“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.’” — Matthew 16:24 (NKJV)

There is an old saying among men of integrity who lead others: “I wouldn’t ask my men to do something that I would not do myself.” This reflection of a true leader’s character might have come from the example that Jesus set for us in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26:37, 42, and 44.

Jesus prayed three times that the Father would remove the cross from His life; yet, three times He surrendered His will to that of the Father and proceeded to fulfill God’s will instead of His own. At Gethsemane, a fully human Jesus accepted the will of God that the fully God Jesus had already accepted before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). It was there that Jesus (God and man) were in total agreement concerning God’s will; the cross of Calvary was now a certainty. Its horror and the hateful atmosphere surrounding it was, as it were, merely the public announcement of what had taken place in the Garden.

If we are to be followers of Jesus, men and women who wear the badge of Christians, then we must also take up our very own cross and crucify our will and take up the will of the Father. It will be difficult, just as it was for Jesus, but He is not asking us to die for Him, only to surrender our own will and take up God’s will.

This is an impossible task for mere humans — we must be led by the Holy Spirit in order to be successful in this surrender. It took Jesus three attempts in fervent prayer to come to this all-important state of being; praying for God’s will for our lives may well be what such verses as “Men ought always to pray” (Luke 18:1) and “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) are saying to us. To know and follow God’s will requires that we know what His will is. There is no better way to know his will than to draw near to Him in prayer. John Wesley called prayer, “the grand means of drawing near to God.”

Pray, seek His face, linger long in His presence; have your own Gethsemane, and come to the same conclusion that Jesus reached — “Not My will but Thine,” not our will but His.

Rev. Bobby Thornhill is a retired pastor.