Have you ever gone through something painful that hurt you?  If it is unexpected it hurts but you can struggle your way through.  It is worse when you know that it is coming.  Sometimes the anticipation is actually the worst part.  This makes me think about Jesus suffering for us on the cross.  He knew what was about to happen.  He even prayed and asked the Father if there was another way.  He had known this was His ultimate purpose.  Isaiah even spelled it out thousands of years prior.  Let’s look at his words in Isaiah 53.

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

The fact that Jesus knew the pain He would undergo and still walked in to it for us makes His death all the more meaningful.  Jesus loves you so much that He died for you.  He died the most painful death possible.  It wasn’t a spur of the moment take me not him kind of a decision.  It was the plan all along.  Jesus made the plan happen.  He carried it out and suffered and died.  He died for us, let’s live for Him.

In His Grip,

Pastor Dave