One of the impactful things said by Pastor Bart Sunday was that God knows what we go through because He went through it already. More importantly, God has already overcome that which would overwhelm us. Think about it. We, all of us, were completely estranged from God. Our sinfulness was a wall that separated us from God. But God loves us so much that He gave us–He made an agonizing and painful decision to sacrifice–His only Son that those walls might be broken down, to restore His relationship with us, to make us His adopted children, to give us eternal life.
That is the Father, overcoming the overwhelming. But the Son had a lot of overwhelming to overcome Himself. The primary overwhelming issue Jesus lived with was the knowledge that he would die a horrible painful death. He did this for us because he loves us soooo much. The stress of this is finally seen in the garden of Gethsemane. Luke records while praying his sweat became as blood. Matthew records that Jesus told his disciples that he was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. What did Jesus do when being overwhelmed? He prayed and submitted to God the Father. He overcame the overwhelming.
When we are feeling overwhelmed, we have the one source to overcome all. Just like Jesus, when he was being overwhelmed by sorrow, we can turn to the Father for support, help, and comfort. He knows what we are going through, He knows how we feel, and He knows the best solution. When we put our all into His hands, the overwhelming will become the overcome. Through Christ, we win.
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. -Romans 8:31-39
