Relinquishment
In Richard Foster's book Prayer, his chapter on "The Prayer of Relinquishment" focuses on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He points out that this is a battle of two wills. The will of Jesus was that "the cup pass from him," that God in his wisdom find another way to get the mission done. But the will of God was that Jesus suffer what we now know came in the next 24 hours. Which will will Jesus follow?
Of course, we know the answer.
It's interesting: this is the only picture we have of Jesus in this kind of struggle. Hebrews says he "learned obedience by suffering", and that he "offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears," yet the gospel writers give us very little of this, at least at it relates to his daily struggle to obey. So here's the question: is the Garden of Gethsemane the one moment of Christ's struggle, recorded so that we would understand that he relates to our struggle, or is it the climactic moment in a human lifetime of struggle in which Jesus relinquished his will day after day after day, the fight in the Garden being Jesus "in extreme."
To ask it more blatantly: did Christ struggle to obey in the years before the Garden? Did he go into the prayer about choosing the disciples with someone in mind the Spirit corrected him about, said "No" to? Did Jesus ever think "I want to go to this town," while the Spirit told him, "No, you need to go this way?"
Luke records that Jesus often went to a solitary place to pray. And then he would emerge and do these amazing miracles or dispense sage stories and advice or look straight into the hearts of the men and women gathered around him. I don't know about you, but my picture has been that Jesus prays peacefully and calmly, asking God this or that about the day, God answering back, Jesus saying, "Oh, okay, sure...I'll do that. No problem."
What I'm wondering is how often did Jesus come to prayer with one set of plans in mind, only to have them contradicted by God in the hour of prayer, and then in a battle of wills, finally come to the place of relinquishment wherein he rose from his prayer saying--in a manner meaningful only if he had a wiill to give up--"Not my will, but yours be done?"
For me, Gethsemane becomes overwhelmingly meaningful if it is no one time shot, but the natural climax of a long life lived in obedience to God, obedience that caused suffering defined by daily giving up his own will for that of the Father. I am not suggesting that Jesus fought a deep, intense battle of wills each day. What I am suggesting that his relinquishment of his own will to obey the will of the Father was a process, and it was real, in the sense that it presupposes he had his own will to give up.
This is on my mind because historically, I've treated my plans as more important than his, not understanding that his willing for me is to my good--in the deepest, truest sense of "good"--and that trusting him to reveal that will--and lead me in it--is not a dream, but is a living reality within reach.
Jesus' life was not his own...he freely relinquished his claim to it...see Philippians 2...If I relinquished my life to him, what would he do with it? Is that the same as asking, "if I died at the feet of Jesus, what would he do with the dead body?"
Resurrect it, maybe?
8:49:24 AM
