Your Will be Done

Thursday, April 2

Before His public ministry began and following His baptism, Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil (Matthew 4:1-11). The Father had already spoken words of pleasure over His incarnate Son when He rose up out of the Jordan, and now Jesus would demonstrate how right the Father was in His affirmation. Prior to their entry into the Promised Land, the people of Israel had been tested in the wilderness and failed to live by faith in God’s Word. Jesus would now accomplish what Israel (and indeed all of mankind) had failed to do in the face of temptations to fall away from loving and trusting the Father to trust in the world and love of self.

The Devil tempted Jesus to take His life into His own hands and prioritize His physical life (the temptation of making bread from stones); to test the Father’s love for Him (the temptation of jumping off the Temple); and to become a powerful ruler over the kingdoms of men by worshiping the Devil rather than following the Father’s plan to become King through the humility and suffering of the cross (temptation of the high mountain).

Jesus overcame the test in triumph, and this period of testing prepared Him for a ministry that would be plagued by testing. Jesus proved that He was not here to please men or to consume pleasures of the world but to consider the Father’s will more important than His own life. Gethsemane was another moment of testing, perhaps the most significant, and one that even revealed the mystery of Christ’s own struggle in the face of it. Yet as much as He wished the terrible cup to be exchanged for another way, He did not desire another way above the Father’s will.

Lord Jesus, You demonstrated throughout your life an obedient will that was in perfect union with Your Father’s. You did not consider the opinions of men or the pleasures of the world more important than loving Your Father. You faced and overcame temptations with perfect triumph, temptations that have overcome me time and again. Through Your obedience, by grace, Your Father is my Father. Help me, by the Holy Spirit, to become more like You in praying with all my heart, Father, “Your will be done.”

Written by Faculty Members of the Gary Cook School of Leadership at Dallas Baptist University.