Do you think Jesus ever had to leave the room so that he wouldn’t act unChristlike? Maybe that sounds dumb to ask, but I was asking it the other day as I had to leave a room before I gave in to my emotional overwhelm and let somebody have it. That was when I wondered if Jesus had ever done the same. And then I thought, ‘well, yeah, Jesus just did it in me’.
It says he never did any wrong, and he also taught that if your right hand was causing you to do wrong–then cut it off. So if leaving a room kept him from acting wrongly when his human emotions were right there ready to explode, then yes, I’d say he cut it off and left the room and went and collected himself.
So then, the next question was, were the emotions wrong?
I, in my self-talk, was kinda leaning that way, but God has a funny way of being merciful where we, often, are hard. Love never just outright condemns. He looks at the why. He looks at the heart to get the motive of the behavior—and of the emotions.
I was reading in Psalm 77 one day and I felt like it lined out my thinking. It’s all about the author’s emotions. He was kind of all over the place. Lots of “oh woe is me” at the beginning, and then in verses 6-9 he more or less ‘leaves the room’ and starts challenging his own self-talk with questions like: “Will the Lord reject forever? And will he never ever be favorable again? Has God stopped being kind and loving? Has he withdrawn compassion?”
Then verse 10 says, “it is my infirmity that the right hand of the Most High has changed.” In other words, God hasn’t changed. It’s me, my own emotional ground that’s causing me to be all “woe is me”.
He is still love, but it’s the guy’s grief in his human weakness, that makes him think the Lord had changed.
And that was me. It was the end of a long and tiring day. My feet hurt, I was exhausted and that makes me impatient and grumpy. Does that make it okay? Is that an excuse? No…. But it is okay to retreat and collect myself. If I weren’t so tired, I wouldn’t be feeling that way. Maybe Jesus did or didn’t have to, but I know I do and there’s no condemnation from him that I do.
I think he wants me to be my personality, but just recognize my limits and act within those boundaries. How will I ever do it in a situation when I may be harshly persecuted? Idk? I do know, he will give me the needed grace at the time. However, for now there’s grace in taking those few moments away.