Thoughts for another day

November 5, 2008.

Today's verse: Lk. 22:44. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. (KJV)
(Pls. read the above before you read further. Thanks)

In all the time I’ve prayed, I’ve realised my prayer is most intense when I’m in agony. My heart beats faster and the creases at the temple appear more even as I pray and my imploring comes from deep within. Even the body shakes as you pray. You too may have under gone this experience and later felt the joy of that prayer being answered. This is what I call ‘Power Prayer’.

This pattern of praying has been taught to us by our Lord Jesus as we see in the above verse. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus gave us an example of prayer that we must emulate. He felt extreme agony at the prospect He was to face within the next few hours. Remember, though God, He was at that time, fully man and He also had the emotions of men, which would have terrified Him considering what He had to face. In that state, Jesus knelt down upon the coarse mud of the garden and His gaze went to Heaven, where sat His Father and He saluted Him and cried out.

As man, His instinct was to get away from the cup of suffering that was His share but as the Son of God, He wanted the will of His Father in His life and that is why I’d say, His prayer was intense because He did not want His human emotion to rule His prayer, but that His Father’s will, permeate in His life. And I believe He was strengthened enough to bear the brunt of the insults, scourging and crucifixion that were His in the next few hours. Truly, His Father treasured the beads of sweat that fell on the ground as drops of blood.

With us too, the Father will do the same if we but bend our heads and grab our being intensely and pray as if our very lives depended on our prayer. In that we will see His comfort brought by His angel and God will lift us up to that dimension, where pain and trouble vanish and His Grace settles down in us.