Good morning…
Bonding with our therapeutic small group at PAWkids this week, we were asked to fill in a handful of blanks, completing a series of sentences. One man’s answers to two self-reflective questions captured my attention.
My best friend ___________________. He answered: “God.”
I am afraid of ____________________. He answered: “God.”
I can totally relate to this young black man’s ambivalent dilemma. How am I supposed to intimately befriend a God who allows fearful things to happen? The same ambivalent dilemma became a real challenge for Jesus also, as he wrestled with his fear and with our Father in the Garden of Gethsemane.
We are told …an intense feeling of great sorrow plunged his soul into agony. And he said… “My heart is overwhelmed and crushed with grief. It feels as though I’m dying…”
Then he walked a short distance away, and overcome with grief, he threw himself facedown on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if there is any way you can deliver me from this suffering, please take it from me. Yet what I want is not important, for I only desire to fulfill your plan for me.”
Then an angel from heaven appeared to strengthen him (Matthew 26:37b-39, TPT).
We are invited into intimate relationship with a Best Friend who has the power to give life and the power to take away life. Anytime. Anywhere. In any way God allows. This all-powerful God who would watch His only Son be wrongly accused, brutally beaten and publicly crucified without lifting a finger to stop the ugly process, isn’t that Someone to fear? Fearing the Lord is the beginning of discernment (Proverbs 1:7a, NET).
If our Father did not spare His own Son from betrayal, humiliation and the most painful way of being put to death, shouldn’t we fear a God who has a different, more expansive plan for our life than we can ever imagine? “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8, NIV).
In what ways can you relate to this ambivalent dilemma of being afraid of God, our Best Friend?
…Sue…
