Trusting Him more when you hit rock bottom
Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.” He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” Matthew 26:36-39
To know Christ is to grow in intimacy with Him. Intimacy is to be transparent with God. It means that we need to be honest with Him and to be completely open. This is the example the Lord Jesus Christ has provided for us from the text. Jesus openly expressed what He felt as He was about to face His death on the cross. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus told His disciples the anguish that He was going through because of His impending crucifixion. His death will mean separation from the Father. The passage described how Jesus felt at that moment; “he became anguished and distressed.” Realizing the gravity of the sins of the entire world that He will carry with Him at the cross, He felt so broken that He needed His disciples to know what He was going through. Jesus, fully God and fully man, was open about what He was going through at that moment. He requested them to be near with Him at that moment and to be in prayer. The Lord Jesus Christ modeled to His disciples and His followers how to find comfort in times of distress and sorrow. He poured out His heart to the Father. This is in contrast to what the world promotes where you need to keep within yourself what you are experiencing. So Jesus in the midst of His agony humbly came to the Father to pray. Arrogance and self-sufficiency should not characterize the lives of believers. God does not see it as a burden when He sees His children comes to Him in prayer and transparent before Him expressing a realization that on our own we are lost and cannot handle the trials that we are facing. God created within us a longing and hunger that He alone can fill. “Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord” (Lamentations 2:19). God already knows what is in our hearts even before we come to Him but He wants us to be contrite and honest before Him, confessing that we need Him. “O my people, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge” (Psalm 62:8).
Blessings,
Noel De Guzman
www.my-wbc.com
Visit us on YouTube: WestsideBCLA
