By Pastor Steve Nickodemus

The Hardest Prayer

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
Luke 22:42 New International Version

Two thousand years ago, in a garden just outside Jerusalem, our Lord Jesus prayed the hardest prayer of all time…. “not my will, but yours be done.”  Jesus knew what lay before Him if he chose it – the cross.  Agony, suffering, the sin of the world, brokenness, pain, death lay before Him.

And in this agonizing choice, He had already said to His Father, “If you are willing, take this cup from Me.”  He prayed the petition that came from His humanity, the desire to live and not be forsaken and cut off from life.  This is a Son that spoke His request to His Father, take the cup of suffering from me if you would….

But then there is that word, “yet”.  “Yet not my will be done, but your will, Father.”  Of course he doesn’t want the cup of suffering, no one would.  But Jesus will choose what the Father wants Him to do.  He will go to the cross.

Have you not found this to be the hardest prayer of all, “your will be done”?  When every fiber of our being says, “no”, we pray, “yet not my will, but yours be done. ”  “Take away the cancer, save my child, bring my husband back, stop this war, protect me from my enemy”…. the list goes on and on.  Honest prayers offered up by honest hearts and yet… yet not my will, but yours be done.

In the midst of the fear and the dread we pray,   “I trust you, Lord, when I can see nothing but pain and destruction.  I trust you, Father, that you know best.  In the midst of my pain and my longing, yet may your will be done, O Lord…. Amen.”

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church Colorado Springs, Colorado