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Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions, Mark chapter 14, day 3. As we look at
verses 32 to 42 today, it's very obvious as we walk through this chapter that
it's a holy place. It's a holy place of walking with Jesus in these moments, in
these hours, before He goes to the cross.

And in the holiness of what happened this night, I don't know if there's a more
significant spot, a more holy place, than what happens in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Listen to verses 32 to 42. They went to a place called Gethsemane,
and Jesus said to His disciples, "Sit here while I pray.

" He took Peter, James, and John along with Him, and they began to be deeply
distressed and troubled. "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of
death," He said to them. "Stay here and keep watch.

" Going a little further, He fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the
hour might pass from Him. "Abba, Father," He said, "everything is possible for
you. Take this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will.

" Then He returned to His disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," He said to
Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing,
but the body is weak. " Once more He went away and prayed the same thing.

When He came back, He again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy.
They did not know what to say to Him. Returning the third time, He said to them,
"Are you still sleeping and resting enough?

" The hour has come. "Look, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of
sinners. Rise, let us go.

Here comes my Betrayer. " Here is Jesus as the Lamb of God, the Passover Lamb.
Here is Jesus as the willing Lamb.

There is this amazing moment in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prays, "Yet
not what I will, but what you will. " Some ask, "Why did Jesus pray this? Didn't
He know He was going to the cross?

" Jesus chose as He came to this earth to limit His understanding in some ways.
The fact that He chose to do that didn't lessen Him in any way. He didn't lessen
Himself as God, but He chose to limit Himself as God.

He didn't understand everything. He chose not to have omniscience. This is the
moment where He knows the next day He is going to the cross.

He prays to the Father, and He is saying, "Father, if there is another plan that
You have, if there is something to reveal to me at this moment before I go to
the cross, if there is another direction I am supposed to take here, now is the
moment to reveal it. " But then He prays this, "Not what I will, but you will. "
We see Jesus as God.

We also see Jesus as human here. He says, "Take this cup from Me. " Who would
want to suffer the agony of the cross?

Who would want to suffer the spiritual agony that Jesus is going to go through
by taking all of mankind's sin upon Himself? He expresses in honesty His
humanity here. But then He also says, "Not what I will, but what you will.

" This is what I like to call the "nevertheless" prayer. In some versions it
says, "Nevertheless, not what I will, but you will. " You see, there are many
desires that I have and things that I want to do, but the "nevertheless" prayer
is when I come to God in all honesty and say, "God, here is what I want, here is
my desire, nevertheless, I really want what You want.

" How could Jesus pray this the same way I can pray that prayer? Because I
trust. I trust that God knows what is best.

I trust that God's plan is the plan that will prevail. I trust that God is good
and that even going through difficult times His goodness is going to be shown.
Jesus is about to go through the cross, one of the most evil moments in all of
history.

And yet Jesus is about to go through the cross, one of the moments where God's
goodness is seen the most clearly in all of history. If you don't think that
God's goodness can be seen even when human beings and Satan is trying to throw
evil into this world, you've never looked at the cross. God can do that.

That is the greatness of God's power. Here is Jesus expressing as the
sacrificial lamb His willingness. He was not a lamb that was dragged bleeding
and kicking to the sacrifice.

He went willingly to the cross. And this was a willingness that was based on
God's will. The key to Jesus' strength is that He could call God "Abba Father.

" He had a relationship with God. He's a willing lamb. We see Jesus as the lamb
in these verses, but we also see Him once again as the shepherd.

He's the shepherd who's guarding His sheep. Now the interesting thing here is
He's guarding the sheep that He'd asked to guard Him. He goes into this garden
to pray, and He doesn't want to be interrupted in this very significant moment
with God.

He knows there are people that are about to arrest Him, and so He asks the
disciples, "Please stay here. Keep watch. You be the ones to keep watch for Me
in this moment.

" They were supposed to guard Jesus, but who ends up doing the guarding? Jesus
guards them. Even as Jesus Himself faces death, He has to take care of His
sheep.

Jesus is the shepherd, we're the sheep. If I could just remember, if you could
just remember that one simple fact, our lives and relationships would be very
different, much healthier. Jesus is the shepherd, we're the sheep.

And here are the sheep falling asleep. Now let me just explain what's going on
with these disciples. It's late at night.

They'd just eaten this huge Passover meal, and they couldn't keep their eyes
open. And so when Jesus goes over to pray, they fall asleep, not once, not
twice, but three times. One of the amazing things to me about this passage is
verse 40.

When Jesus comes back the second time and notices that they'd fallen asleep
again, the Bible says this important sentence, "They did not know what to say to
Him. " He woke them up, He said something important is going on, and they just
didn't know what to say. Now think about it.

This is one of the holiest moments in all of history, and they didn't know how
to respond. They didn't know what to say. I don't know about you, but I can
surely relate to that.

It is easy to miss the holiness of what God is doing. I get caught up in myself,
I get caught up in my needs, or the holiness seems so much above me that I can't
seem to attain it. I can't reach for it, so I fall asleep.

I don't know what else to do, so I fall asleep. The prayer that I want to pray,
that we need to pray together in this, is God, help me to be aware of the fact
that you are doing wonderful things, even if I don't see them. Help me to be
aware of what you are doing.

Help me to be aware of what my shepherd says to me in these holy moments. This
holy moment, by the way, might be with your family, when God is doing something
significant in one of your kids' lives, or in your life as a couple, and you
don't know what to say. This holy moment might be in your own heart when you are
sitting in church and something is stirring.

You know God wants to do something great, but you don't know what to say. This
holy moment might be in your small group when all of a sudden something
different breaks out than you usually have in your small group. And amidst the
laughter and enjoyment, there is all of a sudden an opportunity to take a next
step of faith and a next step of depth in your lives together, and you don't
know what to say.

There are a lot of places where this kind of a holy moment can happen. What does
our shepherd say to us when that happens? Here is what he says to those
disciples, and there are disciples today, I believe.

Watch and pray so that you don't fall into temptation. The spirit is willing,
but the body is weak. I love the honesty of what Jesus says here.

He says first, you want to watch and pray because you are very prone to fall
into temptation, the temptation of focusing on yourself. So how do you get the
focus off yourself? You get the focus on somebody else.

You watch and pray. You look at God and you talk to God. When you encounter a
holy moment, talk to God.

Put your focus on Him. And even if you don't have the words in your mind, keep
your focus on Him in that moment. Just say, "God, I don't have the words, but
I'm keeping my focus on You.

" But here's the second thing that Jesus reminds us of in these holy moments. He
says the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. He's reminding us when I
encounter one of these "I don't know what to say" holy moments in my life, it's
good to recognize that I am just human.

I've got a weak human body that's not going to always want to go along with me
in these incredible things that God wants to do in my life. But God's Spirit in
me is willing. So if I'm depending in these holy moments on my human strength,
my human body, it's weak.

It's not going to get me there. It can get you other places. It might get you to
business success.

It might get you to some good accomplishment in your life. But it's not going to
get you to the greatness of what God wants to do. I instead depend on God's
Spirit in that moment for what only God's Spirit can do in my life, for the
places that he can carry me and take me.

I don't know. Maybe some of you listening to this right now, somehow God is
creating a holy moment in your life. Out of these few moments of looking
together what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, this holy place, let's talk
to Jesus Christ.

Jesus, I don't want to fall asleep. We don't want to fall asleep. We want to
watch and pray.

When you begin to stir something in our hearts, in our families, in our
churches, in our groups, when you begin to stir something in our lives and we
realize you want to do something different and we feel drawn toward this
incredible thing that you want to do but we can't quite see it yet, help us in
that moment to put the focus on you, to say not my will but your will be done
and to trust what your Spirit can do. God, do something new in my life, do
something new in our lives, to the holiness of your strength and power and
Spirit. We pray this in your name, amen.

Tomorrow we're going to talk together about what happened at the trial.