My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.
Yet not as I will, but as you will.
Matthew 26:38-39
Some of my favorites times at Beaverton Foursquare church have been our monthly prayer and worship nights. I highly encourage you to come to these if you have not yet. I love them because we truly press in and make space for God. We don't have the restraints of needing to open up the parking spaces from one service to the next, and there is a lingering presence of community with one another and with God.
We have also explored different methods of prayer and worship during these evenings: personal prayer time, a time of group worship, and a time of really pressing in to intercede and call out to God as an army of believers.
Together we find strength as we persist in prayer and believe in the power of our resurrected King.
But there are always those impossible questions to answer in the times we have prayed and prayed persistently, only to be disappointed:
Why do we even pray?
Does it matter?
Does God change his mind or decide to alter the natural of course of an event or situation?
Though I don't know the answers to all of these questions, I do believe that prayer matters. In a big way. Prayer is an intimate way in which our all-knowing and all-powerful God allows us to approach him and engage in relationship with him. He longs for us to come to him with our troubles and our requests, like a loving father would hope for his children. His intent for us is good, and what breaks our hearts as we cry in the palm of his hands breaks his heart as well.
Our staff has been on a discipleship journey called Rooted. It's really an incredible experience that has taken us back to the "basics" of learning to follow Jesus, except in a very non-basic way. It's a journey meant to teach, empower and equip believers to live in a deeper level of connection with God, creating a culture of exponential discipleship in and throughout a body of believers.
This week, we read about and studied some of these very questions. Jesus teaches us how to pray in many different ways. We can read in scripture about the frequency in which Jesus prayed, the depth of his prayers and even the content and emotion behind many of his prayers. From our Rooted journals, we read about Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, and this quote really made me stop:
In the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before Jesus was killed, He prayed for God the Father to change the plan for the next day, and even though the plan remained the same, Jesus found strength in listening to His Father. Prayer is not just talking to God; it is giving space for Him to communicate back to us.
...Jesus Teaches us to ask, but to also understand that our Father in heaven reserves the right to answer according to His wisdom and love for us.Jesus prays to his Father not just once, but three times in the garden (paraphrased):
My soul is grieved with sorrow. Take this from me! I don't want to do this! But I want your will for my life and for your kingdom. If it is possible, please get me out of this. If it is not possible, I will ask for your will to be done.
Jesus' request to be saved from his situation goes unanswered.
He asked. Many times.
He persisted.
And yet his request, in the midst of his anguish, was still aligned with the heart of his Father.
Yet not as I will, but as you will.
Though Jesus, in his human limitations, prayed to his Father with a deep longing to be relieved from his situation, he found strength just in being in the presence of his Father. In his request to God, he teaches us to ask. Yes, ask! But to ask with the understanding that the Lord knows the full picture and the ultimate outcome of everything.
If Jesus' prayer of distress would have been answered according to his own will, we wouldn't be talking about him today as the resurrected King, the hope of salvation.
Our hope of this gift of salvation wouldn't even be a thing.
We would be in bondage to law and bondage to the sin of the world.
God the Father turned a prayer of desperation in the garden into a moment where we can learn the power of approaching him with our requests, aligning our hearts with his will. I was so encouraged to realize in that chapter on prayer that Jesus approached the presence of God through prayer and could draw strength from that time to endure his painful journey.
Many of us have painful journeys in which we need a supernatural strength to endure. In our prayer and worship nights at Beaverton and our own times of personal prayer, we will persist in praying and asking and believing for redemption and healing!
While it is still difficult to understand prayer, and how and why God chooses to save some and not others, I am deeply grateful for a God who clothes us in righteousness, strength, peace and eternal hope that can only be found because Jesus' own prayer of desperation went unanswered.
Jamie
jrobison@b4church.org
Wonderful and heartfelt words. I uttered 'not as I will, but as you will' many times through recent years. God's promises are true!
ReplyDelete