Jesus’s Petition in Gethsemane

Read: Matthew 26:26-42
Listen: Matthew 26

This year in Beyond the Weekend, journey through different biblical models of prayer—one each month. April’s focus is Petition: bringing our needs before God.

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Matthew 26:39

Heaviness hangs in the night air. The disciples drift to sleep nearby. Jesus prays, knowing what awaits him—betrayal, arrest, and a brutal death on a Roman cross. He is deeply troubled (Matthew 26:38). Jesus brings his greatest need to his Father. He asks for another way. He is honest and desperate. Yet, even in his darkest hour, Jesus submits his will to the Father’s. He trusts that God’s plan is good even when the cost is unimaginable.

Today is Good Friday, when we remember Jesus’s suffering and death. Jesus opened the way to God. Prayers of petition bring our needs directly before him. We can petition God boldly because of what Jesus did for us. His death paid for our sin. His resurrection defeated death. When we place our faith in Jesus, we are no longer separated from God. We can come to him freely, as children to a father. We too can bring our deepest fears, pain, and hardest needs to God in prayer, just as Jesus did. We can lay our needs before him honestly and then open our hands, trusting that the same God who raised Jesus from the dead is at work in our lives.

TODAY: On this Good Friday, bring one real, honest need to God. Tell him how you feel and close your prayer with, “Yet not my will, but yours be done.” Then, join us this weekend to celebrate what Jesus did for you. We’d love to have you at our Good Friday and Easter services. Find times and locations HERE.