HH, Sir Godfrey Gregg D.Div

“Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42).

He who once suffered in Gethsemane will be our strength and our victory, too. We may fear, we may also sink, but let us not be dismayed, and we shall yet praise Him, and look back from a finished course, and say, “Not one word hath failed of all that the Lord hath spoken.”

But in order to do this, we must, like Him, meet the conflict, not with a defiant, but with a submissive spirit. He had to say, “Not My will, but Thine be done”; but in saying it, He gained the very thing He surrendered. So the submission of Gethsemane is not a blind and dead submission of a heart that abandons all its hope; but it is the free submission that bows the head, in order to get double strength through the faith and prayer.

Jesus has taught us a great lesson of surrender and not to rely on our own strength. We have to consider our reason and purpose why we are here and where we are going. We have to walk through the garden of Gethsemane to understand what it means to be submissive as Christ was for us. Then and only then can we say “Not My will, but Thine be done”.

We let go, in order that we may take a firmer hold. We give up, in order that we may more fully receive. We lay our Isaac on Mount Moriah, and we ask him back, no longer our Isaac, but God’s Isaac, and infinitely more secure, because given back in the resurrection life.

Let us this day let go of the things that are suppressing us and commit ourselves unto God  God and move forward in His presence and service. “Not My will, but Thine be done”, should be the cry of every believer from henceforth.