Your Highest Purpose In Life?

In the garden just before Jesus was about to begin a period of extreme suffering at the hands of men he prayed to the Father. “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Facing the darkest hour of His life, knowing what would happen and how He would die, Jesus Prayed - “not my will but yours.” Understanding that His own father was about to crush him (Isaiah 53) and that the full wrath of God would come down upon Him, Jesus prayed, “Not my will but thine.” Knowing that the Father who He had trusted, obeyed and loved would forsake him, that the sins all mankind would be upon his shoulder making him an object of God’s wrath, Jesus prayed, “Your will God not mine.”

Do you understand that Jesus was a man? Yes He was God for who but God could bare the full wrath of Jehovah and yet live. But let us not forget that He was also a man. A man who understood the terrible wrath of God and was so terrified of it he prayed while sweat like drops of blood fell from him. Jesus wasn’t afraid of being spit on, or smacked with a rod or whipped with sharp shards of bone and stone. Jesus wasn’t afraid of the name calling or the jeering voices of men. Jesus wasn’t even afraid of the nails that would pierce his skin pinning him to the cross. Jesus feared the wrath of God.

You can’t appreciate what was happening to Jesus until you understand the fierceness and anger of God. I know we are taught a lot about Jesus' love but because God loves He also hates. For who if they love children does not hate abortion or child molestation. God’s wrath, anger and violence is holy but it doesn’t mean that it is any less fierce.

How do we pray in our best times and in our darkest hours? Are we really interested in seeing God’s will be done? Even if it means that we are crushed into dust to best honor and glorify God, would we desire God’s will? If God could gather the most glory for himself and His son Jesus Christ through our suffering would we still be passionate to see His will be done?

My guess is that for most of us, we pray according to our will with little regard for what God’s will really is. Somehow we feel that God owes us this or that when in fact all God owes us is his wrath. Praise Jesus that those in Christ are not under condemnation for Christ has bore the very wrath of God that should have been upon us. Even then, how often do we want what we want without regard for God’s glory and will?

I have been more and more convicted of how truly wicked my own heart is. Everything I have lived for though I believed I was living for God, I have sought my will not His. I desired such things that seemed pure but I did not regard His will. I am guilty of reading God’s Word just so I can get a good sermon. I have desired to be a great minister that I might be named among the elite. I have prayed that God would give me direction so that people would notice that I was used of God. Though I am convinced I have not yet seen God’s holiness nor my own wickedness like Isaiah did, I am seeing now more clearly than I have before.

“Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips , and I live among a people of unclean lips , and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” Isaiah 6:5.

How important is doing God’s will to you? Is God’s glory your highest purpose in life?