Tough Choices
Photo by Gabriel Cattaruzzi on Unsplash
When Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was showing us the mentality it takes to do the right thing when the right thing is tough to do.
In Luke 22:40, he told his disciples, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation” (ESV). And in Luke 22:46, he came back to them and repeated himself: “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”
In between those two sentences, what was Jesus doing? He was following his own advice, praying: “Father if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
Prayerful dependence in the face of temptation counts on God as a good Father. To make a tough choice, we must see God as a person who can give us encouragement and strength when our will needs help aligning with his. God is a person, not a topic. (By “person,” I don’t mean he’s a human being like the rest of us, but that he is a Person, not a force or energy, someOne to relate to.)
God is a person, not a topic. He’s not a list of rules. He’s not a standard of behavior. He’s not a cosmic energy force. He’s not a philosophy or a morality or a mascot. God is someone that we can talk to. We can pray to him for wisdom and help when we are afraid to follow his will.
Jesus didn’t fake a false resolve or a false stoicism. He humbly called on God for help, help to get aligned, to face down fear with faith. He prayed when fear tempted him to run.
Jesus didn’t pout about God’s will. He didn’t act like something difficult was happening to him, but rather, that something difficult was assigned to him. Jesus didn’t have a victim mentality but a servant mentality, and an empowerment mentality. Because God is a living Being to whom we can go for help, Jesus was looking to serve God the Father and looking for empowerment from God the Father to do the hard job that God had assigned to him for good reasons. His hard job was to die, sinlessly, yet accused of all our sins, so that we can be saved by putting our faith in him.
And he was instructing his disciples, then and now, to adopt the same mentality. No matter how challenging or unpopular, we too can make the tough choices to follow God’s will, with God’s strength.