Fear Gone WildSample

There is a question we can each stop and ask ourselves when we walk through unavoidable trials in this life. It’s a powerful question I believe fits the rebuilding while clearly acknowledging the suffering. It’s a question Jesus asked His closest friends, His disciples, just hours before he would pay the ultimate price for us all. He said these words to Peter: “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” (John 18:11). What I love about Jesus and what makes Him human is before He asked this question, before He ultimately submitted to the will of the Father, He wrestled. 

He wrestled with His reality. 

He wrestled with His purpose.

He wrestled with His mission.

He wrestled with the pain He knew was right around the corner. . . .

This picture of Jesus’s suffering can bring us comfort in our pain. It’s a reminder that even for Jesus, the son of God, remaining faithful to the end was deeply painful. And just as He wrestled with God, it’s okay for us to wrestle too. . . .

I have no idea what your cup looks like or how jagged its edges may be. I have no idea what it’s like to live with the pain you are living with. But I do know that we do not have to carry our pain alone and that peace is possible. God wants to invade every area of our pain and brokenness with His perfect peace, but we have to posture our hearts to receive Him. Maybe posturing our hearts looks like listening to worship music in the car in the morning. Or maybe posturing our hearts looks like going for a walk outside. Or maybe posturing our hearts is sitting with a cup of coffee and reading the Bible at the kitchen counter in the early hours of the morning before anyone else is awake. Or maybe posturing our hearts looks like Jesus in the garden. Maybe the pain is so overwhelming that it beckons us to our knees; it beckons us to the foot of the cross. And maybe today is the day where we declare that although we are broken, we aren’t going to stay broken. We are going to choose to rebuild again; we are going to choose to accept the cup, and we are going to choose to bravely step into another day because we are still alive and God isn’t finished with us yet.