Food for ThoughtLuke 22:44 Prayerful Agony
Food for Thought
An all-creatures.org Guide to Kingdom Living. True Christian living requires us to live according to Kingdom standards which bring Heaven to earth

By Marni Montanez

Luke 22:44 World English Bible

Being in agony he prayed more earnestly. His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.

Sometimes as Christians living in a messed up world, we lose perspective and find ourselves focused on our own personal existence.   It takes a reminder to re-focus our heart on what truly is important.  Allow me to bring you back to a simple truth; The truth that Christ suffered greatly and yet He was completely innocent of all wrong. He truly knows what we feel in our times of persecution and sorrow.      

There is no one on earth who could fully grasp what, Jesus went through in the last day of His life.  And He did it for us.   

Hebrews 12:2 (NASB)

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

The joy referred to here is us;  Our salvation and eternal life in heaven with Him.  This is the reason He chose to give His life.

His fear and pain far exceeded anything we could imagine.

Even through the terror, Jesus remained steadfast on His mission to set us free through His death.   Our salvation was important to Him,  even when He faced  emotional and physical pain. He did not medicate it away with alcohol or drugs. He felt every moment of every torture inflicted on His body and soul.  

His body was damaged beyond recognition, His relationship with His Father was severed and upon Him was every feeling, every disappointment, and every evil that people committed past, present and future and yet He still loved the very people who were abusing Him and died for their salvation.   

Isaiah 53:6 (NCV)

We all have wandered away like sheep;  each of us has gone his own way. But the Lord has put on him the punishment for all the evil we have done.

His loneliness, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, and abuse is unparalleled.   

There are no words to adequately describe His suffering;  It was beyond human understanding.

As the darkness closed in around Him, Jesus turned to the Father and prayed with even more fervor and desperation as He faced the destiny He surrendered to. How many times have we turned to something else when we are facing something hard, instead of seeking God with more of ourselves?  

No one forced Him to give the ultimate sacrifice;  He gave Himself in every sense of the word.

God the Father would have still loved and cherished Him without condemnation had He chosen not to go through with the sacrifice.   But out of pure love, Jesus chose to meet Satan head on.

Angels stood at the ready for Jesus, the Son, and had He made one motion for His Father to rescue Him by using Holy Angels,  they would have swooped in instantly to rescue Him.

Matthew 26:53 (ISV)

53. Don’t you think that I could call on my Father, and he would send me more than twelve legions of angels now?

But Jesus chose to endure the most profound and horrific suffering so that our future could be secure in the Father’s hands. It is amazing that even when His pain was the most intense, we were the focus of His heart.     

Challenge:  When you are feeling sorry for yourself;  when you feel hopeless or down trodden. When you are rejected, betrayed, abused, abandoned or falsely accused.   Remember that Jesus felt it all and gave us a way to get through it…….the Holy Spirit

Prayer:  Father God, I pray for more to come to know you and be filled with your Holy Spirit and live in heaven for eternity with you.  I pray that  you would remind us daily to focus on you so that we learn of You in a deeper way.  In Jesus’ name.

God bless,

Marni

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lamb-rightThe purpose of this series is to encourage people to live as loving, compassionate, and peacemaking children of God: Jesus tells us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:10) God tells us through Micah (6:8), "He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God." And we know from Revelation 21:4 that there will be no more mourning, or crying, or pain, or death. Thus, Christian living requires us to set the standards of these conditions here on earth for our fellow human beings, and for the other animals, as a witness to the rest of the world. To do otherwise is not Christian.