I’ve been studying the scriptures this morning, aided by the Preach My Gospel manual (which is awesome, by the way). Anyways, there’s a little scripture study box on page 32 with the question, “What is the nature of God the Father and Jesus Christ?” And I thought, “I know what God’s like already; I’ll skip it.” But then I didn’t. And I’m glad.
I came up with 17 adjectives – just the main ones that stuck out – that describe our Father in Heaven. I’m not going to list them all here (that can be homework, if you really want to find out) but I was struck by one I hadn’t thought of before: brave.
God is brave. Growing up, I thought of “brave” as being an absence of fear, almost a devil-may-care invincibility. Over time, I started to assume that I was a wuss, because there are a lot of things that scare me. But guess what? I just looked it up. Brave means “ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage”. Courage is defined as “the ability to do something that frightens one”. Bravery isn’t the absence of fear at all – it’s the ability to do scary things.
Now here are the scriptures that gave me that adjective. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” God knew His Son would be abused here. Jesus knew it, too. But both were willing to allow that pain, because it would allow us to have everlasting life – living with God again. 1 John 4:8-9 “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” God knew that Christ would go through hell down here: that was the point. If He went through Hell for us, He could show us the way out again.
Now, I don’t know how God felt about this. I have no doctrinal citation here, besides these scriptures. But this is His Son – and He loves His children – so I’m guessing that He was scared. But being brave doesn’t mean that you’re never scared; it means you do the right thing anyway. Father in Heaven was willing to let His Son endure pain, sickness, and all the problems of mortal life in order to give us someone to turn to when we realize we need help. That’s brave – and I’m glad. ♥
the sandguppy 