuratively, dust speaks of four things: disuse, death, full repentance, and spiritual pulverization. Let's examine these conditions.

Disuse

When we don't need to use household items, they just sit on our shelves. And gather dust! When we need them again, we first wipe off the dust, and then use them. Similarly, disused servants of God are dusty.

Death

When we die, we return to the dust from which we came, "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." While today we often embalm our dead, first century Jews washed their dead, wrapped them in fine linens, and laid them on a burial shelf in a tomb. After one year, when the body had decomposed to dust, they took the bones and placed them in an ossuary. Sometimes they placed their bones with those of their other deceased family members. Thus, when their flesh was reduced to dust, they were "gathered to their people" (see Deuteronomy 32:50).

Full Repentance

Job suffered the most severe pressure imaginable - the sudden loss of all his children and property, and the subsequent loss of his health, friends' support, and wife's love! After reacting to all this with amazing gracefulness, Job's godly attitude unraveled and he quickly became ungracious. This started when he began complaining (Job 3:1). Then his friends, who had been silently supporting him, reacted, accusing him of being a secret sinner and bringing his grievous adversities upon himself. That did it! Job had an emotional meltdown and began reacting to his friends with vigorous self-justification. Then they indulged in a theological argument for the ages, filled with misapplied but exquisite wisdom statements (Job 4 - Job 37).

Finally, God had had enough. He silenced Job and began setting things right. He first confronted Job over the pride of his strifeful self-justification. Then He rebuked Job's friends for their cruel misjudgments. When fully repentant, Job described himself as being reduced to dust: "I abhor myself [my pride] and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6).

Pulverization

When rocks are broken and pulverized in a quarry, a large amount of rock dust is produced. When by the relentless pressure of continual pounding rocks are completely pulverized, they are reduced to fine gravel. And lots of dust.

As Christians, our old nature is like a rock: strong, stubborn, rebellious, unbendable, unmalleable, and totally unusable to God. But after God leads us through His humility training, we emerge with our rocky old nature significantly broken by the pounding of God's tests, each of which reduces our pride and grows Christ's humility within (Philippians 2:5-13). When this pounding is completed, we are consistently humble in response to God's Word, corrections, and guidance - while the pressure of pounding is still underway. Or, we are dusty.

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This is how God takes young, immature Christians and turns them into highly pressurized Christians and extraordinarily stable leaders, "vessel[s] for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work" (2 Timothy 2:21, ESV).

He puts them on the shelf of disuse for a season until they gather dust. They gradually die to sin and self-will until only bones and dust remain. They fully repent "in dust and ashes" of justifying themselves to argumentative critics. And their pride is pounded in one humility test after another until it is reduced to dust. These are the "poor" God raises from the "dust."

God's Most Outstanding Pressurized Leaders

There have been many fully pressurized saints before us. We will briefly examine four: Joseph, Nehemiah, Paul, and the greatest, Jesus.

Joseph

Joseph endured a sequence of pressurized situations that seem as if they would never end: envied by his brothers at home, and then betrayed by them; sent out of his country against his will; thrust into the humiliation of slavery; as a slave, rising to authority only to have that authority cruelly snatched away by a vengeful woman; humiliated again by wrongful conviction and incarceration; then forgotten by his only visible way out, the king's butler, and left to rot in an Egyptian prison from which, under normal circumstances, there was no hope of escape or pardon.

But there, under relentless pressure, Joseph remained faithful. Day after day he renewed his faith in the faithfulness of his father's God and recalled the promise (dream) God gave him of an honorable destiny. Strengthened by this faith, he continued serving his fellow prisoners daily, seeing to their needs and exercising his God-given gifts of interpretation and prophecy, which eventually led to his release. Had Joseph not continued faithfully using his gifts in prison, Pharaoh's butler would never have recommended him to Pharaoh, he would never have been released, and we would never have heard Joseph's inspiring story.

Nehemiah

Nehemiah had the "mission impossible" of rebuilding Jerusalem's broken walls and gates. After the initial joy of obtaining favor from the Persian king, everything else proved to be a monumental challenge: the walls' extremely degraded condition; the inadequate workforce; the Judean nobles' unwillingness to do manual labor; hostile Samaritans on every side, determined to stop his mission; their constant threats, plots, and even lying prophecies, cleverly designed to intimidate or discredit him; and finally, traitors in his own camp, Jewish spies who informed his chief Samaritan adversary, Tobiah, everything Nehemiah said and did.

But, by God's empowering grace, Nehemiah withstood this relentless pressure. He continued to rely wholly on God, courageously lead his workers, discern the Samaritans' tricks, and defy their threats until the wall was finished.

Paul

The moment Saul of Tarsus converted to faith in the One whose followers he was brutally persecuting, his pressure-free life ended. Immediately the Jews in Damascus tried to execute him. Shortly after returning to Jerusalem, he faced more assassination attempts, and was sent off to his hometown of Tarsus. Then, it seemed, the pressure would be gone. Yet even there, he endured the unrelenting pressure of an unfulfilled divine call for nearly a decade. God said he would minister to the Gentiles, but the Gentiles remained unconverted. After their mass conversions in Antioch, it seemed Paul would finally be free to minister and all pressure cease. But after the Antioch leaders, at the Holy Spirit's call, began sending Saul (now Paul) on apostolic missions, he faced new pressures: constant, often brutal, abuse for sowing God's Word among the nations.

But he soldiered on! When imprisoned in Philippi, he sang and gave praise - and witnessed God's miraculous deliverance! After being brutally stoned in Lystra, he bravely returned three times to selflessly help the church! When while sailing to Rome his prophetic warning was ignored and his ship nearly foundered in a terrifying storm, he arose in amazing wisdom, strength, and courage to lead his shipmates to safety. Because Paul never stopped invading Satan's kingdom with God's Word, this pressure never stopped. In his final years, Paul endured unrelenting pressure from false accusations, injustice, imprisonment, assassination attempts, even abandonment by some of his Christian friends. Yet he continued faithfully preaching and teaching Christ and His kingdom to everyone he encountered.

Jesus

From the day Jesus declared His Messianic mission in His local synagogue, the pressure was on. The religious leaders quickly issued an official statement declaring His powers were demonic, not divine, branding Him a Messianic imposter and false prophet. His own half-brothers and friends tried to coerce Him to renounce His claims and abandon His ministry. Everywhere Jesus preached His Pharisaic enemies were present, listening intently for Him to say something - anything - they could twist to make Him appear to be against Moses or the Law. As His popularity skyrocketed, the religious leaders threatened to expel from their synagogues anyone believing in Him. When He purged the temple, the Sadducean priests challenged His authority. No matter how many miracles He worked, the Jewish leaders stubbornly refused to believe on Him. Even one of His own, Judas, betrayed Him. Today we tend to focus on Jesus' miracles, messages, and praises among the people. We should also remember what He endured every day in order to continue ministering: pressure, pressure, and more pressure!

Yet He remained indefatigable! He kept preaching the kingdom. He kept teaching in the synagogues. He kept healing the sick. He kept delivering the oppressed. He even kept mercifully trying to teach His enemies, while they attended His meetings only to find evidence to indict Him! While enduring this national rejection, Jesus kept carrying a cross of personal rejection: His own brothers did not believe in Him. But He could not be stopped. Jesus kept traversing lands, lakes, mountains, and fields to minister to the multitudes. He kept instructing His disciples in the full, deeper meaning of His parables. He kept giving special training to Peter, James, and John so they could later give special leadership to the church - all this while facing unrelenting pressure and pounding from His adversaries. Until His ministry reached its climax . . . on not a throne, but a cross!

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In "raising" Joseph, Nehemiah, Paul, and Jesus to become extraordinary overcomers and durable leaders, the Father kept pounding them with one adversity after another. Sometimes they experienced multiple poundings simultaneously. But in each new scenario they remained surrendered, in close, prayerful, worshipful fellowship with Him, and in faithful pursuance of the works to which He called them. The more they experienced dusty seasons of waiting, the dust of death to self, the dust of full repentance, and the relentless spiritual pounding of their pride, the "dustier" they became - and the more prepared for God to raise them in the fullness of the Holy Spirit's power. Why?

They were thick-skinned. Durable. Indefatigable. Unstoppable. Unphased by opposition of all kinds. Or simply, they were fully pressurized.

Friend, if you are abiding close to Jesus and faithfully fulfilling your call, and Satan's servants are malevolently pounding you, sequentially or simultaneously, please do the following. Stop and consider from a biblical point what is happening. Determine to be spiritually, not carnally, minded. "Count it all joy," or laugh out loud, knowing what is happening (James 1:2). Satan and his servants hope to hinder and harm you. But God wants to turn it all for good and "raise" you from the "dust" of disuse, death, repentance, or pounding to a place of spiritual influence for His people's blessing.

And He will do so, if you will only remain surrendered, trusting, obedient, and faithful in your dusty calling.

Your dust-covered friend,

Dr. Greg Hinnant

GREG HINNANT MINISTRIES