![[Graphic of Jesus praying in the Garden]](https://www.deankwilson.com/Blog_images/Jesus_prays.jpg)
| Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing. Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!” |
| —Matthew 26:36-46 |
Today, I want to write about what it means to “submit.” Now I realize that the word “submit” is not a very popular word. It is not a word that most people really understand, at least not with clarity. And yet, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, I think it’s very important to a person’s development to know what it means to “submit.”
Please allow me to illustrate by sharing a true story with you.
When I was a little boy, I really did not like to eat peas. My mom told me that peas were good for me. But, when I looked at a pile of peas on my plate, all I could think of was how mushy and squishy they would be when I took a spoonful of them into my mouth and began to chew.
So, when my mom would give me some peas, I would take my spoon and push the peas over to the side of the plate. I would be very careful that all the peas stayed together in that little pile. Then, I would eat everything else on my plate and hope that, by saving the peas to the very last, maybe Mom wouldn’t make me eat them.
But, do you know what? My strategy never worked! She would make me eat them every time.
Now sometimes, I would sit there and not eat those peas for a very long time. My mom would say, “Dean! Eat your peas!”
And I would say, “Yes, Mom.” But, I wouldn’t eat them.
In a little while, my mom would say, “Dean! Eat your peas!”
And again I would say, “Yes, Mom.” But, I still wouldn’t eat the peas.
Finally, my mom would say, quite sternly, “Dean! Eat your peas. You cannot leave the table until you eat those peas!”
So, finally, reluctantly, very, very slowly I would eat the peas. The moment I began to eat those peas, I began to “submit” to my mom. You see, finally—in spite of how much I procrastinated making the only correct decision—I did what my mom wanted me to do.
That’s what it means to “submit.” We submit, when we do exactly what someone trustworthy wants us to do.
God want us to do what He tells us to do in His written Word, the Bible. He wants us to submit to Him because He loves us and because He always knows what is the very best thing for us to do. God is certainly trustworthy. He’s someone worthy of our trust. And, He has given us power, through His Holy Spirit, to enable us to submit to His will. The Holy Spirit empowers us to bend our foolish, selfish, stubborn human will to God’s divine and perfect will.
It’s important for us to remember that Jesus, God’s Son, gave us a beautiful example of what it means to submit in the Garden of Gethsemane, as recorded in the Scripture passage at the beginning of this blog post. On the very night that Jesus was going to be arrested on false charges and ultimately crucified in our place on the cruel cross of Calvary, He asked God in prayer to spare Him. But, and this is the really important part, He ended His prayer with the words, “Not my will, but Your will be done.” He purposefully and willingly submitted to His Father’s perfect plan.
Make no mistake about it. Jesus knew what pain He would endure. He knew how humiliating it would be to hang naked on the cruel cross of Roman torture. He knew that the agony that would grip every aspect of His being would be excurciating, as He bore the penalty for all of the sins that humans had ever committed and for every sin that humans would ever commit in the future. He knew that He would pay a terrible price for submitting to His Father. Every one of Jesus’ four human modalities—emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical—would be stressed to the breaking point. Nevertheless, because He knew that His Father’s perfect will was for the best, Jesus submitted His will to the will of His Father.
Because Jesus knew what it meant to submit, and because He willingly submitted His will to God the Father, we received forgiveness for all of our sins, through the shedding of Jesus’ precious blood. And, because He rose again from the dead, He gave assurance to everyone who believes in Him that he or she would have eternal life. Even as Jesus ascended to the heaven from which He came and sat down at the right hand of His Father, He secured for us the reality that heaven would ultimately be our home for all eternity.
The lesson for us is crystal clear: whenever God reveals to us exactly what He wants us to do, our loving response—in full obedience—is to submit to God’s divine and perfect will. Faced with untold challenges in this life, as followers of the Great King Jesus, we can make no other reasonable choice but to submit to the will of the One who knows us best and loves us the most.
