The Worst Thing

To fight fear, my mind usually goes to the greatest extreme.

What’s the worst that could happen?

I go there mentally and play it all out. For many years, I’d wind up creating contingency plans and embracing unhealthy coping mechanisms for my worrying.

The “fear-fighting” would end with me feeling the desperation of everything depending on me.

Then, I received the free gift Jesus offers: eternal life and a forever relationship with God.

Because of Jesus, the worst thing is the one thing that can’t happen.

Jesus already went to the greatest extreme.

He suffered.

He was betrayed and abandoned.

He bore all of sin and its consequences.

He was condemned.

He was tortured.

He was separated from God.

He died.

He did not go to heaven after his death.

It doesn’t get worse or more hopeless than that for any of us. All our greatest fears are realized in those circumstances.

But Jesus endured the worst to freely gift us the best.

As we will celebrate on Easter Sunday, He defeated sin and death. He rose again. He gave life the final word and made hope more certain than our fears.

Because of Jesus, the worst can’t happen to those who belong to Him.

Whatever suffering we face, whatever betrayals, whatever sin we commit and suffer the consequences of, none of it is enough to keep us from the forgiveness of God bought by Jesus on the cross.

Nothing we fear has the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So we are never alone. Never without His help. Never without hope. Never beyond Him making good out of the bad. Never condemned by Him.

“Perfect love casts out fear,” and how perfectly He loves us! (1 John 4:18).

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