Grace When the Answer is NO!


 

Good Morning!  I hope everyone had an awesome Resurrection weekend.  He is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed!

On Friday afternoon, I wanted to do something with the family that reflected honoring the Good Friday message.  Perhaps it’s the Lutheran foundation in me, or maybe I just wanted to do something so that my family could take a moment outside of our plans to honor Jesus for the price He paid on Calvary.  Dan and I decided to have both the girls watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and then take communion as a family together.  My girls are 12 and 7, and while the oldest had seen it (though she swears she hadn’t) my youngest had never.  To me that movie is not one I watch often.  It’s not a ‘for entertainment’ film, and as I watched it there were a few things I felt God spoke to me about.  The evening was a good family time filled with discussions about Jesus, and I’m glad we did it.

On Saturday Morning Dan and I were discussing some things we felt God had laid on our heart and that discussion is what this blog is about.  There was a mini-Revelation that Dan got that really made me stop and think. 

In the first few scenes of that movie, Jesus is crying out at the Garden of Gethsemane.  He is interceding in the ‘Not my will, but yours Father be done.’  Jesus didn’t really want to go to the cross, but He chose to.  He was crying out in the Garden for God, to perhaps come up with another way.  I certainly can understand that.  He knew what he was going to have to face. 

It was in that moment that Jesus’ prayer doesn’t change the plan of God.  The answer to Jesus’ prayers wasn’t ‘Oh Ok son, Here’s another way.’ The answer is that He still has to walk through Calvary for all of humanity.  I believe that at Gethsemane Jesus is graced to finish out his race on the earth.

What Dan said Saturday morning I believe will make sense to many of you, because it did to me.  He said, “Ann So many times we cry out to God to change our situation and circumstance and when He doesn’t right away we get upset.  Maybe we need to remember that God is God, and He sees the bigger picture.  Not that He’s making us suffer, but that He knows there are things we need to walk through in order for us to get to the other side….and maybe we might have to suffer a bit, but we’re empowered to go through it.”

I think we’ve all in some way shape or from been in this kind of situation. 

Matthew 16:24-26 (ESV)


24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

            Our Christian walk will not always be things that will make us want to sing about.  But we have to pray and trust God that His will is greater than what we can understand.  He sees the bigger picture, and we ARE graced to run the race He has put us in.  The Christian walk is worth it.  We have to realize that God is not our sugar daddy.  No’s are not denials of us, but sometimes they are ways to get us to the places we need to be on the earth.  God is right by your side.  Trust in Him.

            God has awesome plans for your life.  Get excited!

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

....And I broke the Pickle Jar

Image
Last week my oldest daughter came running to me for help. I had just bought a new jar of pickles and she could not open them up. Surely, Mom could do it and this was going to be an easy thing. I sometimes wonder how they get those lids so tightly on jars in the factory. I was not going to pull the wimp card but I could not get that lid off. I tried banging the bottom with the palm of my hand. I saw someone do that once. It did not work. I tried twisting it, and it would not budge. I even tried getting a butter knife and breaking the seal by trying to wedge it between the lid and the jar. Nothing was working. Dan was not home and even if he was, I really hate admitting when I cannot do something like this without his help. I was going to get that jar open! Finally I took the opposite end of a butter knife and whacked at the lid. I thought a couple smacks would make the jar open, and it did. Evidently, I do not know my own strength. With the sound of breaking glass crackin...
Read more

Spiritual Motion Sickness?

It is well known in my family that I have a history of issues with motion sickness. I don’t remember when we officially discovered this: Maybe it was the time that I spent the day at the pool in the sun and then was put in the back seat of my grandparents fairly new car to travel through the hills of Southern Ohio and I puked everywhere that told us this, Or maybe it was the time my uncle decided to travel through the mountains of Gatlinburg with the side door open in the van. Perhaps it was the issues I had with vertigo as a child but whatever it was it was learned early on that I would be fine as long as I got to sit in the front seat. I am better as an adult however; I still cannot read in a long car journey. Many people suffer from spiritual motion sickness. They have become nauseous spiritually and they do not understand why. Just like how one gets motion sickness in the physical it applies spiritually. James 1:6-8 (NIV) 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, b...
Read more

Don't Fall For the Fake Jakes!

I hope all of you had an awesome Resurrection Weekend! He is Risen!! Several weeks ago I had someone claiming to be T.D. Jakes begin communication with me on twitter. At first I brushed him off thinking there was no way he was the real T.D. However this individual was persistent. We began exchanging a few direct messages back and forth. He then proceeded to invite me to go with himself and several other ministers over to Japan to preach over there. That was when I told him to email me at my website email. The conversation continued. At first I didn’t believe at all this was the real T.D. Jakes. However the more we exchanged emails the more I really thought it might. His phrasing on how he worded things sounded like the real T.D. The text emails were coming from Texas, and it was obvious this man spent a long time familiarizing himself with T.D. and his website because of the way he wove legitimate things about the real T. D. into the conversations. This went back a forth for several we...
Read more