This is part 2 of a 5-part series. View the entire series here.
He went on a little farther and bowed with His face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from Me. Yet I want Your will to be done, not Mine.” – Matthew 26:39 NLT
In Matthew 26, the night before Jesus goes to the cross, He prays three times that He would not have to endure the suffering that lay before Him. He was grieved “to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38), and His sweat “fell to the ground like drops of blood” (Luke 22:44 NLT). Maybe it seems shocking that the One through whom the redemption of the world would come didn’t want to do it. But here we see the humanity of Jesus on full, heartwrenching display. Like us, He had longings, fears, and trepidations. He knew what He was being asked to do, and still He fell face down and prayed, If it’s at all possible, Father, please don’t make Me do this.
In Jesus’ example, we find permission to bring our requests to the Lord, but also a model for what we do with those requests after we’ve shared them: surrender the outcome back to God.
We have a way of believing we know what’s best for ourselves. We want the easiest, quickest, most pain-free path toward our goal. We don’t want to be inconvenienced or side-tracked, and we certainly don’t want to do anything outside of our comfort zone.
It takes an incredible amount of strength to be honest with God about what you really want—and an incredible amount of humility to then hold that out before Him with open hands and say, But Your will be done, Lord, not mine. Because sometimes His will may involve those very inconveniences we tried so hard to avoid. His plans for us may require that we step out of our comfort zone and into territory that is completely unfamiliar to us. In order for God’s glory to be displayed through us, we have to first align our hearts and wills with His.
Each time Jesus prayed, He ended with surrender. He trusted that His Father’s plan was greater than His fear, that His suffering would be worth it if it meant reconciling all things back to God.
Take some time to pray and, as Philippians 4:6 says, make your requests known to God. Then surrender the outcome of your requests back to Him. You won’t ever know yourself and the depths of your heart as well as God knows you—and that means that His plans for you and your family are always going to be better than anything you could dream up in your own strength. Rest in the truth that you never have to bear the weight of your future alone; He is with you every step, guiding, comforting, and upholding you.
