As I read about Jesus’ ordeal in the Garden of Gethsemane I thought about the last four parables we read. I see Jesus’ passion and agony as a huge exclamation mark to take those parables very seriously in my life.
I believe the last four parables we read can be understood this way:
Be Proactive with your Personal Vision of how God wants to work through your life;
Begin With The End In Mind. Jesus is coming again to establish His Kingdom. Begin being proactive with an understanding that you will be called to give an account of the way you have lived your life;
Put First Things First. Guard against the temptation to allow what seems urgent to crowd out the really important things in your life.
(By the way, these are the first three of Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.)
We are created to enter into our Father’s Joy. Fear stands between us and our entering into the Joy of God. In The Garden of Gethsemane Jesus said, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.” Jesus endured the Garden, and later The Cross, because it was so very important to Him to set us free to live by love instead of fear.
I believe that when we agonize over the sin and fear in our lives to the point we can say with Jesus, ‘my soul is crushed with grief,’ we experience the power of love to set us free from sin and fear.
What does today’s reading reveal to you
about God?
What does it reveal to you about yourself?
Think about what God wants you to do
or remember about this passage.
Does God want you to change anything in your life?
20-Sep-11 Matthew 26:47-68
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