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Edition #40

Welcome to "Write Your Life Forward"!

Are you here for the first time? Come on in, my Friend! We are a community of friends who aspire to see change, get unstuck, and write our lives forward. We do that by helping you study your life's story in the light of God's love story! Welcome to our cyber corner! Here's a note just for you --- wherever you are, whatever you're facing today...

The Truth You've Gotta Know About His Surrender and Love For Us

“Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” (Matthew 26:36)

We have often overlooked this story — of how one Man spent his last few hours in a Garden called Surrender.

This is the Garden where the most excruciating battle was fought one solitary night; his blood dripping like sweat on the cold stony ground.

He knew what lay ahead of him — the thorny crown they’d press against his head, the scourging with a lead-tipped whip that’d rip open his bruised, bloody back.

He foresaw it all; the coming torture, the mocking ridicule, the insult, the outright denial, even His very own crucifixion —

Yet He also knew how the hope of all humanity would delicately hang on the balance of His surrendered givenness.

He did this willingly unto God.

But no, He did this also for us.

His surrender was a culmination of His slow, steady obedience.

It was one faithful step at a time, one wholehearted trust each single way.

When you think about it, you can’t help but realize --- it was Jesus’ meekness to His Father that placed Him there, but it was His love for us that kept Him there.

In agony He pleaded: “Take this cup away from me”...

With each precious plea, His own will was perfected into a deeper surrender.

And you can see how the whole skewed world tilted closer to God’s perfect will as He gave and gave.

He wouldn’t budge from the love He was to give — no, this was the life He’d come to live!— so He prayed: “Not my will, but Yours be done.”

It’s true — every surrender we make is always a Cross — an intersection of two desires — a battle between what one wants and wills.

So the Garden saw it all - the climax of His stress and sorrow, His tears and fears.

“My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch” (Mark 14:34)​

Alone and forsaken, abandoned and rejected; He was denied not only by the band of men He’d loved, but also from the bond with the Father He’d known.

The angels were gone.

The Father turned His face away.

The air was fetid with the stench of death.

‘Gethsemane’ — that's not the place you would want to be, not at all when it means “oil press.”

Like how you would press the olive fruits three times until they are fully pulverized, so would Christ to be completely pressed until His life would all give, His love would all flow, and we would all be made full.

"For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace". (John 1:16)

And so with His giveness, we are given a lifeline, a reason for living, a joy beyond tomorrow, an eternity beyond the grave.

His surrendered moment became our significant movement.

His sacrifice was our mystery revealed, our prophecy fulfilled.

The First Man whose fall occurred in a garden incurred a Final Man to redeem fallen humanity through another garden.

Gethsemane — that was where it all first happened. And His victory at Calvary was first and foremost a triumph beneath those gnarled olive trees.

On the ground of that Garden where sorrow and suffering were unknown by heavens and humanity, love was making its way to find us.

He gave His all so we can be rescued from all our poor and paltry places, so we can be forever freed from our sins, our sadness and our selves.

Who would know that our redemption was first wrought in His rejection, our triumph in His tragedy?

He did it all for us, that we may know whatever may come our way, He'd always make a way through for you.

May His love hang like a banner over you today.

Happy Good Friday, my Friend!

x Liza

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