Thursday 4/17/14 Gethsemane

Dear Father in Heaven:  I love You.  Please forgive me of my sins and help me, please, with another message for Thursday, Maundy Thursday, Lord.  Thanks for your blessings of this day.  Help me also dispatch the message.  In Jesus' Name, I pray.  Amen.

Brothers and sisters, I am going straight to the message.  And yes, this is the second message today.  Please keep us in your prayers for our concert tomorrow.

Thursday:  Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2014, Gethsemane.

Matthew 26:39 - 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."  (NIV)

There is no way I can type all the scriptures out for you so I need to pick and choose.  I do suggest that you would read Matthew chapters 26 and 27 and that would take you pretty much through the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and right up to Easter Sunday and the Resurrection.  I picked this verse for one very, very good reason.

When Jesus prayed to His Father in Heaven, our Father in Heaven also, He set this example for us.  "Yet not as I will, but as You will."  Now we have heard this before from our Lord Jesus and it comes from:

Matthew 6:10 - "Your kingdom come, Your WILL be done on earth as it is in Heaven."  (NIV)

Yes, you should know this as part of The Lord's Prayer, and I wanted to bring this out, for indeed when we pray each day, we should be praying "Thy will be done."  For indeed we must know and fully understand that God's will is always better for us than our own will.  Sometimes we need to be reminded of this and that is what our Jesus is showing us at Gethsemane, which by the way means "oil press" and of course the location is on the Mount of Olives.  Sometimes when we pray we expect things to happen and they do not.  One recent prayer of mine was for my dear friend Dave, for we prayed and prayed for God to heal him and let him with us, but it was not god's will.  Folks,  I would love to tell you that I really understood the will of God,but I do not.  But I do know this, "IF IT IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR JESUS, THEN IT IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME."  And you can quote me on that one.

As a Christian, we walk in faith, and as I have told you many times, I believe in the Bible from the beginning to the end.  I have seen some people question the Bible because some of the wording is different between the Gospels.  I want to put it this way, I have no problem at all with the Gospels being worded differently, even as they quote Jesus.  Jesus walked this earth setting examples, and His disciples traveled with Him.  Not everything was seen and heard by each of them.  Also when more than one person is watching something you will get more than one opinion of some of the details, but the main theory of the story would be the same.  While today we do have some problems with some reporters reporting the truth, with that said, remember one of the disciples of Jesus sold Him out.  If twelve of us this day wee to watch some events, say we went to school, we would arrive at different details, but the subject matter should be about the same.  And then there would be some fall asleep, as happened to Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, who were James and John.  One of those who would more than likely fall asleep would be me.

Okay, we are back to the will of Jesus being done and again I say, "if it is good enough for Jesus, then it is good enough for me."  Again, please take time to read the full account of these events found in your Bible.  And I will be back with the "Good Friday" message either later tonight or tomorrow sometime.

Now go forth and share your blessings.  Love ya, and please pass on the love from me.

Pastor Dan