The very essence of Jesus’ time on earth was dotted with pain and joy, with laughing and grieving, sometimes in the very same breath.

I’ve been in this season recently where I’ve encountered a potential disconnect between my will and God’s will. I’m hoping and praying for something seemingly impossible. Something that could very well be in God’s plan, but maybe not. I don’t know yet. In this tension God is teaching me some things about my relationship to his will. And one of the ways he’s taught is through Summit’s Gospel Reading Plan.

What is your response when you encounter Jesus? Not necessarily a conversation, but when something in your life clearly suggests that  Jesus is at work, or you read a verse of Scripture and find it striking.

As we have begun our journey through reading the Gospels and discovering who Jesus really was as he walked this earth, I have kept this one verse on a loop in the back of my mind. As I’ve allowed the stories of the Gospel of John to play out in my imagination, I find myself looking for the moments in which Jesus faced all of the struggles I face in my own life today—from the intense and painful moments of my life to the seemingly mundane and innocuous ones.

I once asked my 9th-grade girls at Edge if Jesus feels real to them. I asked if they felt the bigness of what God did for us in sending the Messiah to die for our messes. I don’t know that they actually understood what I was asking, but I kept going. “It’s one thing to logically know it, it’s another thing to feel it,” I said to them. Then I told them what I so desperately wish someone had told me when I was their age, “It’s OK if it doesn’t feel real to you right now. It didn’t feel real to me for a long time.”