The Night Jesus Felt Fear - Bravester

I’ve written often about how we friend fear as a way to control our worlds. As a way to try to control the outcome (as if).

The opposite
of love is fear as 1 John 4:19 teaches us. Jesus is all about love. So how can
he feel fear?

Because
Jesus was as human as you and I are human. I believe that as a doctrine to be
true. Yet Jesus didn’t befriend fear like we do as a means to control our
worlds. Or because fear feels responsible.

This is what Jesus did to fear. I love this visual. I think of it often when I’m praying and I feel fear creeping in.

The night I believe Jesus felt fear was in the Garden of Gethesemane. Matthew 26:36-46. Luke 22:39-46.

In the story
of Jesus this night stands out because Jesus becomes an emotional mess. You can
feel his anxiety. His hesitancy to obey. His loneliness. His vulnerability.

And he
sweats drops of blood.

This is an actual condition called hematidrosis. (Thank you, Google.) Hematidrosis is a condition in which capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to exude blood, occurring under conditions of extreme physical or emotional stress. Severe mental anxiety activates the sympathetic nervous system to invoke the “fight-or-flight” response to such a degree that the blood vessels to the sweat glands hemorrhage.  (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

Jesus must
have been under extreme fear, stress, anxiety, and experiencing
fight-or-flight. Doesn’t his prayer of “Take this cup of suffering from me”
poetically say, “I can’t do this, get me out of here?”

Yet Jesus keeps in his emotions and keeps going back in again and again to pray with God, plead with God, wrestle with God. He’s not numbing himself. He’s not keeping himself crazy busy easily justified by being about “his father’s business.” He stays in all of his feels so that he can know know know that God is with him. And can bravely go forward. (Thank God because Jesus’ move forward gave me the gift that changed my life dramatically.)

Knowing
Jesus experienced this depth of fear, I pray, takes away Satan’s ability to
shame you over your own emotion of fear.

Our goal
cannot be to rid our lives of fear. Or befriend fear by believing it is
responsible.

Our goal is
to love. Love is simple.  Love is
complicated. Love does not control the outcome. Love is vulnerable. Love is
going to hurt. Love is beautiful.

Fear is a
squished dead snake next to love.

Love is overcoming. And that’s what Jesus did that one night.

Jesus is so beautiful with his scars and squished snake guts on his feet.

(photo credit:
https://aleteia.org/2016/02/08/how-17-saints-fought-the-devil-and-lived-to-tell-the-tale/ )


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