One of the things that impresses me the most when I look at the life of Christ is his resolve. He seems to have approached the mission ahead of him completely focused on what needed to be accomplished. I wish I had that kind of resolve. Unfortunately I approach a lot of tasks in life and am easily distracted in the process.

But then came Gethsemane.

The garden of Gethsemane is the place where Jesus went before he surrendered himself into the hands of the Jews. In Gethsemane he knew what was coming and we see some of his human side come out. In Luke 22:42 Jesus said, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” He knew the anguish that awaited him and was expressing the weight of his burden to his Father in heaven. We learn through the gospels that he sweat drops of blood as a further indication of the anguish that he was experiencing. The word Gethsemane literally means “oil press.” It was in the garden of Gethsemane that Jesus was pressed beyond our ability to comprehend.

What strikes me the most is what he said after he asked the Father if it was possible for the cup to be taken away from him. The second part of Luke 22:42 records Jesus saying, “yet not my will, but yours be done.” Not my will but yours be done. He surrendered. He articulated his uncompromising heart to surrender to the will of his Father. If we are ever going to experience the fullness of the will of God for our lives, we must learn to embrace the heart of Jesus in Gethsemane. He didn’t bargain with God. He didn’t say he would follow him as long as his plans were comfortable or convenient. He was real about his desire to not experience what was in front of him but he also made it clear that the Father’s will mattered the most.

Have you surrendered at this level? Have you come to the inevitable and necessary conclusion that life is not about you? I wrestle with this. At the end of the day I don’t want God to take the reins in my life but this reflects a lack of understanding of what life is about. We are here to glorify God and fulfill the plans that he has set out for us. If we want to experience the deep and rich relationship with God that we were designed for, we must peer deeply into Gethsemane and learn an important lesson.

You will be pressed. You will be squeezed. There will be times when it would be much easier to follow your self-will instead of God’s will, but you have to settle this struggle in your heart first. Do you exist for God or for yourself? You can’t have it both ways. C.S. Lewis said, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” Which type are you? You can only be one or the other.