Surrender Amounting to Substitution of Wills

UV 3691/10000 Surrender amounting to Substitution of Wills Saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup (of divine wrath) from Me; yet not My will, but always Yours be done.” Luke 22 v 42 Jesus prayed to the Father in this manner in the garden of Gethsemane. The most difficult thing for man to do is to surrender our wills to God, our Creator and Father. It is as we think we know what is best for us and we do not trust God. But Jesus trusted the Father implicitly and explicitly. Hence, He said, “ Father, if You are willing, remove this cup…” Earlier, he had asked his disciples who wanted to sit on His right and left, “ Are you willing to drink of the cup of suffering that I am to drink..?” Jesus was conscious of all aspects of the suffering He was to undergo to fulfil His mission on earth- the redemption of mankind. Every believer, if He is a true follower of Jesus has to drink a cup of suffering. The Father did not remove the cup of suffering but He sent an angel to strengthen Jesus in His inner being. The appearance of an angel to Daniel also strengthened him. The Lord sends angelic beings to strengthen us so that we can endure a trial that is imminent. He does not leave us alone. We need to surrender our wills to the Father and to Jesus. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to strengthen us. The word “strengthen” here means to prepare us to face a great challenge, an immense difficulty that we cannot bear on our own natural strength. The Lord prepared Stephen for martyrdom by granting him a vision of heaven. Indeed, when we can peep into heaven and what it has in store for us, we are prepared to leave this life and this world behind. Every day we need to surrender our wills to Jesus. We need to say to the Father -what is our heart’s desire, our preferences but leave it to Him to decide by saying, “ Not my will but Thine, O Lord.” Despite being strengthened by the angelic being, Jesus remained in great agony as He continued to pray and Luke records that He sweated drops of blood due to the intensity of His feelings. Likewise, in our lives, the Lord may allow us to go through times or moments of agony. It is not a sign of His having left us but the prelude to a great salvation. The substitution of our wills by that of the Father in heaven is a guarantee of great reward, of tremendous blessing. After this Father-Son moment, Jesus faces the betrayal of Judas, the denials of Peter, the trials before the Sanhedrin, before Pilate, the demand to crucify Him by the Jewish people, the journey with the cross, the crucifixion, the moment of extreme isolation on the cross when the unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit is broken for the first time in eternity. On the journey carrying the cross, a man called Simon of Cyrene helped Jesus under compulsion of the Roman soldiers but as a result, Jesus today helps us carry our cross through our journey of life.