Lent: With One VoiceSample

A CRY FROM THE GARDEN

The garden of Gethsemane (which means olive press), is Jesus’s favorite place of prayer. What a fitting place for Jesus to be pressed down with in agony and pray with a heavy, broken heart. So heavy was the burden of His heart that the pores of His flesh poured with a bloody sweat!

What an example He sets before us. In Gethsemane, we see Jesus praying for relief from this great trial. Yet, He submitted to the Father’s will. There is depth and agony in the prayer that this ‘hour might pass from Him’. The hour will shortly be defined as the time for the ‘Son of Man’ (the term Jesus uses about Himself), to be ‘delivered into the hands of sinners.’

Jesus prays ‘Abba, Father’, using the intimate and tender title for God. Here we are face to face with the agony of love. The impending hour in which the Son of Man must suffer, as Jesus has prophesied, is the cup He must drink. ‘It was’, wrote J.C. Ryle, ‘a sense of the unutterable weight of our sins and transgressions which were then specially laid upon Him.’

This is the highest measure of practical godliness and holiness. The surrender of my will to God’s will in all things is godliness.

FOR REFLECTION
• Do you know God’s will for your life? Are you living out His will?
• To obey God is the best thing in your life. What would you like to surrender to God right now?

PRAYER
Father, I want to know Your will but most of all I want to have the willingness to do Your will. I confess that I am weak but with Your help I will obey You. Give me the grace to surrender this area of my life to You.