Jesus felt it all He felt the betrayal the burden and the lonliness He felt the suffering the pain and the longing He felt the absence of God and the presence the love and the forgiveness therefore to live a life in Christ does not protect you from feeling it guarantees that you will feel it all as He felt it all and through it all He will be with you always He will never leave you just as the Father was is and will always be in and with the Son so too are they in and with you through the Holy Spirit
JESUS FELT IT ALL By Robert Van Valkenburgh Meditations of a Gentle Warrior
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It shrinks your world down to the size of itself, offering no comfort or consolation in the process.
Because fear is selfish.
It demands all of your attention and cares nothing about you, your relationships, or your desires.
Fear is the cancerous destroyer of hopes and dreams, but as powerful as fear feels and as convincing as fear’s lies may sound, fear is ultimately an illusion.
Expose your fear to light, face it, and walk through it, and you will discover that fear only exists in your mind.
As such, fear is overcome by getting out of your head and into action.
Every once in a while, God winks at us just to see us smile.
At exactly the right moment, when we are experiencing doubt or insecurity, something will happen to let us know that He is there.
He is present and He is actively participating in our lives.
We need these reminders from time to time because life is difficult.
We can get fearful, frustrated, or lose faith.
We can feel disconnected and even abandoned or forsaken by God.
This is all part of the struggle of being human.
We are imperfect beings, incapable of experiencing God perfectly.
Because of this, we occasionally lose touch with Him, no matter how faithful we try to be, and find ourselves feeling lost and alone.
But, if we are willing, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, He will reveal himself to us in a way that is so personal, so subtle, and so powerful that His presence in our hearts and in our lives is undeniable.
And, we are left with nothing else to do but smile.
“There’s a lot to be said for surviving.” —Anonymous
‘Muddy Clouds’ by Ana
In my early 20’s, I was going through a rough patch. I had moved to a new town to start a new life. A high school dropout with no goals or aspirations, I was awkward, antisocial, and broke. In spite of my better judgement, I got into a relationship with a person who I knew was unstable and volatile. Predictably, nearly a year later, I was alone and heartbroken, unable to see past my own misery and pain.
For a several months, I spent my spare time in an empty apartment, wallowing in my own isolated misery, reading existentialist philosophy and listening to gothic-industrial music. It seemed at the time like my life was over before it had even begun. In my mind, this is how I would spend the rest of my days, working menial jobs, barely getting by, depressed, and alone.
In the year or so prior to this low point, I did manage to meet a few very good people, folks I could trust and rely on, several of whom I still count as friends more than twenty years later. One of these people was and continues to be a trusted advisor, a mentor to me, someone who understood where I had come from and who helped me to start over. He knew what I was going through and had listened to me whine and moan about it for quite a while. Finally, he looked at me and said something that I carry with me to this day when I am struggling or feeling down.
He said, “Survival is underrated. There’s a lot to be said for surviving. You’re fortunate to have made it this far.”
“As in life, so too it is in budo. As in budo, so too it is in life.”
Meditations on God 