Stumble and Get Back Up

"For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again, but the wicked stumble in time of calamity." - Proverbs 24:16

I know what it feels like to let God down. To one day feel like you're so close and you're on the right path… and then the next you've stumbled and it hurts. You fell down and committed the sin you swore you weren't going to. Maybe it's an addiction you're fighting. Maybe it's the way you're treating someone. Whatever it is… it's separating you from God and that guilt, that shame is tearing you up inside. One day you feel worthy of the Lord and the next you convince yourself you shouldn't even go to church on Sunday.

There's good news here and it's that you're human. Jesus fully understands those painful weaknesses and that's why He came to save us. This verse in Proverbs is amazing… the just man falls seven times… if you saw someone make a mistake seven times, you would brush them off, wouldn't you? God doesn't. To God, the only thing that matters is that we get back up. You can sin one hundred times in a day and if by the end of the day, you turn back and try again for God, in His eyes you are just. The only thing that separates the wicked from the just is that the wicked stay down and give up.

Today's Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank You for Your unconditional love and mercy. I thank You that You don't judge us as harshly as we judge ourselves sometimes. Whenever I stumble, and You know I do often, please be there to lift me back up. In Your Name we pray, amen.

The Evil That I Hate

"Stay awake and pray, so that you may not slip into temptation. The spirit indeed is eager, but human nature is weak." - Matthew 26:41

The verse that I relate to the most is from Romans where Paul says that he cannot explain what happens to him - he does the evil that he hates and not the good that he wants to do. I can't tell you how many times I don't want to do something, refuse to even think about it, and then, in a very surreal way, watch myself doing the very thing I didn't want to do. It really is my soul saying, "don't do it!" as my flesh falls into temptation. I caught myself today saying something I shouldn't have, but out it came anyway. But then, if I'm falling into sin, I feel bad asking for forgiveness right away because I feel that I'm not strong enough to not fall again. This is why if you ever feel like this, you need to listen to Jesus' words here. The spirit is willing to be good. I do want to be good. I don't want to sin, but my flesh is weak. Our human nature is weak. So, what do we do then? We keep watch and we pray. We must be observant of all of our sins and be aware of the occasions in which we sin so we could avoid them. And if we don't remain strong in prayer, it's so easy to just slip into temptation, as I see myself do so many times. I'm sure you see this in yourself, too.

The bottom line is that yes, we are all sinners, but we need to grow spiritually as well, right? Therefore, keep watch over what you do, and most importantly, pray constantly so that you are able to move past certain temptations.

Today's Prayer:
Jesus, again and again, I do what I don't want to do. Help me pick myself up and be a stronger person, a person of stronger faith and conviction. Thank You for Your saving grace and mercy. In Your Name we pray, amen.

It's Ok To Be Alone

"Then John's disciples came to take his body and bury it. And they went to bring the news to Jesus. On hearing this, Jesus set out secretly by boat for a secluded place." - Matthew 14:12-13

Do you feel like you just want to be alone? Away from everyone and everything? You just don't want to deal with anything and you need your own space to get through whatever is going on in your head. When people see us get this way, their first reaction is usually to discourage us from being alone. They want to invite us out thinking we shouldn't sulk in our problems. I personally feel that we absolutely need to sulk from time to time. It's ok to be alone. And that's what Jesus did so many times. One thing people tend to put aside is that Jesus is human too. He hurt inside when bad things happened. Things disappointed Him. Things knocked the wind right out of Him. In the passage above, Jesus hears that John the Baptist, His cousin, had been murdered. How do you think Jesus felt? Is it any easier because He was God? No, don't think for a second that it was. It hurt Him deeply. He felt the same pain we feel, the disbelief, the feeling like we just can't breathe, sleepless nights. Jesus felt all of it. And what made it worse was that if John the Baptist was murdered, Jesus knew He would be next. Imagine the fear that entered His heart and mind at this point!

So what did Jesus do? He left to a solitary place all by Himself. He pulled away from everyone because He was depressed, sad, angry, scared, all of it. As a normal, healthy human being Jesus needed His own time to straighten it all out and get Himself together, so it's ok if we do the same.

But this is healthy only for a certain amount of time. When Jesus reached the shore on His boat, He found that crowds had followed Him there and He felt compassion for them. He took His time to be on His own to mourn and think things out, but at the end of the day, we were created for unity and among others in the presence of God is the only way to fully heal. However, until you're ready to come back out, take your time. Be like Jesus and go off to a secluded place to be by yourself. It's what Jesus would do.

Today's Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank You for being an example to me. You lived and died so that I would have someone to look up to. Even when I want to be alone, I ask that You be my only company in getting through these tough times. In Your Name we pray, amen.

He Did It Too

"And the Word flesh was made; He had His tent pitched among us." - John 1:14

I have always found it so amazing that God would lower Himself sooo much to actually become a mortal, human being. How could someone eternal, immortal, and omnipotent become one of us? How could our bodies even contain Him? But He did…God chose to cloth Himself with our flesh because that's how much He loves us. He was willing to come down from Heaven and be born of a woman like the rest of us. He grew up, went through adolescence, experienced hurt, joy, pain, embarrassment, excitement, anxiety, worry and anger just like the rest of us. God loves us so much that He wouldn't give us a life that He Himself wouldn't be willing to carry or understand, so He came to experience life with us. There isn't a problem we face that Jesus wasn't willing to experience in the flesh along with us. Loss, poverty, betrayal, those very things that hurt us at our very core, Jesus chose to experience to be united with us and one day free us from the power of sin and death. He pitched His tent among us. He was one of us who bled, was beaten, and died. If our God loves us so much to put Himself through pain, to be united with us, what then could He not ask of us? Or better yet, what aren't we willing to do for our Lord? Pray to Him? Yes. Go to church? Yes? How about have faith in Him even when all things seem opposed? Jesus in human flesh showed us how to have faith, so we can as well. How about love our brother, even when they have wronged us? Jesus in human flesh showed us how to forgive those who beat us down, so we can as well. How about staying faithful in a world that doesn't understand devotion to God and only seeks its own pleasure and interests? Jesus in human flesh showed us how to love God, live upright and persevere in the faith, so we can as well.

Today's Prayer:
Lord Jesus, 2000 years ago, You pitched Your tent among us to show us how much You love us. For our sake, You chose to suffer and feel what we feel, and even go through death. When I think that what You ask is too hard for me to accomplish or unrealistic, remind me that You did it as well, so that I can always follow Your life and Your example. In Your Name we pray, amen.

The Humanity of Jesus

"When the parents had fulfilled all that was required by the law of the Lord, they returned to their town, Nazareth in Galilee. There the child grew in stature and strength." - Luke 2:39-40

When I think of Jesus, I think of this powerful savior who was strong and confident. He boldly opposed sin, walked on water, went around performing miracles, and even resurrected from the dead. How can any of us ever match the Son of God? But we forget that Jesus Christ was also fully human. We tend to cast this aside because we want our Savior to be strong and holy and we consider regular human emotions as weak.

If you really read the bible and look past the miracles, you will find a regular human being just like you and I. The gospels write of a Jesus that cried with His friends. He felt anger. He would get impatient, sad, happy. He even felt fear, embarrassment. And just because He was the son of God doesn't mean He never doubted. The devil also tempted Jesus with pleasure of the flesh, pride, power, and the testing of God. These are the normal feelings that we all grow up with. Some are seen as good and others are seen as bad. Jesus experienced them all and that's why Luke says that the child Jesus grew in strength and stature because each of us grows in a physical and emotion form.

Therefore, don't ever feel like you have to give up and the world is too hard on you. God has not given us a burden we cannot carry. On the contrary, He sent His only son to live as we live, feel what we feel, experiencing pain and joy in the same way we do. Jesus Christ understands what you go through. His life is real and attainable.

Today's Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank You for being an example to us through Your life and especially Your weaknesses. Help me to learn from You so that I may imitate You in all things. In Your Name we pray, amen.

The Human Jesus

In Matthew 14, Jesus finds out that his cousin and prophet, John the Baptist, had been killed by Herod. Verse 13 says, "On hearing this, Jesus set out secretly by boat for a secluded place."

The first thing that strikes me about this verse is that the pain Jesus was in must have been incredible. Forget for a second that Jesus is God and think about what the human Jesus was feeling. One of His family members was jailed and killed for proclaiming the Word of God, something He himself was doing as well. This must have served as a strong reminder that His time to suffer was approaching very, very quickly. Can you imagine the fear a man feels at this news? He knew He was next. He came into this world a normal man, like you and I. He had His own fears, He had His own hopes, anxieties, worries, and dreams, just like you and I do. It's so easy to forget this when we feel that God just doesn't understand us because our problems, our sufferings are so big that there's no way He could ever help, but you are so wrong! The glory of God is that He loves us so much that He lowered Himself by becoming one of us and living a human life just like the rest of us. There's nothing you can go through that He can't understand. And probably even more so because although He is God, He never chose to avoid His pain and suffering but accepted humiliation and a death on the cross, seeing it all through with faith. Because He is God it doesn't mean that things didn't hurt Him the way things hurt us, or that God the Father lessened the embarrassment or the humiliation He faced during His last hours on Earth. As a matter of fact, when Jesus prayed in the garden before He was arrested, it says that He was so worried, so scared, that He sweated blood! He said to His disciples, "My soul is filled with sorrow even to death." How then can He not truly understand you in your sorrow?

The second thing that strikes me is Jesus' actions upon hearing the news. The verse says "secretly" and "secluded." Secretly and secluded because this world will never let us be in peace. There are demands coming at us from all angles and we are pressed for time. In the same way, so many people depended on Jesus for teaching and for healing, so He made sure He had His own time, away from everyone else to spend with God. The Son of Man, the human Jesus knew that He was in pain and He needed to be alone to be refueled by God. We have all been taught that the body and the spirit are separate. We eat food to energize our bodies, but it is through prayer and this secluded time with God that our spirits are strengthened. If you are feeling emtpy and alone right now, I guarantee it is because you have not taken the time today to be strengthened by God. Your spirit is hungry, give it nourishment.The Lord Jesus Christ has set before you a perfect example of how to act for He led an exemplary life. He came down from Heaven to show us that if He could perservere in the faith through trials and tribulations, so can we.

Today's Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank You for having come down from Heaven to share in our pain and suffering. You are my rock and with my eyes set on You and Your life, I know I can overcome all adversity by being strengthened by You. In Your Name we pray, Amen.