Matthew 26:39

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Matthew 26:39

As Christians we all strive to be more like Jesus. After all isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing?

One of the things that I often find hardest, is when Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane. He’s there, it’s nighttime, and he is alone, afraid of the pain and torment that’s to come.

He stepped apart from others in order to spend time with his Father. He poured out his heart to the Father, acknowledging the fact that he was afraid and didn’t want to take the path that was set before him.

He knew what was needed, and that it had been part of God’s plan all along, and yet the idea of what lay ahead was so overwhelming to Jesus that he asked “Father, if there’s any way to take this cup from me then let it pass.”

Yet he finished that prayer with the following statement: Thy will be done.

It’s the times in our lives that we’re invested in the outcome, where we can’t picture life with any different resolution than the one we want most, that it’s hardest to be most like Jesus. When a loved one is in the hospital, sick and possibly dying. When a slick and dark road and speeding car combine to create a sickening, inevitable crash. When the market bottoms out, and you know you’re about ready to lose a lot of money.

There’s nothing you can do, but dread the inevitable, and hope and pray for a different outcome than the one you know is surely to come.
I’m sure that there was a part of Jesus that dreaded the idea of going to the cross and of what was to come at Calvary. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. Who would ever want to go through such pain?

Yet when it comes right down to it, he subjugated his will and his desires to those of the Father, recognizing that God’s will was part of a perfect plan.

I have recently had to take something very dear to me, and offer it back to God in a similar way. I wanted a specific outcome more than anything else, and in wanting it more than anything else, I risked losing something precious to me, without even realizing it at the time.
I finally had to stop trying to force a specific outcome, and turn to God saying, “Lord, I don’t know what your will is here, but I’m willing to wait and find out from you. May your will be done.”

I’m grateful that, within 48 hours of doing that, circumstances that I’d been trying to “make” happen, came together naturally.

But how often do we try to force something or someone to follow our will? I know it’s a trap I can fall into easily at times, even in my writing.

Yet, if we want God to use our talents and the gifts that He gave us, we have to be willing to relinquish control of them to him. What are you holding too tightly to?