I laid in bed last night, awakened by the wind, and my mind wandered to the ache in my daughter’s back.

I need to get her to the doctor, I thought. What if it’s something real? What if it’s not growing pains, like I suggested? What if?????

What a horrible place to find yourself in the middle of the night. You want to get back to sleep, but instead worry about little aches and turn them over into giants in your mind. I’ve faced a lot of giants in the middle of the night, but few of them towered so tall in the light of day.

When I worry about things beyond my control, it robs me of sleep and displays my lack of trust in God. In those times, I’m thinking life exists for me and what I want or need.

I remembered a verse I’d studied the day before–

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what He suffered. Hebrews 2:10

I repeated the phrase–God, for whom and through whom everything exists.

Everything exists FOR God and THROUGH God.

This life isn’t about me and what I want. It’s God’s world, and I’m living whatever He allows me, in His time, with His plans, for His own purposes. This brings a different perspective up against my worries and fears.

Through Jesus Christ, God brought many sons and daughters to glory.

Don’t ever forget He is a good God.

His heart is to rescue us from the kingdom of darkness, to transfer us over to the Kingdom of Light, and He accomplishes this through Jesus.

God made Jesus–the pioneer of our salvation–perfect through His sufferings. Jesus’ suffering qualified Him to redeem us. He became fully human, fully like us in our flesh and blood, which made Him able to save us, and to understand our humanity.

He suffered in all the ways we suffer. He endured life’s hassles and difficulties just like us, enduring through hunger and thirst and exhaustion and loss.

All the while, Jesus trusted in God, leaning on the everlasting arms.

All the while, God worked through His sufferings to bring about His greater purposes.

Jesus is called the pioneer of our salvation. In the Greek, this word applies to a leader, ruler, or prince.

In this context, Pioneer carries the sense of Champion–the one who came to the aid of all who were enslaved to the enemy.

He too shared in their humanity, so that by His death He might break the power of him who holds the power of death–that is, the devil–and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.  Hebrews 2:14-15

At one time, the devil held the power of death over us, because of our sin. He continues to tempt us, but no longer does he hold that power over us, because Jesus frees us. The devil no longer has any claim over us as believers, because Jesus has made us right before God.

Free, free, we are free at last.

We are free from fear of death, free from fear of all the things which turn into giants in the night.

Sometimes we just need the reminder of our freedom, the reminder of Jesus and who He is and all He’s done for us.

 

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