The Squeeze That Reveals
They taught us something in private pilot school that never left me: the Venturi effect. Narrow the passage, increase the velocity. Speed rises, pressure falls. And in that sudden drop of pressure, fuel can freeze even when the outside air isn’t all that cold. Strange, isn’t it? You tighten the space, and you reveal a condition you didn’t even know was there.
Life does the same thing.
When the passage narrows — when the walls close in and the pressure drops — what’s inside us shows its temperature. Some freeze. Some fracture.
But the one who fixes his gaze on Jesus finds something different in the squeeze: REVELATION.
The more you “narrow Him down,” the more you give careful attention to His way, His voice, His rhythm, His heart — the more astonishing He becomes.
When I say “narrow Him down,” I don’t mean shrink Him — you can’t compress the Infinite. I mean, give Him your focused attention. It’s like a little girl who reaches up with both hands, cups her daddy’s face, and pulls him close so that she can really see him. She isn’t making him smaller; she’s bringing him nearer. She’s studying the details she’d miss from across the room. That’s what it means to narrow Jesus down — not to limit Him, but to look long enough and close enough for wonder to happen.
Not because He changes, but because your speed toward Him increases. You rush into Him. And like a pilot watching the airspeed indicator tick upward in a tight turn, you discover things about Him you never noticed in calm cruising altitude.
Paul understood this better than most. He penned a line in Philippians that rattles around in every true disciple’s heartbeat: “That I may know Him…” (Phil. 3:10). Paul could’ve chosen a softer word there. But know — ginosko — is intimate, experiential, participatory. Not textbook knowledge. Not hangar-talk. It’s the kind of knowing that happens only under pressure.
But then Paul goes deeper:
“…that I may know Him in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings…”
That second phrase bothers people. It should. It’s supposed to.
Does it mean we learn from how He fellowships with His suffering? Or from what we learn as we suffer? The answer is yes.
There is a mystery here you can’t solve with a wrench or a checklist. Paul is pulling us into a sacred paradox — a theological Venturi — where the passage narrows and velocity increases. As you press into Jesus, you discover that He is already pressing into you. When you suffer, you’re not just learning from your pain; you’re learning the way He handled His.
You see how He prayed in Gethsemane.
How He stayed silent before the accusers.
How He forgave while bleeding.
How He held His course when every familiar voice disappeared into the distance.
How He trusted while dying.
How He finished His mission with no applause from earth — only obedience toward heaven.That’s His fellowship in suffering — and He pulls you into it. Not to freeze you, but to free you.
In the squeeze of life, Jesus is not a distant rescuer waving from a cloud. He’s the Savior in the cockpit with you, hands on the yoke, whispering, “I’ve flown this turbulence. Follow Me.”
And here’s the wild thing: the more you learn, the more you realize how much you cannot learn. You glimpse His edges, and they stretch beyond the horizon of your understanding. Paul shouted it from Romans 11: “How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” You can study Him all your days and never exhaust Him — but you’ll sure enjoy the chase.
And maybe that’s the point.
Knowing Jesus isn’t a destination; it’s a pursuit.
A lifelong acceleration. A narrowing that reveals. A holy velocity that pulls back the layers of your soul and uncovers a Christ more magnificent than you expected.
A Savior unsearchable.
A Lord uncontainable.
A Christ who meets you in the squeeze — and pulls you through. And in that holy pressure, the squeeze becomes its own revelation: it lets me see myself the way I really am, it lets me see others the way God sees them, and it unveils a Savior so often undetectable in the calm but unmistakable in the chaos.
Because in the narrowing, He appears.
In the pressure, He speaks.
In the turbulence, He takes the yoke.