Hallelujah Even Here: A 5 Day Devotional by Lydia LairdExemplo

“Sometimes nothing left to give
Becomes the sweetest offering...
And sometimes choosing just to sing
Is the thing that changes everything.”

There’s a scene in Matthew 26 that just wrecks me.

Jesus is in the garden, experiencing deep anguish as He prepares to go to the cross.  He has given 32 years of ministry, miracles, teaching, and time to the world He came to save, and now all that’s left is for Him to give up Himself.  From a spectators view, it may seem like He should have been ready to do this since this was the whole point of Him coming to Earth. But although He was God incarnate, the human part of Him still felt all of the pain and anxiety and fear that any of us would have felt in His shoes.  

Think of the darkest, lowest place you’ve ever been mentally, and then multiply it by a thousand; that’s about where Jesus was.  The stress of the moment was so heavy that He was literally sweating tears of blood. In Matthew 26, after He told His disciples that His soul was “grieved to the point of death,” verse 39 says, “He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.’”  What Jesus was about to face was not just a valley; it wasn’t even just death. He was about to bear the burden of every sin known to man.  He was about to face the most painful beating, the most excruciating death, and the greatest loneliness that anyone ever could or would feel for all eternity. That’s what Jesus signed up for in order to save us.  

Knowing His purpose, yet overwhelmed by the task at hand, He asks “if…”

“If possible, could we change the plan, Dad?”

“Could we rewrite the story to end differently?”

Then, he says, “Yet…”

“Yet not as I will, but as You will.”

Jesus, who knew the Father’s loving heart more than anyone possibly could, trusted Him so much, that even in the depths of despair, He chose His Father’s plan above all else. All He had to give was Himself. And that offering would give eternal hope to all.  

Imagine if—in that moment—He had chosen to allow the painful task at hand to make Him run away from His Father.  Death would be the end for all of us.  There would be no happy ending.  But the hero of the story trusted in God’s will and chose to worship Him with His final breath. And that made all the difference.  If Jesus—knowing the heart of God better than any—could choose to face the death He did because He trusted the Father... how much more can we trust Him with whatever we are facing right now?  Not only because He is trustworthy, but also because He has promised never to leave us or forsake us.

I’ll say it again my friends: we can trust the Man who died for us. 

With you and love you, 

Lydia