It doesn’t speak well of me when I’ve claimed to be a Christian for years, yet I’ve come face to face with the fact that the Cross never meant that much to me. I should say it never became personal to me. When I look back on my “relationship” with Jesus, I spent more time arguing and fighting with Him, then getting to know Him.
The pain and hurt in my past is valid. It happened. But at the point when Jesus held out His hand to me, offering me a way out of the abuse, I realize instead of taking that hand, I spit in it. I knocked it away. I didn’t know this Jesus and I sure didn’t trust Him. I deceived myself into believing that I had a relationship with Him. I read the Bible and did multiple Bible studies and went to conferences and seminars and church. I went to church.
But it didn’t change me. For years I remained full of hate, bitterness, unforgiveness, anger and jealousy. I could quote Scripture and tell you a lot about the Bible. A word of warning, if you aren’t doing what the Bible says then You are not right with God. Reading the Bible does not change your life. It can make you one of those Pharisees that know about Jesus, but they don’t know Jesus. They don’t have a personal relationship with Him.
One big problem I had was a lack of trust. Every authority figure over me abused that authority. They did not instill love and trust in me. In fact, the very opposite. We have a tendency of judging God the same way we see our earthly father.
Another “excuse” I had was God didn’t do things the way I thought they should be done. I wanted a fairy godmother to wave her magic wand and fix me, or a genie in a bottle, to take away all my problems. Plus, I wanted everybody else to be fixed. I didn’t believe I had a problem; it was what they had done to me.
The beautiful thing about Jesus is found in 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
Longsuffering according to Strong’s Concordance means; to be mild and slow in avenging, to be slow to anger, slow to punish.
Yeah!!! At least while it pertains to how Jesus is towards me. The problem is we are to be like Jesus. UGH!!! Anyway, Jesus was longsuffering towards me. He took me through some painful healing, forcing me to face the truth about myself, about the abuse and about my relationship, or lack thereof with Him.
Recently He took me on a journey to the Cross. He had me imagine myself being there at the time He had been arrested. He had me imagine watching as He was buffeted and spit on and slapped. He had me imagine seeing the crown of thorns being shoved into His head. I watched as they scourged Him with whips and beat Him so badly that the Bible says in Isaiah 52:14 “As many were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:”
Jesus was beaten so badly that He was unrecognizable. He made me watch as they shoved that heavy Cross onto His shoulders, and head toward Calvary. But He not only had me “imagine” or “see” all that had been done to Him, He made me imagine myself there, I was in the crowd yelling crucify Him. I was following behind Him as he was on the way to be crucified, mocking Him and laughing at Him.
I was the one not believing Jesus is the Son of God. I was the one not trusting Him, not believing He loved me or that He died to take my sins. I spent most of my life blaming Him for what I went through. I believed all the lies the devil told me. I was angry at Him for allowing them to do the things to me that caused such horrendous pain.
I had read in the Bible that He died for me. But I can’t say that it was a reality in my life for many years. I wasted so many years making excuses about why I was the way I was and being bitter about my childhood and way into my adult life.
But Jesus refused to give up on me. As He had me imagine myself in that crowd, laughing and making fun of Him and calling out obscenities, I got to the part where He laid down on that Cross and they were driving those spikes into His hands and feet. At that point, I realized that He laid down on that Cross. They didn’t make Him. He willingly laid down and allowed them to nail Him to that Cross.
He had allowed all they did to Him. He had a way out. He had the power to stop it all. But He didn’t. As I saw Him lying down on that Cross, realizing the truth, knowing and seeing Him for who He is, and for what He did, I saw myself throwing myself over Him, truly repenting for my sins. It was no longer what everybody else had done to me.
We are all sinners, but a victim mentality keeps us from seeing the truth. It keeps us in a fog and keeps us from healing. God didn’t stop the abuse. He didn’t change the other people. He wanted to deal with me, wanting me to face and acknowledge the abuse happened, but also allowing Him to heal me, which in turn changed me. Now I would never go back into an abusive relationship. I refuse to allow myself to be what I used to be.
Jesus wasn’t just sent to the Cross. He allowed it. He wanted to because He loves us. He is willing to be longsuffering and He will go to great lengths to reach us. He is the same for one and all. But if we choose to continue to reject Him, Romans 1:28 “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;”
Take your own journey with Jesus to the Cross. Take the hand that He has held out to you and let Him do in you what He knows needs to be done to get you to heaven. It isn’t about everybody else. It is a journey for you to go on, and it is about a personal relationship between you and Jesus.
A Journey with Jesus to the Cross
