The Fender Louver: God's Rest And Dealing With Life's Pressure

An irregular piece, the louver is a performance part integrated into fenders to relieve pressure built up by turbulent air in the wheel well. These slits in the bodywork help to reduce lift in the corners in which they are placed, crucially helping the car generate more grip. This parallels God's rest, which in times when we're under great pressure, relieves us before we lose our grip on him.

As we all know, life is hard. A lesson taught over and over again as you traverse the Bible. Repeatedly, the stories depicted show times of struggle, trial, and most relatable, pressure. Similarly, for us too, when life gets more and more difficult, we begin to feel weighed down, in this way mirroring a paper plate. As you put more and more into it, eventually, it caves in, and your dinner spills out. As our plates get fuller and fuller, we see ourselves oftentimes get tunnel vision, unable to see past our overwhelming immediate problems. But one thing is for sure, although these problems are real, the chaos put in your head isn't.

Satan is going to try everything to get you away from God. Knowing he's already lost, he simply wants to take as many away from God as he can. One way he's really good at this, is through the use of mental tricks to get you to avoid God's help. If he can separate you two's communication, then he'll have you all to himself, an undisturbed line to feed his lies. Just like shame, anger, and jealousy have a major impact in a person's life, pressure too, is all in our heads, a personalized gift from the devil himself. 2 Corinthians 10:5 warns against this, saying "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." So how can we respond biblically to everyday pressure?

By Putting Our Faith In The Power And Plan Of God

Christian artist Josh Wilson wrote a song titled Faith Is Not A Feeling, something that we all must live out. As written in YouVersion's 10-day devotional Praying God's Truth Over My Fears, "We don’t have to know what’s ahead if we know God. We can rest in the future that He has for us because He loves us so much." Despite our troubles being real, we need to remember that our God has our best in mind. He wants to see us prosper and fulfill the plan that he has made.

As James writes in verse 4:7, "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." Satan has no power nor place in our lives that we don't give to him, so eradicating any place he could be, especially in our minds, gets us closer to a God filled life, which is full of peace. By having no avenue for Satan to blur our vision of God, we then will be able to wholeheartedly turn our gaze to what's true; that the trials we face are for God's purposes and our advancement. "That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:10 NIV.

Focusing on God doesn't mean we become robots, not feeling anything, but that we appropriate the time we take to grieve, cry, and yes, freak out. When the pressure is on and we feel like we're gonna crack, we need to be like Job in verses 13-22, where he loses EVERYTHING, yet remains immovable in his faith. A good example of this is in 2 Corinthians 1:8‭-‬10, when it is written: "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us..." Although a tiresome phrase to some, it is still no less true that when it was first uttered. "God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear." 1 Corinthians 10:13