He Didn't Turn Away

With Easter just a few days away… I want you to remember something....

Jesus knew.
He knew what was coming.
He knew the betrayal… the lies… the beating… the cross.
And He STILL kept walking.

I don't know about you, but THAT gets me all up in my feels and speaks very loudly to me!

Because I know me....and if I know something hard is coming… I start bracing myself. I avoid it. I overthink it. I try to reroute it if I can.

But Jesus? He walked straight towards it.

And it wasn't that He didn’t feel it… because He did.

Luke 22:44 says "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”

That word… agony. That's a pretty heavy word, isn't it?  It certainly isn't light. 

It's pressure, it's weight, it's pain, it's being fully aware of what’s about to happen… and feeling it in your body.

And yet… He still said yes.
He didn’t run.
He didn’t call it off.
He stayed......

I think about how often we ask God to remove the hard things…when sometimes…He wants us to walk through them WITH Him.

And it's not because He’s trying to hurt us…but because there’s something on the other side of obedience that cannot be reached any other way.

Jesus didn’t go to the cross accidentally. 
He went intentionally.
Step by step… knowing full well what it would cost Him.

And remembering that changes how I've looked at my own hard places lately.  
Because if He could walk toward the cross…knowing what it would take…
Then I can keep walking too.

And it's not because I’m strong…but because HE IS.  

So …let’s lift our voices and praise the God who stayed.

The God who endured.

The God who finished what He came to do.

The God who walked through suffering, carried the cross, and made a way for us to have life… and to live it more abundantly through Him.