Devotion Text: Mark 14:35-36

Have you talked to God today? How about yesterday? What role does prayer play in your life? Does it play a lead role, is it relegated to the supporting cast, or does it just make cameo appearances? Is it the first thing you do in any situation? Or when all else fails, do you pray? These are questions we need to consider in light of the beautiful example Jesus gives us as the shadow of the cross begins to deepen and darken His life on earth. This Lenten season, as we journey to the cross, we will be observing some Crucial Hours of Jesus’ Passion in our Saturday Devotions. The clock of Jesus’ earthly life was winding down. He needed strength for what lies ahead. And He knew where to find it. 

While Jesus was finishing the Last Passover and the first Lord’s Supper, the storm clouds were rolling in and beginning to rumble. The powers of darkness were massing their forces for an all-out, full-scale, frontal assault on Jesus. For 33 years, they had failed and now were gathering for one last, desperate attack. It was now or never. Satan was about to launch his final onslaught to wreck the work of Christ and prevent the world’s redemption. He liked being ‘king of the hill’ and wasn’t about to surrender his turf without a battle. He was about to let out all the stops. He was about to play his last ace in the hole, his trump card -- Death. Death was the last and most potent weapon in his arsenal. And Jesus knew it.

A fateful evening lay ahead as Jesus led His beleaguered band of brothers out of the city to their customary retreat -- the Garden of Gethsemane, a favorite place of Jesus. It was quiet there, away from the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem. He often went there to pray. He left eight of His disciples near the entrance of the Garden, taking with Him only Peter, James, and John, His “inner circle.” He needed these trusted friends to comfort, encourage, and support Him with their prayers. He needed sympathy, but He also needed solitude, so He walked on a little further to talk with His Heavenly Father.

There was nothing more natural for Jesus to do under the circumstances than to have a long heart-to-heart talk with His Heavenly Father in prayer. He prayed by Himself, and He prayed with His disciples. He prayed for Himself, and He prayed for His disciples. He prayed for believers, and He prayed for unbelievers. He prayed daily, and He prayed often. But He never prayed like He prayed that evening. Let’s look at His:

Jesus was never more intensely human than in the Praying Hour. Never did He bare His soul as He bared it in Gethsemane. Up to this time and after this time, He retained His composure at all times. His calm remained unruffled. But this night was different. Scripture can hardly find words to paint a picture of His agony. No terms known to man could plumb the depths of Jesus’ mortal anguish.

We know Jesus was in agony. Listen to His words to His disciples: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” The mighty Miracle-worker was crushed. A tremendous load, the sin and guilt of all mankind, had beaten Him down and torn Him apart. He was being made “a curse for us.” The truth of what He had known all along swept over Him with devastating fury.

We know Jesus was in agony. Look at the position that He assumed: “He fell with His face to the ground and prayed.” Never did He pray like that. He knelt and prayed. He sat and prayed. He stood and prayed. But here He prostrated Himself flat on the ground with His face in the dirt and prayed. The sins of all mankind oppressed Him and “made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.”

We know Jesus was in agony. Observe the fervency with which He prayed: “his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” This was by far the most penetrating prayer that earth and Heaven had ever heard. The pressure was so great that Jesus sweat blood. The severe stress and strain had even ruptured blood vessels in Jesus’ body. 

We know Jesus was in agony. Listen to His desperate plea to His Father: “Abba, Father, everything is possible for You. Take this cup from me.” It was a passionate plea for relief from the soul-searing pain that He was experiencing. Is there any other way? If there is a different way to do it, let it be done. Hebrews 5:7 describes His torment: “He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One, who could save Him from death.” He was tasting now of the cup that He would drink in its entirety the next day on Calvary’s mountain. And Christ the True Man didn’t like what was in that cup one bit. It was a bitter cup filled with the concentrated wrath of God against the sins of a rebellious world.

We know Jesus was in agony. There was one added drop of bitterness in the cup that evening: Jesus was abandoned by human frailty in the form of His disciples. They utterly failed Him in His Praying Hour. They calmly slept during His overwhelming agony, fulfilling Psalm 69:20: “Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none.”

We know Jesus was in agony. He had good reason. He knew what was waiting for Him. He knew that betrayal, shame, mockery, rejection, and crucifixion lay just around the corner. He knew that in the offing was the pain of being attached to a cross with spikes driven through His hands and feet. He knew the devil would have his way, and He would see death. All these things, though, didn’t amount to a hill of beans in comparison to what else He knew. He knew that He would be blamed for all of our sins and for all of our guilt. He not only knew it. He felt it. He knew, too, that He would suffer separation from His Father -- yes, hell itself -- because of those sins heaped on His sinless soul. And so He prayed!

The very same thing that caused Jesus so much agony causes us no end of grief and agony as well. The curse of sin gives us a tough row to hoe too. True enough, Jesus did release us from sin’s death grip, but every once in a while, it seems to get us in a stranglehold again, doesn’t it? What do we do when we don’t know where to turn, when we are weak and heavy laden, when we are in great agony of body and soul? Well, what did Jesus do? He turned to His Heavenly Father in prayer. That’s a privilege we have, too -- to turn to our Heavenly Father and pour out our needs, cares, and anxieties. We won’t find help anywhere else, not in things and certainly not in people; just look at how Jesus’ most trusted friends let Him down. Saints, your Heavenly Father will never let you down. Never. That’s a guarantee! Romans 8:32 says: “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all -- how will he not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things.”

The agonizing weight of sin even caused Jesus, the Son of God, to seek strength from His Father to carry on. Jesus! What about us? How can we ever presume to be able to go it alone? We can’t. How can we turn elsewhere when we are hurting? We can’t. Nowhere can we find strength and comfort like we can when we talk to Him as dear children talk to their dear Father. James 5:13 says: “Is anyone of you in trouble? He should pray.” In this Praying Hour, Jesus not only shows us when to pray and why to pray, but He also shows us how to pray. Let us look now at His…

Jesus approached prayer with great humility. The Bible tells us: “He fell to the ground.” The weight of the sins of the world on His human nature humbled Him so that He prostrated Himself before His Heavenly Father. We, too, will approach prayer humbly when we consider that there is no way we could approach a holy God. Prayer is a privilege and a blessing won for us by Jesus’ Passion. He made things right with God so that we can approach our Father in Heaven in prayer. We need not grovel in the dirt as Jesus did. He invites us to sit on His lap and talk to Him there, where He can wrap His loving arms around us. 

Jesus also came to His Heavenly Father in complete trust and confidence. “Abba, Father, everything is possible for You.” He knew His cup had been poured by the Father and that He could, if He would, remove it from Him. With God, all things are possible. There is no impossible prayer. There is nothing too great or too small to bring to our Father that He can’t remove or give us strength to bear. Don’t ever let God get too small. Go to Him with everything in prayer. Pray big. Pray small. Just pray!

Jesus’ attitude toward prayer was one of complete submission and absolute surrender to His Father’s will: “Not my will, but yours be done.” Imagine how the devil felt when he heard those words. Here he thought he had Jesus on the ropes, even down for the count, but Jesus came back to win the first skirmish in the great Battle of the Ages.

Jesus had no desire to escape His duty. He didn’t murmur or complain. He was ready to drink the cup of suffering to its last, bitter dregs if that was His Father’s will. He merely presented His request according to His human nature and placed it in His Father’s hands to answer as He saw fit. Jesus was committed to doing His Father’s will and would carry it out even if it meant marching to His death. John 4:34 says: “My food is to do the will of Him, who sent me and to finish His work.” Total obedience.

How do we pray? Do we present our requests humbly at our Heavenly Father’s feet as Jesus did…but then proceed to inform God when, where, and how we want God to respond? Such is not a prayer at all. It’s a dictation. To the Almighty God, no less! Are we always ready to accept God’s will and conform our will to His? Or isn’t it true that when we say, “Your will be done,” there is often an addendum attached in our minds, “as long as it agrees with my will?” Instead, let us surrender ourselves entirely to His will, knowing confidently that He will do what is best for us. We can’t always see the sunshine of God’s grace beaming brightly upon us. There are hours and days, and for some, months and years, when the sunshine of divine favor is obscured by clouds of adversity and the blindness caused by our own sin.

During such times, we are tempted to murmur or complain. Instead, let us resign ourselves to our Father’s will and know it is wise, full of love and grace. He will give us strength to bear whatever He allows to come our way.

Sometimes submitting to the Lord’s will is easy, but mostly it’s hard. Our human nature constantly revolts against it. It raises doubts about whether God has heard our prayers when things don’t turn out how we think they should. Be assured God hears and answers every prayer…in His own way and in His own time. Look at God’s…

The fate of all mankind hung in the balance as Jesus’ fervent prayer winged its way Heavenward. The request was before the Heavenly Father. All Creation waited with bated breath to hear the answer. In the answer to that prayer hung the eternity of every person on earth. It couldn’t have been a very easy answer for the Father to give His Son because He wrote the warrant for His death in His answer. It couldn’t have been very easy to render His decision as He saw His Son writhing on the ground, praying for relief, for some other way, for any other way. But it was the only answer a just and loving God could give. What if God had aborted the mission right there? We’d all be struggling in despair and facing eternal damnation. But from history, we know the answer that came down from the throne on high.

It was a resounding ‘NO.’ The silence from Heaven was deafening. Jesus heard it loud and clear, more so with each successive prayer He offered. It was a loud and emphatic “No; My dear Son, there is no other way. You are the Way.” No explanation was given. None was needed. Jesus knew now that He would indeed walk the way to the cross according to plan. It was His Father’s will. You see, God saw beyond the crucifixion. Crucifixion was not the end. Death was not the final chapter in Jesus’ life. After Calvary came the Resurrection. After the cross came the crown. Similarly, it might seem that God is deaf to our prayers, yet all the while He is saying ‘no,’ His loving heart has planned to give us something far better -- in His own time and in His own way.

He won’t always give us what we ask for, but He’ll always give us what we need. That’s because He can see far beyond the here and now. And we can’t. He knows what is best for us in the long run. And we don’t.

Saints, as we join Jesus on His journey to the cross this Lenten season, we will relive some of the most Crucial Hours of Jesus’ Passion. We will witness firsthand those moments when Jesus was never more human and our salvation was never more imperiled. We will develop a new appreciation for just how much Jesus loves us. As the clock chimes a close to this Praying Hour, let us resolve to Watch and Pray with Jesus as Calvary creeps closer and the cross looms larger. As the old Lenten hymn suggests:

Learn from Jesus Christ to pray. Amen

Pastor Timothy Unke, Campus Pastor

Crean Lutheran High School