Ep. 7: Not My Will, But Yours: Yielding to God's Will in Our Gethsemane Moments

What does it really mean to pray, "Thy will be done"?

In this episode, we continue our study of the Lord's Prayer by exploring one of the most profound and costly prayers a believer can offer — surrendering our will to God's. We look at the classic example of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and unpack what He was truly saying when He prayed, "Let this cup pass, nevertheless not my will but Yours."

Whether you're in a season of pressing or learning to say "Thy will be done" for the first time, this episode will prepare your heart to surrender — and discover the life God has for you on the other side.

Transcript

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Welcome to On This Rock, the discipleship podcast that trains you to follow Jesus Christ. As you listen, we trust you'll gain a deeper understanding of who He is and anchor your identity in Him. Christ in you is the only hope of receiving God's glory. Trade your pebble for the Rock of Ages. Welcome to the show with your host, author, and seasoned Bible teacher, Nana Auchi Listeners, thank you so much for joining me today. We will continue with our study of the Lord's Prayer by exploring what it means to pray your will be done. This is powerful. We're gonna talk about the classic example of this prayer by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. So stay tuned until the end. Now, this really goes to the heart of the purpose of prayer. Yes, we are to bring our petitions to God when we pray, but prayer is not to convince God to serve our personal agendas. It's rather for us to serve His agenda. It's rather for us to be priests in His kingdom who prioritize His agenda in the earth, what He wants to do in us, what He wants to do in our families, in our cities, in our nations. prayer really is a, a wonderful gift that God has given us so that we can have fellowship with Him. And through that fellowship, heaven's atmosphere, heaven's agenda, heaven's priorities can come to the earth and be fulfilled, So it's very important that we understand what it means to pray this prayer, what it means to do that. Now, the first thing about this is it involves reordering our loves, because we're gonna have to love what God loves, right? We're gonna have to put that in its proper place. And the things that we may think have high priority may have to be put aside because He said, "Seek first the kingdom, and all these other things," your priority, "will then be taken care of." So we must say, "Father, you are sovereign. Let me know what you want," and be willing to do it. And often when we pray, God reveals His will. We pick up His burdens. If we're rightly aligned with Him and His kingdom, we will pick up what is actually on His heart. And when that happens, we may not feel like that's something that we wanna carry, but that might be what God wants us to carry. And when that happens, we have to be willing to die to our earthly loves and submit to His will because He has promised that as we do that, we will discover that our priorities are also met. And it's so wonderful because this really goes to the heart of discipleship, laying our lives down. Laying our lives down means laying our lives, our will down to do the will of God. There is a choice that we have to make at every step when we're confronted with the will of God. And each time we have to be able to say, "Thy will be done." So this session, this episode really is supposed to prepare our hearts to say that, to be able to say, "Thy will be done," 'cause it's not always an easy decision to make. It really isn't. It can come with, at a cost. But you have to think about it this way, that the value you get for paying this cost is way more than the cost that you're going to pay. it's way more. a- and you're gonna find it's more satisfying. We are going to find that. I'm s- I'm talking to myself too. So our objective today really is to prepare our hearts to surrender to God's will so that we can find that life that He has for us. We can discover, what He has for us, and we can also find that our priorities actually become non-issues because they're just taken care of. So what does it mean to pray, "Let your will be done"? I wanna make two points, and then we'll go into talking about the significance of praying, "Let your will be done," and also the need for praying, "Let your will be done." And the first one really is that it is very important to take note of the order of this prayer. Jesus taught His disciples to pray first for God's will to be done before petitioning Him for daily bread. So if you look at the Lord's Prayer, we pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done" before we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." And this is significant. Why is it significant? Because bread is a staple. A staple means it's something you need every day to sustain your body's energy and strength. Praying for God's will even before our daily sustenance implies that doing the will of God is more important than our daily sustenance. In fact, if we put God's will after our sus- seeking our daily staple, we may miss the staple because the order is important. That also tells me that doing God's will brings a certain satisfaction. It brings a certain provision, to us. Jesus demonstrated this truth to his disciples in John 4 when he came to Jacob's well, and he was physically tired. And the Bible says he was not only tired, he was thirsty, and he was hungry But in that situation, he prioritized doing God's will to minister to the Samaritan woman before thinking about food, thinking about drink, thinking about his daily sustenance. So his body- his bodily needs in that time. He was tired. And last thing he wanted to do, his body was thinking, his flesh was thinking, "I just wanna rest. I probably... I don't even wanna talk to anybody right now." But in that moment, he recognized an opportune moment, because the Spirit of God set this up. It was actually an appointment that on the journey he paused at Jacob's Well and his disciples went ahead. And the Samaritan woman came to draw water, and he got to teach her. And he got to say some really powerful statements, "We only worship God in spirit and in truth." amazing things that he shared. That, that out of our bellies will flow rivers of living water, which John explains is the Holy Spirit. So John uses this situation, this encounter, to really teach us some deep truths that Jesus revealed to this woman. And this was a place where evangelism broke out after this woman had her encounter with Jesus. But all that had to take place on the condition of Jesus saying, "Thy will be done." Jesus yielding to the will of the Father. And when his disciples came back and they urged him to eat, he responded by saying, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work." So doing the will of God has a certain kind of satisfaction that takes away even the natural needs, if we put that in its proper order. And similarly, Job says in, in Job 23:12B, Job declared, "I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily bread." So Job is a man who was able to overcome great suffering and to prevail and to experience great, a great comeback. God restored double. He restored him. So restoration to God is double. He gave him double of everything. his children weren't doubled because, of course, the children that died weren't lost. He had prayed for them. God didn't think of it as a loss, so he only gave him another set. But everything else, he got two sets of everything else. And this is a man who says... who revealed some great things like, "I know my Redeemer lives, and he's gonna s- stand at the last day." he believed in the resurrection and all that. And here he gives us another powerful statement: "I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily bread." This is why God called Job a man of integrity. This is why God boasted about Job to Satan when he came into His presence. And this is also why Job got tested, because he's a man who treasured the words of God. He's a man who put the words of God above even his daily bread. So he had the fear of the Lord. He had the fear of the Lord. So this is an important attitude. it's a good question to ask. Do you treasure the words of God more than your daily bread? and there's a warning in Philippians 3. There's a warning that Paul gives us. it's something that is sandwiched, actually, between, interestingly, between two ditches. The first ditch is the extreme of legalism. where Paul talks about that people who have confidence in the flesh, who trust in their works. And then he talks about how he counted everything loss for the knowledge of Christ. And then the second ditch is people who have put their appetites above the will of God. That's the second ditch. So Paul talks about this first one, and then he talks about how he is pursuing Christ. He's pursuing what he was saved for. He's pursuing character, maturity, the knowledge of God. These things go together. And he says, "I haven't arrived yet, but I'm on my way. I'm where I need to be in my progress, in my level of maturity." And then after that, he talks about people who have made the cross their enemy. So Christ is not their enemy. God is not their enemy, but the cross is their enemy. Then he comes to this other ditch, and that ditch is, he says they have made their belly their god, and their end is destruction. So because they have not prioritized the words of God, the will of God, and the thing that's standing in the way is their appetites, which they don't wanna give up for a season. That may... That might look like fasting. That might look like a, whatever kind of consecration that God has for you And re- and remember, it's His will, not our will. So it's not the sacrifice we want to give God, but rather the sacrifice He wants from us that counts. That- that's... Otherwise, sometimes we find ourselves in partial obedience. And He's saying that because these people have put other things, like their appetites, maybe their, how they feel. in Jesus' situation with the woman. Maybe they're like, "I'm too tired. I can't do this. I can't pray." So they're not people of prayer. when Jesus says, "You have to be a house of prayer or you become a den of thieves," And so there is a situation where if we don't actually prioritize God's will, we c- like Job did, we can find ourselves heading for destruction. God is not mocked. What we sow, we will reap. If you sow your will over God's will, you can expect to reap that. And sometimes we confess promises, but then we don't follow through and meet the conditions that are attached to them, and we fall into a kind of deception and delusion where we're just expecting things to happen. But they're not gonna happen until we've met the next step in, in doing the will of God. So this is an important point that I wanna make, that the order is significant. The second point that I wanna make about this is that it also, like I said, reflects the heart of the gospel. We must first lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. So in doing the will of God, there is a measure of dying to self. 'Cause especially when my will and God's will cross, there's a real problem. And this is really going to the cost of following Jesus, the cost of discipleship, episode, which actually is my most popular episode. It's been listened to by many people from all over the world, different continents. And I find that very interesting. But I'm also glad, because we must count the cost. But the cost does not outweigh the value. Jesus, really, and what He brings to us is way more valuable. So there is a cost, and we do have to count it. And h- honestly, sometimes the cost is so great when you start doing some things, some assignments that God gives you, that you start to regret it. But He said that if you... He said in Hebrews that if you look back, put your hand to the plow and you look back, then He will have no pleasure in you. So you become y- someone who displeases God. You don't, you're no longer pleasing Him. you can lose favor that way. So we have to be careful about such things. When we commit to God, we must trust that His grace will see us through, that His grace is sufficient. So like I said, doing the will of God involves ordering our loves in such a way that His priorities take precedence over our loves, right? And then we got to trust that God's gonna take care of stuff. But it also means crucifying certain things that we love. like giving up the coffee for a season, And not... Giving up the, the ice cream for a season, whatever it is that God is asking. Giving up sleep for a season. Going to places you don't wanna go to. Talking to people you don't wanna talk to. It's kind of interesting to share the gospel with them. So it is something you have to think about seriously because this is required to be a disciple. The paradox is that if we put God's will before our needs, we will please God and ourselves. Because like Jesus, we will find that doing His will is like eating. It- it's satisfying. We eat to our satisfaction, and we will find that we are not only pleasing Him, God's not only pleased, but we are actually pleased. But in the beginning, it might not feel like something we wanna do. And, Romans 12 One and two, also very powerful scriptures w- which speak to our response to the gospel. Paul says we've gotta lay our lives down. We gotta present our bodies as a living sacrifice. So you and I are the sacrifice that God is looking for, on, on the altar, before Him. It's not you bringing something to put on an altar to worship God, but you putting yourself on that altar as His worship, living your life as the burnt offering. Now, you're not dead like the animal in the Old Testament when you put yourself on the altar, but it does come with sacrifice, which means something you don't necessarily wanna do or something that's painful, something that is costly 'cause it's a sacrifice. But it's our response to the gospel. We must put our lives on that altar. And Jesus says the altar sanctifies us. So when we stop obeying God and we start pleasing ourselves, we are off the altar, and it's like we're out of the sanctification process. we, we're no longer holy because we have become unholy by not putting ourselves on the thing that makes us holy, which is the altar of the cross. which is the altar of giving up my will for His will. Which is the altar of trading my life for that of Christ, taking on His identity and losing my old identity. Now, he says when we renew our minds and we're not conformed to the world and we put our lives down, we're gonna find that we discover God's will, and we find that it's not only good, but it's acceptable, and it's perfect. So there are three levels here. So why am I saying this? Because in the end, we'll find it satisfying. But in the beginning, it may not seem that way. There are things God can ask of us, God asked me to go preach the gospel, and it doesn't feel second nature to go in the streets and just talk to random strangers. It's counter to my old self, but that old self is dead. So I have to come into Christ and follow His lead, right? So now let's talk about what it means, the significance of praying, "Let your will be done." Now, to understand what it means, let your will be done, we must study the example of Jesus in Gethsemane. So we must look at this, and you may wanna read that, in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew 26:36-56, Luke 22:39-53, Mark 14:32-50. Now, it's important to read all three because they add different things, They give us different aspects. Luke mentions Jesus sweating drops of blood, sweating like drops of blood. That is very important. and, But we don't see it in the other s- other accounts. One accounts talks about a- an angel coming to strengthen Him. Now, if you read it, you'll see what, how they give you a full picture. So now let's just dig into it a little bit. So the Bible tells us Jesus intentionally brought His disciples to Gethsemane to pray, and it occurred after celebrating the Passover feast when He inaugurated the New Covenant through His body and His blood. He had already shared with them, "Do this in remembrance of me. This is my body that's broken for you." So Jesus knew He was going to the cross, and He knew He was gonna die. He says, "My body broken for you, my blood shared for you." He knew what was coming. When they arrived in Gethsemane, in the garden, He said to them, Matthew 26:36 in the NIV says, "He said to them, 'Sit here while I go over there and pray.' Then He took Peter and t- and the two brothers, James and John," so His inner circle, those He was closest to. He took them further into the garden with Him. So it's not everybody you bring into your Gethsemane. when you find yourself in those places It's not everybody you do life with, you share with. you gotta bring in... There's an inner circle that you can bring with you to pray with you. And he says he brought them, and, the Bible says, "He became deeply troubled," and he said, "My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me." Matthew 26:38 in the NLT. Unfortunately, his inner cic- circle failed him because they fell asleep. part of it, too, is reflecting on this. They f- could feel his grief. They could feel the whole stress of the situation. They didn't understand everything about it, but it was an escape for them. They fell asleep, and that's what people tend to do. They sleep 'cause they don't know what to do. They feel hopeless. They feel stressed. They feel overwhelmed. They feel they just wanna escape, and that's what they did. They kinda fell asleep. They couldn't handle it. But that's the opposite of what we need to do. They fainted, in other words. Jesus already warned in Luke 18:1. He says, "Pray so you don't faint." So if you don't pray, you will faint. Faint in your strength to continue believing and trusting and persevering to get from A to B, the journey you started with the Lord, completing it. The promise he gave you, seeing it come to pass. If you don't pray... 'Cause we wrestle not with flesh and blood, right? But with unseen enemies. We wrestle with ourselves, in- within ourselves, in our own- with our own nature, with our will. And if you don't pray, you're not gonna overcome these things. Your stubborn st- self will is probably your greatest enemy And they fainted. But Jesus prayed, and his prayer was, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." Now, praying for God's will to override our own is a requirement if we are to follow Jesus' example as our predecessor, as our pioneer. So through daily praying, "Let your will be done," we posture ourselves to receive God's wisdom. We posture ourselves to find out his will, and we posture ourselves to also give in to that will. So there's a mental preparedness that comes with praying that regularly. Now, the first thing to note about this story is that Jesus retreated to pray in the garden before he became overwhelmed. He didn't wait for the situation to get out of hand. And he didn't become overwhelmed, but he did that before it became an, a situation that could overwhelm. His, his, disciples, like I said, were already overwhelmed, right? And it was, because it was a big task. He was going to pay for the sins of mankind. Those who had lived before him, were living in his time, and living after his time. What he did had eternal significance. He was going to take on our sin, the entire sin. Hallelujah. Oh my God. Praise God for such great mercy. He was going to die for his enemies, people who hated and despised him. Would you die for people who hate you, who dislike you, who curse you? This is a great question because that's what he did. He died for you and I while we were still God's enemies, as the Bible says. And he wasn't s- he wasn't shrinking from doing it when he said, "Let your... If the, if it is your will, let this cup pass." He prayed, "Let your will be done" in a place of severe testing. He said, "If it is your will, let the cup pass. Nevertheless, let your will be done." But he wasn't saying, "I don't wanna do this." He wasn't really saying, "I don't wanna do this." Let's look at this a bit more. The Greek word Gethsemane means an oil press, so it's a reference to Jesus enduring the pressing, right? A pressing for For the anointing. That's what happens when you press the olives in the oil press, is that the anointing oil comes out. And Gethsemane is derived from two Hebrew words, gat, meaning a place for pressing oil or wine, and shemang meaning oils. So in Jesus's days, heavy stone slabs were placed on pre-crushed olives, and the weight of the stone pressed the olive oil out of the mash for collection. So the name provides a vivid picture of what Jesus was experiencing while he was praying. The Bible says he was exceedingly sorrowful in Matthew 26:38. The cause of this suffering was the cup. But, like I said, he wasn't trying to get out of the cup. Now, the cup is a metaphor symbolizing the new covenant being established through the cross, which, like I said, he had already instituted. So he didn't institute something and then come to prayer for God to try to get him out of it. That's not what he was doing. He had already established that covenant. He said, "This is my body broken for you, my blood shed for you." So he knew the cost. He understood what he was going into. He understood. But in Gethsemane, he started to feel the weight of it. It's almost like God gave him a preview, and he started to feel the weight of it. And some commentates- commentators say that perhaps he was feeling that weight, and he was saying, "God, let this weight I'm feeling in this garden pass, pass. Let the... Remove this." not saying I don't wanna experience it on the cross, but that, oh, right here, right now, feeling what it feels like to be on the cross is a lot. But God put him through it because God wanted him to make an informed decision so that when he was on the cross, he would know exactly what it would be like. he already knew what it was gonna be like. There was no point then to say no. So his will was fully yielded to the Father 'cause he had counted the cost fully from experiencing what being on the cross was like right there in the garden. So that, that's what some commentators saying. There is some wisdom to that, that he was experiencing what it's like in the, there. already there, the enemy was already trying to crush his soul, right? So the real question was he saying, "Get me out of this"? And if you look at this, Jesus had previously spoken to his disciples about it, so he wasn't saying, "Get me out of this," after sharing his body and his blood with them. So what was he saying? What was he saying there? the real thing that I believe happened here was Jesus was concerned that if this weight he was feeling, if this death he was experiencing in that garden was not taken away, that he might miss actually going on the cross because he w- he was exceedingly sorrowful. So the sorrow was so much that he felt like, "Man, I'm experiencing death here," could actually make him die, that he could actually miss it. The agony he was going through 'Cause on the cross, you know what killed Him was, in the end, the separation from His Father. And He said, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He was, He died of a broken heart. Jesus died of a broken heart. It's not an easy thing to experience a broken heart. It's crushing. It's painful. When people betray you, it's crushing. It's painful. When your husband leaves you, when your wife leaves you, and you didn't expect that, or for the wrong reasons, whatever. If people betray you, people take things that belong to you. When your heart is broken, when you're abused, mistreated, when you're misunderstood, when you're rejected. Now, Jesus experienced this for us, and the way He experienced it was even more than anything we can go through because He experienced for the first time in eternity His Father pulling away His presence. The presence is our gift. The presence, God coming to dwell in us is really the goal that we're all after, right? The God who come and make His abode in us. Jesus said that. He said, "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments, and I and my Father will come and make our abode with you." So we always wanna b- wanna pursue the presence of God to the point where we're not just visiting, He's not just visiting, but we're living like heaven has come on earth, right? That's why we pray that prayer, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." He let heaven be here on earth as it is in heaven. But that's not what was going on here, that He just wanted to get out of it. No. He was experiencing something so crushing that He felt like if this thing is not taken away... That's why He had to pray through. That's why He had to pray through. So why is this a good or a good account of what happened? Because it says that after Jesus gave in and said, "Nevertheless, let your will be done," that He was strengthened by an angel, that God sent an angel to strengthen Him. Because He submitted His will, now we're told in scripture that an angel came to strengthen Him. So his prayer was contending not to miss the will of God. That's how important this will was to Jesus, that he was contending that he wouldn't miss doing the will of God. He was contending that the will of God will come to pass, that he will see this covenant that he had broken, he will see it through. That he would not be crushed by the weight before the assignment's time. That he would be able to complete it and fulfill the will of God. And being in that garden experience, in that perkasa to the cross was also part of the will of God. So he was like, let your will be done. Let me experience what you want me to experience." And God then sent an angel to strengthen him so that he would be able to pray through, and he would be able to do what he needed to do in that garden, and he would be able to go to the cross and do what he needed to do too. Because Jesus came in a human body. He was fully God in a human body living as a man. So he needed to go through things, and he felt things as a human being fully. Otherwise, his sacrifice would not have been fully adequate or fully fitting because he wouldn't have died as a man, with all our limitations. We needed our representative. the Bible says, "I looked for a man among them to stand in the gap." So God looked for somebody. This is in Ezekiel. The, the-- a condition for being an intercessor, a condition for being somebody who can stand in for people is to be from among them. So Jesus had to be a man like us. He had to be from among us. God had to look for him. Abraham prayed for Sodom, but Abraham was not from among Sodom, so Abraham could not stand in for Sodom. His intercession didn't go all the way through. Howe-however, Jesus' intercession did because he was from among us. He was a fully human So this was powerful. This was a really powerful experience there. Jesus did something in the garden to show us that it takes contending to do the will of God. This is what the Book of Hebrews is all about, because the people had come to a point where they had become complacent. And the writer of Hebrew wrote to warn them that they could indeed miss it. This is where he said he quoted the Lord as saying, "If you put your hand to the plow and you turn back, that you, you, his soul will find no pleasure in you." It says, "His soul will find no pleasure in you." So he wrote to exhort them about the better covenant that they had and not to settle for complacency, because complacency will put you in religion. Because when you stop doing the will of God, you end up falling into religion because now you're out of the will of God, and you're backsliding from his grace. And he warned them that they needed to progress. They needed to come into a full understanding of what God had promised them, which was worth pursuing. It is worth pursuing the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is worth pursuing the will of the Father because the ultimate is the glory of God. It's the glory of His presence dwelling among us. It's the glory of His presence here on Earth, Heaven's atmosphere down here. Wherever we are, we carry it wherever we are because now we've entered His rest. So he warns them about missing the rest of the promise like, Israel did when they came out of the promised land, and God ha- had to raise a whole new generation. So he warned them about that. So the key really message from this study of Gethsemane is to remember that we must pray and not faint, and we must contend to do the will of God. And sometimes that really means putting food aside for a season, going after h- God hard, doing the hard fast, doing the, that you're able to do medically, doing that God has sanctioned because it must be by faith too. We don't wanna do things religiously. It means sometimes sleepless nights, going after God all night like Jacob did for the blessing. It cost Jacob sleep, an all-night wrestle. What are you gonna re- do-- give up to wrestle? Because sometimes that's what it takes. You've gotta wrestle God to do His will. So it's a serious thing, and Jesus's message is a serious thing. Now, Jesus experienced such tremendous pressure that Luke says His sweat was like drops of blood. And there's a medical... Luke was a physician, so it's interesting that he brings us that aspect of what happened, of the agony. Because it, it- there is a medical explanation for this. There is a medical term. They have a terminology for what He was actually experiencing and what that means, And I just want you to ponder that. What is God's will revealed to you about your calling, your purpose, a promise He wants to give you? Have you pursued Him for it? Because it's going to take pursuit. There are times when we have Gethsemane moments, and in those moments we have to be like Jacob and not Esau, who decided that what's this worth? What's His grace worth when I'm here feeling like I'm dying from hunger or thirst or tiredness or whatever the issue might be? There is a contending, and we need to pray that God will give us the grace to be able to contend, to submit to doing His will so that we don't miss it. So that we surrender our will to God and pray that Thy will be done. That's the significance of praying Thy will be done, is showing love towards the Father. Showing that we want- we... Our love for Him His prior, his priority. It's prioritizing what he wants. Prioritizing pleasing him. And in the end, finding that as we please him, we please ourselves. But it may come and involves personal cost. And finding that it actually draws us closer to him and not away from him. And why do we need to pray that? Because it is a sign of the fear of the Lord. Like Job experienced, it is a sign of the fear of the Lord. And if we don't do that, we will fall out of the fear of the Lord, out of wisdom, and into foolishness, because that is the opposite of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of the Lord is showing him reverence. And many in the Body of Christ are missing out, are not entering into what God has for them because of the lack of reverence. I asked the Lord once, "Why is it that so many people are struggling, are broke, are going through all this stuff, and you've made all these promises?" And I had one word, reverence. See, you and I need to show God reverence. Reverence is faith. Reverence is honor. Reverence is hallowed be thy name. Reverence is respect for His Word. It's honoring His Word, like Job said, above unnecessary food. It's reordering our priorities. Reverence is believing in God. And honestly, the human heart cannot truly believe in God without pursuing God in prayer, because God has to work on our hearts so that the fallow ground can be broken up, so that the uncultivated places can be turned into fruitful vines, fruitful lands where milk and honey flow And it's if we don't pray, we will faint. So we must pray. And praying is not just a casual, I'm heading to work and I just say five minutes prayer here, two minutes. No, we've got to set time aside. Jesus said to his disciples in Gethsemane, "Could you not tarry with me for an hour? Pray, lest you enter into temptation." So praying an hour in the Spirit is a great safeguard against temptation. Jude 20 tells us, when you find yourself infiltrated by sin, when you find yourself infiltrated by falsehood, you contend by praying in the Spirit so that you remain in the love of God. So remaining in the love of God is the goal. Abiding, staying connected, and not slipping into religion and deceiving ourselves, which is the alternative Is what's at stake here. We have to enter the rest. We have to. and it's gonna cost, and it's gonna take sacrifice, and it's gonna take doing the will of God even when our will and His will cross. It's gonna take living out the life of discipleship. It's gonna take laying our lives down, and it's gonna take overcoming some things. Otherwise, we may become bitter, hardened, or angry through life. There are many Christians who are angry with God because they've been disappointed, because things have happened they didn't expect. I've gone through this. It's like the parable of the sower, The second category of soil. they are trampled by-- He says trampled by huma- humanity. Even though they're Christians, they're trampled because they've got offense in their hearts. you may be a Christian and you feel like, "Why am I feeling trampled in life by people? Why am I not feeling like I'm on top?" Because there is a brokenness in your heart. You may have experienced a broken heart like I did. going through a divorce like I did, for the sake of my faith. Actually going through persecution for the sake of my faith. Going through betrayal for the sake of my faith and thinking, "Man, God, why didn't you come to my aid? I thought you would defend me." And I-- and it created this... it's like unacknowledged offense where you're not offended even at the people because you know the truth and you know you've gotta forgive them and release them, but you feel let down by God. And that's something we have to deal with. We have to let the Lord heal our hearts, and we have to be able to still trust in His goodness and pursue Him so that the story can end well like it did for Naomi. So that in the end, we're not saying, "God, you've made my life bitter. My life is bitter. You abandoned me. You forsook me," when He said He'll never forsake us nor leave us. 'Cause those are all lies that our circumstances try to tell us or the enemy tries to play in our mind. But that we come to a place where, like him, like-- Sorry, like her, there is a new story. The story's rewritten because God's not done with your story. He's not done with my story But it's going to take s- overcoming some places like Gethsemane. It's going to take triumphing through prayer. It's gonna take connecting with the body of Christ, praying corporately. Because Joshua and Caleb didn't take the promise by themselves. They had to be part of an army. And so being an isolated Christian who doesn't pray with other believers is actually, is actually not a good strategy. We have to be in the right place at the right time. We need those corporate gather- gatherings, those all-day prayer meetings, praying in the Spirit all day. How hungry are you? If you're not, ask the Lord to make you hungry. So I'm gonna end on this note, that we need to pray to be prepared to do the will of God, to pray through, to be strengthened like Jesus did so that we don't miss doing what He wants. Because what He wants, though it may be laying our lives down for others, is also the means to our covenant with Him, our fulfillment, our satisfaction, our needs and priorities also falling into place. So Father, I thank You for this message. I thank You so much that You're a God of covenant. I thank You that You keep Your word, and keeping Your word says You do so with those who also respect Your covenant. You keep covenant with those who honor You, who revere You, as the psalmist said. And so I pray that You will give us grace to reverence You, to fear You, and to do Your will, to keep our vows, to keep our covenant with You Even if it's costly, even when it's difficult. And I pray for strength that you will strengthen us because your grace is sufficient. Your grace brings an ease to the difficult things. Your grace brings perspective. Your grace brings healing to our hearts from all the disappointments. Heal our hearts. Heal our hearts of all the offenses. Remove those things that have hindered us from doing your will. Give us vision and provision to do your will and to also fulfill our callings and destinies and what it is you're asking, the conditions you've set for us to see your promises fulfilled in our lives. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Thank you so much for joining me today. And if this blessed you, be sure to share it. And I encourage you to listen even again if you feel like, there are things here that really touched your heart. I encourage you to listen again as many times as you need to so you don't forget the truth. You don't forget the revelation that God gives you as you are listening. Pray for revelation. Pray for insight, and let the Word continue to speak to your heart and bless you. All right, take care. Bye. Thank you for listening to On This Rock. We're so glad you joined us and hope you've been encouraged. To connect with our women's ministry, explore live discipleship classes, or support children with disabilities through our Mercy Mission, visit onthisrockgroup.com. You can now find everything we offer there. Until next time, stay rooted in truth, and remember, trade your pebble for the rock of ages