The Secret of the Garden

Luke 22:44 And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground."


My Lord Jesus is in the garden praying to God the night before His crucifixion. He knows what is about to happen and seeks the face of His Father. God sends an angel to minister to Him, yet the prospect of the events of the next day weigh heavy on Him. He is in agony over what He will have to face. So much so that the stress causes the blood pressure in His body to increase to the point of bursting the blood vessels in His skin and His sweat is mixed with blood. And what does Jesus do? He prays more earnestly!
Jesus shows us that when life is hard, when we are facing impossible odds, we need to turn to God and pray more earnestly. Jesus knew that He depended on the help of God so much that His prayers became intense. He labors in prayer to the point of having the sweat pour out of Him. He knows that only God can get Him through the next hours and that He would have to depend on strength that can only come from on high. God becomes His single focus. His relationship with the Father will determine the success or failure of the trials He would have to face the next day. So He prays like His life depends on it, because it does. And not only His life, but the eternal life of every living soul on earth.
So many time we say that all options are gone and all that is left for us is to pray. What a pathetic statement! We look at prayer and see it as our last option. When all else fails, let's go to God and see what He can do for us. And our prayer will probably be something like "God, why are you doing this to me?" Like Martha we will ask "Do you not care?" We have a loving and caring Father in heaven who wants nothing more than for us to succeed in life. He loves us so much that He allowed His beloved Son to go through the suffering of the garden and the cross, so that we may be saved. He wants to use us in this lifetime to have a full and meaningful life, with purpose and hope for the future. But in order to use us He has to train us up in the knowledge and wisdom of God. We are His tools to reach the lost on earth. We are to further His kingdom and reach the lost for Him, so He has to take us through the trials, so we too can learn to say" Father, your will be done, not mine." For His will for my life is infinitely better than any plan I can come up with. And along the way we need His strength, His resources to be equipped for the work that He has in store for us. The way that we align  ourselves with Him and tap into His resources is through prayer. The success of our lives here on earth depends on how earnestly we seek the Lord in prayer.
Jon Courson points out, that there are two Adams in the Bible. One failed in the garden of Eden and the other succeeded in the garden of Gethsemane. One rebelled, the other knelt in submission. The first was cursed to work by the sweat of his brow unto death on earth, the latter sweat great drops of blood in prayer to bring us life everlasting. Let us follow Jesus' example and come to God first and seek His guiding in our lives and enter in His rest. We do not need to work out our salvation - Jesus did that for us. He suffered so that we would not have to. He had to spend the night in agony, so that we can enter into His rest.

Application
I want Jesus' peace and joy in my life. I want to rest upon His promise of a full life in Him. I want his heavenly resources to make my life a success. Today, I will pray throughout the whole day and spend as much time as possible in conversation with Him.