Victim Or Victor—It's Your ChoiceSample

Trust the Father    

      Jesus knew He was going to be betrayed. He was sitting there with the traitor at the table. 

    The Son of God, who left Heaven and came to Earth in the flesh, lived a perfect life. What did He do that made everybody mad? Healing people? Feeding those who didn't have food? Raising people from the dead? So, if there's anybody in history who had the right to play the victim card, it is Jesus.

    But on that night, He doesn't do it. I was even thinking one time, “You know what? Why didn't Jesus just go ‘Guys, tackle Judas, tie him up. We don't want him getting out of here; he's got bad thoughts in his mind’?” Isn't that what we do a lot of times? Try to get out of anything difficult presented to us? Instead of going “Wait a minute, however this plays out, it's how it is supposed to play out. Not my will, but Your will.” Jesus let Judas not only walk out, but He looked at Judas and said, “Go do what you're going to do, and do it quickly.”

    Jesus knew the moment Judas walked out the door was like the first domino   dropped that activated the whole process to the cross. Jesus said, “Go, because that's the whole reason I've come. This is the Will of the Father. I'm not a victim right now even though the enemy is trying to lie to me: Father doesn't love me, and He's abandoned me. He's letting me suffer, and even my friends are going to abandon me. All that's playing in my head, but here's what I know, and I have to let it happen. You go do what you're supposed to do, and I'm going to trust the Father.” So, as I'm reading this passage, I come to that verse where it says that Judas walks out of the room, then I read two sentences in the same verse. Two sentences Jesus says right after this and when Jesus says these two sentences, they explode inside of me. Confusion. Weirdness. Like this is the craziest verse! What in the world?! And yet, in this small verse there’s big stuff. This verse will change your life.

    This is what it says. When Judas had gone out, Jesus said “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”