Hi, my name is Renée Evans, Senior Leader at Bethel Austin, and I’d like to welcome you to God Today. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about the life of Jesus and the emotions of Jesus. I love reading the Gospels. I love it because not only does it give me a glimpse into the person of Jesus, but it helps me to understand why He did the things that He did, why He thought the way that He thought. It helps me to understand Jesus as a person and not just as a character within a story that I read. And I was reading in John 11 and it says in John 11:35, and this is right after Mary had told Jesus that Lazarus had died. And it says here in verse 35: Jesus wept. It’s so easy to skim over that verse, isn’t it? And in fact, that’s the shortest verse in the entire Bible. Did you know that? Jesus wept. Two words. That has so much power and so much of an insight into who our Jesus was. And even though Jesus knew that Lazarus would rise again, He still wept. And I don’t know about you, but I love to pull apart those scriptures. And I love to ask questions like, God, if You knew he would rise again, why did You weep? And it’s in moments like that, that the Lord reminds me of His humanity, because Jesus was fully God and fully man. And if Jesus never had these emotions and if He never experienced what grief would be like, then He could never relate to us as humans, but He was fully human and fully God.
And so He is not only this amazing redemptive Savior, but He’s someone who can step down into our situations, into our emotions, into our circumstances and say, “Hey, I’ve been there. I’ve experienced grief. I’ve watched my friend die. And I’ve wept. I wept.” And isn’t that just like Jesus to meet us in our humanity? Isn’t that just like our King? That He is not a God that just wants to be worshiped up here and as a distant far away God, but that He is a God who wants to step into our humanity. He wants to step into our pain. He wants to do life with us in the good and the bad. He wants to do life with us when we’re thriving, and He wants to do life with us when we have no idea what we’re doing. He wants to do life with us in our most painful moments, and He can. He has the unique ability to do so, because He also knows what it’s like to have wept. He didn’t just shed a single tear. It says He wept. And I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure if you’re anything like me, then you know the difference between crying and weeping. And there’s maybe not as many moments where we’re led to weeping, but when you are in that place of weeping, you know that it is a consuming pain, that it is a consuming grief and our God knows right where you are. He knows right where you’ve been, and He’s with you in every single moment.
I just want to encourage you today that you do not serve a God that is a distant, emotionally, unattached God. You do not serve a distant dad-like figure; an emotionally unavailable father. You serve a God who is with you and who meets you in the depth of your humanity and the depth of your emotions. And that is such a beautiful thing. In Psalm 23, where it talks about God being our Shepherd. It says we are confident because He is with us. Even if we go through the valley of the shadow of death, He is with us. He is with us in it all, amen? And I want to encourage you that no matter what situation you find yourself in right now, whether you can say, Renée, I am living my best life. Whether you’re like, I just don’t know how I’m going to face tomorrow. He is with you, He’s with you in every single season, every single moment, every single emotion that you have. He isn’t just with you, but He’s lived it. He’s lived it, and he is a God that can relate to us. Amen?
Jesus, I thank You that You are so close to us. I thank You that it is not Your heart to just rule and reign from some distant throne that we can imagine, Lord, but that You are with us in our pain and with us in our joy. And then just as You did for Your friend, You can weep with us in our grief. I thank You that You are living. I thank You that You are alive in us, God, and that You meet us in every single season and every single emotion. We thank You, Father, that You will become more and more real to us, not just for the rest of this day, but as we walk out this week and in the months to come, that You will extend this beautiful invitation to be a part of our humanity.