Sunday, November 2, 2008

Agony, Honesty, and Grace

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus told His disciples,
" My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow.
  I am in so much agony that I could die."

  I wonder about the agony.

As Deity, He was horrified at the prospect of taking on the sins of mankind; becoming the very essence of sin Himself, and experiencing God's wrath for that sin.

  As a human, He dreaded the pain and humiliation of crucifixion. He dreaded leaving His mother and friends. He dreaded that they had to see Him die in this way. He sorrowed for their sorrow of having Him gone from their lives. These are just the obvious agonies. 

His agonies brought Him to the place of such dread that He wanted to escape the very reason He had come to earth in the first place.

I love how honest He was with His disciples. He was not going to be able to positively confess Himself out of this trouble. He asked God to deliver Him from death and God delivered Him from His desire to shrink back from dying.

What a perfect example He is.

So, we can be honest with our friends, our inner circle. We can tell them how awful life is and share our struggle with our circumstances. And we can ask God for exactly what we want. "Deliver me from this awful thing I am facing..."

Is it safe to say that God will either deliver us from the awful thing or else deliver us from the fear of the awful thing? He will either take it from us or give us grace to bear it?

Grace sounds like a gentle word, but it is the steadfast foundation of every miracle.

We have a friend, Roger, who had cancer. I knew God was going to heal him. He did and He didn't. We were glad and we were disappointed all at the same time. But, in the midst of the partial healing, God gave Roger grace to live with an encumbrance left over from the miracle He granted. And every time I see Roger, I think of the miracle of grace, and I thank God for it. Roger knows he is a miracle and he has grace to prove it.

Isaiah 40:29~"He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength."

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