Read Matthew 26:36-46

Gethsemane. 

The word means “oil press”. It’s fitting, if you ask me. The last place Jesus went with His disciples before the nails and the cross and the tomb and the death and the life and the victory. Jesus led them to this Gethsemane garden, where He would experience the press of anguish and dread like none of us have ever or will ever know. This Gethsemane, where Jesus battled His will and let the Father have it all.

The fight for my soul and for yours began long before Calvary. Jesus’ three words declared the victory from the cross.

“It is finished.”

But hours before those three words, He spoke five others to the Father in a private moment on His face in that Gethsemane garden, begging God to take away what He knew had to be done. Five words of surrender in which He literally gave the Father His own desire so that He could accomplish what He’d come to earth to do.

“Yet not as I will…” Five words. And then four more. …”(B)ut as you will.” And that one sentence of surrender propelled the exchange of His life for ours.

Jesus’ whole life, He had leaned on the Father, followed His way. He always knew exactly where He was going – through Calvary and the tomb – before conquering death itself with His own life that lasts forever for you and for me. But first, He went through Gethsemane. Because surrender always precedes obedience to God.

That’s where Jesus laid it all out for His Father. Left it right there on the ground in that garden where His will was pressed to the place of surrender. And there He surrendered it all.

Are you pressed to the point where surrender is really your only choice? Jesus knows that kind of pressure. Follow Him through it and you will emerge with the freedom that lives real and true on this side of heaven and then forevermore.

Bria Wasson