Jesus's Life

 I've been thinking a lot about Jesus's life.  Jesus was a sinless man, yet he still encountered trying times.  There are many times I just scream out to God, "Why us God?" Why is it although we are trying  to do right and we are trying to be fully devoted followers of Christ and we try to follow His will but yet we are still ridiculed, overlooked, betrayed and hurt.  Why is it that it feels at times we can't catch a break?  Then my thoughts turn to Jesus.

 Jesus didn't have a lot of money growing up.  He wasn't born in a palace but rather in a barn.  His parents weren't executives or big time celebrities but rather a carpenter and a stay at home mom.  He didn't have the best money could buy but He was better than anything money could buy.  He grew up and began his career turning water into wine.  He started getting 12 guys together and they went around teaching about God.  He’d often stop to heal the sick, to play with children, talk to the down-trodden, give sinners hope, walk on water, calm storms and waves, make enough food to feed multitudes out of a few loaves of bread and some fish,  and even brought the dead back to life.  There are many reasons to see Jesus was pretty cool.

But ultimately his passion led to his pain.  Proclaiming who His father was, lead those who knew Him to betray Him.  The High Priests and the Pharisees believed Jesus to be blasphemous and couldn't be the Son of God.   Their disbelief of Jesus’s claim caused others to believe them and somehow this wrong way of thinking entered into Jesus’s disciples.  First it came from Judas, who plotted with the high priests and captains for Jesus’s capture.  Then slowly as things began to unravel even Simon Peter began to deny Christ even though He had promised He would never do such a thing.  

In Jesus’s final days He was ridiculed, overlooked, betrayed and hurt.  He didn't deserve any of the treatment He received yet it was all in God’s Will and all in God’s Plan for Him to go through this. So if Jesus who was the only sinless man to ever live, went through that kind of treatment and pain why do  we question when we are going through it ourselves?  It ultimately is God’s will.  Perhaps the key to understanding how to handle our problems lies in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus went to pray. Luke 22:40-44  Knowing what was to come, He sought His Father And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and ^vknelt down and prayed, ⁴² saying, ^w“Father, if you are willing, remove ^xthis cup from me. ^yNevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” ⁴³ And there appeared to him ^zan angel from heaven, strengthening him. ⁴⁴ And ^wbeing in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Jesus may have been without sin but he still felt pain and anguish.  The only way to find comfort and strength was to pray.  He did ask for the pain to go away but He ultimately asked for His will to be done and not his own!  That is what each of us must do when we face the things in life that just don’t seem fair.  And because God sent Jesus  to walk among us in flesh, it meant Jesus too would have to endure the things of life each of us go through.  The cross was not just about Jesus dying for our sins so that we could have eternal life but it was also for God  to send the Great Counselor (The Holy Spirit) and to be the one we turn too when this world doesn’t seem fair.  Jesus knows how to navigate through this messy world and He is there for us!  He died for us after sweating blood fighting his own will for God’s will to be done.  Perhaps when we find ourselves struggling with God’s will we need to keep praying until we sweat blood if that’s what needs to happen! 

However, recently I tried to pray this fervently and I ended up falling asleep just as the disciples did !Luke  22:45  When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. 46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.".  As hard as I tried, I fell asleep just like the disciples.  My sorrows exhausted me.  I am falling into the temptation of wanting my will to be done and not God's.  My first reaction when I woke up was disappointment in myself  but then I remember even the disciples failed in this and the best that I can do is to keep praying and know that although I may not accept it at first, it will be God's will and not mine that will be done. A hard pill to swallow at times when you realize the desires of your heart may turn again into hope deferred.