Your Gethsemane Experience can Lead to a Resurrection

 I just finished re-reading the book of John this morning, and I began picturing the closing chapters describing the Gethsemane experience of Jesus, agonizing in the dark aloneness before His Father, feeling the weight of the sins of the world descending on Him and causing Jesus to feel the separation from His Father. This was followed by the betrayal of a friend, and the abandonment of others who said they would never forsake Him, a one-sided trial, physical abuse and suffering and finally a crucifixion and death.   

And for the disciples, all hope was totally smashed and they spent the darkest, loneliest, most fearful weekend of their lives.  They questioned all that they learned and been through over the past 3 and a half years.  They wondered if it were all for nothing.  They forgot that just hours before, Jesus had told them plainly that He must suffer and die (read John ch 13-17)  And as they grieved, the oppressor of humanity came and peddled despair to add insult to injury.  Nothing had gone the way that they had hoped or planned.  But they had forgotten something.  God wasn’t following their plan. He was fulfilling His!  And His plans always turn out better than ours.

At the tomb, Sunday morning, a dejected Mary arrives to find it empty.  She makes assumptions and then  Runs back to Jerusalem and tells the disciples that Jesus’ body had been taken.  Peter and John run to the tomb and find the grave clothes and wonder what in the world had happened.  And though that dawn had split time in two, it had yet to dawn on them.  They left dejected as Mary finally got back.  

Let’s pick up the story in John 20.  John 20:11    Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. ¹² She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. ¹³  “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her. 

 “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

14   She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. ¹⁵ “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?” 

 She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”

16   “Mary!” Jesus said. 

She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).

17    “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

18    Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.

Later, Jesus Himself appeared among them, and at the risk of sounding cliché, the light finally dawned.  And new hope sprang to life. And they found, in Christ, all they had ever hoped for and more was resurrected within them.

Which leads me to this.  ALL of us will have our Gethsemane experiences.  We will feel separated from God.  We will feel the tempter and oppressor of our souls breathing his ugly, dark breath down our necks as he seeks to peddle despair to our discouraged hearts and snuff out any flicker of hope that may be seeking to rise.  He will have friends betray us, people abandon us, others judge us unfairly and then heap abuse on us in many various forms.

And he will seek to have you, in the midst of your distress,  pursue a course that would have you terminate your existence. And many do, as they often opt for a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and the enemy sweeps them into eternity.  But here is where Jesus’ death and resurrection made it possible for you and I to flip the script.

If you and I can only see it differently, we would see that in our darkest moments, we don’t have to give in to the temptation to end our existence, or our marriage, or whatever the temptation to give up on is, or even to lose hope.  But we can, like Jesus, pray for either the temptation to leave (let this cup pass from me) or for God to give us the strength to bear up under it.  (But not my will, YOUR will, Father) 

In either case, it leads to a death. But not a final one.  It actually becomes a death that leads to resurrection.  Paul called it “the death to self”(Gal 2:19) and even said, “I die every day!” (1 Cor 15:31). And this dying to self allows for a new resurrection.

You lay down all of the abuses, the judgments, the abandonment, the betrayal and look to Christ for restoration.  You choose to give up yourself and your will,  in deference to the Father’s will for your life, recognizing that HIS plan is always better than yours, and HE will remake things for you.

This winter, I have personally gone through what Mother Teresa, when speaking of her experience with God over the course of almost 50 years,  termed her “dark night of the soul”.  I have been beset by trauma’s in my youth perpetrated against me, stupid choices made in trying to work my own way out of difficulties, temptations from things that I thought were long since buried, discouragement in my work, depression and darkness and hopeless feelings and a desire to cash in 40 years of ministry.  And where I found hope was recognizing that I was in my own Gethsemane experience.  It was all dark around me…and the tempter of souls was screaming a thousand lies into my head…and he almost won.  I almost cashed it in and walked away from ministry and from God.   But I continued to hold on to my devotional habit and I forced myself to continue to go into the Word each day…though the rest of my day was often beset with darkness and depression.  

Where I found renewed hope was back in Gethsemane, the cross and the resurrection.  It is a metaphor for so much of what we experience.   We experience the darkness…sometimes the death of dreams or hopes…but God is a God of resurrections.  And He is restoring me daily.  I had to die to a few things in the darkness…with self being the one that I, like Paul, am having to relearn to die to daily.   And in the resurrections is where new hope is found.

Don’t run from your Gethsemane experience.  Stay there and ask God for the strength to endure it and then to rise once again to walk in the newness of life.

Soft Society? or One Purpose of Suffering

We’ve become a soft society. How do I know? Listen to what we complain about. They aren’t complaints that the government just killed our pastor or our uncle or our spouse for loving Jesus. We don’t complain about how hard it is to share the gospel in our society. We don’t even complain about starving to death. As a matter of fact, we complain about food. We have the luxury to complain about food. I don’t like this kind. It’s gross. There is not enough of it to suit me.

We complain about weather. Too hot. Too cold. Too windy. Too rainy.

We complain about homework and jobs. We complain about cars that aren’t as nice and about high gas prices. We complain at restaurants or oil change places or even, believe it or not, Wal-Mart when the service isn’t fast enough. We complain about other drivers who don’t go fast enough when the light turns green. In spite of all we’ve been blessed with, or perhaps I should say, in spite of all the circumstances that we are blessed not to have to live with, we still complain about anything that encroaches on our idea of the good life. We’ve become a soft society.

So how does the Lord get our attention in a soft society? How does the Lord get us more committed when our lives are not on the line every day? How does Jesus get us to grow closer to Him when we are more concerned with what we are eating after church than the food He wants to give us while we are still in church?

You aren’t going to like my answer. I don’t like my answer…but it’s biblical. I have come to believe that it is through suffering that God talks best. Let me rephrase that. I believe it is through suffering that we learn to hear God best. I don’t believe that God causes human suffering. But I have come to believe that He will come to the one who is suffering and draw near to them and grow them to be closer to Himself. When you think of suffering in the Bible, who do you think of? Job. Listen to what the book of Job has to say about this.

Job 36:15 But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction. 16 “He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.

Maybe we can see the tough spot we are in today from a different perspective. Perhaps, if we listen closely, we may hear God speaking to us. Not to condemn us, but to woo us and refine us so that He can present us faultless, without spot or wrinkle to the Ancient of Days.