I am afraid.

I am afraid. I am afraid for the phone call that will come Tuesday afternoon. I am afraid the news will not be good.

God knew this. And He told me to come to church today. Because our pastor was going to talk about f.e.a.r.

The message today was about when Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemene shortly before His death. He knew He was going to die. And it was going to be a very painful death on the cross. He was terrified. Horrified. Scared out of His mind.

And what did He do? He prayed. He cried out in inutterable words the feelings of His heart. And He asked God to spare Him the pain. He begged God to "take the cup" from Him so He wouldn't have to go through all the agony.

But, then, He did something remarkable. In the midst of those cries, He surrendered to God's will. He BEGGED His father to not have Him go through an agonizing death on the cross, but then, immediately after, He said that if it was God's will for Him to do so, He wanted that more. He wanted what God wanted more than to be spared the pain. (And can you imagine where we'd all be if God had shown mercy to Jesus at that point and spared Him the cross? Yikes).

So, here I am, not nearly in the same level of fear, but I am afraid.

We are going through a series now called "the Jesus experiment", where we are challenged to live like Christ. So, in my fear, I'm surrendering (yes, again). I'm asking (begging, really) that God spare us the pain of another "failure".

However, in the next breath, I'm asking that His will be done. I know it's a better plan, from a better perspective, than my own.