Coping

Posted by Jeffrey Smith March 30th, 2016 1,857 Views 0 Comments

Acts: 3:19-Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.

Coping is a man-made way of dealing with something that is disturbing. it is no different than the inter-workings of a watch or a clock. It is put in place to function, but outside of that function it is useless. Coping does not lead to an end, it is simply to avoid something else. We have been taught that coping is what we must all do when we are faced with uncomfortable situations, and yet it is purely mechanical. Some of us cope using anger, fear, alcohol, poor judgment, but they are all a veil of something much deeper. Coping is not blood bought from Jesus. We were not liberated from one bondage to purposefully be enslaved in another. It is with this that I invite you to pour all of your blocks in this life on Jesus. Jesus is the servant King. He washed His disciples feet to prove it. He was humiliated, spit on, and deliberately made fun of to engage it. He was wrongfully accused to make us right. He went to the cross to fulfill it. We all have a block in truly understanding His role in our lives to some degree based on reverence. We can often rationalize the idea that Jesus is too busy for our problems. That He is too Holy to deal with our faults, or that He is this or that, and yet He is how we are to be delivered from all situations. 

Jesus purposely sat with the worst of the worst to deliver them from this one fear, that we are not good enough to be saved. The problem we have in this world is that too many people want to get their wrongs right before they are reverent enough to go to Him. That is the opposite of what Jesus desires.  Repenting literally means: changing of one’s mind. This is what is important. When we repent, it is changing of our mind from what we can do, to what Jesus has done on our behalf. Coping is what we do on our behalf outside of Jesus. Coping seems legit when we hear it. Look at the ridiculousness of how it functions in our society today. I recently looked at a news story where someone wrote the name Trump in chalk on a college campus. Chalk washes off with water, and yet it was so damaging to some people there were emergency counselors hired for people to deal with how it affected the eyes of those who saw the horrifying name Trump. It appears to me that we have symptoms of a society that is focused on coping in this life and not on Jesus. 

When we read about stories like this, we think, that is silly and ridiculous and it is, yet take that very situation and apply it to your life in any instance. If you are facing something that needs emergency counseling regardless if it washes off with water, or takes total eradication, then look no further than Jesus. He is our wonderful counselor (Isaiah 9:6), He is the one we need. We don't have to cope with anything, we just have to see Him move in our lives and take away the filth with His Living Water. Let Him wash away the evil, sin, lack, and fear in our lives altogether. We are unified in Jesus and it is our blood bought right to never cope but to depend on Him, and Him alone. Trust Jesus, and lay down all of the man-made mechanisms that enslave.

Thank You Father for sending us Jesus, who completely takes away our fear, anxiety, sin, disease, and lack in every way.  Thank You for giving us our redeemer and making us new in Him.  In Jesus name, amen.