Season 1, Episode 6
In my previous episode I said that Jesus was not afraid of anything. When you read that (or first heard it on the podcast) did you wonder if that was really so? What about His anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane as He cried out to His Father, His sweat falling to the ground like drops of blood?
If ever there was a record of Jesus being afraid, this is it. He felt alone and vulnerable as He faced the suffering ahead of Him, culminating in His agonising death on the cross. He longed for His closest friends to be there for Him – to give Him comfort and strength in His anguish. But they just kept falling asleep. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” They had no comprehension of what Jesus was facing, but to Him it was frighteningly real. I’m sure He was feeling fear. Great fear. But I’m equally sure that He never yielded to it.
There is a world of difference between feeling fear and yielding to it. God created you for intimate relationship with Him. Abandon yourself to Him in love and you literally have nothing to fear!
The first mention in the Bible of anyone being afraid was when Adam and Eve hid from God among the trees in the Garden of Eden, after they had disobeyed Him. He had been looking for them in the Garden so He and they could walk and talk together in the cool of the evening. Not being able to find them, he called out, “Where are you?” Adam’s response broke His heart: “I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid”. God knew that only one thing could have caused Adam and Eve to go from being fearless to being fearful. But He still had to ask the question: “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
God’s perfect man and his wife – the crowning glory of His Creation – were reduced to fugitives, fearfully hiding from Him among the trees.
Once again, I emphasise that to feel fear is not the same thing as to fear. The feeling of fear, with which we are all familiar, is that involuntary reflex we experience in situations where we sense danger or some sort of threat. Fearing, on the other hand, is what you do with that reflex. Which, in turn, depends on the nature of your personal relationship with God … and on nothing else.
Long before that night in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus had already said: “I come to do your will, O God”. He had no other desire or purpose than to speak His Father’s words and to do His Father's works. For Him, that was all settled. Yet, in the Garden of Gethsemane, we find Him tempted as never before to surrender to His fears. As He faces the imminence of all that He must now endure to fulfil His mission, Jesus appears close to finally giving in to his fears. So close as to say to His Father “…if it is possible, let this cup pass from me….”. Then, just as the fate of His entire mission seems to be balanced on a knife-edge, He says, “…nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done”. And that one pivotal word ‘nevertheless’ makes all the difference!
At that point where Jesus was pleading with His Father to “…let this cup pass…” I can imagine the entire Host of Heaven holding their collective breath and thinking, “Oh no! Oh no! Not now!” And then, as Jesus spoke that vital word, “nevertheless,” following it with, “not my will, but yours, be done”, I can likewise imagine the collective sigh of relief that echoed around Heaven!
No matter how close He came to it, Jesus did not yield to fear – because He was consumed with love for His Father.
We would all be without hope if, at that critical point, Jesus had turned from loving His Father to caring for Himself. His ‘nevertheless’ decision was not because He suddenly became braver or more courageous. Neither was it because He somehow managed to psych Himself into “I can do this” mode. It was because His commitment to His Father was always: “I come to do your will, O God”. No matter how powerfully His fears threatened to overwhelm Him, “I won't do it,” was out of the question.
Those words: “… nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done,” were not the words of a conscript who had no choice, but the powerful affirmation of one who had long ago made His choice … regardless of the price He must pay.
With that vivid Gethsemane scenario in mind, I’d like to take this further and focus on the significance to each of ‘God's will’ – two words which often crop up in our conversations, our prayers, our songs, our Bible reading, and our churches.
As a term, God’s will simply means ‘what God wants’ – in the same way as your will refers to what you want. God's will is what He chooses. Your will is what you choose. If God makes His will known to me and I choose to do it, I will inevitably do God’s will. Not because I have no choice, but precisely because I do have a choice … and have chosen to make God’s will my will!
I once heard someone pray: “Lord, make me willing to be willing”. I was a young Christian at the time, and I was impressed … at first. Then I realised that such words are just double-talk which put the onus onto God! What is the point of asking God to make me willing, when I could (and should) cut to the chase and simply say: ‘I only want to do your will’. God will never make you willing to do His will, any more than He made Jesus willing. The willingness to do God’s will must always come from you!
Anyone who knew Jesus and heard Him praying that night in Gethsemane, could have thought: “He’s really in a corner now! After faithfully carrying out His mission to this point, He is finally at the end of the road. He’s about to be arrested and once that happens it will be game over.” Yet, far from game over, it was ‘game on’ … because, in Gethsemane, God's great purpose in sending Jesus into this world was on the brink, not of failure, but of spectacular fulfilment! A fulfilment that could never have come about but for the immense price Jesus and His Father so willingly paid to redeem you and me.
So, to do God’s will, you first need to know what He wants of you. Then you must be willing to do what He wants … and finally you must then actually do it! All of which is so beautifully encapsulated in Jesus’ commitment to His Father: “I come to do your will, O God”. That’s a blanket commitment, in which you freely and willingly make an unbreakable promise to God as an expression of your love.
That will, of course, play out in all kinds of situations, at different times in your life, and in ways you may not expect. But as it was with Jesus, if this is what you have resolved between yourself and God, the onus will always be on you to live out that commitment every day of your life.
For His part, God undertakes to speak to you when He has something to say, to reveal to you whatever He wants you to know, and to make clear what He wants you to do. It is my experience that God always speaks with a voice I can hear and in a language I can understand!
Which does not let any of us off the hook at times when we have no specific word or guidance from Him, and you may be tempted to say, “God hasn't given me any specific directions for today, so I can just do whatever I want”. A life lived in God's will is a one of constant communion with Him. In the words of the apostle Paul: “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit”. Which means living and walking with God every moment of every day, because you have chosen to make your relationship with Him the sole purpose for your life.
To live like that is to be free of any basis for panic or anxiety. You have no need to put yourself through the common Christian exercise called “am I in or out of God’s will?”. You already know you are in His will, unless He shows you otherwise – because you have chosen to make God’s will your natural environment, the place in which you live and breathe. A fish does not swim around in the ocean, stressing about whether or not it is in the water. Because the water is its natural environment, the fish will sure know about it if it ever happens to be out of it!
It is often the sincerest Christians who worry about whether or not they are ‘in God’s will’. I used to worry about it too, until God showed me that the answer lay in my personal relationship with Him. If you have made that relationship the place in which you have chosen to ‘live and move and have your being’, you have no need to agonise over whether or not you are living in the will of God.
But then there are those who quite like to live in habitual self-doubt about whether or not they are in God’s will, because it seems to offer them some legitimate leeway. They wander along a path of wilful ignorance, while at the same time insisting that they really do want to do God’s will … if only they could be sure of it. They avoid intimacy with God and don’t seek His direction in their lives – which makes them susceptible to going off on tangents that take them into situations where God would never have taken them.
Knowing God’s way and walking in intimacy with Him has nothing to do with human abilities or qualities. But it has everything to do with willingness to hear and to obey. If you have any kind of genuine relationship with God on His terms, He will let you know if and when you have diverted onto a path of your own choosing. How He does that is up to Him. Your responsibility is to recognise that He is doing so, rather than floundering around like that fish-out-of-water! You might not like it, but if you face the fact that you have taken yourself out of that ocean of God’s love in which you were previously living – my advice is that you wholeheartedly repent, and then do what you must to jump right back in where you belong!
But it doesn’t have to be that way. When you have put your life in God's hands and are living in a heart-to-heart relationship with Him – desiring Him only – that ocean of God's love is intended to be your constant environment. That’s how it should be, and that’s how it can be, if you settle for nothing else.
Open your heart to those well-known words of Paul the apostle, which exhort you to present your body to God as a living sacrifice.* Your physical body – within which you exist as a living soul, and has also become the temple of God’s Spirit – is yours to present to Him, saying:
“Everything I do in this world is expressed through this body, which I now present as a living sacrifice to you – so that the life I live while I am present in this body, will be the true expression of a life laid down for you, as I live for you in this world.”
That's what a living sacrifice is. And that's the person through whom God can and will be glorified!
*Romans 12:1