HE EMPATHIZES WITH YOU...

A rapid and pounding heart, lightheadedness and dizziness, the body gets sweaty and shaky, short of breath and sometimes it feels like you're suffocating, your vision starts to black out, and It feels like you are going to faint.  There is an urgent need to leave the place where you are, and if you don’t you might lose control of yourself, you think you are having a heart attack and you are going to die. 

I'm describing a panic attack, if you have been there you know this horrible feeling. I have had them since I was kid.

In Luke 22:39-46 we read that Jesus was in agony, he was sorrowful as he prayed more earnestly; his sweat became like great drops of blood, in Matthew 26:38 he said, "my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death", he asked his friends to pray with him and no one did, instead they decided to sleep. Then he suffered even more and died alone. 

Yes, Jesus is God, perfect and without sin, but he was a human, like me too. On the cross he took on all of our sin and our sorrows. God in the flesh bore the punishment of my sin and exchanged it with his righteousness. I no longer stand condemned, instead he sees me through Christ, and I stand justified. 

Maybe the anxiety (or any other bad situation you are experiencing) will never go away, maybe God won't remove that cup, but I want my prayer to be not my will but  His be done. His suffering saved me, and gave me life again. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.(Hebrews 4:15) In your suffering He will glorify too.

Someday He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.(Revelations 21:4)

It is finished! He is risen. 

HAPPY EASTER!

Laura.