PASSION’S PRAYER: “YOUR WILL BE DONE”
What does it mean to become a people of the Passion? I don’t think that I have explained what that means fully. I just assumed you knew. To become a people of the Passion is to have, not only the person of Jesus Christ as central in your life and thinking, but to have the cross of Christ in the core of your being. The cross reminds us of Christ’s sacrifice. The cross calls to us and challenges us to follow Christ. Without the cross there is no point in being a church.
What then, is the role of prayer in becoming a people of the Passion? It’s not just prayer. It’s an adjustment, a prayer to change “me,” the “I” into what God wants. Praying this prayer means trading your passions for the Passion. It is a willingness to surrender and to say to God, “your will be done.”
What does a prayer like that look like? It might sound like a preacher in Redrock, Mississippi who prayed this prayer: “Oh Lord, give Thy servant this mornin’ the eyes of the eagle and the wisdom of the owl; connect his soul with the gospel telephone in the central skies; ‘luminate his brow with the Sun of heaven; possess his mind with love for the people; turpentine his imagination, grease his lips with ‘possum oil, loosen his tongue with the sledge hammer of Thy power; ‘lectrify his brain with the lightnin’ of the word; put ‘petual motion on his arms; fill him plum full of the dynamite of Thy glory; ‘noint him all over with the kerosene oil of Thy salvation and SET HIM ON FIRE. Amen!”...
But more likely it would resemble the simple yet moving prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is where we find our four challenges in praying the prayer of the Passion Himself. And in between these challenges I want to show you 3 “prayer busters” that keep us from becoming a people of the Passion through meaningful prayer.
1. Praying Through The Pain
Jesus was a person who believed in prayer. This could appear quite odd to us as we profess that Jesus is the Son of God, and therefore equal with God. Why would Jesus need to pray? The answer is simple: Jesus was a man created in the image of God. Humankind was created to live in complete and constant dependence on the Creator. Being a perfect human without sin, Jesus was a perfect example of what our relationship with God should be like.
In the Garden that night, Jesus prayed, not because of his sorrow, but because he always prayed. What a jarring picture though, to see Jesus this way. Our text says, “He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. The he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death…’”
His sorrow seemed to be multiplied by so many factors. He knew that the appointed time with the Cross had come. Jesus was the only one who could really understand the pain and suffering that seemed to go with that impending destiny. And the weight of such an unimaginable burden, carrying the sins countless generations to the Cross, was so very heavy.
It is in this moment of painful anticipation that Jesus teaches us the necessity of prayer even when difficulties seem intolerable. We are speechless when surgery is the next morning. Words don’t come when sadness chokes your throat and blurs your mind. Prayer is the furthest thing from our minds when our senses are overwhelmed with anguish. But that is exactly when Jesus prayed. He prayed through the pain to his Father on whom he depended for all things.
There is our lesson. Too simple. Too painful. Too true. But if you can do nothing else to pray, to get the words out, at least take on the posture of prayer and cry to Him. We can take comfort in this truth: “…the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Rom. 8:26).
Prayer Buster # 1 – Self-reliance
Why don’t we pray in crisis situations? One reason is the inherent need we have to fix the problem ourselves with our own strength and resources. We call this self-reliance. It comes from a belief that prayer does not change or help the trouble we are in. You have prayed before and nothing happened, so we are compelled to take matters into our own hands. And I can do this myself.
When Jesus was done praying, we read that soldiers came to arrest him. In v. 51 Peter pulls out a sword in defense of Jesus and slices an ear off of a temple servant. Sleeping when he should have been praying, Peter now tries to fight a spiritual battle with a carnal weapon. That is the futility of fighting many of our battles with our own resources. We are fighting unseen forces without the help of God in prayer.
2. Prayer Is Supposed To Be Shared
Jesus rejected the attitude of self-reliance. That was not his way; it’s not what he taught; he didn’t exemplify it. Even in the Garden on the night before his death, he prayed to God and asked his disciples to pray with him. “Stay here and keep watch with me…Watch and pray.” In moments like these, Jesus teaches us the value of shared prayer.
Why do we think that we can bear our burdens alone? If Jesus shared this most monumental prayer request with his disciples, what makes us think that we can handle our own problems alone?
Here’s my theory: Mennonites think that advertising their problems is too proud. So they humble themselves and say nothing. What they don’t realize is that real pride is saying nothing and that true humility is sharing your burden with others. True humility admits that we can’t tackle these troubles alone. I say “Mennonites” because I think that while all Christians may struggle with this pride, Mennonites are notorious for “sucking it up” and not revealing any weakness. And that is just not the way church should be. Praying for each other is what church relationships are all about.
Instead, we are like the people in the movie “The Village.” Each of the elders in this movie possessed a locked box of secrets that they were too afraid to share with the community. Those boxes contained the past, dark secrets, and things they wished no one to know. I think that everyone in this church has a locked box. And we are not experiencing peace, freedom, forgiveness, or healing because we are afraid of what people will say about our secrets or our wounds.
It is precisely the wounds in our relationships that keep many of us from experiencing the life of prayer. When we are hurting we draw back from making ourselves more vulnerable. We’ve been burnt before and we don’t trust anyone with our burdens. And so we lock it all away and perhaps we pray, but no one intercedes for us because they have no idea. What we don’t realize is that those wounds, when accepted, become positive realities, showing us exactly where we need God’s help in our lives.
Prayer is supposed to be shared. We are intertwined. No one who is hurting hurts alone. Even if we don’t know what’s bothering you, it affects everyone. No one can read minds, so you need to share your burden. Passion’s prayer is a corporate prayer we all pray because we all need God.
Prayer Buster # 2 – Time
Quality time is needed to share real needs for prayer. The foyer of the church is not a good place to share because we are all running somewhere. Our second prayer buster is time. Prayer takes time itself and time is at a premium. I heard of one church where a member chided the pastor for praying saying “shouldn’t you be working?” We don’t think prayer is worth our time. So we don’t give it time in our day.
Jesus said to his disciples, “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” 60 minutes! That’s all he asked for on the most important night of his life. Not many events can compare with this night, but there are many crucial events in our lives that could use prayer. What’s 60 minutes? Last week at our retreat your ministers and deacons shared and prayed for 90. The time flew by. It was the best thing we did.
3. Prayers Can Be Repeated
It is hard to know what Jesus prayed in the Garden aside from what is recorded: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me…” He may have used many more words to express the intensity he was feeling, but these words convey the heart of his prayer. And we know that he prayed this desire three times. There is value in repeated prayers, as we can see from Christ’s example.
I have personally had some problem with repeated prayer. My feeling was that God was not deaf the first time and he knows all things, so why bother him again with this issue? It reminds me of the story Paul Harvey told about a 3-year-old boy who went to the grocery store with his mother. Before they entered the grocery store she said to him, "Now you’re not going to get any chocolate chip cookies, so don’t even ask."
She put him up in the cart & he sat in the little child’s seat while she wheeled down the aisles. He was doing just fine until they came to the cookie section. He saw the chocolate chip cookies & he stood up in the seat & said, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you not even to ask. You’re not going to get any at all.” So he sat back down. This happened repeatedly as they went down the aisles.
Finally, they were approaching the checkout lane. The little boy sensed that this may be his last chance. So just before they got to the line, he stood up on the seat of the cart & shouted in his loudest voice, “In the name of Jesus, may I have some chocolate chip cookies?” And everybody round about just laughed. Some even applauded. And, according to Paul Harvey, due to the generosity of the other shoppers, the little boy & his mother left with 23 boxes of chocolate chip cookies....
The lesson we take from this is: if we badger God long enough he will give us what we want. It seems like we are trying to manipulate God. Still, Jesus does teach that we should be persistent in prayer. He told the story of persistent widow in Luke 18 who pestered a judge to grant her justice in her dispute with another person. The judge grew tired of her constant haranguing and finally gave her what she wanted. But Jesus very purposely told his listeners that the judge is not a metaphor for God. Just the opposite. God does care; he does listen. Jesus said, “…will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?”
What then is the purpose of repeated prayer? It shows God that we mean business. It is all too easy, too shallow, and too cheap to pray and then walk away and think no more about it. To keep on praying indicates determination on our part and confidence that God is able to do his part.
U2 singer Bono, in a private meeting in June 2001 on the Hill in Washington, D.C., said, “I believe that the Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force. God doesn’t mind if we bang on the door to heaven sometimes, asking him to listen to what we have to say.”
Prayer Buster # 3 – Apathy
The problem we often feel with repeated prayers is that we pray and pray and receive no answer. We put a lot of time, we feel, into crying out to God; we worry over our problem and feel like God isn’t; and we just feel empty. The result is prayer buster #3 apathy. Why pray if we do not get the answer we want – or any answer for that matter? Maybe we grow so weary we just don’t believe in the so-called “power of prayer.” Apathy like this can be very defeating for your faith and for you as a person.
Each time Jesus came to check on his disciples he found them sleeping. How do you sleep on a night like that? They were not aware of the battle taking place. These men were not spiritually in tune with the issues and dangers Jesus was facing. It wasn’t that they didn’t care – they didn’t know what to care or how to care.
4. Prayer That Goes Unanswered
There is no verse to quote on this point. It is a glaring vacancy that stabs in the gut to see that God does not answer Jesus’ repeated prayer. What do you do when God says nothing at all? Here we learn about the mystery of unanswered prayer.
Jesus prayed repeatedly “Take this cup away” and always ended with “let your will be done.” That’s a hard thing to say “your will be done.” It’s hard because we want our will to be done. We want our prayers answered in our way, in our timing. And if they are not we wonder what’s wrong with our faith.
Did God not answer Jesus? The writer of Hebrews says otherwise, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” (Heb. 5:7). Does God refuse to answer you and me when we cry out to him? Is it that our faith is not enough? Have we sinned and that is why God does not answer?
Michael Green wrote a great answer to this question: “The prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane shows that we can be close to God, live a holy life, and pray with faith, earnestness, and expectancy, and yet not get what we ask for. It is a profound mystery before which we must bow.”
We bow before this mystery of unanswered prayer by saying to our loving God “your will be done.” We cannot know the mind of God, his great plans, or how he will work out our present troubles for his glory. All we can say in faith is “your will be done.” Prayer is not about manipulating God to our will – it is opening up to God and trusting that whatever pain we go through in the process, he is there with us.
Richard Foster, in his book “Celebration of Discipline” says “To pray is to change. Prayer in the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ….
…James says: ‘You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions’ (James 4:3). To ask ‘rightly’ involves transformed passions, total renewal. In prayer, real prayer, we begin to think God’s thoughts after Him: to desire the things He desires, to love the things He loves. Progressively we are taught to see things from His point of view.”
Conclusion
Can you not pray one hour? Jesus asked his disciples to pray this one night. To challenge you to pray one hour each day will seem to some of you a legalistic “guilt” command. I don’t want it to be that. I know that for various reasons, prayer is a difficult chore. I wish you could know the joy of praying together so that it was not a task but an experience.
Perhaps you could plan 6 – 10 minute sessions throughout the day where you could pray. Take each segment and pray for family, then friends…you know what? You need to decide how you are going to do this. If you want to become a people of the Passion, you have to learn to deny yourself and pray “your will be done.”
Becky Tirabassi, by way of encouragement in this regard, wrote:
After praying for one hour every day, my perspective of prayer changed.
I learned that prayer is not a monologue to a deaf God, but a conversation with a God who hears prayer.
Prayer is not helping God with an answer; it is asking God to help. It is not telling God what to do; it is telling him my needs. It isn’t so much for the disciplined as for the undisciplined.
Prayer is not necessarily meant to be an easy joy ride, but it definitely is a spiritual discipline that produces joy.
Prayer is not just coming to Jesus; it is letting Jesus come into me.
Prayer is not only for the educated seminary scholar; it is for anyone who will practice, persevere, and plan to pray.
Prayer is not a substitute for time in the Word; it will lead to the Word.
Prayer is not for the impatient but for the one who waits.
Prayer is not a place to boast but a place to confess. Prayer is not my motivating God, but God’s motivating me.
Prayer is not a waste of time; it is an appointment with the King of kings.
AMEN
