Gethsemane (Mark 14: 32-42)
‘Abba Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will but, but what you will.’
Mark 14:36
There in the Garden of tears my heavy load He chose to bear; His heart with sorrow was torn, ‘Yet not my will but Yours,’ He said.
The words from Graham Kendrick’s hymn ‘From heaven You came.’ Words that sum up not only Jesus anguish but his choice to be obedient to God. Humanly speaking if there was a point in Jesus life where he could have said, ‘No! I can’t do this,’ it would have been in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus famous words ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will’ are not words of resignation or defeat. They are words of worship, obedience and trust. Father, I don’t understand, I can’t go on, it is to much for me. Father please change this because it frightens me, it overwhelms me, because I’d rather face anything than this.
Yet Lord, my trust in you, my faith in you, my desire to be obedient to you, to live through whatever you set before me is greater than my fear.
Have you faced your Gethsemane yet? Some of us will have, some of us are and some of us will. There will be those who say if our faith was greater, we would have not had to face it, or if our faith had of been stronger, we would have overcome, we would not have been as deeply distressed (v33). Yet Jesus himself was overcome with anxiety and fear. He had an inexpressible desire to do anything else, he called out to God to change what lay ahead. God’s answer to his only Son was to not take any of it away.
This morning I invite each of us to take up the roll of the disciples who watched and prayed with Jesus. Pray for those we know who are facing their garden of Gethsemane, fearful and overwrought with distress.
For those of us who are facing our Gethsemane… be still and know you are being prayed for this morning. Be still and know that ‘My God will Stand beside Me.’ Use the song below to help focus on God’s presence in your garden of tears knowing that you do not bear your heavy load alone.
Prayer Lord, for those in the garden of tears, their heavy load we pray you would bear. Where their hearts with sorrow are torn, we pray your healing as you take upon yourself their pain. Amen
For those in the Garden…
Prayer Lord Jesus, come…….
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