Mark 14:36-39

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus pleaded. How do we know this? Because he kept going back and saying the same thing. In Mark 14:36, Jesus prays: “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Then, after he went back and found his disciples sleeping, Mark tells us in Mark 14:39, “[…] again he went away and prayed, saying the same words.” Did you get that? He was “saying the same words.”

Have you ever pleaded in prayer like that? Praying the same words over and over? Pleading in earnest, repetitive prayer, because the answer has not come yet? Because you do not like what the answer seems to be? Or simply because you do not know what else to do? Hospitals, court houses, prisons, refugee camps, recovery houses, military bases, orphanages, homes with lonely people, hurting people, and churches are filled with people pleading, pleading to God for some relief.

If you are pleading right now for something to happen, some opportunity to materialize, some healing to take place, some addiction to go away, a broken marriage to be mended, an estranged child to come home, money to pay the rent, whatever it is, Jesus knows what it is like to plead. He planted his feet in your shoes, while pleading in that garden. He knows what it feels like not to want to go through the pain and yet be willing to endure it.

Jesus was pleading to sympathize with all those who plead in prayer and yet seem to find no relief. Pleading. Wow! Jesus pleading.

Jesus came into this dark, painful pleading world, so that we would never need to plead alone. Even more, as much as he desired to bypass the pain, he was more willing to do whatever was necessary to accomplish God’s will and bring his pleading children home.