The living archive is loading.
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
I want to open with a story from my childhood. In 1992, when I was seven years old, I was at the Lynwood Aquatic Center for my final swim lesson. To pass, I had to jump off a diving board into 14 feet of water.
I walked confidently to the end of the board, but when I looked over the edge, everything changed. My feet began backing up. I froze there for two hours—two full hours. The whole pool had to shut down. My mom and classmates were calling from the other side: "Jump, Lel, jump!" But I refused.
Finally, I felt a firm yet gentle hand on my back—and I was pushed in. I survived, got out, dried off. Everyone was celebrating, but I was angry. I told my mom, "I was about to do it! You didn't give me a chance."
My mother looked at me in the rearview mirror and said something prophetic: "Lannell, it had to happen. It had to happen."
And just as it was with me, God is trying to move you to a place in your Christian maturity where some moments have to happen to ensure that you walk in your purpose.
Let me set the foundation for what we're about to explore in Matthew 26:47–56. I need to be clear: I am not saying that bad things are God's fault. Evil is evil. Sin is sin. The Bible makes this clear—God tempts no one with evil.
But here is what I am saying: the Christian life is not without suffering. Suffering is part of our experience. Yet God will redeem negative things. He will extract something from them, even though He is not the cause of them.
What I want you to understand is that our suffering itself—the difficult, painful seasons—these can be redemptive. God can use them to form us, even though He did not cause them.
In Matthew 26, Jesus is coming out of the Garden of Gethsemane. Just moments before, in that secret place with Peter, James, and John, He had prayed: "Not my will, but thy will be done."
He has resolved. He is ready.
But the disciples are not ready. As Jesus steps out of the garden, Judas arrives with a crowd—chief priests, elders, people with swords and clubs. The scene is chaotic. Everyone is anxious. Everyone is afraid.
Except Jesus. Jesus is the calmest person in the entire space.
Have you ever been in a moment where everything is falling apart around you and you don't know what to do? Have you been trying to understand how God would allow you to sit in a season like this—a season where you have been most obedient and yet experienced the most pain?
Listen to me: The fact that it is hard does not mean that you missed God. Just because it hurts does not mean you're off track. If obedience led Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane, why would you think obedience will always lead you into comfort?
Obedience to God's will ushers you into the place of pain—not away from it.
The story we're about to walk through is a story about reactions. It's a story about emotional control. It's a story about purpose. And it's not just happening to Jesus—it's happening to us. Jesus shows us what to do. Others in the text show us what not to do. It is a mirror to see if we look like Jesus when all hell breaks loose.
Verse 47 says, "While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve."
This is striking. Judas knew exactly where Jesus was. He knew the garden. He knew the routine. He knew the rhythm.
Your deepest wounds will always come from people who have had access to your patterns, because they likely studied you before they stabbed you.
Judas came with a great crowd—chief priests and elders. If we modernize this, these are church leaders. These are people who would stand and proclaim Scripture, who would read from the Torah. They were religious people capturing Jesus in the name of God.
I know you've never seen wayward preachers use the name of God to prop themselves up. I know you've never been in a church where someone stands and says, "The Holy Spirit told me that 300 people in this room have $100." That is a lie. They are using religiosity to force an agenda, to keep their status. The Holy Spirit did not say that. They said that because they are over budget.
They misuse the name of God for their own spiritual purpose.
Verse 51: "And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword."
We know it's Peter, but Matthew never names him. He simply says "one of those who were with Jesus." Peter struck the servant of the high priest—a man named Malchus—and cut off his ear.
Listen carefully: Peter did not swing because he was brave. He swung because he was unhealed.
He swung because he was emotionally unmanaged. He swung because swinging was easier than surrendering.
Pressure will always reveal your reflex. Put you in a pressured place, and I will show you exactly how you respond.
For some of you, your sword is not physical. For some, it's pulling back out of conversations. For some, it's manipulation. For some, it's going numb. For some, it's an angry attitude or cutting remarks. For some, it's stonewalling. For some, it's playing the white knight, the savior. For some, it's running instead of confrontation.
For some of you, your sword is your spouse. You've turned your spouse into a project instead of a partner, and you call it having standards.
For some of you, your sword is your silence. You've been cunning people with it for years. The people closest to you bear emotional scars from your mouth, and you call it being direct.
Your sword is whatever you reach for when your world is spinning out of control.
But here's the thing: Peter's swing did not begin in the garden. No. It began when he slept while God needed him the most. Jesus was praying in Gethsemane, and Peter was asleep instead of being attentive.
Let me ask you: When was the last time you opened your Bible without a crisis forcing you there? When was the last time you sat with God when you didn't need something from Him?
You've been running on last year's prayers trying to fight this year's battles. You've neglected the secret place, and now you're panicking in the public place.
Now show me how you would respond when all hell breaks loose. You have no clarity, no peace, no power. And you're wondering why you keep swinging at the things you should be praying through.
Peter is not just a cautionary tale—he is a testimony if we do not wake up. Peter's sword was already in his hand before the mob arrived. He just hadn't drawn it yet. And in the moment that demanded stability, he walked in with chaos.
Peter's swing was not bravery. It was brokenness. It is the visible manifestation of an invisible wound.
Now, why did Peter cut off Malchus's ear instead of his head? Why not stab him in the heart? He clearly knew how to use a sword. The answer is this: Our emotional swings are not coming from what's happening in that moment. They're coming from what you never healed five years ago. They're coming from places you didn't heal twenty years ago.
You keep blaming your circumstances, but your circumstances didn't create your chaos. They exposed it.
David Richo writes in his book Triggers: "What triggers show us is where we have not yet become free. You're not reacting to what they did. You're reacting to what you never dealt with."
Your response has nothing to do with the moment. Your response has everything to do with what you have not addressed.
Let me give you an example. I love to cook. I love to bake. I make what I call double-crusted, slap-your-mama peach cobbler. But whenever I cook, I burn myself some way, shape, or form. And when I do, I know it's going to be good—because I'm putting my foot in it.
But here's what happens. When I burn myself, I get frustrated and pull the band-aid off after just a day, assuming it's healed. I don't give it the space to heal. The scar never properly forms. And it always leaves a scar—a visible one.
If you're not careful, the thing you don't deal with today will become the scar of the future.
Verse 52: "Then Jesus said to him, 'Put your sword back in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.'"
Jesus's rebuke is not traditional. It is subtle, clear, and surgical. He doesn't say, "Throw your sword away." He doesn't say, "Give me the sword." He says, "Put your sword back in its place."
He's not saying emotions are bad. He's saying: Put them in their place. Your emotions aren't the enemy. Your timing is.
Your responses are often your emotions just leading, dictating, controlling, interrupting. Your emotions were designed to inform you, not to control you.
We say "take the wheel, Jesus," but often what we do is we actually take the wheel. We allow our emotions to take it. We put Jesus in the passenger seat, and some of us push Jesus out of the car completely. Then we drive with our emotions, and watch—our lives wind up in the ditch.
Then we have the audacity to ask, "Jesus, why did you allow this to happen to me?" Because we have not given our emotions the proper place in our lives.
Jesus does not destroy emotions. He does not ignore them. Jesus Himself had emotions. Hebrews 4:15 says:
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin."
Jesus has experienced every emotion we experience. And yet He chose not to sin. Your emotional response is a choice. Jesus teaches us how to discipline our emotions. He never says you cannot be passionate. He never says you cannot be angry. The Bible says: "Be angry, but sin not."
Put your passions where they belong. Put them in their place.
Listen to me very clearly: If the only way you know how to feel safe is to stay in control, you will always interpret surrender as danger. You have made control your god and called it wisdom.
Control is not safety. It's a sword. Control is not wisdom. It's self-protection. And self-protection often becomes self-sabotage.
Let me ask you: What have you been calling wisdom that is really just fear with a better vocabulary? What has your self-protection already cost you that you're still not ready to admit? What impulses have you masqueraded as discernment?
You say, "I discern this moment." No. That is just your faulty impulses getting you into seasons that you're praying God to pull you out of. And God won't move because God didn't put you there.
We cannot ask God for peace when we are gripping our emotional weapons. We keep saying, "Lord, help me" while refusing to release it. And He is saying, "I want to help you, but you will not let go."
What emotions we hold in our hands reveal what we don't trust God to hold. Show me what you can't let go of, and I'll show you what you worship.
That's why Jesus says, "Put it back in its place." Jesus is discipling Peter's emotions—and ours. The correction had to happen so that he could respond not emotionally, but like Christ.
Verse 53: "Do you think that I cannot appeal to the Father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?"
A legion is 6,000 soldiers. Jesus is saying He could command 72,000 angels at His disposal right now.
Jesus is saying: Peter, I'm not here because I lack options. I'm here because I have obedience.
Jesus had enough spiritual control to discern the moment and hold back the gates of heaven itself, which He could have released. So my question to you is: Why can't you hold your tongue in traffic?
Jesus could have escaped. He could have retaliated. He could have shut it down. But He didn't—not because He was powerless, but because He was powerful.
Real authority is not doing what you have the power to do. It is resisting what you have the right to do. Power is not in what you can do. Power is in what you won't do.
Jesus had the right to fight. He had the right to command the angels. But purpose always speaks louder than pain.
How do we distinguish a healthy response from an unhealthy one? Jesus models it for us:
An unhealthy response says: "Do anything right now. Just do it."
A healthy response says: "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord."
Unhealthy: "Run, escape, quit, freeze."
Healthy: "Hold fast to the profession of our faith without wavering."
Unhealthy: "Rewrite the story so you won't get hurt."
Healthy: "Run with endurance the race that is set before us."
Unhealthy: "The plan is failing. You need to take control."
Healthy: "Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not on thy own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your path."
Unhealthy: "Now or never."
Healthy: "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."
Unhealthy: "The pain is proof that you're failing."
Healthy: "Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be complete."
Unhealthy: "What you're feeling you'll feel forever."
Healthy: "I consider that the sufferings of this present world shall not compare to the glory that shall be revealed."
Every shortcut that the enemy offers you is sabotage wrapped in relief. The devil's exits always look like entrances. He's not trying to destroy you openly. The enemy is trying to reroute you subtly. And the reroute feels like a rescue until you realize where it led you.
Jesus could have called the angels, but He used His power over the pain. If Jesus had chosen escape, we would still be on our way to hell. His escape would have cost us everything.
It had to happen.
In verses 54–56, Jesus explains to the crowd: "But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so?"
He then asks: "Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day, I sat at the temple teaching. You didn't seize me. But all this had to take place so that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled."
Listen to the tone of Jesus. He is not irritated. He is not anxious. He is not shaken. If some of us were honest with ourselves, if we were in the same place, we would not respond like Jesus.
He is rooted. Jesus is the calmest person in all of the chaos—in something He could have prevented.
And that's what happens when you know the outcome.
When you know the outcome, when you know He'll never leave you nor forsake you, it doesn't matter what comes your way.
When I know the outcome, I trust His word. Jesus says, "Now then shall the scriptures be fulfilled." Translation: "If I stop this, I stop what God said. If I protect myself—which I can—from my own pain, I prevent myself from My purpose, which is to die on the cross."
He's saying: "This is not happening to me. This is happening for the sake of what God promised."
So what you have been calling confusion, heaven has been calling completion. What we've been calling a breakdown, the Father's been calling it a setup.
How differently would you carry this season if you actually believed that God already wrote the ending?
What have you been calling falling apart that God has been calling falling into place? How much of your purpose have you already delayed by protecting yourself from the pain?
Purpose does not make pain painless. It gives pain purpose. You can survive the what if you know the why. And purpose will carry what comfort cannot cure.
Not because God is cruel, but because God is completing something that required a season in your life and in mine.
Somebody in here needs to say: "I am not going to waste this pain. These tears will not be wasted. This heartache will not be wasted. This financial trouble will not be wasted. This relationship that fell apart will not be wasted."
I am going to lean not into myself but into the Father and say, "I trust you."
It had to happen so that You, Father, could be glorified. Not about me, but about You.
Some of us have blamed God for seasons where He was trying to form you, not force you through.
My wife and I took a pottery class. When you're at the wheel, you have to put your foot on it and keep it spinning. If you're too forceful, the pottery caves in or falls off, and you have to start over with another block of clay.
You have to form it. Form it. Form it. If you're not careful, you'll keep breaking.
And some of us—if we're honest with one another—this is a season where we feel like we keep breaking, and we keep blaming the Potter. But the truth is, we are the clay. We are brittle. We are broken.
And we keep saying: "Father, do something. You see me in this pain. You see me crying. You see my heart broken. You see me trying. Do something."
And God is saying: "Son, daughter—it had to happen. It had to happen because I'm about to use what you're experiencing to form you into what I need you to be in this next season."
Let me tell you the part of my diving board story I never shared with you. The whole time I was up there looking down at that 14-foot drop into the water, what I failed to recognize was that Kelly, the lifeguard, was actually in the water the whole time.
For two hours, the lifeguard was just waiting on me to jump. I was nervous. I was fearful. I didn't trust. And the Savior was right there the whole time.
Some of us need to take a moment and say: "I'm sorry. You were there the whole time."
"I cursed you, and you were right there. I yelled in my prayer closet, but you were right there. I fought this emotion and this pain, but you were there the whole time."
"You kept me in the midst of my trials and tribulations, and I was still mad. I never missed a meal, and I was still mad. Breath in my body, but I was still mad. Money in the bank, but I was still mad."
This is the moment where some of us have to say: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for how I showed up, Father. And I trust you—that in this season, it had to happen."
"It had to happen so that You would get the glory out of this pain. You would get the glory out of this moment."
I want to open with a story from my childhood. In 1992, when I was seven years old, I was at the Lynwood Aquatic Center for my final swim lesson. To pass, I had to jump off a diving board into 14 feet of water.
I walked confidently to the end of the board, but when I looked over the edge, everything changed. My feet began backing up. I froze there for two hours—two full hours. The whole pool had to shut down. My mom and classmates were calling from the other side: "Jump, Lel, jump!" But I refused.
Finally, I felt a firm yet gentle hand on my back—and I was pushed in. I survived, got out, dried off. Everyone was celebrating, but I was angry. I told my mom, "I was about to do it! You didn't give me a chance."
My mother looked at me in the rearview mirror and said something prophetic: "Lannell, it had to happen. It had to happen."
And just as it was with me, God is trying to move you to a place in your Christian maturity where some moments have to happen to ensure that you walk in your purpose.
Let me set the foundation for what we're about to explore in Matthew 26:47–56. I need to be clear: I am not saying that bad things are God's fault. Evil is evil. Sin is sin. The Bible makes this clear—God tempts no one with evil.
But here is what I am saying: the Christian life is not without suffering. Suffering is part of our experience. Yet God will redeem negative things. He will extract something from them, even though He is not the cause of them.
What I want you to understand is that our suffering itself—the difficult, painful seasons—these can be redemptive. God can use them to form us, even though He did not cause them.
In Matthew 26, Jesus is coming out of the Garden of Gethsemane. Just moments before, in that secret place with Peter, James, and John, He had prayed: "Not my will, but thy will be done."
He has resolved. He is ready.
But the disciples are not ready. As Jesus steps out of the garden, Judas arrives with a crowd—chief priests, elders, people with swords and clubs. The scene is chaotic. Everyone is anxious. Everyone is afraid.
Except Jesus. Jesus is the calmest person in the entire space.
Have you ever been in a moment where everything is falling apart around you and you don't know what to do? Have you been trying to understand how God would allow you to sit in a season like this—a season where you have been most obedient and yet experienced the most pain?
Listen to me: The fact that it is hard does not mean that you missed God. Just because it hurts does not mean you're off track. If obedience led Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane, why would you think obedience will always lead you into comfort?
Obedience to God's will ushers you into the place of pain—not away from it.
The story we're about to walk through is a story about reactions. It's a story about emotional control. It's a story about purpose. And it's not just happening to Jesus—it's happening to us. Jesus shows us what to do. Others in the text show us what not to do. It is a mirror to see if we look like Jesus when all hell breaks loose.
Verse 47 says, "While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve."
This is striking. Judas knew exactly where Jesus was. He knew the garden. He knew the routine. He knew the rhythm.
Your deepest wounds will always come from people who have had access to your patterns, because they likely studied you before they stabbed you.
Judas came with a great crowd—chief priests and elders. If we modernize this, these are church leaders. These are people who would stand and proclaim Scripture, who would read from the Torah. They were religious people capturing Jesus in the name of God.
I know you've never seen wayward preachers use the name of God to prop themselves up. I know you've never been in a church where someone stands and says, "The Holy Spirit told me that 300 people in this room have $100." That is a lie. They are using religiosity to force an agenda, to keep their status. The Holy Spirit did not say that. They said that because they are over budget.
They misuse the name of God for their own spiritual purpose.
Verse 51: "And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword."
We know it's Peter, but Matthew never names him. He simply says "one of those who were with Jesus." Peter struck the servant of the high priest—a man named Malchus—and cut off his ear.
Listen carefully: Peter did not swing because he was brave. He swung because he was unhealed.
He swung because he was emotionally unmanaged. He swung because swinging was easier than surrendering.
Pressure will always reveal your reflex. Put you in a pressured place, and I will show you exactly how you respond.
For some of you, your sword is not physical. For some, it's pulling back out of conversations. For some, it's manipulation. For some, it's going numb. For some, it's an angry attitude or cutting remarks. For some, it's stonewalling. For some, it's playing the white knight, the savior. For some, it's running instead of confrontation.
For some of you, your sword is your spouse. You've turned your spouse into a project instead of a partner, and you call it having standards.
For some of you, your sword is your silence. You've been cunning people with it for years. The people closest to you bear emotional scars from your mouth, and you call it being direct.
Your sword is whatever you reach for when your world is spinning out of control.
But here's the thing: Peter's swing did not begin in the garden. No. It began when he slept while God needed him the most. Jesus was praying in Gethsemane, and Peter was asleep instead of being attentive.
Let me ask you: When was the last time you opened your Bible without a crisis forcing you there? When was the last time you sat with God when you didn't need something from Him?
You've been running on last year's prayers trying to fight this year's battles. You've neglected the secret place, and now you're panicking in the public place.
Now show me how you would respond when all hell breaks loose. You have no clarity, no peace, no power. And you're wondering why you keep swinging at the things you should be praying through.
Peter is not just a cautionary tale—he is a testimony if we do not wake up. Peter's sword was already in his hand before the mob arrived. He just hadn't drawn it yet. And in the moment that demanded stability, he walked in with chaos.
Peter's swing was not bravery. It was brokenness. It is the visible manifestation of an invisible wound.
Now, why did Peter cut off Malchus's ear instead of his head? Why not stab him in the heart? He clearly knew how to use a sword. The answer is this: Our emotional swings are not coming from what's happening in that moment. They're coming from what you never healed five years ago. They're coming from places you didn't heal twenty years ago.
You keep blaming your circumstances, but your circumstances didn't create your chaos. They exposed it.
David Richo writes in his book Triggers: "What triggers show us is where we have not yet become free. You're not reacting to what they did. You're reacting to what you never dealt with."
Your response has nothing to do with the moment. Your response has everything to do with what you have not addressed.
Let me give you an example. I love to cook. I love to bake. I make what I call double-crusted, slap-your-mama peach cobbler. But whenever I cook, I burn myself some way, shape, or form. And when I do, I know it's going to be good—because I'm putting my foot in it.
But here's what happens. When I burn myself, I get frustrated and pull the band-aid off after just a day, assuming it's healed. I don't give it the space to heal. The scar never properly forms. And it always leaves a scar—a visible one.
If you're not careful, the thing you don't deal with today will become the scar of the future.
Verse 52: "Then Jesus said to him, 'Put your sword back in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.'"
Jesus's rebuke is not traditional. It is subtle, clear, and surgical. He doesn't say, "Throw your sword away." He doesn't say, "Give me the sword." He says, "Put your sword back in its place."
He's not saying emotions are bad. He's saying: Put them in their place. Your emotions aren't the enemy. Your timing is.
Your responses are often your emotions just leading, dictating, controlling, interrupting. Your emotions were designed to inform you, not to control you.
We say "take the wheel, Jesus," but often what we do is we actually take the wheel. We allow our emotions to take it. We put Jesus in the passenger seat, and some of us push Jesus out of the car completely. Then we drive with our emotions, and watch—our lives wind up in the ditch.
Then we have the audacity to ask, "Jesus, why did you allow this to happen to me?" Because we have not given our emotions the proper place in our lives.
Jesus does not destroy emotions. He does not ignore them. Jesus Himself had emotions. Hebrews 4:15 says:
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin."
Jesus has experienced every emotion we experience. And yet He chose not to sin. Your emotional response is a choice. Jesus teaches us how to discipline our emotions. He never says you cannot be passionate. He never says you cannot be angry. The Bible says: "Be angry, but sin not."
Put your passions where they belong. Put them in their place.
Listen to me very clearly: If the only way you know how to feel safe is to stay in control, you will always interpret surrender as danger. You have made control your god and called it wisdom.
Control is not safety. It's a sword. Control is not wisdom. It's self-protection. And self-protection often becomes self-sabotage.
Let me ask you: What have you been calling wisdom that is really just fear with a better vocabulary? What has your self-protection already cost you that you're still not ready to admit? What impulses have you masqueraded as discernment?
You say, "I discern this moment." No. That is just your faulty impulses getting you into seasons that you're praying God to pull you out of. And God won't move because God didn't put you there.
We cannot ask God for peace when we are gripping our emotional weapons. We keep saying, "Lord, help me" while refusing to release it. And He is saying, "I want to help you, but you will not let go."
What emotions we hold in our hands reveal what we don't trust God to hold. Show me what you can't let go of, and I'll show you what you worship.
That's why Jesus says, "Put it back in its place." Jesus is discipling Peter's emotions—and ours. The correction had to happen so that he could respond not emotionally, but like Christ.
Verse 53: "Do you think that I cannot appeal to the Father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?"
A legion is 6,000 soldiers. Jesus is saying He could command 72,000 angels at His disposal right now.
Jesus is saying: Peter, I'm not here because I lack options. I'm here because I have obedience.
Jesus had enough spiritual control to discern the moment and hold back the gates of heaven itself, which He could have released. So my question to you is: Why can't you hold your tongue in traffic?
Jesus could have escaped. He could have retaliated. He could have shut it down. But He didn't—not because He was powerless, but because He was powerful.
Real authority is not doing what you have the power to do. It is resisting what you have the right to do. Power is not in what you can do. Power is in what you won't do.
Jesus had the right to fight. He had the right to command the angels. But purpose always speaks louder than pain.
How do we distinguish a healthy response from an unhealthy one? Jesus models it for us:
An unhealthy response says: "Do anything right now. Just do it."
A healthy response says: "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord."
Unhealthy: "Run, escape, quit, freeze."
Healthy: "Hold fast to the profession of our faith without wavering."
Unhealthy: "Rewrite the story so you won't get hurt."
Healthy: "Run with endurance the race that is set before us."
Unhealthy: "The plan is failing. You need to take control."
Healthy: "Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not on thy own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your path."
Unhealthy: "Now or never."
Healthy: "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."
Unhealthy: "The pain is proof that you're failing."
Healthy: "Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be complete."
Unhealthy: "What you're feeling you'll feel forever."
Healthy: "I consider that the sufferings of this present world shall not compare to the glory that shall be revealed."
Every shortcut that the enemy offers you is sabotage wrapped in relief. The devil's exits always look like entrances. He's not trying to destroy you openly. The enemy is trying to reroute you subtly. And the reroute feels like a rescue until you realize where it led you.
Jesus could have called the angels, but He used His power over the pain. If Jesus had chosen escape, we would still be on our way to hell. His escape would have cost us everything.
It had to happen.
In verses 54–56, Jesus explains to the crowd: "But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so?"
He then asks: "Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day, I sat at the temple teaching. You didn't seize me. But all this had to take place so that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled."
Listen to the tone of Jesus. He is not irritated. He is not anxious. He is not shaken. If some of us were honest with ourselves, if we were in the same place, we would not respond like Jesus.
He is rooted. Jesus is the calmest person in all of the chaos—in something He could have prevented.
And that's what happens when you know the outcome.
When you know the outcome, when you know He'll never leave you nor forsake you, it doesn't matter what comes your way.
When I know the outcome, I trust His word. Jesus says, "Now then shall the scriptures be fulfilled." Translation: "If I stop this, I stop what God said. If I protect myself—which I can—from my own pain, I prevent myself from My purpose, which is to die on the cross."
He's saying: "This is not happening to me. This is happening for the sake of what God promised."
So what you have been calling confusion, heaven has been calling completion. What we've been calling a breakdown, the Father's been calling it a setup.
How differently would you carry this season if you actually believed that God already wrote the ending?
What have you been calling falling apart that God has been calling falling into place? How much of your purpose have you already delayed by protecting yourself from the pain?
Purpose does not make pain painless. It gives pain purpose. You can survive the what if you know the why. And purpose will carry what comfort cannot cure.
Not because God is cruel, but because God is completing something that required a season in your life and in mine.
Somebody in here needs to say: "I am not going to waste this pain. These tears will not be wasted. This heartache will not be wasted. This financial trouble will not be wasted. This relationship that fell apart will not be wasted."
I am going to lean not into myself but into the Father and say, "I trust you."
It had to happen so that You, Father, could be glorified. Not about me, but about You.
Some of us have blamed God for seasons where He was trying to form you, not force you through.
My wife and I took a pottery class. When you're at the wheel, you have to put your foot on it and keep it spinning. If you're too forceful, the pottery caves in or falls off, and you have to start over with another block of clay.
You have to form it. Form it. Form it. If you're not careful, you'll keep breaking.
And some of us—if we're honest with one another—this is a season where we feel like we keep breaking, and we keep blaming the Potter. But the truth is, we are the clay. We are brittle. We are broken.
And we keep saying: "Father, do something. You see me in this pain. You see me crying. You see my heart broken. You see me trying. Do something."
And God is saying: "Son, daughter—it had to happen. It had to happen because I'm about to use what you're experiencing to form you into what I need you to be in this next season."
Let me tell you the part of my diving board story I never shared with you. The whole time I was up there looking down at that 14-foot drop into the water, what I failed to recognize was that Kelly, the lifeguard, was actually in the water the whole time.
For two hours, the lifeguard was just waiting on me to jump. I was nervous. I was fearful. I didn't trust. And the Savior was right there the whole time.
Some of us need to take a moment and say: "I'm sorry. You were there the whole time."
"I cursed you, and you were right there. I yelled in my prayer closet, but you were right there. I fought this emotion and this pain, but you were there the whole time."
"You kept me in the midst of my trials and tribulations, and I was still mad. I never missed a meal, and I was still mad. Breath in my body, but I was still mad. Money in the bank, but I was still mad."
This is the moment where some of us have to say: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for how I showed up, Father. And I trust you—that in this season, it had to happen."
"It had to happen so that You would get the glory out of this pain. You would get the glory out of this moment."
