Your Kingdom Come; Your Will Be Done

Karen Ellis:

Dark midnight was my cry.
Dark midnight was my cry
Dark midnight was my cry.
Give me Jesus.

Give me Jesus.
Give me Jesus.
You can have all this world,
Give me Jesus.

The old humble physician, Dr. Luke, in his twenty-second chapter of the book he recorded for us, sets a scene for the challenges ahead that depicted the darkest midnight in human history.

Turn to Luke 22:39–46, and let’s walk into the Garden of Gethsemane together.

He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them,“Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, and He knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

Whew! What a scene. You can tangibly feel the still, solitary tension in the desert air. The nighttime chill rolling across the sands.

Now, imagine coming into this quiet, tense, nighttime place from the ruckus, sometimes mellow scene that just happened before it. We were just in the Upper Room with all the disciples and Jesus. And the Upper Room scene is crowded, but it’s also intimate. It’s peopled, but it’s also private. Every gesture at the table is pregnant with fulfillment and meaning from the pouring of the wine to the breaking of the bread to the sharing of the cup. And then the charge, “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

Everything old about this feast is about to become new. Everything the disciples anticipated about the coming of the Messiah is literally being fulfilled in real time by the hands of Jesus Himself.

Now, also in this Upper Room, destruction lurks beneath the surface of everything. Just as Satan intruded and shattered the peace of the first man and woman in the Garden, Satan audaciously enters this scene, too. Reclining at the table, Satan has taken up residence in the heart of one very willing Judas Iscariot.

And there at the table, we see the two men dip their bread in the same bowl. And just like that, we have the meeting of betrayer and betrayed.

Cain vs. Abel
Death vs. Life
Establishment vs. Movement
Deception vs. Truth
Violence vs. Peace
Self vs. God

The Judas and the Christ: and violence meets peace, and arrogance meets humility.

Perhaps their fingers even brushed together in the bowl of betrayal. Hand to hand, eye to eye, as the betrayer is exposed. 

“That which you must do, do it quickly,” Jesus says. And that pregnant, prophetic moment fades to black as Judas leaves the room.

At the center of each of these highly, dramatic, nearly cinematic scenes is Christ, Heaven’s man and Heaven’s rule. He is the center of everything.

He is the Creator and Sustainer of time, of yesterday, today, and tomorrow because the book of John, the first John, reminds us that, 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1–4)

And so, by the time the whole scene moves from the Upper Room to the Garden of Gethsemane, at that very moment, a very crucial prayer is made. Do not miss these words: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:43).

We see Christ, the one who rules heaven, submitting to Heaven’s rule. The Scripture tells us this is no ordinary prayer. Scripture tells us He is praying a very specific and profound prayer. It is a prayer of extreme agony.

Here is the one who rules the heavens, flat on His face, and very much alone in the Garden, in agony, already bleeding, just from the stress alone.

Now, I want us to pause for a moment and question: if Christ is the one who established Heaven’s rule, if He is the one who is sovereign over all the affairs of all the people on earth, if He is in absolute control of it all, why is He in such agony?

He’s in agony because He voluntarily took on flesh and experienced the worst of the worst in this life. And this means that none of us can raise a clay fist at Him and cry, (in an angry voice):

“You don’t know what it’s like to be me.”
“You don’t know what it’s like, the darkness I feel.”

No one can ever look at Jesus and cry out, “You don’t know my pain, my sorrow, my sadness, my confusion, my loneliness, my fear.”

He knows. He took on flesh, and He walked the joys and the sorrows of our lives.

Beloved Sisters, He knows. He knows all the insults and the pains that will be thrown at those who will bear His name. Even just on this night alone, look at the indignities He suffered.

Our sweet physician, Dr. Luke, records them for us in chapter 22. Verse 3, a plot gets hatched by the religious establishment in cahoots with the state to murder Him. They took out a hit on an innocent man. That would extend into the court system. And the plan is even carried out by someone on the inside, by Judas Iscariot, one of His own.

Verse 21: Christ reveals to the whole group that He knows all about the plot to hand Him over to the authorities—in front of Judas. And then He submits to the plot.

They dip their hands in the bowl. Now, Jesus could have grabbed his wrist, given him the what-for right then and there. But no. He encourages Judas, “Go do what you must do.”

Earthly leaders, presidents, monarchs, when the assassination attempt is discovered, everything is done to stop the perpetrators. Not so with the King of kings. He lets the assassination plot play out.

Verse 24: Another indignity, as His disciples are sitting there on the most intense moment of His life, squabbling over His legacy in front of Him.

Verses 31–34: We see Jesus foretelling of Peter’s denial that’s to come the next morning, denying that he was even associated with Christ, whose name has, by now, become a scandal in the region.

Verse 47: Judas betrays Him to the authorities, not just pointing to Him, but betraying Him with an unholy kiss.

Later on, as that wild, wicked, chaos of the night unfolds and plods towards the Cross, He endures the mockery of a trial, the twisting of His words, the beating of His flesh, public humiliation, carrying His own cross through the streets, and then hanging, naked and exposed, from that cross for crimes He didn’t even commit.

The indignities of the story match the agony of the prayer.

It’s also interesting how many of these indignities are actually relational, reputational, even personal.

All of us know that the wounds from those we love and trust can be some of the deepest ones.

But that’s looking back on the evening. What about our Lord’s agony and anxiety over what’s coming? I think Dr. Luke, who knew the body and how the Creator had created us, is asking us to look at a few things here.

One: Jesus’ flesh was anxious as He anticipated this first and once-in-a-lifetime separation from the Father, which He knew (sounds of gasping) would cost Him, to cry in anguish from the Cross (gasping), “Why, why have You forsaken Me?”

Jesus knows the depth of loneliness and being so separated, so much that after His resurrection, He promises us “He will never leave us nor forsake us.” He says, “Once you are with Me, I will never leave you, especially in your darkest hour.” He knows from a flesh standpoint how frightening that is.

Two: Jesus’ flesh is anxious, knowing that He would, for the first time, know the anguish of sinful rebellion and regret, carrying forgiveness for every person’s lifetime of sin from time immemorial, every sin of our past, our present, and even our future, claiming sin.

The affects of every cruel and careless word, every beating, every lie, every rape, every torture, every murder, every genocide, every cruelty and offense against humanity that man and womankind can devise so that we wouldn’t have to pay for it.

Three: His flesh is anxious about a long, slow, and literally excruciating suffocating death, ex crusis, meaning this pain was a particular kind of excruciating. It was ex crusis from the Cross, excruciating directly drawn from the prolonged, death-drain-by-cross that shattered the bodies, not only of its victim, but the psyche of those who watched their slow deaths.

But the intersection of all these agonies is medically real. It’s got a name. Hematidrosis is a product of severe mental distress where the capillaries in our bodies expand from stress so much that we sweat so much that our sweat literally becomes bloody.

For our precious Lord, this was the weight of the pain of the cross and our sin that infused every pore and cell.

And yet, and this is stunning, despite the anguish and the anxiety and the anticipation, the One who rules Heaven, the One who set the world in motion from the beginning of time, who set the stars in the sky, who calmed the seas, and calmed the waters, knows how this body will be racked by pain within twenty-four hours; He still prays for Heaven’s rule. He still prays to the Father, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.”

And what’s the effect of this prayer? Look at Luke 22:43.

The Man who rules Heaven receives supernatural strength. He gets strength for two things. He receives strength from on high in His flesh and weakness to endure the task that is to come, and the angels come and minister to Him. But the anguish doesn’t stop.

Our sweet sister, Nancy Wolgemuth, pointed this second one out to me.

As Christ prays and is ministered to, He is supernaturally strengthened, not to escape the agony, but He’s empowered to pray more fervently to endure it. His prayer in verse 44 produces even more fervent prayer. The more one prays, the more one is moved to pray.

In praying, Christ moved in His humanity from anxiety to adventure. And I don’t mean adventure like going on a vacation or a hike or a treasure hunt or into an unknown land full of pleasure and delight. No. I mean the greatest adventure of walking where no man could walk—to the Cross where He had to walk on our behalf.

From humanity and the temporal world to the Cross, to the grave, then to show, to lead the captives out of captivity, to sit at the right hand of the Father to wait and intercede and claim for His own that which we could never claim for ourselves.

Now, where are the disciples when all of this is happening? The humble Dr. Luke, he caught them. It’s, like, “Yes, this is what we were doing.” They had all fallen asleep.

But if they had been awake, they might have heard His prayer and heard Him doing the thing that He Himself had taught them to do, using the very same words.

Remember in Matthew 6:5–10 where the disciples call out, “Lord, teach us to pray.” In this passage we see Christ foreshadowing the prayer that He’s going to teach all who follow after Him to pray. He says:

When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by everybody else. Truly, I say to you, they received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this:

Our Father in heaven,
   hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
   your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”

Stop right there. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

He was teaching us to pray as He would pray in the Garden, the prayer that declares Heaven rules.

When they asked, “Lord, teach us to pray,” He was instructing us in the prayer that declares that rule, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” And we all know this prayer so well—many of us from memory. How often do we gloss over these words, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”?

Do we hear those echoes from the Garden? Do we realize that He has modeled for us what He taught us, even commanded us to pray? And do we realize what happens when we pray as He has in His words, “Not my will, but Yours”?

When we ask that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in Heaven,” we ask for at least four things, three of which I’ve gotten from my friends at Prayer Current, a wonderful prayer ministry from Canada. Take a look at what they’re doing.

Prayer Current says the three things we see are that:

• First, we pray to accept God’s will.
• Second, we ask to approve God’s will.
• Third, we pray to do God’s will on earth as in Heaven.
• And I would add a fourth. In praying His prayer, we affirm that we are one.

How do we understand these things?

First, when you pray “Your will be done,” we pray to accept God’s will. God’s will is done, always and everywhere. It’s impossible to try and live outside of it. We can’t thwart it. We can’t mess it up. We can’t prevent Him from doing what He has decided. We will only be broken in the attempt.

So when we pray, “Your will be done,” we’re actually just affirming that Heaven’s rule and reign extends everywhere. We’re proclaiming Heaven rules. We’re reminding ourselves that we are limited. Only God is absolutely free and sovereign.

Psalm 115, verse 3 says, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”

And when we pray, “Your will be done,” we worship God. And we ensure that all our plans and purposes begin and end with God willing.

Second: When we pray, “Your will be done,” we ask to approve God’s will. We’re not just resigning to it, like fate or some other impersonal force. His will is a living expression of His being. It reveals His wisdom and His justice and His truth. But we all know approving God’s will is not always easy.

My friend and theologian, Dr. Guy Richards, says, “The hardest place to live is the space where our will is out of alignment with God’s.” And he’s right.

When we wrestle between our will and God’s, our troubles remain insurmountable. But as we bring our troubles and ourselves to Jesus in prayer, asking His will to be done, we approve the will of our Father in Heaven. And in prayer, we turn crisis to Christ.

There’s a good news that helps us rest. John 15 tells us when we stop striving in our own will and learn to pray according to His, we have the promise that our prayers are answered.

Our friends, the Gettys, sing, “When fears are stilled and striving cease, my Comforter, my all in all, here in the power of Christ I stand.”

Third: When we pray, “Your will be done,” we pray to do God’s will “on earth as it is in Heaven.”

Cruelty and injustice happen every day against the people of God. And they happen against people who don’t know Him. We are His agents on earth to do His will and expand His kingdom and give the world a foretaste of glory and justice divine by acting justly and loving mercy as it happens in the sweet by and by, and as we are living in the nasty now and now.

As we pray and do His will, He will strengthen us to be poured out for others just as He Himself was strengthened to be poured out for us.

And one final thing to see in His prayer, and the prayer He taught us, is the oneness we express when we submit to Heaven’s rule, to God’s sovereignty in the way that He does.

For the Body of Christ, one is more than a number. One is who we are. It’s a state of being in Christ. Among ourselves as His people, we are one that Christ has determined that we should be so.

On the evening of Christ’s greatest trial, we find Him offering a prayer for Himself, His disciples, and for us, for the future generations of believers who will bear His name.

John 17 gives us the wider picture of His prayer life that night. It offers three clues to the significance of our oneness achieved through prayer.

First, He cautions His disciples in the preceding chapters that the world would hate them as it has hated Him. So His prayer is framed by the hostility between Him and the dark force that works against Him that was set in motion way back in the first Garden long ago where our parents were first deceived.

My beautiful sisters, hear this: our oneness with Him is connected to our unity with each other. There are no other earthly relationships that are based on physical and spiritual union with the Person of Christ. And this oneness together is so precious, so unique, it makes us in Him a different people altogether—different from any other people group on the face of the earth.

And though our earthly relationships, family relationships, concerns may have earthly significance, they are not Christ’s primary focus at the midnight hour. His prayer for unity and endurance is formed, uttered, and accomplished at the greatest hour of trial in all of redemptive history. There is only one relationship on His mind—His with us, and ours with each other. So He prays over us to His Father, “Make them one as We are one.”

In our unity with Christ, we have this relationship that’s intimate and Christ-centered and physical and distinct. There are simply no other comparisons to any other earthly alliances. To be one with Him, and to be one with each other, this is the Father’s will. This is Christ’s will. This is the sweet place where Heaven rules.

The prayer, “Not my will, but Yours,” is the death of our will and the rule and reign of His.

Just as the prayer of submission to the Father’s will lead Christ to face the Cross to His physical death, the prayer is also the strength we need to face the tasks we’ve been given: “to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” to help gather people in from all nations, tongues and tribes and show the broken world what justice and shalom are like under Heaven’s rule.

And, yes, we should expect to suffer the same indignities He saw that night on His way to the Cross because we’re one in Him. But we should also expect when we pray, “Not my will, but Yours . . . Your kingdom come, Your will be done,” we should also expect that we will be strengthened to endure all the way to the end.

I don’t know what the future for the Church in America will hold. I do know it will be different from anything that we’ve seen before in our own history. I suspect, with a lot of you, that it will be more and more uncomfortable to be a faithful, Bible-believing Christian in our context.

I also believe with all my heart that we are being prepared for our finest hour as the Church in America. I believe with all my heart that our covenant-keeping God will be there every step of the way to hold us through it and for future generations to come after us—teens, I’m talking to you.

I know no better words to prepare us for the next season as exiles than those He has given us through His servant Paul, and they come from 1 Peter, chapter 4:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. . . . Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” (vv. 12–16, 19)

How in the world do we possibly do all this?
How in the world do we do good and even glory in insults because we bear His name?
How in the world do we rejoice as we share His sufferings?
How in the world do we combat the shame that the world would heap upon the follower of His way as we resist the dark force and work against humanity and against this world?

Evil will press in. It is promised, and it is inevitable. How in the world do we even begin to endure for His namesake and His glory alone?

The beginning for every Christian—and I don’t care where you live in the world—is in praying the prayer of Heaven’s rule: “Not my will, but Yours, Lord.” This is our strength, and this is our hope.

Romans 8 teaches us about the connection between suffering for His namesake and hope in His namesake:

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. (vv. 16–19)

It is thrilling, and it is terrifying to let go, but what a Savior. What a prayer to model for us, the prayer that declares Heaven rules. There’s joy, and there’s hope in it.

He’s promised us troubles, yielding is how we overcome. So, Church, whew, precious Sisters, we gird up our loins, and we find hope by falling on our knees.

• Ask Christ for the wisdom to know what to do and the strength to do it.
• Ask Christ how He tenderly loves His persecutors into His kingdom and away from the world.
• Ask Christ for the power to stay single-minded on the mission of the Church and to not fall asleep or fall into temptation.
• Ask Christ for the courage and the strength to, even at the last breath, love the salvation of those who hate.
• Ask Him to set our eyes on the Cross and not our circumstances.
• Ask Him to reveal His glory amid the most difficult circumstances.
• Ask to be more and more like Him in our dark and troubled times just as He became like us.

He knew what it was like to be us. He still knows what it’s like to be us. He’s given us the way to be like Him—the Man of sorrows and the Ruler of Heaven—two faces co-mingled in the same Person and wholly given us for our comfort and our courage.

Is your soul anxious? Is your mind tired? Your bones weary? Pray.

Do you not yet know Him intimately? Do you want to know Him as yours? This is the door: “Not my will, but Yours. I acknowledge that my life is Yours, and I give it all to You. Do with me as You see best. And I trust that it will be best for You and me. Not my will, but Yours.”

We’ve had so many beautiful moments this weekend, to focus on what Sister Nancy called, “the micros of our lives”—our relationships, our families, our health, our losses, our gains, our personal situations, the nations. This big, old churning world, this now is a moment for the macro.

This is the moment, your opportunity to yield your whole person to the will of God for your life—whatever that may be—and put your trust in Him that Heaven rules over your entire person, your past, your present, and even your future.

It’s in this place, in the dark, midnight hour of the Gethsemanes of our souls with our friends sleeping and unhelpful around us and the enemy pressing in on us from all corners that we’ll find strength to endure the challenging days to come.

Let’s bow our heads and pray to that end.

“Not my will, but Yours be done.” Silently, in our hearts, let’s do business with God. And pray the prayer that declares Heaven rules.

Oh, when I come to die,
Oh, when I come to die,
Oh, when I come to die,
Give me Jesus.

Give me Jesus.
Give me Jesus.
You can have all this world,
Give me Jesus.

And in the morning when I rise,
In the morning when I rise,
In the morning when I rise,
Give me Jesus.

Give me Jesus.
Give me Jesus.
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
Give me Jesus.”

And all of God’s people said, “Amen!”

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.