‘Let us never forget that our prayers are heard, not because we are in earnest, not because we suffer, but because he suffered. Because our Lord Jesus Christ went through the depths of agony to the last ebb in the Garden of Gethsemane, because he went through Calvary, we have “boldness to enter into the holiest” (Heb 10:19).’ Oswald Chambers.
This joyful Eastertide can be a bit of a mixed bag of emotions from a spiritual point of view. There’s the incredible awe in our salvation right there – the glorious springing from the tomb, the work of redemption achieved once and for all. But there’s the agony of the cross, the misery and fear in the garden, the appalling suffering of the innocent and loving Christ, and the recognition of just what God was prepared to do to bring his people back to him.
Turn-of-the-last-century Baptist minister and inspirational orator Oswald Chambers, in a compilation of his talks, ‘If you will ask’, considers how the evident suffering of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is so well documented in order to help us begin to fathom the depth of our atonement: ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.’ (Matthew 26:38).
Jesus was not known for his exaggeration. Have you ever known such sorrow that it feels like it might kill you? This is the agony of Christ. ‘This is the agony of God as Man. It is God as Man, going through the last lap of the supreme, supernatural redemption of the human race.’
And for what? So that we could come back to God.
Prayer is the most direct, active thing we can do as a testimony, a recognition, that the way back to God is open to us. Pastor Jonathan Oloyede from this month’s Twelve, one of the instigators behind the Global Day of Prayer London this 11 May, is driven by the message to pray found in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Pastor Jonathan says, ‘Jesus prayed all the time. He prayed in Gethsemane. He prayed on the Cross. Why do we feel now that we can act and do more, and do less of prayer? Everything about the early Church in terms of its foundation, its pillars, was prayer. My passion is to see the church in the United Kingdom united in prayer.’
Spend some time this Easter thinking on the sorrow of Christ in that garden, and what it was all for. Then gladly take up the invitation offered of relationship with him and pray, pray, pray - glorying in how miraculously simple it is, because of how much it cost him.
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