Four Ways To Say, "Thy Will Be Done" - Life of Christ Part 92

Do you remember where you were the day the Challenger blew up? You realize it was 10 years ago actually today that one minute and 13 seconds into launch, the space shuttle Challenger exploded.

And if you're like I am, I'll bet that almost without exception you can remember where you were when you first found out that this thing had happened. Now I don't know if you saw it this week, but USA Today ran a feature article on the events leading up to the Challenger disaster. What it reveals is that the engineers at Morton Thiokol Company, this is the company that made the rocket and the boosters, that they became deeply concerned about NASA's intent to launch on January 28th when it was learned that the overnight temperature in Florida was going to drop into the 20s.

The reason for this is that on other launches, even when the temperature was only in the 50s, they had noticed that there were leaks occurring in the O-rings between the boosters and the rockets. And so the day before, January 27th, as the article reported, engineers at Thiokol Company called NASA and argued with NASA trying to convince NASA they should not launch. In fact, that argument went way into the night of the 27th with these engineers vehemently objecting to NASA's intent to go ahead and launch.

But you see, there was a State of the Union address the next day, January 28th. NASA knew President Reagan wanted to tout his teacher in space at the State of the Union, and they weren't going to let some bunch of formula-crunching engineers keep them from getting his teacher in space. Well, after they finally couldn't get the engineers to agree to go along with it, they went above their heads to management, had a secret meeting, the article reported, with the Vice President of Thiokol Company. Nobody knows exactly what went on in that meeting, but by the time the meeting was over, management reversed their engineers and informed NASA that they could now recommend a launch the next morning, January 28th, 11.38 a.m., in a temperature of 36 degrees at launch time.

They launched the Space Shuttle Challenger, and as we say, the rest is history. When I read that article, my first response was, I was mad. I was angry. And then when I calmed down a little bit, I started thinking, well, now, what does this whole story tell us about human nature? What does it tell us about human dynamics? Because it really does tell us something. And here's what I think it tells us. I think it tells us is that human nature is wired in such a way that whenever you try to force human nature, my nature, your nature, to go in a direction that we don't want to go, the way Thiokol's engineers tried to force NASA, we will do everything human nature will to fight it and resist it and change it so that we can get our way, so we can do it the way we want to do it.

That's human nature. The reason I bring this up is because as I look at the Bible, I find that God is constantly trying to get me as a Christian to go in directions that my human nature doesn't want to go. And if you're a Christian, God is probably trying to always get you to go in directions that your human nature doesn't want to go. And what that creates is kind of like a spiritual tug-of-war inside of us. And the passage we're going to study this morning is all about the response that God is looking for from us as Christians when we face that kind of tug-of-war going on inside of us where God's will wants to go one way and our human nature wants to go the other way. Now let's look at the passage together. It's a very familiar story. It's a story about Jesus Christ spending the last night before he was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. It's a very familiar story, but it's got a great spiritual lesson.

Let's look here. Chapter 26 of Matthew's Gospel, beginning at verse 36. Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to them, sit here while I go over there and pray. Now remember, Jesus had just finished eating his final meal with his disciples, commonly called the Last Supper.

He was going to be arrested that evening. And so before his arrest, he goes out of the city of Jerusalem through the eastern gate across the little Kidron Valley, up on the Mount of Olives on the other side. In fact, Luke's Gospel says that this was his usual habit, that he did not spend the night in Jerusalem. He'd come into Jerusalem during the day, but he didn't spend the night there. He would go out and over the Mount of Olives and do one of two things.

He'd either keep going another half a mile to the town of Bethany where he would spend the night with Mary and Martha and Lazarus at their home, or sometimes, Luke tells us, he would just roll out his sleeping bag and bed down right on the Mount of Olives in a place called Gethsemane. Now we often call it the Garden of Gethsemane, but friends, this was not a garden. I mean, not like we think of a garden. I mean, it wasn't like a garden where they had nice flowers and you know, an arboretum where you'd walk through and go, oh, look, a pretty yellow flower over there.

Isn't that pretty? That was not what this was. Actually, Gethsemane was a commercial site where they processed olive oil. In fact, the name Gethsemane actually comes from two Hebrew words that mean an olive oil press, because they would take olives, put them in a big old press, crunch them, squeeze the oil out, bottle it, and sell it. This was a commercial working site up on the Mount of Olives where they processed and refined olive oil. Somebody owned this commercial site.

We don't know who. And apparently they had given Jesus and his disciples permission to bed down at this commercial site in the evening whenever they felt like bedding down there. Now if you go today to Israel, the Garden of Gethsemane is still there. It's one of the few sites in Israel that we can be sure is right at its original location. There are olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane today that are more than 2,000 years old and were actually there when Jesus Christ spent the night there in the garden. Today it is a garden, but it wasn't then.

There's also a huge rock in the garden where tradition says that Jesus knelt and prayed leaning against this rock. And you can go see it. And I can't describe it to you in words.

You just have to come with me sometime and go see it to get the full impact of what this is like and how close it is to the city. I mean, it's just overwhelming. This is where Jesus went for the evening. Now the next verse, verse 37, and he took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, James and John, along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. And he said to them, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow, even to the point of death. Jesus was facing a crisis.

There's no doubt about that. A personal crisis. Stay here, he said, and keep watch with me and going a little farther, we find out what the crisis is. He fell on his face to the ground and he prayed. My Father, if it is possible, please may this cup be taken from me.

This is the crisis he's facing. Now, what is this cup that Jesus is talking about? Well, the cup that he's referring to is his impending death, his impending crucifixion on the cross. You say, well, how could he know that was coming? Because Jesus was God and because he knew exactly what stood in front of him that night. In fact, if you flip back with me to Matthew chapter 20, if you'll turn back a couple of chapters, Matthew chapter 20, let me show you what he had said prior to this evening. Verse 17, Matthew chapter 20, now as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the 12 disciples and said to them, we're going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man, meaning himself, will be betrayed to the chief priest and the teachers of the law.

They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and to be beaten and to be crucified. And on the third day, he'll be raised to life. How did Jesus know that was going to happen to him?

Because he was God in the flesh. He knew what was coming. And friends, this night in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus knew what was coming. He knew about the events of the next few days. He knew he was going to be betrayed. He knew he was going to go to trial before the Romans. He knew he was going to be beaten by Roman soldiers. He knew that he was going to be mocked by Jewish leaders. He knew he was going to be rejected by the Jewish people. He was going to be deserted by his own followers. And eventually he was going to be nailed to a cross and crucified.

That was the cup that he knew all about. And he said, Father, if there's any way that I can complete my mission and not have to deal with this cup, that's what I'd really like. I really don't want to do this if there's any other way we can get it done. But look what he said. Let's go back to chapter 26, verse 39. But not as I will, but as you will.

Or as other translations will say, not my will, but your will be done. Are you keeping up with the events in America lately about capital punishment? Did you know that on Friday a fellow named John Taylor was executed out in Utah for the rape and murder of a little 11-year-old girl? But what really made it a little unusual is the way he was executed. He was executed by firing squad. It's been 20 years almost in America since anybody's been executed by firing squad.

But this guy chose that form of execution. Well back in November, the state of Utah put out a statewide advertisement asking for volunteers who were willing to come and be part of the firing squad. They didn't think they'd get anybody. They were in the paper, the article in the paper said, well we'd be lucky if we get the five volunteers we need. They got thousands of volunteers to come shoot this guy.

Thousands. They had to actually set up a new department of government just to work through all the volunteers, interview them, and get down to five who wanted to come shoot this guy. Well you know how it works. They lead the guy in, they strap him in the chair, they put up a bag over his head, and then they pin a target on his chest. How'd you like them to pin a target on your chest? You know that far side cartoon with the deer that's got this bullseye on his chest? And the other deer says, bummer of a birthmark, Hal.

Well that's kind of like what this guy's like. They put this bullseye on him, and he gets two minutes to say whatever he wants, and whether he's done or not, when the two minutes is up, the guy goes ready, aim, fire, and five people using 30 caliber rifles all try to hit the bullseye. Now one of them have a blank. They don't know which one.

One of the five of them is given a gun with a blank so that nobody knows for sure whether they were the one who actually did the killing, but four of them have real bullets, and I guess they figure if, you know, four out of five ought to be able to do it, and so Friday of this past week, they shot this guy to death. Now the advocacy groups, as you can imagine, were just going absolutely bonkers about this, saying that this was cruel and unusual punishment and it violated the Constitution and all this stuff. Here's what he said, John Taylor, and I quote him. He said, I am not going to submit to lethal injection.

I don't want to go flip it around like a fish out of water on some table. That would be cruel and unusual punishment. End of quote.

Friends, I got news for both John Taylor and all those advocacy groups. The news I have for them is that neither lethal injection nor firing squad can hold a candle in terms of being cruel and unusual to crucifixion as a way of dying. Crucifixion, friends, without a doubt, was the cruelest form of capital punishment ever invented by man. You didn't die by blood loss. You didn't die because you got nailed up there. You died slowly by suffocation. As you hung on the cross, sometimes for days while people watched you, you slowly got weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker until eventually at some point you lost the ability to expand your diaphragm and even breathe.

You were so weak and people literally suffocated to death slowly and excruciatingly hanging there in public view for everybody to see. Jesus knew that. Nobody in their right mind would want to be crucified. And that's why he said, Father, if there's any way for this cup to be taken from me and still accomplish my mission, I'd like to do that. You know, actually, crucifixion wasn't the worst part of the whole thing. You say it wasn't?

No. The worst part of the whole thing, the cup that was coming, was the fact that the sin of the entire human race was going to be taken and laid on him as he hung there on the cross and he was going to pay for the sin of the whole human race. That was the mission for which he came. The Bible says, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21, that God made him who had no sin, Jesus Christ, to become sin for us, where?

On the cross, so that through him, Jesus Christ, we as sinners might become righteous in the sight of God. And it was really this, an utterly holy being, having all the filth of the world and all the sin of the world laid on him as he hung on the cross there. That was such a repulsive experience for him. It made his skin crawl as he thought about it. And friends, that was really the worst part of what was ahead of Jesus as he spent that night there in the garden. All of this, the rejection of his friends, the abuse of sinners, the agony of crucifixion, the repulsiveness of sin to a holy being, all of that rolled into one is what explains the anguish that we see Jesus going through in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And it was so bad that Luke reports in his gospel, and Luke was a doctor and would have noticed something like this, that Jesus, and I'm quoting now, was in such anguish that he prayed earnestly and his sweat was like big drops of blood falling on the ground. That's how much he was sweating. Now, most of you know I belong to Olympus Gym down in Seven Corners and I go there three days a week if I can make it that often, and I work out. And my workout normally takes me about an hour and 45 minutes, and part of it is riding the life cycle. And I don't know how many of you all do this, but the idea of the life cycle is, you know, you don't go anywhere, but you get your heart rate and your cardiovascular rate and everything up.

And I normally ride it for about 40 minutes, 35 to 40 minutes, up to as high as I can ride it. And when I'm done, I'm soaking wet. I mean, I look like I just jumped in a swimming pool. And I got sweat dripping off of me.

I mean, I have to wipe the cycle sometimes after I ride it because I've dripped water, sweat all over the cycle and everything. I say, why do you do that to yourself? Well, the answer is that's the only way I know to rota-ruta the donuts out of my bloodstream. So that's how I get them out. I say, man, why don't you just stop eating donuts? Because life is short. And donuts rule. What do you want me to say?

A day without donuts is not a good day. So that's what I do. And many times as I'm sitting there with sweat, I mean, just roll it off of me. I've thought about this passage where it says that Jesus was sweating like this in the garden of Gethsemane, but friends, Jesus wasn't exercising.

You understand what I'm saying? This was in the cool of the evening. All Jesus was doing was praying and he was sweating like this. Now, does that give us a clue about the agony of soul that he must have been going through? How can you work up a sweat like this just with praying? I don't know. I've never worked up a sweat like this praying, but he did because the agony of soul he was going through was positively incomprehensible to us who are not holy beings.

What was ahead of him? My mom used to call this schvitzing, that's Yiddish, schvitzing for sweating like a pig in August. And although somebody left the first service and said, pigs don't sweat. Well, I said, I know, but they look like they ought to. So what do you want me to say?

They look like they should. You know, it's kind of interesting that our world tells us that you can get to heaven with good works, that you can get to heaven by coming to church, that you can get to heaven by being baptized, that you can get to heaven by being a good, upstanding citizen, that you can get to heaven in lots of different ways, that you don't really need what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross to get to heaven. Friends, could I say to you that if you don't really need what Jesus Christ did on the cross for you and me to have our sins forgiven and get to heaven, then Jesus Christ was a fool, an absolute fool to go through this kind of pain and this kind of agony and go to the cross. When he prayed, Father, if there's any other way to accomplish my mission of bringing forgiveness of sin and eternal life to this world, to people in this world, if there's any other way to do it, take this cup from me.

Don't you think that if there were some other way to do it, God would have obliged him and taken the cup from him and he wouldn't have had to go through the cross? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody comes to the Father unless they come by me, unless they come by the way I made by dying on the cross. And if you're here and you've never trusted what Jesus did on the cross for you as your one and only hope of heaven, then I'd like to say to you that unless you're prepared to say that Jesus Christ was a fool, he said the only way you can do it is by what he did on the cross and that's why he went.

And I hope you'll think about that. There is no other way or Jesus would have never gone to the cross. Can we all agree, friends, that Jesus was facing a crisis here in Gethsemane?

Is that fair? That in his human nature, Jesus Christ did not want to go to the cross? And this is the same crisis I face every day as a Christian. And if you're a Christian that you face, a crisis where God is trying to take us in one direction and our human nature is trying to take us in the other direction, it just flat doesn't want to go where God wants to take us any more than those NASA officials wanted to go where those engineers were trying to take them.

We're talking about a major tug of war going on here in the garden at Gethsemane. You say, but Lon, wasn't Jesus God in the flesh? I mean, how could his human side and his divine side be so much at odds? And how could he be having such a crisis? And was there really any chance that he wouldn't go to the cross? I mean, could that really have happened? Was this a real crisis or any way?

I mean, and the answer to that is I don't know. Jesus Christ is the one unique being that ever lived in the universe, the God man. I don't understand what was going on inside of him that night. You don't understand what was going on. God doesn't explain to us what was going on.

It's part of the mystery of him being the God man. All I can tell you is that the really important thing for our purposes is not that we fully understand the nature of the crisis Jesus himself was going through, but that we understand how he solved it. That's the key point, how he solved the crisis and how we solved it was this. Father, not as I will, but as you will. Not my will, but yours be done.

That's the key point here, how he fixed the crisis. Now that's the end of our passage, but of course it leaves us with a question and the really important question. And what's that? So what?

Right. Lon, I'm not about to be crucified. I've never been to the Garden of Gethsemane. What difference does this make to me? It doesn't make any difference to my earthly life. Yes, it does.

Yes, it does. Because I believe the Garden of Gethsemane, friends, is all about a decision. It's all about a decision Jesus Christ had to make, a decision about whose will was going to be preeminent in his life, whether it was going to be his own will or the will of God. And my dear friends, that is a decision that as a Christian you and I have to grapple with every moment of every day in our lives. Yes, this is about us. It's a perfect example of the struggle we go through. We face it in our business ethics. We face it in our business behavior. We face it in how we use our time and how we spend our money. We face this tug of war in how we run our sex lives and how we run our dating relationships. We face this tug of war in how we keep our marriage vows and how we run our families. We face this tug of war in how we fill out our 1040s, how we relate to other people, the way we talk about others, the language we use, the jokes we tell, what we watch on TV, the movies that we go through. In that and in many, many other different areas of real life, God has a will for our life that he lays out clearly in the Word of God for us. And by the same token, our human nature has a will for our life in every single one of those areas. And you know as well as I do that our human will and the will of God does not agree.

It does not line up. And so you and I have a decision to make every moment of every day whose will is going to be preeminent in our lives, just like Jesus had the same struggle. And the decision God's looking for from us is the same one that he looks for from Jesus Christ, the same one Jesus Christ gave, and that is not my will, not my will, but your will be done.

Your will, Father. This is called lordship. This is called surrender to the lordship of Christ. This is a great definition. It's when we're willing to say not my will, but your will be done.

Or like Jimmy Draper, this famous Southern Baptist preacher said, another good definition of lordship is when we say to God, God, the answer is yes. Now what was the question? Will you do this? Will you go here? Will you be that? Yes, yes, yes. Fill in the question, God.

The answer is yes. That's lordship. You know what I love about this is that God as we go through this struggle allows us to be real. Did you notice that how he allowed Jesus to be real? Did Jesus have to paste a bunch of plastic on and go, Oh, yeah, I can't wait to go to the cross.

This is going to be fun. Is that how he had to react to this? Or could he go into the garden? Could he get on his knees? Could he be honest with God? Could he pour out his true feelings? Could he tell God about his real struggle? Could he share with God that he really didn't want to do it? Could he be real and authentic and honest about it before God?

Yes. Yes, I love that about God. But at the same time, Jesus Christ came out of the garden, having made a decision that regardless of how he felt, he was going to put the will of God first.

And that's exactly if you're a Christian, what God expects from you and me. Can we do this? Sure we can. Because that decision to put the will of God ahead of our own will does not have to be based on our feelings. That is an act of our will. And we can overcome our feelings and make that decision doesn't matter how we feel.

Jesus did. So can we. One more comment before I close. You know, in our house, we have a little phrase, we have actually a little acronym. We call it CO. You say CO, what is CO?

Here's what it stands for. Cheerful obedience. We use that phrase a lot around our house. We say to our kids, what do we want?

CO. We just don't want O. We want CO. We want cheerful obedience. And what we teach our children is that the attitude in which you obey is just as important as whether you obey.

We hand out a lot of discipline in our house where the response we get from our kids are, well, I did what you told me to, to which we say, yeah, but you didn't do it with the right attitude. So it doesn't count. Right?

Doesn't count. Because friends, how we do what we do is as important as what we do. Now, is that true with God? You bet. And so I'm here trying to get you to say thy will be done in every area of your life. But friends, how you say thy will be done is just as important to God as whether you say thy will be done. So let me close this morning by telling you about four ways that you can say thy will be done and all of them are not equally as good. Okay. There are four ways you can say it.

First of all, you can say it defeatedly, helplessly, like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, God's going to do whatever he wants to do anyway. So what difference does it make? I don't care. Just do it. It's going to happen to me anyway. So thy will be done. Thy will be done.

Thy will be done. Just do it. And when you do that, it's kind of like you're a little pawn in a chess game and God's just moving you around and you know it's not going to matter anyway. You feel it's not going to matter anyway.

So what difference does it make? Just do whichever you want to do. Sock it to me, God, and I'll take it.

Go ahead. Friends, there's no joy in that way of saying thy will be done. There's no victory in that way of saying thy will be done. That's just a sense of futility and a sense of hopelessness. And if that's the way a person says thy will be done, God doesn't want you saying it like that. There's a second way to say thy will be done.

And that's not just defeatedly, but begrudgingly. In my house, I don't know what you do if you're a dad and you have boys at your house, but I wrestle with my boys. I like doing that. And we get down and down position up position and we go, we just clear all the furniture and we go. Now, the deal is that one person has to make the other person say uncle.

That's the deal. And we don't stop till somebody says it. And I usually win. And the reason I usually win is not because I'm stronger than some of the older guys at the house anymore, but I'm dirtier. I'm dirtier and I cheat. And I'm tougher. They may be stronger, but I'm meaner.

And it's true. And my kids will tell you, I will stop at no cost to win and I win. And I get them down there and I got them. And they're like, uncle, buddy, uncle, uncle, not aunt or grandmother, uncle. And when I hear it, you get up. You hurt me. You hurt me.

You can talk. Say uncle. Now, a lot of times, friends, begrudgingly, they say, uncle. And you know, there are many times when we as Christians will come to God and say thy will be done and we'll do it just as begrudgingly feeling like we've been in an all out, knock them down, drag them out, fight with God and God finally pinned us. And so here we come to God, we're beaten, we're bruised, we're battered. And in a sense of absolute begrudgingness, we finally cave in and say, all right, all right, all right, all right, your will be done. Is that how God wants it?

I don't think so. There's a third way to say that I will be done. And that's bitterly, bitterly. Here's the story about the kid, didn't you? His mom said to him, now you're going to go over there in the corner and be punished. And you go sit on that chair till I tell you to get up.

And he went over in the corner and stood up. She said, sit on that chair. And he said, I'm not sitting. And she said, I said, sit down on that chair. He said, I'm not doing it. She said, I told you to sit on that chair. He said, no way. So she walked over, grabbed his little body, plopped that old little body on top of that chair. And she said, now you sit.

He said, well, I just want to tell you one thing. He said, I may be sitting on the outside, but I'm still standing on the inside. Welcome to passive aggressive land. We're on the outside, we do what we know we're supposed to do. But on the inside, man, we are just seething. I mean, we're just so angry. We don't know what to do about it.

But on the outside, we're looking all right. And there's a lot of us who that's exactly how we say to God, thy will be done. We say, all right, I know I'm supposed to do this.

I know this is the right thing. You know, Lon tells us in the Bible. So I'm going to do, okay, thy will be done. But man, on the inside, we are mad. We are angry and we resent it. Is that the way God wants us to say thy will be done? I don't think so. So if God doesn't want us to say it defeatedly or begrudgingly or bitterly, how does he want us to say it?

Well, friends, he wants to say it forth and finally he wants us to say it cheerfully. So now wait a minute, Lon, nobody in their right mind can be cheerful when they're being forced to do something they don't really want to do. Oh, yes, you can. If your focus is right, you can.

If you've got the right focus. You see, the focus needs to be on the truth of God. And the truth of God is Romans chapter eight, verse 28, that God works all things together for good.

God works all things together for good to those who love him and will follow him. And what that means is that we can look at a situation where we're in a tug of war with God. And we can say, I know that even though God's trying to push me in a direction that I don't want to go, because I believe the truth of the Word of God, not just in my head, but in my spirit, I know God's trying to do something good for me.

And I just don't have the sense or the wisdom to appreciate it. I know that God's a loving Heavenly Father, and he's trying to take me in a direction that will be a blessing to me and a blessing to everybody around me. And if I really believe that, friend, if I believe that in my heart, then I can submit to a loving God cheerfully if I believe that he's trying to work all things out together for good for my life. Now, a lot of us didn't have parents that we felt we could trust to do that for us.

A lot of us don't have any friends that we feel we can trust to do that for us. But I'm telling you that if you know Jesus Christ personally by faith, you can trust him. That is where his heart is. And that is what he's out to do in every situation in your life. He's out to keep you from self destructing and take you in a direction that's going to make you happy, give you joy, make you a blessing. It's just that most of the time you and I don't have enough wisdom to see that.

So we got to trust him. You can submit cheerfully if you believe what God tells you about himself and about where his heart is for you. Well, there are four ways to say thy will be done. God doesn't want us saying it defeatedly, like we're surrendering to fate. And he doesn't want us saying it begrudgingly, like we're surrendering to defeat. And he doesn't want us saying it bitterly, like we're surrendering to an enemy. But he wants us saying it cheerfully, trustingly, because we're surrendering to a loving Heavenly Father who's only trying to take us in a direction where life's richest blessing and greatest joy lies.

That's what he wants for you. And I hope that if you're struggling with something in your life, and I can't help but think that most of us here as Christians are probably in a tug of war with God about something, we usually are. That God will use his word this morning to crack through that tug of war and bring you to the place where you can say, God, co, huh?

Cheerful obedience. That's what I'm going to give you. Because I believe you love me. And I believe you just trying to do what's best for me. I'll trust you.

That's right. With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, if you're here this morning and you're in the middle of one of those old tug of wars, and God has spoken to your heart this morning and said, you know, it's time for you to give me a little co, a little cheerful surrender. And I'll bless your life for that. If you're willing to do that with the areas where you're in struggle and conflict this morning, then I'd like to pray with you and for you. And without anybody looking around, I'd like you to indicate, God, I'm willing to do that. Not my will, but thine be done.

Just by slipping your hand up and you can put it right back down. Thank you. God bless you. Anybody else?

Anybody else? Thanks. Lord, for these folks who raised their hand and maybe for people who made that decision but didn't raise their hand.

That's all right too. I pray that you would give them an immediate sense of joy and freedom and release as they finally run the white flag up. And Father, we're so grateful that you are the kind of God who loves us.

You really do. Who only wants what's best for us. And even though some of us couldn't trust our parents, we couldn't trust our friends, we couldn't trust our spouse, God, thank you we can trust you. And I pray that you would bring us to the place where we believe that with all of our heart so that we can say not my will, but thine be done. Not with bitterness, not with helplessness, not with anger, but that we can say it with cheerfulness knowing that you love us so much.

There's no danger in ever making that commitment. For these people who raised their hands, give them that assurance and work that truth as a life changing truth into each of our lives. Help us live moment by moment the truth that we've learned today and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen.