Gods Therapy for Our Trepidation

Hope is an endangered species. We are more troubled than we’ve been in nearly fifty years. Happiness is down. Loneliness is up. And optimism has taken a right hook to the chin. Research from the National Institute of Mental Health is showing an epidemic of mental health problems among eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds in the United States.

You can relate. Your heart has been broken, your dreams have been shattered, your body has battled disease. And maybe you’ve wondered if this life is worth living. God’s therapy for our trepidation reads like this: “For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever” (2 Corinthians 4:18). Face the problems of this life by focusing on the promises of the next.

Devotion by Max Lucado | The Almighty Jehovah | https://thealmightyJehovah.com

What Gabriel Never Expected

Prior to Bethlehem God gave us his messengers, his teachers, his words. But in the manger God gave us himself. Extraordinary, don’t you think? I imagine even Gabriel scratched his head at the idea of “God with us.” Gabriel surely was not one to question his God-given missions. When God sent, Gabriel went.

And when word got out that God was to become a human, Gabriel was no doubt enthused. He could envision the moment: The Messiah in a blazing chariot. The King descending on a fiery cloud. An explosion of light from which the Messiah would emerge. What he never expected, however, was a slip of paper with a Nazarene address. “God will become a baby,” it read. “Tell the mother to name the child Jesus. And tell her not to be afraid.”

Gods With Us Promise

Jesus understands you. He’s faced hunger, sorrow, and death and wants to face them with you. The Bible says Jesus “understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

If Jesus understands our weaknesses, then so does God. Jesus was God in human form. He was God with us. That’s why Jesus is called Immanuel. Immanu means “with us.” El refers to Elohim, or God. So Immanuel is not an “above-us God” or a “somewhere-in-the-neighborhood God.” He came as the “with-us God.” All of us.

“I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Search for restrictions on the promise, and you’ll find none. There’s no withholding tax on God’s “with us” promise. God is with us. What great news!

Gods Therapy for Our Trepidation