Communauté et discipulat

Grow into Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (Luke 10:25~37)

2016.11.27Stephen Cha

Jesus' sorrow and honest prayer in Gethsemane show that God meets us in our grief and losses. When we bring our hearts to him and surrender our will, he enlarges our souls and uses us to bless and comfort others.

Jesus shows us that sorrow should not be hidden

In Gethsemane, Jesus does not appear calm and distant. He says, 'My soul is very sorrowful, even to the point of death,' and he falls on his face in prayer. The sermon explains that his anguish came from facing the wrath of God in our place, not from simple fear of pain. Jesus, who is God, entered that furnace for us. That love is the first thing we should remember when we go through our own suffering.

Pour out your heart honestly before the Father

Jesus does not pray only for blessing or for himself. He speaks honestly about what he feels and says, 'Not my will, but yours be done.' The Psalms are full of lament, which shows that God invites us to bring our pain to him. Elizabeth Elliot's habit of offering each sudden pain to God is an example of this. Prayer does not always remove the pain, but it lets us meet God and be changed.

Watch and pray instead of deciding in anger or despair

Jesus tells the disciples to watch and pray so that they do not fall into temptation, and he says the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. When we are angry, sad, or stressed, we should not make major decisions about our jobs, our relationships, or our lives. We need God's strength and the help of the Holy Spirit to respond in a way that follows God's ways, and we need to keep praying as long as it takes.

Take up the cross for others, not for yourself

The sermon uses an African fable about Peter and the stones to show that we must ask whom we are really serving. Jesus picked up the cross not for his own comfort but for his friends, for those who crucified him, and for us, enduring it for the joy set before him. Our lives are not about ourselves but about God, and we are called to bless others through service. God comforts us in our brokenness so that we can then comfort others.

God is with us in the valley of the shadow

Psalm 23 says 'the valley of the shadow of death,' and the word is shadow, not death itself. Jesus has already walked through death, so he walks with us through whatever shadow we face. His loving kindness and goodness follow us even when we see only darkness. As we take steps of obedience, we will again experience his faithfulness and his leading.

Apply to Life

  • Let us bring our losses and sorrows honestly before the Lord in prayer, as Jesus did.
  • Let us refuse to make important decisions while we are angry, stressed, or deeply sad, and let us watch and pray instead.
  • Let us keep praying as long as we need to, rather than offering only a short prayer.
  • Let us surrender our own will to God, saying 'Your will be done.'
  • Let us use the comfort we have received from God to serve and encourage others who are in pain.

This summary was made automatically from the sermon's captions and may differ from the sermon.

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