Prayer and Submission (Luke 22:39-46)

"In the Garden of Gethsemane" by Nikolai Ge

This passage is a fascinating one for me. We get more of a glimpse into the inner life of Christ that just about any other moment in the Gospels. After all, we do not have any writings by Jesus himself. That has interesting implications for us as Christians, about God, His revelation, the way He wants us to continue the mission of Christ in the world, etc.

Here though, we see Jesus wrestling with very real, very human, emotions. We see anxiety, fear, and dread of what He is about to face. Yet, He is committed to trusting Gods plan and submitting Himself to God’s will. This is a good example for us as believers. We do not always have the clear understanding of what God is doing that Jesus did. However, we can trust Him and commit to His plans. In doing that, we may face anxiety, fear, and even doubts. Those things are not sins or signs of a lack of faith. People often say that faith is belief in an absence of evidence. This is nonsense. The evidence for the truth of the Gospel is there to be found. However, faith is indeed as trust in spite of feeling. We cannot always trust our emotions, instincts, and thoughts. But we can trust God.

In the midst of the challenges we face in our faith, prayer is the stance we should take. When we fear, when we are tempted to worry, we turn to God. When we struggle to trust, we need to talk to Him about it. Jesus was strengthened in the most unimaginably tense moment in history. We can trust that we will be held up as well.

But I still wonder how the evangelists found out about all of this moment when the disciples slept through it!