The Jesus I Wanted vs. the Jesus I Needed

When everything in your life falls apart at the same time, you expect Jesus to show up in a certain way. You expect Him to arrive like He did at Lazarus’s tomb—calling the dead back to life, shifting the atmosphere, proving to everyone watching that He is who He says He is.

You expect resurrection Jesus. Miracle Jesus. Victor Jesus.

At least, that’s the Jesus I wanted.

I wanted the Jesus who would heal my daughter instantly. The Jesus who would silence the memories that tormented her. The Jesus who would restore her innocence with a word. The Jesus who would straighten out the path beneath my family’s feet.

The Jesus who would stamp out the trauma the way He cast out demons.

I wanted the Jesus who fixes what breaks.

But the Jesus who met me in those months wasn’t the resurrected Christ standing outside an empty tomb.

He was the Christ struggling under the weight of a cross. A Christ who sweat blood. A Christ who felt alone. A Christ who carried the sins of others at the expense of His own body.

A Christ who looked heavenward and asked, “Why?”

A Christ who obeyed even when obedience hurt.

I had spent years preaching about Him, loving Him, trusting Him. But this was the first time I felt Him as a fellow sufferer. Not distant. Not theoretical. Not theological. But present in pain—mine, my daughter’s, my family’s.

There is a version of Jesus that lives in our expectations.

The Jesus we imagine. The Jesus we want. The Jesus who lines up neatly with our desires for life to make sense. But there is another Jesus—the real one—who steps into places we never wanted to go, who leads us into nights so dark we can’t tell the sky from our own grief.

I didn’t want the Jesus who let my daughter walk through trauma He could have prevented. I didn’t want the Jesus who asked me to minister to a man whose sin resembled the wound in my own family.

I didn’t want the Jesus who stayed silent when I demanded answers. I didn’t want the Jesus who let obedience feel like crucifixion instead of blessing.

But that was the Jesus I needed.

The Jesus who doesn’t run from suffering but enters it fully. The Jesus who doesn’t promise to erase pain but promises to redeem it. The Jesus who teaches love not through ease, but through sacrifice.

The Jesus who whispers, “Follow Me,” even when our steps lead to Gethsemane before they lead to Galilee.

There were nights when I sat outside under the open sky and prayed without words—just silence, breath, and ache. I didn’t feel abandoned. I didn’t question His existence. I didn’t lose my faith. But I lost the version of Jesus I had built in my mind.

The Jesus who existed to make life feel manageable. The Jesus who kept pain at a distance. The Jesus who answered quickly and clearly.

The Jesus who prevented storms instead of joining me in them.

In His place stood a Jesus who was far more costly and far more real.

A Jesus who obeyed when He didn’t want to. A Jesus who forgave those who didn’t deserve it. A Jesus who carried people who hurt Him. A Jesus who walked willingly toward pain because His Father asked Him to.

A Jesus whose love wasn’t soft—it was sacrificial.

When I looked back at the months behind me—the prison visits, the Redlands night, the collapse in my home, my daughter trembling, my own tears falling in a park—I realized Jesus hadn’t failed me.

He had simply refused to be the version I wanted.

Instead, He had become the Jesus I needed: The Jesus who teaches us how to carry crosses we never expected to lift. The Jesus who doesn’t make the world painless but makes us able to endure it. The Jesus who stays close in the suffering instead of removing it.

Slowly, painfully, quietly, I learned this: Faith isn’t trusting God to keep us from every wound. Faith is trusting Him to heal us through wounds we never understood. And discipleship isn’t walking behind the Jesus who calms every storm.

It is walking behind the Jesus who sleeps in the boat while the waves rise, asking us to trust Him even when everything feels out of control.

That was the Jesus who held me.

Not the Jesus I expected.

The Jesus I needed.

The one who knew sorrow.

The one who carried sin that wasn’t His.

The one who walked into darkness so we wouldn’t walk there alone.

Faith in the Dark is Jesse Velez’s true story of enduring faith, costly obedience, and discovering God’s presence in seasons of grief and silence. Best to read the 12-Part Series in order: