The Road Less Traveled

 Meditations of the Gospel of Mark

October 9, 2020

The Road Less Traveled

“Abba, Father,” he cried out, “everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Mark 14:36

Read: Mark 14:26-52

Jesus said you can pray for anything and if you really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart it will be yours. (Mark 11:23-24) If there was ever a person who lived that had faith in God without doubt in their heart, it was Jesus. It was in this faith that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me.”

Jesus did not receive what he asked for. Is there a contradiction between Jesus’ teaching on prayer and his own practice of prayer? No! Implicit with Jesus’ teaching on prayer is how he ended his own prayer; “Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

God has a plan of redemption for the entire world, and God has a particular purpose for every person to help bring into fulfillment God’s plan. God’s desire is for the flow of our life to always be where we fit into God’s plan, not how we can fit God into our plans.

Every church split, every controversy in a church is about control and control is always about focusing on our will instead of God’s will. This principal applies to our personal lives as well. Breakdowns in marriage and family relationships can always be traced back to a fork in the road. One road is our journey toward self-fulfillment; the other road, the road less traveled, is the road of God’s will, God’s purpose for our lives.

One simple phrase in our text today reminds me that the roads of life may not always be clearly marked. When Jesus found Peter sleeping instead of praying, Mark says “they didn’t know what to say.” (v.40) It is at moments like this that we rejoice for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.” (Romans 8:26-27)

My Takeaway: I would be remiss if I didn’t also point to Proverbs 3: 5-6 to help us find the road less traveled.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.”

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Copyright © 2020 by Alex M. Knight

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

• Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

• The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.