The Importance of Being Earnest (in prayer!)

Posted by lisacaldwell on Oct 8, 2009 in Daily Bread | 2 comments

Given the context of the surrounding passages, we know that Jesus is praying on the Mt. of Olives before his arrest and, eventually, his death on the cross. Being God, He knew what was coming. He knew the plan. And He knew the plan would succeed. Yet He still found it absolutely imperative to meet His Father in prayer. Twice in the passage of verses 39-46, Jesus challenged his disciples to pray in order to avoid temptation. He himself withdrew and did likewise. Based on his prayer in vs. 42, we can see that perhaps Satan had been trying to tempt Jesus into not carrying out His given mission. However, Jesus acknowledges that ultimately He is called to submit to the will of His Father. God heard the prayer of His Son and acted immediately by sending an angel to strengthen Him (vs.43). The very next verse shows the result of this strengthening-He prayed more earnestly, so much more so that “his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” I don’t know about you, but I would certainly need the strength of an angel of God to pray that earnestly!

So often as Christians, we talk about the power of prayer and the fact that we understand that we need to pray. But do we really stop and think about the fact that Jesus, being God, prayed earnestly (with drops of blood-like sweat!). Not only does God want us to pray to Him, He wants to help us with the very act of prayer! He wants to sustain us, encourage us, and empower us just by our sitting at His feet before the throne. What a loving God we serve!