Take It to Jesus: A 3-Day Devotional by Anna GoldenExemplo

Day 1: The One We’ve Been Waiting For

While I was recording my live album in Franklin, Tennessee, I received tragic news. The boyfriend of one of my closest friends, Steph, had passed away suddenly in the middle of the night. In that moment, all I could think was, “What do you tell someone who is faced with the most unimaginable grief?”

A few months later I was back in Nashville for a songwriting trip. I sat down with my friends, Monty Rivera and Jessie Early. We had written everything we “needed” to write for the week, but I remember asking them, “Could we just write a song for my friend, Steph?”

The entire songwriting session was filled with tears, questions, grief, and an undeniable understanding that the only person who could ever make anything OK was Jesus. That’s how we wrote “Take It To Jesus.” One of the text messages I had sent Steph the night I got the news quite literally became the song’s first verse, which starts with the truest of statements: “I have no idea what to say right now.” It makes me think of the story in John 4 where we meet the woman at the well.

I love this story because I truly believe it shows the character of Jesus, especially in the midst of heartache — the way He sits with us, the way He understands us, the way He knows us. The woman at the well experienced living water the day she met Him. At the very end of the story, John 4:28-29 says, “…the woman left her water jar and ran off to her village and told everyone, ‘Come and meet a man at the well who told me everything I’ve ever done! He could be the One we’ve been waiting for.’”

Like the woman at the well, I want us to discover how it feels to be completely restored by the One who carried our cross so we can take up His charge to start carrying others. I can’t even begin to imagine what our ministries, relationships, and our world might look like if we carried one other the way we’ve been carried. I want to be like the woman at the well who dropped everything to run and tell everyone: “I have found the One we’ve been waiting for!” I want to be the woman who takes people to Jesus.