Not My Will

Not My Will

A missionary doctor working in a conflict zone was required to make a decision whether to stay or evacuate as violence escalated around his hospital. Staying meant real risk. Evacuating meant leaving patients who had no other care. He described spending hours in prayer wrestling with God, not unlike Gethsemane. 'I finally said: I want to leave. I'm afraid. But not my will.' He stayed. Both he and his patients survived. He later said: 'Gethsemane prayer is not passive resignation. It is wrestling with God all the way to the end, then choosing His will with full knowledge of what it costs. That's what Jesus did. That's what I tried to do.'

Gethsemane is the fullness of the incarnation: God in human flesh sweating blood, asking if there is another way. Jesus does not suppress His desire to avoid the cross — He states it plainly: 'Take this cup from me.' His humanity is fully expressed. But His prayer doesn't end there. The hinge is 'yet': yet not what I will but what You will. This is not resignation; it is the hardest act of trust in human history. 'Abba, Father' — the most intimate address to God, a child's word for a parent — precedes the surrender. He is not surrendering to a cold fate; He is entrusting Himself to a Father He knows and loves. Every time we pray 'not my will,' we are standing in the shadow of that garden, practicing the same trust.