Relatable Jesus (Part 2: Anxiety)

Anxiety

I was in a 7th grade social studies class, when suddenly my heart began to race, my mind began to fill up with thoughts racing, my face turning red, and absolutely unable to catch my breath. My first panic attack, of course it had to be in front of a bunch of mean middle school kids that pretty much never let me live it down, but it would definitely not be my last. Anxiety is something I have struggled with since.. for me personally it wasn’t something that was brought on situational it was brought on out of nowhere at random times. I would just start downloading thoughts in my brain too much too fast. It would cause me to be frustrated and overstimulated with my surroundings. Most of my life I had no idea how to control it or what to do. Also for the majority of my life there wasn’t as much awareness on the topic as there is now. So lets dive in to the feelings of anxiety and the Bible.

Continuing on through our topic, Relatable Jesus, anxiety is just another thing Jesus came, experienced first hand, conquered and thankfully showed us exactly how to overcome. After the Lords Supper, and moments before His arrest, Jesus headed to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he took with him a few disciples to keep watch and pray, as He also stepped away to be alone with the Father. He expressed to the disciples in Mark 14:34 “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me”

Through the gospel accounts we conclude this was a moment for Jesus filled with torment, unease, sorrow and grief for the things that were coming. He fell to the ground and cried out in verse 36, “Abba, everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done not mine.” This is such a powerful verse for me, and honestly one of the verses that made me fall most in love with him. In this moment he is showing the vulnerability of the flesh, that he’s scared and he doesn’t want to go thru the agony that awaits him, he wants to know if there is any other way possible for mankind to be saved, and if there is, then he is pleading with God that he be spared. That’s a deep moment filled with so many emotions, more importantly even thru his pleading and his torment, he STILL says he wishes for the will of the Father to be done nonetheless. It tells is in Luke he was filled with so much anguish he was sweating drops of blood, a condition known as hermatohidrosis, caused by extreme physical or emotional stress. It’s one thing to know that he came to earth as the Son of God and Died for our sins, its another when the details are painted out, of how hard this was for him. How brutal it was for Him to know what was coming, to even know that the people you were doing it for, were in fact the ones doing it to you. Then even further for ME to know that he chose to push thru all of this, so that I MAY LIVE?? So that he can spend ETERNITY WITH ME? That’s the definition of love. That’s what makes me what to spend eternity doing my absolute best to love Him back the way he loved me.

Furthermore, in this is a teaching moment as well. A moment he again gives us the instructions to get through the feelings of this anxiety. The key is; Prayer. Jesus got down on His face and prayed to the Father, he prayed through his anguish. He told his friends to pray for him. Then through his prayer God sent and angel of strength, and Jesus just continued to pray MORE. He reminded us that the flesh is weak, but that the spirit is willing, and the answer is simply prayer. Philippians 4:6-7 addresses anxiety “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Jesus Christ”

In a recent research study it was discovered that anxiety and gratitude essentially live in the same part of the brain, the limbic system. The study shows that the two emotions cannot mutually exist simultaneously. When gratitude is activated it counteracts the signals of anxiety.

So just as Jesus showed us, falling on your knees in prayer and thanking the Lord is in fact how we are able to gain the strength to get through our moments of anxiety.

And again one of the many ways Jesus came here to earth to not only save us from our sins, but to show us exactly how to live and handle the situations of our daily life and struggles.

“Lord, Our Father in Heaven. Thank you for your sacrifice for our sins. Thank you for loving me so much that you let nothing stand in the way of the will of the Father, and let nothing stand in the way of your desire to spend eternity with me. I love you, and I pray you give me wisdom and knowledge of the things I may do to make your day better and to glorify you. In Jesus name I pray these things Amen”

Relatable Jesus

Falling In love with Jesus

I want us to look in to the amazing qualities that Jesus showed us in his time here, dive into the things we are striving as Christians to be like him in.. One of the things that made me fall in love with God is the Choice to come to earth, and experience life as we do. The idea that he loves us so much that he came here and chose to die for us, but even more than that chose to go thru so many of the battles that we face on a daily basis so that when we come to him with this same situations he isn’t just speaking to us as an all knowing creator. he is there for us as someone who came and experienced the worst versions of the things we all go thru on a daily basis.

We will begin this series with the FIRST Characteristic of Jesus I want to talk about…

Self control

In Matthew 4 we learn that after Jesus is baptized he goes into the desert and fasts for 40 days and 40 nights. After this at his most vulnerable, starving, thirsty, and i can only imagine exhausted time.. he is then presented with satan showing up.. to tempt him. Which from my experience is his favorite time to show up. When you are beaten down, when you are tired. When you feel like there is no hope. That’s when he shows up. Even more so he doesn’t always show up with lies and terrible evil sounding things. Sometimes he shows up in these moments with little truths spun in deceptive form. In verse 3 he tells Jesus that IF Jesus is the Son of man to turn the stones to become loaves of bread. To which Jesus responds in verse 4 “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that come from the mouth of God” Imagine the self control it takes to not make food appear when you haven’t eaten in 40 days. The need for food to survive and not having it for that long and still maintaining the self control to say no, and stick to what you came here to teach and do. He loved you enough to say no at that moment. I’m just re falling in love with him just typing this. Not only is that fact true that he said no because of how much he loves us, it also gives us something to relate to. We walk thru life with temptations that are so easily accessible to choose sin, and I can say from personal experience that I’ve that they seem so small in comparison to Starving in a desert and still saying no to food. We are out with friends deciding to get drunk with them. We are sitting in front of a phone screen choosing purity or pornography. We are sitting in conversations deciding to lie and gossip like the people around us. Temptations come in so many forms, but here Jesus is telling us. Hey I’ve been there I know it’s hard, but trust me the way to life is with me. This isn’t the only temptation Satan threw at Jesus, he also tried to lure him with a spin on the written word itself, telling Jesus to throw himself off the temple if he was truly the Son of God and that the angels would save him. He then offered him ALL the kingdoms of the world and all their glory, if he fell down and worshiped him. All to which Jesus responded with the WRITTEN word of God, to essentially and literally tell Satan to buzz off.

So many moments Jesus had the chance to succumb to temptation and not follow through with his mission to save us.. and every time he chose us. That is some self control I’m eternally grateful for, and it fuels me in my own life to do the same. Even. Better than just giving us a moment to relate to him in a struggle, he also gives us the exact way to avoid falling into the temptations…

The Word of God.. and in moments that I hear that little chatter of Satan in my ear;

“It’s just once it’s no big deal”

“The Bible says none of us are perfect, this is just my one thing”

“It’s not THAT bad I’m not hurting anyone else”

“I’ve already messed up enough, why even try to change now”

I go to my source. I read the words my Lord and savior left me to get through these moments.. and I align myself back in His will. You would be surprised how quickly reading just a couple of verses in a moment of discomfort can instantly change your direction. Most importantly it’s NEVER TOO LATE to let Jesus change your life.

Reading your Bible and enjoying it.

Learning the character and personality of God.

While speaking with a long time friend on my relationship growth with God, and how I got there I was brought to the topic of reading the Bible and how to go about it. For him, and from what i have witnessed for a lot of people it was hard to get started and hard to stick with.. He mentioned how boring it got and how he got sleepy every time he would attempt it. He stated that he knew it was important and that for as long as he had been claiming to be a Christian it was kinda crazy that he hadn’t even read it yet. I have realized this is the case for lots of people. Especially from where I live which is considered the “Bible Belt” of America. A lot of people run off the knowledge of the few scriptures they memorized in vacation Bible school as a kid, the excerpts  they hear in sermons on Sunday morning and most likely the few they have hung on their walls from hobby lobby.  This was such a huge realization of so many things about our culture and view of Christianity. How are you supposed to truly know God with out reading the one thing he has left for you to get to know him. How are you supposed to see the answers to your prayers if you don’t even know what he is saying. Most importantly how are you supposed to have discernment in weather the thought and voice over your life or situation is that of God or Satan if you don’t know what the details of Gods Character look like.

So I sat down and helped work out a plan thru the Bible and what had worked for me when I started out. I’m sure there will be PLENTY of people that may disagree with me and that’s fine. I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to go about reading the Bible in my opinion as long as you are reading it. For me and most of the people I have helped thru this stump of getting interested in reading it..I think is so important to pay attention to where you START in the Bible, instead of just beginning in Genesis and pushing thru the whole thing.

The New Testament

Beginning in the New Testament in my opinion gives you a chance to see the New covenant. To understand how things are now. It’s begins with the story of Jesus

It takes you through his birth, life, and crucifixion in the first four books. Most importantly it give you the chance to get to know Jesus. It gives you a chance to fall in love with him and who he is, you begin to unfold and see the ways that we are made in his likeness. You’ll start to realize thru this book that I compare a lot of the way I navigate God is how I would see a healthy relationship develop between two people. It may be a little backwards, but it works for me and it may work for you too. To me it’s like going on a first date.. you aren’t going to sit down at dinner and start rattling off all your past.. diving deep into your past traumas, and drawing out a family tree so the person knows your grandmas name and who your great uncle on your moms side is.. You’re going to talk about your life now. you’re going to let them get to know who you are in this moment. Not that everything else isn’t important because it is, but for you to develop a relationship and further your feelings for each other you need to know the version you are getting into now. Then later on when you fallen in love, that’s when you start talking about your past.. that’s when it becomes interesting to hear about lineage, and past experiences of the person. It even starts to connecting the dots for how the person came bout to who they are now. For me that’s kinda how i looked at the Bible.. first date kinda nervous lets dive in to who God is now, and how who he is, learn all you can about Jesus and his time here, after all He IS the person we are trying to be most like. THEN, once we have gotten there we can go back to the Old Testament and see how it all connected to that one point in history. Suddenly the lineage isn’t as boring it’s exciting to see how each person was connected to each other, and the bloodline to which a king was born. It’s captivating to see all these stories of people following in faith to lead us to the birth of a messiah, and if you are anything like me you can deep dive in to all these crazy small details through out the Old Testament that gave clear proof Gods son was on his way, and that that was the plan all along.

So lets open up our Bibles and lets get to know who Jesus is.

Just a woman at the well

She was just an ordinary woman sitting by a well in Samaria, and little did she know the life changing moment she was about to encounter, as Jesus simply asked her for a drink. This was a woman that felt ashamed, she felt used, and forgotten. She probably felt like she was never enough for anyone. Historically those things were all probably true for the time period she was in, she was a Samaritan woman that had already had five husbands and living with another. I think as women we can all relate to having some kind of traumatic past of being hurt by men, not fitting in, or being rejected. I feel like I have spent a lot of my life wanting to find real love. To find a husband that truly adored me and treated me as such. I think I wanted it so bad in my twenties that I was virtually obsessed with the idea. I wasn’t even picking people based on anything other than how sweet or infatuated they seemed in the beginning. Spoiler alert: that didn’t work out well, people change. Love bombing is a real thing, people aren’t always what they seem at first, and actions do in fact eventually speak a lot louder than words. So I was left feeling exactly like her.. ashamed of my past, used by the men I let in to my life, and like I was never going to be enough for any one.

Cue Jesus.

Lets set the scene from her point of view. She minding her business going to draw water from the well. She’s probably had a terrible day (from my experience this is specifically Jesus’s favorite time to make him self known) She’s probably tired, feeling drained. She’s probably anxiously thinking of her life and feeling as though its never going to get any better than this. She probably felt stuck and ashamed. As she approached the well, there was a man. He asked her “Will you give me a drink?” I can kinda gather where her mind had been through that day by how quick her response of shame and rejection was “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” Then Jesus responds with “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” You know she had to be confused and thrown completely off, wondering who is this man and what is he talking about living water. She asks him where she can find this living water. She asks him who he is and if he is greater than “our father Jacob” who had given them the well and drank from it.

Then the moment happens, and Jesus in all his Glory and Grace says, “ Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” Of course she wanted to never thirst again, to never have to come and draw from the well again. It was noon the hottest part of the day and she was a social outcast that didn’t want to be seen out. As she asked him where she could find this water, he instead told her to go find her husband and come back. She didn’t have a husband tho. Jesus then said “ You are right when you say you have no husband. You have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband. What you have said is quite true” I know the look on her face must have been priceless. I probably would have fell over in shock that this random man is not only talking to me but calling me out as well. Calling me out on all my shame and regret. She had to have thought how does this man know me so well. Realizing he is a prophet of some kind. As Jesus revealed to her that he is The Messiah. That he was the one that had come to explain it all to them. She quickly became over joyed and ready to tell everyone of her encounter.

In her revelation realizing that this living water He is speaking of is Him. The water she had been drinking was finding her identity in men. The water from the well can be all sorts of things for us. It can be the simplest of things we chase after trying to fill the void or try to fill whole. Trying to feel like we have finally made it. Is it the biggest nicest house or car? Is it being popular and acceptance from the people around us? Is it the perfect amount of kids or the perfect husband, that’s finally going to make us feel like we did it, that we are finally happy and no longer broken?

As Jesus tells us the answer is no, he is the Living Water. When the body gets dehydrated the mind will start to convince itself that it sees things, mirages, its just right there, a creek to drink from that will save you. Your mind will let you believe that something fake and empty is the way to Life. Thats what all of these things we fill our life with thinking it will satisfy us are, mirages.

The only true source for life is through Jesus Christ. He is our living water. A relationship with him is the all access pass to finally feeling whole, to finally feeling accepted and unashamed. Jesus specifically took the path thru the town of Sychar for this woman. He knew she needed him. He knew how broken she was.

He knew she needed to be saved, So he made a special trip just for her.

And he would do the same for me, and for you.

We are all just a woman at a well.. and we ARE ENOUGH to Jesus Christ.