You see smiling pictures and hear the stories of success, but you don’t always see the struggle.
There has been agony.
There has been defeat.
There has been anger.
There has been frustration.
There have been tears shed.
But the Lord, our God, is so special.
His love for us never changes. When our moods fluctuate and our attitudes are rotten, Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins is constant. Just because we have a rough day or say something out of aggravation, doesn’t mean He loves us any less.
That’s the beauty.
Jesus is so full of grace. It’s constantly humbling to realize how the Lord uses people like us.
We are a people who disappoint.
But He is a God who redeems and forgives.
Where we fall short, He does not.
He dusts off our iniquities, and then replaces the empty shelves in our hearts with his Word.
And his Word will never fade away.
We can always count on the Lord to come through.
He is waiting to pick us back up when we break.
Accept that you need Jesus.
Because if you assume you can live this life with your own fleshly guidance, you will be constantly disappointed.
The Lord is ready to help you to see the rainbows and butterflies.
Isaiah 53 (MSG) says,
Who believes what we’ve heard and seen?
Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?
The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We are all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve down wrong, on him, on him.
He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn’t say a word. Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence. Justice miscarried, and he was led off—and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people. They buried him with the wicked, threw him in a grace with a rich man, even though he’d never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn’t true.
Still, it’s what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain. The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him. Out of that terrible travail of soul, he’ll see that it’s worth it and be glad he did it. Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant, will make many “righteous ones,” as he himself carries the burden of their sins. Therefore I’ll reward him extravagantly—the best of everything, the highest honors—Because he looked death in the face and didn’t flinch, because he embraced the company of the lowest. He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many; he took up the cause of all the black sheep.
