“And I, if I am lifted up from the earth,

will draw all peoples to Myself.”

John 12:32

Gloomy days. We all face them at times in our lives. Depression, discouragement, and grief are spiritual blockers that come to invade our souls and minds. But sadly enough, a lot of God’s children allow these things to come and clog up their faith stream. They don’t realize that if they wallow in it long enough, these things will eventually kill them.

Oh, don’t be so dramatic, it is only a momentary downtime for me, I would get over it, you might say. Oh, but you don’t know that the devil has already put one over you. While you are immersing yourself in your self-pity party, the enemy is sucking the very life out of you. But I don’t know what else I should do. Yes, you have an option to either lift up your problems or lift up Jesus in your life! Because the longer you dwell on your problems, the higher you promote that problem in your mind. You are not getting rid of it, you are exalting your problem to the point that it looks impossible for you to get out of it. So what should I do? You need to unburden yourself from all your cares by laying them all down at the feet of Jesus and start lifting Him up in praise. The moment you lift Him up in praise, you will see that what you are feeling or facing can’t be compared to the love He has for you.

God knows how you feel when you are feeling the worst because He was once a man and he felt everything we felt. However, Jesus chose not to allow earthly emotion or sadness to overcome Him. He learned to surrender all of His cares to the Father and receive strength and grace from him to complete his course on earth. Imagine for a second, if you already knew that your life was meant for one purpose and that is to die a brutal death on the cross for the sins of all mankind, and had to speak about your own death every time you are with your friends. That was Jesus’s life. But He wasn’t depressed, discouraged, or overwhelmed with fear from his calling. How could that be possible? It is because Jesus was too busy lifting up the Father in his own life by doing the Father’s works on the earth.

Now, you are given the same choice: to either be drenched in your problems and grief or be free from them. The quickest way you can be free from them is by praising Him and thanking Him for all that He has done in your life up to this point. Go ahead and lift Him up today! When He is lifted up, He will lift you up with Him!

Scripture Reading: John 12:27-36

This Devotional is from:

“Live The New You – 365 Days Devotional in Living the Real You”