Gethsemane: Lessons in Prayer, Matthew 26:36-46

Open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 26 versus 30, 36 to 40 four and 46 rather and this morning, and for at least one more week were going to be in Gethsemane with our Lord. Thinking through what the implications are for us especially in relation to prayer. He is facing what we can never understand. Luke, I think it is, uses the phrase "agony", and the words that are used as we've seen in the previous studies, PERILUPEO, and other words that talk about the emotional impact that this had in His humanity, are words that we don't often associate with our Lord: that in his humanity He recognized what was going on. But as a person, the wholeness of who Jesus is, is important to understand. So I want to review a little bit of that today as we go through go through our study understood so that we can better understand what the implications and applications are.

I have always had one problem as a result of very common application that comes out of this passage at the end of Jesus' prayer. He says, "Father not my will but your will be done". Many people often use that almost as a dismissive term in prayer. They mean well, but is that being used in the same way that Jesus is using this? In the disciples' prayer in Matthew chapter 6 Jesus, in response to their question on how to pray, says as part of that prayer, praying to the Father, "Thy will be done." Don't stop there; it goes on. What does it say next? "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." What is He praying for? He is praying that the kingdom will come on the earth, and will manifest the will of God on the earth as well as in heaven. So we have to be careful not to just chop out phrases and take them and apply them because it sounds good.

We always understand that, when we pray there is a reality that we are humbled, we are submitting to the will of God; but it's almost as if we are going say, "Father I desperately need a, b or c. I'm in this situation, whatever it may be". And then after we pour our hearts out to the Lord and present these petitions in these intercessions for people, it's almost like, Okay that's the positive, now here's the negative that is going to counter everything I just said, and I am going to say, nevertheless your will be done.

That's not how the Lord is using that. He is not using that as a as a cliché; He is not using that as some way to dismiss Him. The way a lot of people would use that would almost imply as if Jesus' will on the cross is somehow at complete odds with the Father's will at the cross. Now that's going to present us with some mind-bending thoughts because it gets us deeply into our understanding of how the humanity and the deity of Christ intersect, and that intersection, the union of the divine and the human, his undiminished deity and true humanity unites together in one person. It is called the hypostatic union, from a Greek word, which is used to mean substance or person. In this context we will have to look at that as we think this through this, this week as well as next week.

Now the previous lesson we focused on what's happening to our Lord as a person. I keep emphasizing that because sometimes a way people talk they will say, well, in the deity of Christ or the humanity of Christ, almost as if there is not just two natures but two persons. There are two natures in one person, so the person Jesus is sorrowing; the person Jesus is grieving; the person Jesus is facing this test and this trial. That He sorrows and grieves tells us that He is truly human. That he is submitted to the will of the Father may say some things also about His deity.

There are a couple things that we need to keep in mind and think through, one being the understanding of this doctrine called the hypostatic union, and its significance. One thing that's encouraging if you have a little trouble with it is that it took the early church with all of their intellectual tools—Remember, most of these early church fathers were well trained in the thought forms and logic of either Aristotelianism or Platonism. They were, they had great intellectual skills—and they were wrestling with this, concept, first of all, the question of who was Jesus before He came was eternal like God: What is the relationship of the pre-incarnate Christ to the eternal Father; and after they resolved that at the Council of Nicaea the question was, well, what was He when He came? What is the relationship of these two natures? That took them from roughly around 150 until about 450—300 years. Before that they weren't analyzing these teachings in Scripture that clearly.

It took really bright men to figure out how to correctly articulate this. And sometimes we just flippantly act as if this is so easily understood because that's what we've been taught since we were little in Sunday school or since we came to church. So it's important to put ourselves in their place a little bit and think through what this means and what those implications are.

What we have seen is that Jesus, after the time in the upper room where he instituted the Lord's Table, leaves that room with his disciples now. What is interesting is in the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew Mark and Luke because they cover the same material in a slightly different way and each one—they have Jesus leave the upper room at after the Seder meal, the disciples sing a hymn and they go out, and then they come to Gethsemane. When you look at the Gospel of John you realize that all along the way as Jesus is walking through the city of Jerusalem and around He is teaching the disciples in John 14 and John 15 in John 16. And then either as He is walking or when they first arrive—I tend to think from looking at it that it is while they are still walking—Jesus prayed His what we call the high priestly prayer of John 17. This is a night of prayer and the high priestly prayer is directly related to what Jesus taught His disciples about the church age in John 14, 15, 16.

Then there was that high priestly prayer, and then they arrived at the garden of Gethsemane, and these events followed. So basically, four chapters are left out by the Synoptics. On the other hand, John doesn't deal with this prayer of our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. The reason some that the Synoptics focus on it and John doesn't is because, I believe, the Synoptics are written long before AD 70. They were written quite early, 40 to early 50, and they were written to answer different questions; whereas John is writing after the fall of Jerusalem, he is writing in AD early 90s, and he is addressing a different situation than the other writers.

Jesus comes to this place that is called the Garden of Gethsemane and He separates Himself from the disciples, from the whole group, and he took with Him Peter and James and John, the same three that were with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration. Why does He do that? I think the reason He takes the same three guys is because they saw the glory of His deity on the Mount of Transfiguration. Now they are going to see Him in the struggle of His humanity in the Garden of Gethsemane. It's interesting that you have Peter and John. Peter writes first and second Peter, John writes the Gospel of John and three epistles. The other two main writers of Scripture are Paul and Luke. We also have Matthew and Mark writing their two Gospels, but in terms of the church age epistles it's basically Paul, Peter and John.

So Peter and John have witnessed both the Transfiguration and they have witnessed Jesus' struggle in Gethsemane. He comes and falls on his face. What we see in the parallel Gospels is that one says He kneels the other says He falls down, and another says He falls on his face. It is a position of submission, a position of subordination, and a position of respect. One bows down before a king, someone in authority. And so this is not a prescriptive passage. One of the things that is difficult for people to understand when they read the Scripture is that some passages are prescriptive and some are descriptive. Description simply says this is what Jesus does, or this is what Paul did; it doesn't tell us that is what we are supposed to do. That would be prescription, telling us what to do. It's prescribed action.

Different people, different cultures pray in different ways. When John portrays the Lord, if we are putting this together, Jesus is praying probably open-eyed, talking to the Father and may be looking to heaven as He is walking along the path to go to the Garden of Gethsemane; but here this personal prayer is reflected in his posture. In the Jewish culture and Middle Eastern culture they are a lot more emotional and a lot more physically demonstrative than Western Europeans tend to be, and that's not to say that one is better than the other; it's just different. This is a prescription that when we pray we need to prostrate ourselves upon the ground. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do, but that's not what it's not going to make you any holier; it's not going to make you any more spiritual; it's not going to mean that you're more mature than anybody else; it's just a choice.

Jesus separates Himself from the others. I think that's important too because this is a personal prayer, He is going off about a stones throw, so the disciples could see him probably about as far as from the pulpit back to the back wall of the auditorium. They could see Him, but it also was a time of privacy. Interesting how commentaries get so caught up in the details: "Well, if they couldn't hear Him how would he know what He prayed?"

Jesus said something on the way to the garden of Gethsemane in John chapter 14 that that the Holy Spirit would bring to remembrance, bring to their mind, all the things that He had talked taught them. It is called inspiration of the Scriptures so they didn't have to hear Him for God the Holy Spirit to reveal to them what He had prayed. He prays, and here he says, "Oh my Father". I will talk about that just a little bit. This is interesting because in Judaism you never use that phrase, My father. The word for father in Hebrew is the av and if you were saying, My father, you'd say, avi (my father). There's a diminutive to that which we will see is used in the Mark parallel, and that is Abba, which is often translated for Americans as Daddy or Poppa, or a more intimate term.

What this shows is the intimacy that Jesus had with the Father, and one, which, because we are in Christ, we can have also. So we are addressing prayer to the Father. Now every now and then you're here somebody who says you can pray to the Holy Spirit, or you can pray to the Son. We have a lot of people just use the ambiguous phrase, Lord, and you don't know whether there talking to Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, or whether they're just talking to the second person of the Trinity, and you probably heard some people say that you should only pray to the Father. And you've heard some other people say, well, that of course Jesus prayed to the Father, He is not going pray to Himself, so why do you make this conclusion that you shouldn't pray to the Son? They will justify that ambiguity. And you'll hear Charismatics even praying to the Holy Spirit.

We never have an example in the Scripture of prayer to the Holy Spirit; we never have an example prayer to the to the Son either. The reason is because both the Son and the Spirit are intercessors for us to the Father. The Son is our intercessor, He is praying to the father for us. We don't need to pray to the Intercessor; we pray to the Father. That is the basic theological rationale for why we pray to the Father, along with a little bit of an argument from silence; nobody prays to the Son or the Spirit in the Scriptures. We don't pray to the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for us as well; so we don't pray to the intercessor.

This is one of the distinctions between Protestant theology and Roman Catholic theology. In Roman Catholic theology they don't understand the relationship that the believer in Christ now has giving him intimacy with the Father. They require not only an intercessor with the Father, but they require an intercessor with the intercessors. They pray to Mary. Mary is the one you must pray to, and she will intercede with the Son and then with the Father, so it gets all convoluted because of the influence of paganism and false teaching.

Jesus prays to the Father. I think we learn from this that we too should pray to the Father. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray in Matthew chapter 6, He said, "Pray, Our father who art in heaven"; again, an emphasis that prayer is directed toward the Father.

I want to look at the parallel before we go on. The big phrase to look at is, first of all, the request, "Let this cup pass from me." The cup represents His judgment for sin on the cross. It might surprise you to realize that almost every phrase in these prayers in this section is highly debated among Orthodox evangelical scholars. It it's amazing. When I got into this about three or four weeks ago, I was just stunned by the debates that go on, and the vast amount of reading I had to go through in the last three weeks in order to make sure I've got this got a handle on this. Because there are several different views out there trying to come to grips with what this passage is saying, and all of them are wrestling with the idea that we don't want to somehow create a problem with the relationship of the humanity and the deity of Christ.

And then Jesus prays, "Nevertheless, not as I will but as you will." And that's the big question. Does Jesus have a separate will from the Father, or does Jesus have the same will as the Father? Is there one will in the person of Christ? I'm just going to cut to the chase there: there are two. He has his own individual will that's part of his human nature. There is the Father's will and the Son's will.

This was a heresy that developed in the sixth and seventh centuries AD called monotheletism. If you break it down, THELEO is the Greek word for will; MONO is the word one. It is the idea that Jesus had two natures but one will. And if He only has one will, does He have a true full human nature?

Mark says He went a little further; He fell on the ground. Notice he doesn't say "falls down on the ground"; He just fell on the ground. He doesn't say he knelt, as Luke does, and He went a little farther, fell on the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. Now that is statement of indirect discourse from Mark. You all remember that from sixth or seventh grade literature: that you have direct discourse and indirect discourse. Direct discourse is when you are directly quoting what someone said, and indirect discourse is when you're just paraphrasing him in your own words.

Mark paraphrases what Jesus is praying for in his own words in verse 35, and then in verse 36 he tells us precisely what Jesus said. That is important because I think when you compare Matthew to Mark you can avoid taking some position some people taken, because Mark makes it pretty clear what the conditional statement "if it were possible" means. Jesus prays that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him, and He said, "Abba Father, all things are possible for you." That phrase "all things are possible for you" is not stated in a condition; that is a statement of fact. It is an indicative statement and a declarative statement. He states, "all things are possible for you". God is omnipotent, but when we say all things are possible for you that doesn't mean God can violate certain realities. It just means that God can do what ever He intends to do in light of His plan and His purpose.

Jesus is praying, "all things are possible for you" and then we have His request: "Take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not what I will but what you"—

that second will is just supplied to make more sense. He literally says, "Not what I will, but you." It is the Greek word THELO. This is an important word to understand. It's used here, it used many times and the noun form of it, THELEMA, is used many times in John. And this has to do with not just expressing God's sovereign declared will, but it also has the idea of desire, which is a little less intense than expressing an absolute will. That is important because Jesus is talking about His own will. When He uses the word THELO there, is He talking about an absolute will or is He talking about a desire that is simply present in His human nature.

Breaking some of this down, I said Abba is an intimate address for the Father. But this word is also highly debated. I have written numerous scholars from an evangelical community and they also talk about this as being this intimate word, and that it was used in the first century. However, there's a man named Raymond Brown, a Roman Catholic scholar. He has written a book called The Death of the Messiah, which is two volumes, each volumes about 2-1/2 to 3 inches thick. He is granular in his analysis of exegesis, his analysis of theology and theological articles. In fact, I discovered several evangelical articles from journals from reading him and his footnotes. In fact, a guy I knew at Dallas seminary had written an article back in the 70s (I don't agree with him) on the prayer Gethsemane that was footnoted by Brown. So you have to be careful because he's Roman Catholic. He has certain theological predilections there, but he cites granular studies on the use of Abba which say that this form of the word is never used before the early second century—100, 110, 120.

My opinion is that when Jesus prays throughout the Gospels He prays mostly, My Father. In Jewish tradition you would never assume that level of intimacy with God. God may be Father, but you're not going to pray in that level of intimacy. And that's what Jesus did. Here He uses the word Abba, and Paul also introduces that in Galatians. This indicates that close intimacy the believer has with the Father. I think that it's introduced into language because of what Jesus did, because of what Paul said. This was a form that's introduced. That is why it's not attested, is not found in any in any literature prior to the second century. And so it is in the first century, due to the influence of Christians, that this word is formed.

Mark in his indirect discourse says that Jesus prays, "If it were possible". This is a first class condition. My goodness, there's a lot of debate over the nuance of the first class condition. Normally the way many of us have been taught is we think of the fact that there's four different ways you can express the nuance of an if clause in the Bible. You can say if, and it's true where you would translate its sense. But that's not always the case; you can't always translate its sense. Many times you can though. The second class condition is if, and the condition is assumed to be not true. And the third class condition is more what we think of as a condition as if, maybe it's true, maybe it's not; like if we confess our sins, maybe you will and maybe you won't.

What's interesting that throws a little twist into things is that there are about 10 cases in the New Testament where the first class condition is used, but it's basically if, and it's not true. It's a contrary to fact condition. So you have to go through all of this stuff, and a number of articles that I read that were dealing with grammar written by evangelicals would argue that this is a contrary to fact example. I don't think it is because of what is stated in going back to Mark where Jesus states as a declarative statement that all things are possible. Jesus is recognizing that there is a possibility here, remote though it might be; or He is simply stating it as an assumption for debate's sake where if and we are going to assume it's true, but it probably isn't. And that's that is more the case.

I think that is here because all things are possible for God. But Jesus knows this isn't possible. Why do I say that? Because there have been five times up to this point where Jesus has told the disciples that "it's necessary for me to go to Jerusalem where I'm going to be betrayed, where I am going to be handed over to the Gentiles where I'm going to be crucified, and I am going to rise from the dead". When you look at those statements it is clear that He knows that is what God's will is. So the question arises, Did Jesus have a will separate from the Father that is independent and exercised independently from the Father?

Three passages in the Gospel of John for Jesus talks about this. In John 4:34 Jesus said to his disciples, "My food", and by food He means that which gives me energy. Food is that which nourishes you; food is that which gives you energy, and He is using it metaphorically here, aside from actually eating. He says, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work". Jesus understood that His mission was to bring to completion the work, the plan of God the Father, and that is the word, THELEMA, which is the noun form of THELO, the verb form He uses in the garden of Gethsemane. So here it's very clear He understands the will of the Father.

John 5:30 ^NASB “I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." That is a really interesting passage because it does clearly tell us Jesus has His own will, but He is not going to exercise it independently of the Father. He is always dependent upon the Father and He is going to carry out the Father's plan.

John 6:38 ^NASB “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." In other words, not to exercise myself independently of the Father, but the will of Him who sent me. I think this is important because the way in which some people have expressed some of the discussion on the hypostatic union is that the Son submitted Himself to the to the Father's will, and the Kenosis is that Jesus would enter into human history and never act independently of the Father. I don't think we even need to use the word independent there because He never does. His will is never independent of the Father.

This term that I've been talking about, hypostatic union, comes from a Greek word HUPOSTASIS, which has the basic meaning of a substantial nature or capacity or essence or actual being or reality. The term comes into use in the fourth century AD to express the relationship between the humanity and the deity of Christ. So by way of definition, the hypostatic union describes the union of two natures—that is, His divine and human, in the one person of Jesus Christ. These natures are—inseparably united without loss or mixture of separate identity. In other words, they are united but they're not meshed together. He still fully God, is fully man; they are kept independent, but they are united, they don't they don't blend together, without loss or mixture of separate identity, without loss or transfer properties or attributes, the union is personal and eternal.

The fact is that a billion years from now Jesus is still the God-Man. Once He entered into human history and took on the form of humanity He is the God-Man forever and ever and ever. That doesn't change His deity. That's part of why we use these phrases "without loss or mixture of separate identity and without loss or transfer of properties are attributes"; it's eternal.

Here are key passages Philippians 2:6-11, the Kenosis passage. Notice that I have underlined John chapter one, Romans chapter one, Colossians chapter one, and Hebrews chapter one. So if you want to remember something, just remember those first chapters, Romans, Hebrews, Colossians, John; that's it. That is where you find those great passages on the deity of Christ entering into human history.

In Philippians 2 Paul is talking about humility and unity in the body of Christ at Philippi: that they should not each be seeking their own agenda. And the example that he gives of Jesus Christ goes back to the incarnation, that Christ, although he existed in the form of God—and that phrase means the essence of God; He has full rights and privileges of deity; He is equal to the Father in his essence—He didn't regard his privilege, His equality with God, something to be held on to, something to be grasped at. He was not going to assert his His rights and privileges of deity. Instead, He was going to—the phrase is translated "emptied Himself", and that is a huge debate. The Greek word is KENOSIS and it has the idea that He is willing to limit the use of His divine prerogatives for a limited time for a specific purpose, and that was to fulfill the plan of redemption.

He "emptied Himself"—bad translation which could indicate giving something up. He never gives up His deity, and what He does is add to His deity this nature of being a servant, which is qualified by the phrase "being made in the likeness of men". He is going to take on; He is going to add to His deity humanity. And He is "found in appearance …" That indicates and who He is, He is man; He is fully a man, not just the appearance of a man; that was a heresy in the early church called Docetism. He is truly a man and He humbled Himself—that's submission to authority; he humbled himself by being obedient to the point of death. That emphasizes that He is obedient.

And these words, THELO the verb, THELEMA the noun, being obedient, all emphasize that Jesus has His own volition as a separate person, even in the Trinity, but it is never exercised apart from the whole because Jesus says, "I and the Father are one" in John 10:30. He has to exercise that volition though, in growing spiritually. That is the purpose of Hebrews 2:10, that God the Father is perfecting or bringing to maturity the author of their salvation through sufferings. It is how He handles that testing.

So what we see in terms of the definition is that there are natures in Christ, two distinct substances: one divine and one human. They are united. None of us can explain how that happens, but they are united in the one person of Christ, yet they remain distinct, they don't blend together. And it's not like you're baking bread and you're taking flour and then you're adding sugar and salt and blending it all together; they remain distinct. That means there is no transfer of the attributes from one nature to another. His humanity doesn't leak into His deity; His deity doesn't leak into his humanity. And in some way what Jesus does in hypostatic union is limit His divine attributes. He doesn't give up those divine attributes, but it's like he puts in a firewall and there are only certain times when He accesses His deity to do some certain things. And He doesn't ever do it to solve His human problems, like when He is in the Garden of Gethsemane duties under this incredible pressure He doesn't rely on His divine attributes to solve the problem. A lot of people get confused: Well of course Jesus did not have a problem; He was God, He just handled it. No He didn't, not that way. He handled it out of his humanity the same way you and I do, but there were times when Jesus used his deity to demonstrate that He was God: when He stilled the sea, when there was the storm on got the sea of Galilee; when He changed the water into wine; when He healed people. That demonstrated that He was fully God.

A fourth aspect of our understanding is that the union is a personal union. That means He is a person. He is not just some thing, He is a person with all the attributes and all the nuances of what it means to be a person: that we can communicate with Him, we can talk to Him, He communicates with the Father; He is a person.

And 5^th, there's only one person; there are not two persons in two natures, there are not two natures and one will. There are two natures, undiminished deity and true humanity.

And 6^th, it is eternal.

What are the consequences of this? First of all, one consequence is that there is a communion of the attributes. I'll explain this a couple different ways. First of all, He does things as one person. There is a communion of the attributes in that they are shared with one another, but they do not penetrate one another. It is one person that is doing everything. When Jesus says, "I hunger", that indicates His humanity, but you can't say, well Jesus humanity hungered, but his deity didn't. That is treating Him like some sort of multiple personality. The one person hungers; that's what I'm getting at here. The second thing is the consequences of the hypostatic union concerning his acts, so that those acts are all the act of one person. And a third is that the Man Christ Jesus is the object of worship—not deity side, but the one person of the Lord Jesus Christ, because He is fully God. A fourth the consequence is that Christ can therefore sympathize with us. He has been tested in every area as we are, yet without sin.

That is important because when we go to the Father in prayer the High Priest who is interceding for us, and with us, has an understanding of what were going through because He has been there; He has been tested. Now he didn't sin. You don't have to sin to understand the pressure of the testing.

And the fifth consequence is that that makes him an eternal priest. A priest is a go-between. As human He can represent us, that relates to His being a mediator, the one who stands between God and man. He is an everlasting priest for us.

Sixth, He has no sin nature. Adam and Eve sinned, but there is no sin in Jesus, so He is the perfect High Priest who can intercede for us; and He is the one who is sitting at the right hand of the Father. So the one who sitting at the right hand of the Father is a man, the God-Man, but He is fully human. The one who is directing and holding the universe together, according to Colossians 1:15-17, is a man. He is the God-Man but He is a human.

In the early church they had two questions that they were trying to address: what was Jesus before He came, and what was Jesus when He came? The first question was satisfied by an understanding of the Trinity, that Jesus was eternally God, but the big question was who was Jesus, when He came. They got it wrong because they didn't have the mental tools yet, the intellectual language to express it. I think a lot of these guys were trying to get the right thing out but they did know how to express it; the way they expressed it was determined to be heresy.

Apollinarus was the first to take a stab at it, and in his view a human being is made up of the body, the soul, and the human spirit; three parts. Christ was made up of a body, but He had a divine soul and the human spirit is partly human. So He is not truly man, and truly God, He is a blend. After they thought about this for a while they said no, that's wrong, that's heresy.

The next guy to take a stab at this is Nestorius. I think a lot of Christians are really Nestorian in their understanding of the hypostatic union, and they don't know it because it never studied this. Nestorian Christianity dominated in eastern certain Eastern groups of Christianity. It dominated, for example, in China up until time Marco Polo got there. The Christians there were all Nestorians. So it had a long-term impact. In Nestorianism Jesus is really split. He has a divine nature and a divine person, so you get two natures in two persons. In Christ you have a divine nature, a divine person that somehow connected with a human nature and a human person, but there's this firewall completely between them and it's not one person. So it's this idea almost multiple personality. Well that's going too far in one direction.

The next guy to come along with this guy Uticus, and he said you have united Christ. You have a divine nature and human nature, and they are put together into the person of Christ. It creates a third nature; it's blended together. And so Jesus is one person in one nature, and they finally got this articulated at 451 at the Chalcedonian Creed. They are not divided. That is, the two natures are not divided or cut into two persons (that was Nestorianism), but are together, the one and only, and only begotten LOGOS of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus have the prophets all testified that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself taught. One person; two natures.

So when we answer the question, dies Jesus have a will separately from the Father, the answer is yes, but He never operates independent of the Father's will. He is committed to do the Father's will. But there is a pressure on Him in the garden. So when He says, Nevertheless not my will but yours be done, He is not using that as sort of a catchall phrase to just say, okay I'll go ahead and go along with your plan. He's recognizing that He has been in this struggle, and that He continues to be fully committed to what He has been committed to all along, and that is to fulfill the Father's plan for His life.

We can't do that because we are not sinless, and we are not the Son of God. But what we can do is recognize that we are engaged in a soul battle. It is volition. Are we going to live our life each day to serve the Lord? Whatever testing or challenge comes, we're going to do God's will. But we have to know what God's will is. God's will is not some mystical thing where we engage in little navel-gazing, waiting for some liver quiver to define what God wants us to do. We know God's will because we know God's Word. And so to be able to pray within the will of God we have to know it from His Word, and that's the challenge to us that always seems to come back to this: we need to know the Word.

Yesterday morning in the men's prayer breakfast we had about 15 men there, several who usually there weren't there. A young friend of mine came and visited yesterday, and I saw him a couple more times during the day or talked to him. He texted me: "That was great this morning." I saw him later on in an event in the afternoon. He said that was just tremendous, I just love it to see a group of men like that who have been reading their Bible and tare asking questions. They want to really come to know what the Bible says. The focus is on knowing the Word.

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