Your Will Be Done

The Bible is full of verses and passages that raise questions in my mind.  Sometimes when I am reading my Bible, I think, I can’t wait until I get to Heaven to ask God what He meant by that!  And other times, God reveals His meaning to me in unexpected ways.  I think this is one of the reasons why I am drawn to Scripture, it is more than just a book, it is the Word of a living God!  

This morning I was reading in the book of John and I came to one of those verses that make me scratch my head.  John 19:28-30, “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, ‘I am thirsty.’ ... Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’ And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.”

My question was, if everything had been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, then why didn’t Jesus just say, “It is finished!” and bow His dead and give up His spirit?  Whey did Jesus, who knew He was about to go to the Father, say He was thirsty?  He knew He would be given sour wine.  I just don’t know why Jesus drank the sour wine instead of going on to Heaven so He could drink Heavenly wine?  I would much rather have the sweetness of Heaven than the sour grapes of this world!

The answer to this question, was found in Matthew 26, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane with His disciples and He is praying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass...”  Then a second time He prays, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.”  (Matt. 26:39-42)  Jesus was saying, I don’t want the sour grapes of this world but if I have to drink them so that the Father is lifted up then I will drink them.  

All of us have ‘sour grape’ times in our lives.  It would be easier to cut a corner, tell a white lie, or simply compromise, so as not to have to choke down the bitter cup in front of us but when we take the easy way out, what does it say about our great God?  Jesus had done everything perfectly!  He had fulfilled everything and the time was at hand!  All the pain, the weight of all our sins, the Father turning His back on Him, all of this was about to come to an end!  But there was still a cup of sour wine that needed to be drunk, so Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”  After He drank the cup, He said, “It is finished!”  He emptied the cup so the Father would be glorified!  Then He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.  

This week, take time to evaluate your life.  This may be one of the worse seasons of life you have ever experienced.  You may be facing the fork in the road of ‘Compromise’ or ‘Integrity’, but I want to encourage you!  You are not alone!  There is one ‘beside you’, ‘in you’, ‘all around you’ and even ‘holding you up’, who knows what sour grapes taste like!  Receive the cup and let God bring you through!  This will not be easy, nor will it be fun!  But it will bring glory to the One who drank the sour grapes for you!  I’m praying for you this week!

What Lies Behind

Now that Lindsey and I have lived in the Elkin area for almost a year, and we live on a small farm and we have our garden planted, we are attempting to become farmers.  At least in our own minds!  So with this in mind, I got a little yard tractor from my brother-n-law so that I could ride it through our garden and sing “Old MacJason had a farm E I E I O!”  The other day, I was going to plant a row of corn, so I got my tractor out, hooked up a plow (I knew that was the wrong implement but it was the only implement I had) and I attempted to plow a furrow in the soil.  Everything was going great, the tractor was moving on just right and I watched as the plow carved a valley in the soil.  I smiled with joy as I daydreamed about eating the corn at a cookout!  This whole gardening thing is no sweat!  I continued to watch the plow blade cut through the ground with ease!  Finally I turned around to see how much further I had to go when I realized I had gotten off course and gone diagonally across the garden!  Maybe I still have a thing or two to learn about gardening!?!

Spiritually speaking, life can be much like plowing a garden.  We were never created to focus all our time on the row behind us.  If we do that, then we lose sight of where we are supposed to be going.  If I had focused on an end point when I was making the furrow in my garden then my line would have been straight but because I was focused on what was behind me, my garden might look more like a corn maze!  

In life it is easy to spend all our time either looking back at the mistakes that we made or to look back at the glory days when we were younger and more vibrant than we are now.  But no matter how badly we want to go back or how much we wish we could redo those days, we cannot!  Yesterday is gone but we have today and it would be a shame to waste it.  

“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 3:13-14

This week I challenge you to let go of the past, both the regrets and the glory days, then focus on God and He will make your path straight!  (Pr. 3:5-6)