Take This Cup From Me

Luke 22:41-42  He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.’

    In the great debate over whose will is supreme in your life, who is winning?  Is your will trumping God’s will?  Is it a case of you win most battle of will, and you let God win a few. Or have you given yourself over completely to following God’s will?  They are big questions to ask of yourself.  Sometime, soon I hope you will have a conversation with yourself.  It should start out something like this I hope.

‘Self, who is running our life?  Things have been a little rough when we have tried to manage things by ourselves.  I am sure Self, you remember the time when (fill in the blank).  That was like a poster child example of what not to do. Self, we have to make our mind up to stop this intermittent God in charge for a while then us in charge for a longer period of time.  This pattern in our lives is nothing but destructive.  We cannot survive this rollercoaster ride we have placed ourselves on.  After all Self, He is God, and we’re not.

    Okay, my feeble attempt at humor was feeble at best. But the intent is very serious. However you approach this issue, you must approach it and make up your mind. You cannot serve two masters.  Remember the words of Jesus from Luke 16? “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”  Who is your master?  Are you in the driver seat, or is God.  Jesus knows full well who is in charge.  The simple truth in His life pours out for us to cherish and adopt in the words ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done.’  Jesus asked for the cup that contained the pain, anguish, suffering and humiliation that was to be poured out in his life be taken.  Any one of us would ask this given the same circumstances knowing what Jesus knew.  Yet Jesus fully acknowledged that the will of the Father must be done and not His will.  If what was to be accomplished, a terrible price had to be paid.  And Jesus was willing to pay that price.  How humbling for us to read these words and know what transpired.  Jesus knew what was to come, how he would be treated, how he would be denied by the disciples and others in the future. Yet he said ‘not my will, but yours be done.’  We may have smaller issues in our lives to give up to the will of God.  It can become part of our routine to seek out God’s will in meditation and prayer.  And not just at Lent because we are reminded in the readings of the season.  This needs to become a pattern of behavior in our lives.  What would God have you do.  When you start with the simple things, yielding in the more complex times becomes easy. It becomes second nature or a matter of course.  It’s not only what Jesus would do, it is what Jesus did. And that should be enough to convince any of us it is the right thing to do.

     Prayer:  Lord we come before You humbly in prayer earnestly seeking Your will in our lives.  Guide is in Your path. Let Your will be know to us and clear to us in our lives today and everyday. Help us to remember to come to You first in prayer and not after our feeble attempts to run our lives leave us exhausted.  Help us Father for we are weak and You are strong. This we ask in the name of Jesus who with the Father and the Spirit at one, Amen.