Easter Reading Plan / Devotional, 2019: 6

DAY SIX

Read Luke 22:39-46

Here we discover the tremendous grief that overtook Jesus as He prayed to God in the Garden of Gethsemane. Verse 42 should bring us to our knees… “Father, if You are willing, please take this cup of suffering from Me. Yet I want Your will to be done, not Mine.”

Yet = nevertheless. Jesus ultimately wants the will of the Father to be done.

Don’t miss any of this today!

Read it slow.

Take your time.

Consider the specifics of every verse.

Read it in multiple translations.

Jesus goes, as the NLT version says, to the Mount of Olives “as usual” (verse 39.)

I love this! It was the habit of our Jesus to attend to prayer in a usual way. A secret place. A private place. This shows the routine dependency before the Lord.

He tells His disciples who are with Him to, “Pray” for strength as He enters in further to be alone.

What do we find the disciples doing instead (verse 45)?

And then the prayer of Jesus.

Spend time contemplating these verses.

This is full submission. Surrender.

And as is our example of this, we are to pray this way too:

1.) to will whatever God would will.

2.) to full reject whatever is not in His will.

In His own agony, and in the weight of all the sin of the world (including yours and mine!), Jesus ultimately desired the will of the Father.

The Savior’s prayer demonstrates several things. Find the connection between scripture and these attributes:

1.) lonely

2.) humble

3.) persevering

4.) earnest

5.) of resignation

We see, found only in Luke’s Gospel, the angel coming to strengthen Him.

Could this be an answer to Jesus’ prayer: the strength to BEAR the load, not the REMOVAL of it.

In what ways can we incorporate that in our own lives?

The Aramaic word for “fervently”, found in verse 44, is translated to be, “sacrificially.”

He prayed sacrificially.

Meditate on this a bit. What does it mean to you to pray sacrificially?

He finds the disciples then sleeping.

This should be a key point in these passages.

Oh that we would be found always watching and praying!

“Awake, Awake O Sleeper!” (Eph 5:14)

What does it mean to you to stay watchful in prayer?

Confess today: Father God, I want Your will for my life. Forgive me for the times I have strayed from Your plans. Help me to fully trust You, and help me to always stay watchful in prayer.