Tuesday, March 12, 2019

8. Growing in Prayer – The Learning Tree – (3) Submission


Teach me to do Your will [so that I may please You], For You are my God; Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.  Psalm143:10


Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest says, “Our Lord never dictated demands to His Father, and neither are we to make demands on God.  We are here to submit to His will so that He may work through us what He wants.”

Our intimacy with God grows in and through our prayers. As we give ourselves in submission to Him and His ways, we release our will so that His design and purpose can accomplish His Will in and through us here on earth as in Heaven.

Blackaby and King, convey this message, “Knowing God does not come through a program, a study, or a method.  Knowing God comes through a relationship with a Person.  This is an intimate love relationship with God. Through this relationship, God reveals Himself, His purposes, and His ways; and He invites you to join Him where He is already at work.[1]  Also they say:  We must give up our own plans, desires, and aspirations and be willing to make God’s desires and plans for our lives our own”.  This happens in and through prayer and our submission to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We claim His Word and we see in our heart how much God loves us.  There is no greater place to discover true submission to our Heavenly Father than in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-46 ).

I would like for you to close your eyes and image Christ, the Son of God, in the Garden of Gethsemane as He began to be troubled and deeply distressed and exceedingly sorrowful. (Mark 14:33-34) Christ being in agony continued to pray more earnestly until His sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. (Luke 22:44) He continued to ask His Abba that this cup of destruction be removed from Him.  His human nature really wanted this sacrifice to pass away…. His heart was saying is there not some other way for the sins of this world to be healed…..that I would not have to suffer and die the shameful agony of sin.  Jesus, the one life lived in perfection, abhorred to be identified with sin, gross selfish sin.  Far greater than all the physical pain He was to suffer, the separation from His Father was incomprehensible.  The answer to His request was a resounding no.  Andrew Murray writes, “For our sins, He suffered beneath the burden of that unanswered prayer.”[2]  In view of this understanding, is it not incredible that we allow our faith to be daunted when our prayers are not answered in the timing and way that we think they should?!

Christ yielded to the Will of the Father.  His submission was complete.  Not My will, but your will be done (Luke 22:42).  Richard J. Foster writes, “Here we have the complete laying down of human will.”  “Here we have the perfect flowing into the will of the Father.”  “In the school of Gethsemane, we learn that ‘my will, my way, my good’ must yield to higher authority.”[3]

Christ exemplified complete and true submission.  God allowed His Son to carry the burden of sin in the world and save us from destruction.  We can be reborn, regenerated in reconciliation that we become a new being (Ephesians 2:10).  We are offered the opportunity to receive Christ as our Savior and receive the promise of eternal life.  It is in our submission that God can truly use us.  The purpose and intent of the mission we have been given is fulfilled in the laying down of our human will.  In this act of surrender, we are His and He is the Lord of our Life.


[1] Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King, Experiencing God:  Knowing and Doing the Will of God
[2] As quoted from Richard J. Foster’s book, “Prayer:  Finding the Heart’s True Home”
[3] “Prayer:  Finding the Heart’s True Home”, Richard J. Foster




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