Can you remember a time when you felt completely alone? Can you remember what was going through your mind at that time?
Feelings of loneliness and abandonment can be absolutely crippling for anyone who experiences them.
I remember a time in my life when I was struggling with depression. I felt completely overcome with it. It was like a black cloud had moved in over the top of me and just would not lift. What’s more, I was struggling under its weight and remember being on my knees by the side of my bed crying out to God “Do you see me!”
Nothing. I heard nothing! I kneeled until my feet got pins and needles before I rose to my feet and continued on…
God promises in scripture never to leave us or forsake us. Deuteronomy 31:6. Here I was in my darkest hour and where was He?
This week we remember Jesus in His darkest hour. While on the cross Jesus seems to speak two contradictory sentences. Firstly, He cried “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” and then He said “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” Why would He say God why have you left me? And then commit His Spirit to God? Even at our Lords most difficult time He was showing us what a perfect relationship with God is like. He was facing death, He felt abandoned and alone. He felt the weight of the world’s sin upon His shoulders yet even in all of that He submitted to God and trusted Him. He released His very life into the hands of the Father.
Jesus not only is the way He showed us the way.
He did not allow His circumstance and how He felt in the moment override the trust He had in God.
There are times we don’t feel God’s presence. There are times we really want to experience Him but have not and don’t know why? But in those moments we have a choice.
We have a choice to believe that there are things this side of heaven that we are simply not going to understand.
We have a choice to believe God is trustworthy and that if He says He will never abandon us, then that is the truth in spite of what we may feel.
We have a choice to lay down our agenda and will and follow His.
Good Friday is only a few days away. It is the time that we revisit the cross. Jesus changed the world at the cross. And when we sit at the foot of the cross and remember what Christ has done for us we can be changed to.
As we remember how Jesus related to His Father in those last agonizing moments we are encouraged to relate to God in the same way. He felt alone yet chose to trust. He was suffering yet cried out to God. He gave up His will for God’s. Scripture inspires us that if we lose our life for Him we will gain it. Luke 9:23-24.
Our relationship with God is a journey filled with decisions and we have a choice as to how we are going to do it. Are we going to make decisions in relation to our own wants or needs or are we going to make God’s will a priority?
Jesus changed the world at the cross. Will you let the cross change you this year?
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