Praying Through the Struggle

All right, Matthew 26, starting in verse 36, we're in a series called The Struggle is Real.

We're looking at Jesus and His humanity and one of His greatest struggles.

Starting in verse 36, it said, Jesus went with them, them being his disciples, to the olive grove called Gethsemane.

And he said, Sit here while I go over there to pray.

He took Peter and Zebedee's two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed.

He told them, My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.

Stay here and keep watch with me.

He went on a little further and bowed his face to the ground, praying, My father, if it is possible, please let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.

Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

Have you ever seen a strong person break?

Somebody that you may have thought was unbreakable, and yet life hit them in such a way that you saw them in a state of weakness.

You saw them fall apart.

Although we know the people around us are humans, there are certain people in our lives that seem to hold the universe together.

And in some sense, they hold your universe together.

They hold mine.

They're people that help to provide for us.

They're people, especially if you can think back to your childhood, maybe you had a mentor or a parent or a guardian who, in many senses, was the omnipotent, omniscient one in your life holding your world together, and you saw their world falling apart, and you'll never forget it.

With all due respect to all the Bible stories in the whole Bible, if I could be a fly on the wall to one Bible story, it would be this one.

No disrespect to the parting of the Red Sea, I'm sure that was really cool.

No disrespect to the turning the water into wine, I bet that was a sight to behold.

No disrespect to the feeding of the 5,000 or the walking on water, I bet it was unforgettable.

But in terms of useful, in terms of profound impact life change, Gethsemane all day.

We see Jesus at his breaking point and his humanity.

He uses panic attack language.

My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.

I feel like I'm going to die.

It feels like what's going on inside my emotions, inside my head and my heart, are overwhelming my body, and I feel like I can't take it.

What's interesting about this text is that Jesus goes through this and he invites his disciples to watch.

He says, Come with me and keep watch with me.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't like people to see me break down.

Sometimes in a message I'll be teaching and it'll hit me in my deep, deepest feelings.

I might be telling a story, whatever.

Usually I have a pretty good idea and I start, I dread it a little bit because I know I have a story I need to tell, and I know there's a chance it's gonna hit me, and I'm gonna not be able to hold myself together.

And I gotta tell you, whenever I have those feelings, if I start to break down, if I start to cry, okay, and my emotions are getting the best of me, just being honest, what's going on in my head is I just want a trapdoor to open up and swallow me up.

I want to be gone.

I want to walk out.

Guys, I'll be right back.

Uh stand by, talk to your neighbor for a second.

I want to go out here, I want to get myself together, and I want to come back because I I don't want, I want to be strong.

I I want you to think of me as somebody you can count on, as somebody that can help hold your world together.

I I don't want you thinking that I'm weak.

I don't want you thinking I'm falling apart.

In fact, there's a part of me that kind of selfishly wants my friends and family and my kids and my wife and the people closest to me, someday when I'm dead and gone at my funeral, to go, you know, that guy was so tough.

He was so strong, he was unbreakable.

We never saw him sweat.

We never saw him struggle, he just could chew it up and spit it out with the best of him.

He just never, he just never broke, you know.

And yet you have Jesus who is at his breaking point and he's breaking down, and he invites his disciples to come with him.

Come watch this.

Um, why did he do that?

Well, it says in Matthew 26, 41, what he says to him is, keep watch and pray so that you'll not give in to temptation, for the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.

We know Jesus needed support from his friends, but Jesus seemed to be hip to the fact that this might be his greatest lesson to his disciples.

Because he's telling them, hey, listen, you're gonna need this tonight, but you're gonna need it tomorrow.

In ten years from now, there's gonna be moments in your life that your spirit is willing.

You know what you're supposed to do, you know what a courageous person does, you know what a strong person does, but your flesh can't get you there.

And he's like, that's where I'm at right now.

So come watch me so that when you get in your situation, you'll know what to do.

This is why I would tell you if you are that strong person in people's lives who are holding their universe together, it's okay for them to see you work your way through a struggle in a healthy way.

And Jesus gives them a model.

I mean, look what he says.

He says, keep watch and pray so that you'll not give in to temptation.

So he makes a statement to them one of the ways when you're at your breaking point that you push through and battle through a struggle, struggle your way through the struggle, is to pray.

Is to pray.

Um, you you notice the prayer that he prays, right?

We just read it a second ago.

He said, Praise to God, Lord, Father, take this cup of suffering from me, take this thing away, take this out of my life.

But he says, but not my will, but your will.

Okay, think about that now.

Where did you we where else did we hear Jesus say that?

When did he talk about, God, your will be done?

Remember the Lord's Prayer?

Okay, we're in Matthew 26 here, but if you were to backtrack to Matthew 6, you would see he teaches his disciples how to pray.

And they're sort of in a classroom.

It's the Sermon on the Mount, it's not an actual classroom, but a metaphoric classroom.

They're there and he's teaching them and he's like, hey, listen, when you pray, pray like this.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be, holy be your name.

Okay, reverence, honor, your kingdom come, your will be done.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And so he teaches them in the classroom to pray like this.

But come on, the most profound prayer lesson of praying the will of God happened when he was having a panic attack, when he was in the valley of despair, when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he says, Come watch me come through a struggle.

Don't just sit in my classroom, come watch me in my struggle.

And in his struggle, he prays that same prayer God, your will be done.

How you respond to struggle is a better teacher than whatever you say in the classroom.

And some of you are struggling and you're struggling in front of people right now, and you're struggling in front of people you've instructed.

But your instructions are not as profound as you walking through struggle.

The most powerful lessons of your life will happen when you are steadfast and your character emerges in the middle of a struggle.

That matters a lot more than whatever it says on the wall art that you bought from Hobby Lobby.

Those are beautiful decorations and they have pithy sayings, but those pithy sayings don't mean anything.

If when you're in the middle of Gethsemane and you go into your flesh, he in the moment said, Watch me.

Watch me struggle, watch me battle.

God, your will be done.

And for some of you, uh you are so scared that to struggle in front of people that that need you and struggle in front of people who you're impacting and influencing, and what you're missing is this might be the most powerful teaching opportunity of your entire life to leave an indelible mark.

And Jesus had the presence of mind to not go hide his struggle.

He said, Come watch, come keep watch with me.

I want to give you four things we learn from Jesus praying his way through struggle.

The first is make time to pray.

You got to make time to pray.

Um, often when you're in the middle of chaos and there's chaos out there and there's chaos in here, uh, we get to where we're reacting and we're reactive, we're reactive, we're responding.

And what we see is a pattern from Jesus all through his ministry, all through the gospels is that Jesus was proactive about making time to pray.

It didn't just happen in Gethsemane, it had been happening the whole time.

We see in Mark chapter 1, verse 35, Jesus is in a really busy season.

Mark 1:35

Okay, if you read all of Mark chapter 1, Jesus has more work to do than he has time to do it.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

He's running from here, he's running to there, he's healing, he's teaching, he's all over the place.

And yet it says in Mark 1.35, before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.

He made time.

Uh, we see in Mark 6 with the famous story of uh Jesus feeding the 5,000, but what it happened, that story happened on the tail end of Jesus getting the news that his cousin died.

And so he's grieving, but he, as he's grieving, there's a need, and so he's meeting a need with this hand, and and and yet he's grieving, you know, with the other hand.

I mean, he's he is torn between trying to meet the needs of the people he loves and trying to find his own way through grief.

And it says in Mark 6, 45, after, immediately after this, Jesus insisted the disciples go back in the boat, head across the lake to Beth Seda, and while he sent the people home, verse 46, after telling everyone goodbye, he went up into the hills by himself to pray.

And friend, I gotta tell you, often when you're in the middle of the Gethsemane type situation, when you're in a busy season, the thing you need to do most is to pray.

And yet prayer isn't gonna prioritize itself.

Jesus sets up a pattern.

I gotta, I've got to get away, I've got to get out of the eye of the storm, I've got to get away from the people, I've got to get to pray.

You know, think about this with both Jesus and Job.

We've been looking at both Jesus and Job the last uh number of weeks, and what we see from those guys is there were certain things that you could depend on your friends for.

There are certain things you should be able to depend on your friends for.

We talked last week about how to support each other through struggle.

We came up with a plan last week of how to support each other through struggle.

But what we see from both Jesus and Job is there were certain times and certain things and certain subjects that it wasn't going to be right to talk to anybody about but God.

There are some things that people can help you through, and there's some things people can't help you through.

There's some wisdom that comes from people as we evaluate our experiences and we learn everything that we can learn to work through our emotions, and so there's a lot of good there, but that's not the whole deal.

There are some things you get from God Himself.

And you're not gonna get that if you don't make space to pray.

So we see that Jesus made time to pray.

Uh, the second thing that we learn from Jesus as he prayed his way through struggle is that it's okay to be honest with God.

It's okay to be honest with God.

I'll tell you what I've found is often it's being honest with God that's the beginning of me being honest with myself.

I have a tendency, man, when I'm struggling through something to kind of compartmentalize things, to kind of push them to the side.

You know, you just keep going, oh, I'm good, I'm good.

Okay, you push things over here, push it over there.

And often it's actually when I begin to pray and articulate and to trust God enough to start talking about what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling or where I'm at.

And when I start doing that, all of a sudden that truth not only goes to God, but it comes to me.

I start to benefit from my own honesty.

And this really gets down to the nature of your relationship with God and what you believe about him and if you think this is permissible or not.

And I want you to know there there is nothing that you cannot say to God.

I know it's a double negative, but I'm gonna say anyway.

There's nothing you can't say to God.

In other words, you can say anything to God.

You can bring your honesty, your honest self to him.

And I gotta tell you, this it's one of the I think hangups that we have is we're worried that we're gonna offend God or we're gonna throw him off or that we're gonna, you know.

I'm not talking about dishonoring God, hurling insults at God.

I'm not talking about uh that type of thing.

I'm talking about being honest, honoring God with the honesty of your thoughts and your heart.

And I think one of our issues, one of the hangups with God is, you know, is that we take an anthropomorphic view of God.

So in other words, we know we're made in the image of God, but sometimes we make God in our image.

And so a lot of the patterns we learn in interpersonal human relationships, we then put on to God and it's not applicable.

So for example, I've noticed throughout the course of my 43 years on this earth, a lot of times people ask me what I think, but they don't really want to know.

Good.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one.

A few nervous laughs in the room.

I I I mean, for years I thought when people asked me, hey man, what do you think about this?

Hey, give me your opinion on this, I thought that's what they were asking.

I thought they wanted me to speak into the issue or to maybe help them see a blind spot.

So I would honor them with my full transparent thought, thinking, hey, I've got a unique vantage point.

They asked me.

I don't go around giving unsolicited advice, but you solicited, so here it is.

And what I've learned is often when people ask you what you think, they just want affirmation.

They just want you to go, you're doing awesome.

Wouldn't change a thing.

I've come up with my own life.

Hey, I'd only change one thing.

And they go, what?

And I go, nothing.

Because often people don't really want to know, they don't want to have a real conversation like that.

So what do we do?

We tiptoe around God.

I'm worried I'm gonna step on his toes.

I'm worried I'm gonna tell God something he doesn't want to hear.

Man, that is not the case.

The whole scripture is absolutely loaded with people pouring their heart out to God in ways that are uncomfortable.

It causes you when you read it to go, am I allowed to say that?

It's supported through the whole Bible.

Like, how do you make sense of Psalms?

How do you make sense of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet?

How do you make sense of Habakkuk?

How do you make sense of Job?

Job pouring his heart out.

He goes, I wish I was a stillborn baby.

He said, I wish I would have died in the womb.

I cursed the day they put me in my mother's lap.

I would rather feel nothing than feel the pain that I feel right now.

Why did you even make me if you were gonna let me go through this?

It's all throughout the scripture.

Psalm 13, 1, O Lord, how long will you forget me?

Forever?

How long will you look the other way?

If you've ever been in a position where it felt like I'm over here and God's looking that way.

Alright, God, they told me you you know everything, you see everything, you either don't know or don't care.

That's how that that's how he felt.

Psalm 42, which by the way, a little uh note is you might see in your Bible, some of your Bibles have a footnote in Gethsemane in Matthew 26, that when Jesus is saying, My soul is crushed with grief, that he's borrowing from some language in Psalm 42.

But in Psalm 42, 3, it says, Day and night, I have only tears for food.

Some of you have going through something so hard right now, such a struggle, you have no appetite.

Like I'm eating my own tears while my enemies continually taunt me, saying, Where is this God of yours?

Some of you out here trying to defend God's reputation.

You're like, God, I'm sick of defending your reputation.

All my heathen friends are saying to me, Where is your God?

Where how did all that faith get you?

How did all that faithfulness get you?

How did all the Bible verses get you?

How did all the worship songs get you?

How did all those years of denying yourself and taking up your cross?

How'd that get you?

Look where you are now.

And Psalm 42, he's like, I'm tired of even having the question asked.

Psalm 44, 23, wake up, O Lord, why do you sleep?

Get up.

Do not reject us forever.

Look at this one.

This one's so blunt, it's really uncomfortable.

Jeremiah 20.

Everybody knows Jeremiah 29, 11.

I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.

Nine verses earlier, he says, How long, O Lord, must I call?

I'm sorry, he says, Oh Lord, you misled me.

And I allowed myself to be misled.

I am such a fool.

I believed you.

You misled me.

You're stronger than I am, and you overpowered me.

I put myself in your hands and you didn't protect me.

Now I'm mocked every day.

Everyone laughs at me.

When I speak, the words burst out violence and destruction, I shout.

So these messages from the Lord have made me a household joke.

Habakkuk 1, 2 through 4.

How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?

Violence is everywhere.

I cry, but you do not come to save.

And friend, I gotta tell you, God is not thrown off by your honesty.

In fact, God might be the one opportunity you have in this world to have a real honest conversation.

And when you start pouring out your heart, not like I'm out here trying to disrespect God and I'm cursing God, it's not a cursing God.

It's Lord, from my vantage point where I stand right now, this makes no sense.

And I don't know why you're not doing the stuff that I want you to do.

I don't know why you don't do the stuff it seems like a decent person would do.

Why won't you help?

Why won't you do this?

And so you have Jesus, by the way, he's in the garden and he's like, please take this cup from me.

Please take this away from me.

What is he talking about, the cup?

He's talking about the suffering and ultimately the wrath of God.

We know what Jesus, his assignment, he wasn't caught off guard.

It wasn't like, oh, now I know I have to do this.

For 15 chapters, he's been saying that he's going to die, but he knows what he's doing is he's stepping in as our substitute.

He's taking the wrath of God, right?

That is the justice for our sin.

And he's going to take it upon himself, and he's being honest about I don't want to do this.

So you can be honest with God.

Number three is make your request.

Four things we learn from Jesus praying his way through struggle.

The third is to make your request.

Look at this in uh Matthew 26, 39.

When he goes and he bows before God, it says he goes a little farther, he bows his face to the ground, praying, My Father, if it's possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me, yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

And so we see Jesus, he he prays, like, God, Father, if there's any other way, just please take this away.

He's kind of bargaining and begging.

Like, I know the purpose, but maybe there's another way to do this.

He he's getting close to it, and so it's starting to reality starting to set in as humanity.

He's like, I'm dreading this.

I know what I'm being asked to do.

I don't want to do it.

Can we bargain here?

Can we think about it?

Okay, so he prays that prayer, then he goes to check on his friends who are supposed to be keeping watch with them, and they've fallen asleep.

And Jesus gets frustrated with them, and he's like, seriously?

I was very clear.

I just asked one thing.

I just asked you to stay awake, keep watch.

And you couldn't, not even for one hour.

Now, when you read that text, I I don't believe Matthew put that in there so that we would feel guilty every time we can't perform or every time we fall asleep.

Like it says in the text, their eyes were heavy, they could not stay awake, they were very tired.

I don't think the point is that we should live in shame and guilt because in our humanity.

You know, we can't do enough.

I think that's a that's a slippery slope.

You can live with this.

I am never doing enough.

I can never do enough.

I don't think that's the point.

I think the point is Matthew wanted us to see Jesus' humanity and see that he was disappointed with his support system and how he, you know, how he handled it.

Like he was he was agitated, he was frustrated.

He he I asked you to do this and you fell short.

And so he's dealing with the disappointment of his support system.

But look at this, he goes back into prayer even after that disappointment, instead of just quitting and going, you know what?

God, if you won't help me, then fine, and you guys won't help me, then fine.

He goes back to pray.

And look how the prayer slightly changes in verse 42.

So Jesus left him a second time and prayed, My Father, if this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.

So notice he goes from kind of begging and bargaining, please take this cup from me to you know what?

You can see him coming to peace with his mission.

You see him coming to peace with his assignment.

You know what?

If there's not another way, I can do it.

I've got this.

You know, I I've uh I've shared this before, so if you've been here and heard this, uh just bear with me for a second.

But um, you know, I I've shared with you guys a little bit of some of the prayer journey that I've had with my family.

My my both of my boys are on the autism spectrum.

And I talked about when my son Hudson was diagnosed, uh, he's our older son.

Um it caught me off guard, and every night I would put him to bed and I would lay my hands on his head while I was putting him to bed and I would pray for a miracle.

I would pray for healing, and I would beg God to heal him.

And and I would, I mean, I was praying like you have never seen every night.

I mean, just praying fire.

I'm like, Lord, you know we'll give you glory.

God, what could be a better demonstration of your power than to heal this boy?

And we will give you all the praise.

We'll give you all the glory.

Okay, and so I'm praying, I'm I'm using scriptures, man.

I'm going into Bible stories, I'm lawyered up, I'm trying to win the okay, with God.

I'm like, Lord, come on, this, you know, this would be great publicity, you know, for you.

I mean, everybody's talking about making you famous.

I mean, this would do it, you know.

And so, like, I mean, I was all in that, and frankly, like it was day after day, month after month.

Nothing was getting better.

In fact, he was getting worse.

And at a certain point, I just ran out of energy.

I lost steam.

I started praying, I stopped praying for it.

And it really wasn't this like fist shaking at God.

It wasn't like I was angry or whatever.

It was just, I just didn't have it in me.

And it was actually, it wasn't until later when I kind of got my energy back that I looked back and I realized kind of what happened.

And so I've kind of shared that because I think I I had in my heat of the moment and in my exhaustion, I was really had a very reductive view of prayer.

It was very singular.

I was praying a very specific prayer.

God, use your power to heal my son.

That was what I was praying.

I wasn't asking God for his presence, I wasn't asking God for his perspective.

And even my view of power was very specific.

Lord, use your power to do this one thing, this specific thing.

Heal him.

And what I missed, and what I really caught here, this last time I've been reading through this Gethsemane thing, is what we see of Jesus was he prayed for God's power to remove the problem.

Hey, God, if you can, if you're willing, use your power to take this cup of suffering away to neutralize the problem.

But he moves in his prayer away from just take the cup of suffering to give me the power to endure.

Give me the power to persevere.

Because there are some things God will save you from, other things God will bring you through.

Either way, he's faithful, either way, he's powerful.

And this was something Jesus was asking God to take away, but it wasn't supposed to be taken away.

He was supposed to walk through that.

That was his assignment.

It was part of his mission.

Hey, we don't live in utopia.

We live on planet earth.

And on planet earth, there's free will, and planet earth, there's sin, and planet earth there's suffering.

There's all kinds, there's gravity.

Like we live in a world that there is suffering and there's some struggle you are supposed to walk through.

So it's okay to make your request known to God.

God, would you take this thing away?

But God doesn't always take it away, and he didn't take it away for Jesus, but Jesus started to pivot his prayer from God, take the cup to God, give me the strength to walk through and to endure.

I love to watch this progression because what you see is in Gethsemane, ultimately Jesus got what he needed to be able to endure, to be able to take on what he needed to take on.

Look at this.

It says in uh Matthew 26, 45, 46, after his support system kept letting him down, he said, Hey, go ahead and sleep, have your rest, but look, the time has come.

The Son of Man is betrayed in the hands of sinners.

Up, let's be going.

Look, my betrayer is here.

Exclamation point.

That's verse 46.

Have you noticed?

In verse 38, he's like, My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.

I can't do this.

And by verse 46, he says, My betrayer is here, up, let's go.

You see, what ultimately started as a prayer of take this away, eventually he got the strength he needed, the power he needed to go bring it on.

In fact, if you keep reading, okay, he says, My betrayer is here.

Keep reading in Matthew 26.

He's gonna go and he's gonna see Judas, who's his betrayer, who's his friend.

Instead of walking up to Judas and hurling insults at him, he walks up, he's about to betray him with a kiss, he's about to betray him with a gesture of friendship, all the while stabbing him in the back.

And Jesus, fresh off the power of prayer, fresh off the power of Gethsemane, walks up to Judas and says, Do what you gotta do.

Whatever you need to do, go ahead and do it.

I'm ready.

And often this is the process of a strong person at their breaking point, praying their way through struggle.

The result isn't necessarily the removal of the cup of sorrow and suffering and wrath.

The result is the power to walk into what you have next.

And that's what we have for Jesus.

The fourth thing we learn is to commit to persevere.

Commit to persevere.

This past Wednesday night we had um a prayer night.

It was so rich, it was so beautiful, um, very simple.

We just worship God, we had people prayed for each other, um, and we had people share testimonies.

And and it wasn't the testimonies, you know, that you often hear, which I don't mean to disparage these testimonies, but often the testimonies all have a very specific happy ending.

So it's like, hey, our marriage was bad and now it's never been better, or uh somebody's like, you know, hey, I was sick and I had this thing and we prayed, and now I'm the thing came back clean.

Like often you have that, and and that's beautiful, and that's wonderful, and that is worth celebrating, and and that's awesome.

Um, but the testimonies that were shared, one of them was um by uh a man whose mother was sick with cancer, and he said, I prayed and believed and thought she was going to be healed, but she passed.

And he started to talk about how uh in these last nine months that God has uh been showing himself up in his life in ways he had never seen before.

And he's like, you know, I thought this would break me.

I really did.

I thought if she dies, I I won't make it.

He's like, and the Lord is is bringing me through and is giving me strength, and in some ways I'm still in the middle of it, but I'm seeing things I've never seen, I'm learning things I've never learned, and so he's he's healing in the process.

Another woman shared a story of um her son committed suicide in front of her, and it was such a traumatic event, she hit as anybody would, the valley of despair.

And she's like, you know, I uh my mental health went for a ride.

I was, I was, I've never been lower.

And and yet she talked about how God showed up in those dark, dark nights of the soul, in those moments where her soul was crushed with grief to the point of death, and yet God didn't leave me there.

And even when people let me down, God didn't let me down.

And I was able to persevere when I didn't feel like I could.

We had another story of somebody who a couple that has had multiple miscarriages, and they kept praying, God, take this cup of suffering, Lord.

You know we just want to have a child.

And in the middle of those prayers, they found out the husband had Parkinson's.

It was like one and now two things, and they and so they're believing God to you know have this baby, and then they they didn't, and they talked through the process of healing through that and working through it and struggling.

And ultimately in a time of prayer and struggling through, coming to a place where they had clarity.

You know what?

Maybe our assignment is adoption.

She talked to me later after the night we were talking, and she's like, she's a um a trauma specialist in the public school system.

And she said, Oh, we just wanted a baby.

Nothing wrong with that, no, nothing wrong with wanting our own child.

She's like, but she's like, I'm not trying to be cocky, but there's nobody better suited to help a kid who's been to hell and back than me.

She's like, I do it every day at school, why not in my own home?

She's like, nobody's better at this than me.

She's like, maybe this is what God has, maybe this is the cup I'm supposed to carry.

I've been praying, God, take this away, but now I'm praying, God, help me to walk out what you have for me.

So she steps confidently into what God has.

You know, often we have these very specific prayers, and we have these very specific expectations of what we want God to do with his power.

And today I wonder if it's time to start shifting the prayer from Lord, remove this cup to God, give me the strength.

I end with this in conclusion, because I just want to make sure we don't miss it.

Go ahead and bring up that last slide.

This is what we see in Matthew 26, 36 through 45.

Jesus went from his emotional breaking point to asking for help, to bargaining with his heavenly father, to being let down by his support system, to accepting his reality, to committing to faithful endurance, to walking confidently into the future.

How did he do it?

By praying his way through.