Editor's note: Enjoy today's devotion from You Can Be Brave by Max Lucado.
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[Jesus] sank into a pit of suffocating darkness. — Mark 14:33 MSG
Next time an octopus traps you on the ocean floor, don’t despair. Just launch into a flurry of somersaults. Unless you’re wrapped in the grip of a fearfully strong arm or two, you’ll escape with only a few sucker lesions.
As you ascend to the surface, you might encounter a shark. Don’t panic—punch! Pound away at the eyes and gills. They are the most sensitive parts of its body.
Though gorillas can’t read your mind, they can lock you in their grasp. The grip of a silverback is padlock tight. Your only hope of escape is to stroke its arm while loudly smacking your lips. Primates are fastidious groomers. Hopefully, the gorilla will interpret your actions as a spa treatment.
If not, things could be worse. You could be falling from the sky in a malfunctioning parachute, trapped in a plummeting elevator, or buried alive in a steel coffin.
You could be facing your worst-case scenario. We all have them: situations of ultimate desperation. That’s why The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook1 has been such a success. Thanks to the book, I now know how to react to a grabbing gorilla. The odds of such an occasion are so remote, however, I’ve lost no sleep over them. I have stayed awake pondering other gloomy possibilities.
Growing senile is one. The thought of growing old doesn’t trouble me. Don’t mind losing my youth, hair, or teeth. But the thought of losing my mind? Dreadful.
Failing to provide for my family has haunted me. In another worst-case scenario my wife, Denalyn, outlives me and our savings and is destitute, dependent upon the generosity of some kind stranger. She tells me to dismiss such thoughts, that my concerns are folly. Easier said than done, I reply.
These lurking fears. These uninvited Loch Ness monsters. Not pedestrian anxieties of daily deadlines and common colds, but the lingering horror of some inescapable talon. Illogical and inexplicable, perhaps, but also undeniable.
What’s your worst fear? A fear of public failure, unemployment, or heights? The fear that you’ll never find the right spouse or enjoy good health? The fear of being trapped, abandoned, or forgotten?
These are real fears, born out of legitimate concerns. Yet left unchecked, they metastasize into obsessions. The step between prudence and paranoia is short and steep. Prudence wears a seat belt. Paranoia avoids cars. Prudence washes with soap. Paranoia avoids human contact. Prudence saves for old age. Paranoia hoards even trash. Prudence prepares and plans.
- Paranoia panics. Prudence calculates the risk and takes the plunge. Paranoia never enters the water.
The words plunge and water come to mind as I’m writing this chapter while sitting on the edge of a hotel swimming pool. A father and his two small daughters are at play. He’s in the water; they jump into his arms. Let me restate that: one jumps; the other ponders. The dry one gleefully watches her sister leap. She dances up and down as the other splashes. But when her dad invites her to do the same, she shakes her head and backs away.
A living parable! How many people spend life on the edge of the pool? Consulting caution. Ignoring faith. Never taking the plunge. Happy to experience life vicariously through others. For fear of the worst, they never enjoy life at its best. By contrast, their sister jumps. Not with foolish abandon but with belief in the goodness of a father’s heart and trust in a father’s arms.
Such was the choice of Jesus. He did more than speak about fear. He faced it.
The decisive acts of the gospel drama are played out on two stages: Gethsemane’s garden and Golgotha’s cross. Friday’s cross witnessed the severest suffering. Thursday’s garden staged the profoundest fear. It was here, amid the olive trees, that Jesus
fell to the ground. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting Him might pass Him by. ‘Abba, Father,’ He cried out, ‘everything is possible for You. Please take this cup of suffering away from Me. Yet I want Your will to be done, not Mine’. — Mark 14:35–36 NLT
Gospel writer Mark paints the picture of Jesus as pale faced and trembling.
Horror... came over Him. — Mark 14:33 NEB
The word horror is “used of a man who is rendered helpless, disoriented, who is agitated and anguished by the threat of some approaching event.”2
Matthew agreed. He described Jesus as depressed and confused (Matt. 26:373), sorrowful and troubled (RSV), anguish[ed] and dismay[ed] (NEB). We’ve never seen Christ like this. Not in the Galilean storm, at the demoniac’s necropolis, or on the edge of the Nazarene cliff. And never, ever have we read a sentence like this:
He sank into a pit of suffocating darkness. — Mark 14:33 MSG
This is a weighty moment. God has become flesh, and flesh is feeling fear full bore. Why? Of what was Jesus afraid?
It had something to do with a cup. “Please take this cup of suffering away from Me.” Cup, in biblical terminology, was more than a drinking utensil. Cup equaled God’s anger, judgment, and punishment. When God took pity on apostate Jerusalem, He said,
See, I have taken out of your hand the cup that made you stagger... the goblet of my wrath. — Isa. 51:22 NIV
Through Jeremiah, God declared that all nations would drink of the cup of His disgust:
Take from my hand this cup filled to the brim with my anger, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink from it. — Jer. 25:15 NLT
According to John, those who dismiss God
must drink the wine of God’s anger. It has been poured full strength into God’s cup of wrath. And they will be tormented with fire and burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb. — Rev. 14:10 NLT
The cup equaled Jesus’ worst-case scenario: to be the recipient of God’s wrath.
He had never felt God’s fury, didn’t deserve to. He’d never experienced isolation from His Father; the two had been one for eternity. He’d never known physical death; He was an immortal being. Yet within a few short hours, Jesus would face them all. God would unleash His sin-hating wrath on the sin-covered Son. And Jesus was afraid. Deathly afraid.
And what He did with His fear shows us what to do with ours. He prayed.
He told His followers,
Sit here while I go and pray over there. — Matt. 26:36
One prayer was inadequate.
Again, a second time, He went away and prayed... and prayed the third time, saying the same words. — vv. 42, 44
He even requested the prayer support of his friends.
Stay awake and pray for strength, He urged. — v. 41 NCV
Jesus faced His ultimate fear with honest prayer.
Let’s not overcomplicate this topic. Don’t we do so? We prescribe words for prayer, places for prayer, clothing for prayer, postures for prayer; durations, intonations, and incantations. Yet Jesus’ garden appeal had none of these. It was brief (twenty-six English words), straightforward (“Please take this cup of suffering away”), and trusting (“Yet I want Your will to be done, not Mine”). Low on slick and high on authentic. Less a silver-tongued saint in the sanctuary, more a frightened child in a father’s lap.
That’s it. Jesus’ garden prayer is a child’s prayer. Abba, He prayed, using the homespun word a child would use while scampering up on the lap of Papa.
Prayer is the practice of sitting calmly in God’s lap and placing our hands on His steering wheel. He handles the speed and hard curves and ensures safe arrival. And we offer our requests; we ask God to “take this cup away.” This cup of disease, betrayal, financial collapse, joblessness, conflict, or senility. Prayer is this simple. And such simple prayer equipped Christ to stare down His deepest fear.
Do likewise. Fight your dragons in Gethsemane’s garden. Those persistent, ugly villains of the heart—talk to God about them.
- I don’t want to lose my spouse, Lord. Help me to fear less and trust You more.
- I have to fly tomorrow, Lord, and I can’t sleep for fear some terrorist will get on board and take down the plane. Won’t You remove this fear?
- The bank just called and is about to foreclose on our home. What’s going to happen to my family? Can you teach me to trust?
- I’m scared, Lord. The doctor just called, and the news is not good. You know what’s ahead for me. I give my fear to You.
Be specific about your fears. Identify what “this cup” is and talk to God about it.
Let’s pull back the curtains to expose our fears, each and every one. Like vampires, fears can’t stand the sunlight. Financial fears, relationship fears, professional fears, safety fears—call them out in prayer. Drag them out by the hand of your mind and make them stand before God and take their comeuppance!
Jesus made His fears public. He
offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death. — Heb. 5:7 NIV
He prayed loudly enough to be heard and recorded, and He begged His community of friends to pray with Him. His prayer in the garden becomes, for Christians, a picture of the church in action—a place where fears can be verbalized, pronounced, stripped down, and denounced; an escape from the wordless darkness of suppressed frights. A healthy church is where our fears go to die. We pierce them through with Scripture, psalms of celebration and lament. We melt them in the sunlight of confession. We extinguish them with the waterfall of worship, choosing to gaze at God, not our dreads.
The next time you find yourself facing a worst-case moment, do this. Verbalize your angst to a trusted circle of God-seekers. This is an essential step. Find your version of Peter, James, and John. (One hopes yours will stay awake longer.) The big deal (and good news) is this: You needn’t live alone with your fear.
Besides, what if these fears of yours are nothing more than the devil’s hoax? A hell-hatched, joy-stealing prank? I have a friend who was dreading a letter from the IRS. According to their early calculation, he owed them money, money he did not have. He was told to expect a letter detailing the amount. When the letter arrived, his courage failed him. He couldn’t bear to open it, so the envelope sat on his desk for five days while he writhed in dread. How much could it be? Where would he get the funds? For how long would he be sent to prison? Finally he summoned the gumption to open the envelope. He found, not a bill to be paid, but a check to be cashed. The IRS, as it turned out, owed him money! He had wasted five days on needless fear. There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
As followers of God, you and I have a huge asset. We know everything is going to turn out all right. Christ hasn’t budged from his throne, and Romans 8:28 hasn’t evaporated from the Bible. Our problems have always been His possibilities. The kidnapping of Joseph resulted in the preservation of his family. The persecution of Daniel led to a cabinet position. Christ entered the world by a surprise pregnancy and redeemed it through His unjust murder. Dare we believe what the Bible teaches? That no disaster is ultimately fatal?
The apostle Paul penned his final words in the bowels of a Roman prison, chained to a guard—within earshot of his executioner’s footsteps. Worst-case scenario? Not from Paul’s perspective.
God’s looking after me, keeping me safe in the Kingdom of Heaven. All praise to Him, praise forever! — 2 Tim. 4:18 MSG
Paul chose to trust his Father.
By the way, I’m happy to report that the poolside girl has chosen to believe hers. After extensive coaxing from her dad and coaching from her sister, she held her nose and jumped. Last tally, she’s taken at least a dozen plunges. Good for her. Another fear has fallen victim to trust.
1. Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht, The Complete Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007).
2. Pierre Benoit, quoted in Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, vol. 2, The Churchbook: Matthew 13–28 (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990), 979.
3. Bruner, Matthew, 978.
Excerpted with permission from You Can Be Brave by Max Lucado, copyright Max Lucado.
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Your Turn
Let’s no longer entertain our worst-case scenarios. God is in control and He is keeping us safe in the Kingdom of Heaven! Let’s dive into trust! ~ Devotionals Daily