Gethsamane Courage

Matthew 26.36-46
4.2.06 DBC

Gethsemane Courage
-The Will of God in your Life-

We were recently forwarded an email titled finding inner peace. It went something like this:

I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me, and we could all use a little more calmness in our lives. By following the simple advice I heard on the Dr. Phil show, I have finally found inner peace. Dr. Phil proclaimed, “The Way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you’ve started and never finished.”

So I looked around my house to see all the things I have started and hadn’t finished, and before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a package of Oreos, a bag of Doritos, Cheetos and tortilla chips, a bottle of White Zinfandel, the rest of the cheese cake, my old Prozac prescription and a box of chocolates . . . you have no idea of how fantastic I now feel. Please pass this on to those who might be in need of inner peace.

While I cannot endorse this as a serious step to inner peace, I know full well the desire for inner peace.

We, humans, long for inner peace. We need to feel whole and complete. We need meaning and significance. We are meaning makers and meaning seekers.

Surely, being in the center of God’s will brings inner peace?

What is God’s will for your life and for your family?

In the face of death, we see Christ discover courage and inner peace in surrendering to God’s will (Matthew 26.36-46). In this message, I want to examine applications for knowing and doing God’s will in our lives that we can learn from Christ's submitting to God’s will.

Let me first offer this observation:

God’s will never changes, however, sometimes there exist multiple possibilities and ways to accomplish God’s will in our lives.

One thing that I noticed in today’s passage is that Christ, after collapsing to the ground in great angst, prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me . . . ”

Jesus knew that all things are possible with God (Mark 14.36). The statement if it is possible was a first class conditional meaning that Jesus was asking the Father since all things were possible to remove this cup from him.

The phrase this cup was an OT metaphor for one’s ultimate life purpose. For example, “Lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.” (Psalm 16.5)

One’s life, however, is not always singularly fixed. There are times and moments when God’s will can be accomplished in an indefinite number of possibilities.

There is wonderful responsibility, gracious freedom and wide-open possibilities for our lives when we recognize that God many times has a wide range of possibilities for accomplishing his will in our lives.

*God is not strapped for options.
*God is not limited in possibilities.
*God does not operate out of a static unchanging fixed predetermined blue print for your life!

In your life and in all of creation, God is the God who can do all things (Mark 14.36)!

This reality, when you belief that God is able to do all things, can make all of the difference when you consider his will for you life.

This past week, Earl had talked to us about the difference between prayer warriors and prayer worriers.

If we believe that God can move mountains and that he can (in many and most situations) accomplish his will through an infinite number of ways, then we will pray more earnestly.

Thomas G. Long tells the following story:

[A Pastor received] a very disturbing telephone call [at the church office]. A part-time staff member, who had been out in his neighborhood walking his dog, had been mugged, stabbed in the heart and rushed to the hospital, and was now in intensive care with virtually no prospect for survival. When the word spread among the church staff, they gathered spontaneously to pray. Standing around the communion table, each person prayed. [Most of the staff] offered sincere prayers, but mostly polite and mild petitions, prayers that spoke of comfort and hope and changed hearts, but prayers that had already faced the hard certain facts of almost certain death.

Then the custodian prayed . . . [It] was the most athletic prayer . . . The custodian wrestled with God, shouted to God, anguished with God. His finger jabbed in the air and his body shook.

“You’ve done it many times, Lord! You’ve done it for others, you’ve done it for me, now I am begging you to do it again! Do it for him! Save him, Lord!”

[It was said by one in the presence of this prayer] “It was if he grabbed God by the lapels and refused to turn God loose . . . “When we heard that prayer, we just knew that God would indeed come to heal. In the face of that desperate cry for help, God would have been ashamed not to save the man’s life.” And so it happened. (Thomas G. Long in Christian Century 3.21.06, Just as I am, p.18)

And likewise, the Scripture says that Christ in desperation fell to the ground and earnestly prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup, be taken from me. Yet not as I will [desire], but as you will."

We said earlier:

God’s will never changes, however, sometimes there exist multiple possibilities and ways to accomplish God’s will in our lives.

AND now we must also consider that:

With God’s ultimate and final will for our lives there exists only one way that we can fully participate in his ultimate calling on our lives; that is, we must voluntarily lay down our lives before God (just like Jesus did).

That is what Christ demonstrated that night in the garden of Gethsemane.

*He voluntarily gave up his life.
*He selflessly laid down his life for humanity’s salvation.
*He displayed Gethsemane courage.

While Jesus knew that God could, in his power and might, do all things he also knew that sacrificial love and commitment was the only way to ultimately save humanity from separation from (because of the self centeredness of sin) God.

That night in Gethsemane Jesus had many options. He could have fled. He could have said to God, “Do as you did in the day’s of Noah, destroy humanity and start all over again.” Jesus, however, knew that God’s promise and will for humanity could only perfectly be accomplished by a pure and fully God-lived life freely given for our salvation.

Michael Philips (his book, Make Me like Jesus) writes of the secondary and primary will of God in our lives. There are a number of various ways and types of God’s secondary will in your life. God’s primary will for your life, however, is that you would become a son or daughter to Him fashioned and formed into the likeness of Jesus (pure love, self-giving, and holy).

So where are you in all of this talk of God's will in your life? Do you limit what God can do? Do you freely volunteer and lay down your life to God's ultimate will in your life? Jesus is our great example and model for seeking and doing God's will.

Like Jesus, conforming to God's ultimate will comes not without struggle. We too struggle. We find, nevertheless, Gethsamane Courage when we look to Christ.