“But you will exceed all of them. \u00a0For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”<\/em><\/p>\nIf this is the case, then Judas acted out of obedience and faith in Jesus and he was given the strength to follow through with Jesus’ request. \u00a0Imagine for a moment being Judas once things had been set in motion and he was outside the loving gaze and light of Jesus. \u00a0Imagine the torture and suffering he put himself through questioning his actions, wondering if he had acted within the will of God or made a mistake. \u00a0Imagine the tortured thoughts he experienced as he second guessed his actions under the criticism and hatred of those who had once called him brother, his fellow disciples.<\/p>\n
It is so hard to keep our hearts and our heads clear and open to God’s message, and then once we are bogged down with fear of a mistake or acting selfishly rather than within His will, we pull yet further away from Him and our faith is so quickly drained from us.<\/p>\n
I think it is in these moments of fear that we have to breath deep, and know our faith is being tested. \u00a0The moment our faith begins draining from us, is moment that we must hold tight to it and thank God for our current suffering, questioning and lack of confidence in our actions or words. \u00a0We must continue to reflect even more on His perfect plan and remember that sometimes acting within His will might not be comfortable. \u00a0If we have stepped off the path, there is a lesson within each step and we must remember that He loves us so much that He will not let us stray far before He begins nudging us back on track.<\/p>\n
I said something a few days ago that I so deeply regret, that I can now actually appreciate why some people take a vow of silence. \u00a0I am not sure if I was on track or off track with what I said, but even through my regret I am trying very hard to be thankful for experiencing these feelings of regret, for the increase in my desire to be pleasing to God (through silence if necessary) and for yet another opportunity to empathize with Judas.<\/p>\n
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You for everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some believe that Jesus told Judas Iscariot to betray him. In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus said, “But you will exceed all of them. \u00a0For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” If this is the case, then Judas … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7,298,56],"tags":[196,54,67,542,1463,27,980,984,92,983,440,146,15,139,945,55,297,53,12,51,10,979,978,974,975,977,976,720,981,225,58,588,299,441,982,338,90,52,16],"ppma_author":[2854],"class_list":["post-815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-empathy","category-faith","category-gratitude","category-suffering","tag-actions","tag-best","tag-christ","tag-empathize","tag-empathy","tag-faith-2","tag-father","tag-for-you-will-sacrifice-the-man-that-clothes-me","tag-god","tag-gospel","tag-gratitude-2","tag-iscariot","tag-jesus","tag-judas","tag-judas-iscariot","tag-life","tag-lord","tag-my","tag-my-best-life","tag-our","tag-our-best-life","tag-please","tag-pleasing","tag-regret","tag-regrets","tag-repent","tag-repentance","tag-sacrifice","tag-second-guess","tag-suffer","tag-suffering-2","tag-thank","tag-thank-you","tag-thankful","tag-the-gospel-of-judas","tag-words","tag-you","tag-your","tag-your-best-life"],"authors":[{"term_id":2854,"user_id":1,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sbernadac","display_name":"Sarah Bernadac","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d6f6fd27725929c335efc2f3f617d947991447401cb02a573de4c068d7361377?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Bernadac","first_name":"Sarah","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":816,"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions\/816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=815"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ourbestlife.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fppma_author&post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}