Thy Will Be Done

 

I don’t always know God’s will for every facet of my life, and I rarely know what God is planning in this world of ours. So when I don’t know how to pray, I have learned to pray God’s will be done. That is what Jesus taught his disciples to pray “Thy will be done” (Matt 6:10).

The Jesus we see in the garden of Gethsemane is a Jesus we are not used to seeing in the Gospels. Mark says that Jesus was overwhelmed with sorrow to the very point of death (Mark 14:34). As Jesus prayed, his body and his soul were overwhelmed with the impending fear of death.  Strangely, Jesus had never shown fear, not when he battled Satan in the wilderness, nor when he barely escaped death in his home town of Nazareth, not even when he confronted demons or his enemies who wanted him dead.

Why this fear? Jesus was fearful in the garden, not out of fear of his physical death, but his spiritual death. Jesus understood that he was about to become sin for the whole world. He knew the wages of sin was death. Jesus asked his Father, “…if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). We see Jesus’ humanity and his understanding of what he would have to endure spiritually, so he prayed for another way. Jesus asked his Father to take away the cup.

What did Jesus see in the cup? Imagine the appalling filth, the most wretched of human sins, and you have the contents of the cup. Jesus saw the sin of the world, and he recoiled so much that the thought of the cup repulsed him.

Jesus, however, finished his prayer with these words, “take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). What a small word will is, but what a difference it makes. Jesus asked his Father if there was any other way, yet what he wanted most was his Father’s will. What a prayer, and what a model for us! We often beg God for deliverance, but where is the part of the prayer where we pray for God’s will?  Every emotion and every thought in Jesus’ mind and spirit demanded deliverance from the cup.  Jesus knew what was ahead, but despite that sadness that overwhelmed him, he chose the will of the Father.

Where is the man or woman of God who can submit every prayer and petition through the filter of God’s will?  More important than the miracle we want or the deliverance we crave is God’s will.  May we, like Jesus, learn to pray with every petition “...yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).