In the Garden With Jesus - a Lent Journey for TeensSample

It takes effort.

We’ve all suffered through something, right? Maybe a boring lesson, or a never-ending school assembly. Maybe a huge fight within your group of friends or a misunderstanding between you and your parents. How did you handle these struggles?

Jesus also had struggles, yet His response was to pray with greater effort and to sweat blood. Yes, He sweated blood!

We live in a time of comfort and quick shortcuts to get to what we want and where we want to be. You might often hear a friend say, it doesn’t work for me, because it’s uncomfortable and it takes too much effort.

There will be challenging times in our lives where we can get anxious and really sad, and then fall into a great struggle.

That’s when we need great effort and intensity, unto the place where we pray until we can’t anymore.

Commitment doesn’t require only intensity. Jesus also calmed down and encouraged His disciples to sleep (Matt 26:45) after He had asked them earlier to resist sleep and pray with Him with greater effort. Our personalities determine our tendency to want to do too much (effort/work) or too little (relaxation/rest). Jesus invites us through His struggle to grow in discernment, to find the unforced rhythms of His grace to be a great gift.

Exercise:

Ask Holy Spirit to make you aware of the way in which you deal with moments of suffering.

Prayer:

God, I’m asking for a deep awareness of Your love for me and Your work in me.