Friday, September 2, 2011

Don't just sit down and cry

Did you ever notice that Jesus didn’t sit down and cry when His Hometown and His Family rejected him? (Mark 6, Matt 4, Luke 4)
And I know that He is not a hard hearted person; actually just the opposite. He is full of more love than any of us can fathom. So, why didn’t it seem to affect Him?
Jesus wept once. It was at the grave of His friend Lazarus – the man He raised from the dead. And many people think he cried in grief. But I don’t think that was why; because He knew He could raise him from the dead. As I posted previously, I believe His grief was in response to the lack of Faith in the people He was teaching. They had already seen many miracles and He had hoped that they would have learned more about Faith by now. That’s why he delayed his journey to Lazarus; hoping they would finally exercise their Faith. It grieved Him that they lived victimized by everything that hit them, and still didn’t “get it”.
But in regards to people hurting His own feelings . . . He doesn’t cry; He isn’t sad; He doesn’t get down and depressed and incapacitated by it. He mentions that He is rejected by His own. But there’s no reaction that we would normally expect.
Why?
One answer might be that He already knew this was how it would be. He expected it. He knew exactly how everyone would react to Him. He was prepared.
But even if you knew your Hometown and your Family were going to reject you . . . wouldn’t it still affect you? I think it would. You can’t prepare enough for those kinds of emotions. And Jesus has emotions just like ours.
So, how did He do it? We need to know. Why? Because mankind spends an enormous amount of time being sad, disappointed, upset, depressed, and worse. It is the cause of a huge market for the pharmaceutical industry. And it is a major cause of drug abuse, alcoholism etc. Psychiatry would crumble without it.
Since Jesus is our Savior – the one who conquered all – our example; maybe we should really look at this part of Him.
Why doesn’t Jesus get sad?
I think I know why. I really do. I think it is because there is no sadness in God’s presence. God is full of light and joy and love. He associates sadness with darkness. And there is no darkness in Him.
This came to me when I was going thru a devastatingly “sad” situation in my life during which God was teaching me how to be an overcomer and change the circumstances. However, sometimes it doesn’t come about instantly. Therefore I had to learn to “abide”. He told me that this was the only way I was going to get thru this extremely painful time. I needed to get so close to Him that I was actually “living” inside the “joy”. It would take persistence on my part.
Persistence. Why, persistence? Because as you work and drive and cook and sleep and talk and . . . go about your life – the “joy” will begin to weaken from the constant bombardment of the darkness around us in this world. Therefore, I would have to “purpose” in myself to go back into His “joy”, His presence.
I found it to be a bit of a challenge. We tend to “wallow” in sadness. We actually feel very “special” when we are hurt, or damaged, or wounded, or broken. And we hold it up to our own view and turn it all around while we gaze at it in amazement . . . and cry . . . and feel . . . so pure . . . because the “damager” is so evil. It is the one time in our life that we feel this much purity in ourselves. But it’s a lie. We aren’t pure from it. We have even less value than before. We accomplish nothing. We focus on ourselves.
The truth of the whole thing is choice and darkness vs. light.
So, as I would feel the sadness seeping up into my soul and heart, and I began hearing it in my voice as my luster and enthusiasm would fade; the longer I let this progress the deeper I would sink; until finally, I would be in horrible pain.
I had asked God to help me and remind me because I was so very aware that I could not do this alone. And He did. As I'd sink, I'd reach a point that I would cry out to Him “Help me!” And immediately He would tell me what direction to look. I had to take the step; but He supplied the remedy. Each time the remedy was different. Sometimes it was a song, sometimes an article, sometimes a friend (an uplifting one), sometimes . . . well, you know what I mean. But each time, almost instantly, the darkness would retreat quickly; and moments later I would recall that it had been there, but now I was smiling – feeling no pain.
I also found early in this process, that I had to give myself permission to “let it go”. Sometimes we hold on to the pain because we “believe” that we can do nothing else. We have been mortally wounded, now we must suffer deeply and devastatingly. And miraculously I found that also to be an utter lie.
Now to the best of the best; living in the Joy after being hurt, makes Power come alive. Things change. Wonderful things change! Amazing miraculous things that don’t happen at any other time; happen now. And this is what makes learning this process – worth it all.