Jesus prayed for the cup to pass. The cup remained, and Heaven sent strength. Today's Daily Cup explores how God sustains His people through the circumstances they wish He would change.
By Dianna Hobbs
Strength for the cup, one day at a time. (Photo: EEW Magazine Online)
Guess who made an appearance today? Drum roll, please. My voice! After weeks of barely being able to speak, thanks to a doozy of a bacterial and upper respiratory infection, I can finally talk again. I'm still taking antibiotics and prednisone, and dealing with some chest tightness. But my cough has largely subsided, my body aches have eased, and I'm on the mend.
Progress, not perfection. Thank the Lord. I'll take it.
I've been learning to celebrate the little victories for seven years now, ever since my life changed dramatically following brain and immune system damage in 2019. For a long time, I prayed and waited for my return to normalcy. As the months turned into years, I slowly realized that life wasn't going back to the way it had been.
Your girl was devastated.
Crushed.
Hurt hurt.
When you say it twice, you know it's deep.
Now that I've reached 50 by the grace of God, I feel a little steadier. I still believe wholeheartedly that God can do the impossible. I have seen Him work too many miracles to ever doubt His power. These days, when He chooses a different path from the one I've been praying for, I can rest in His wisdom more easily.
The prayer that has carried me through these years takes me back to a garden.
On the night before the cross, Jesus took Peter, James, and John into Gethsemane. He told them His soul was "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death" (Matthew 26:38, KJV). Then He went a little farther, fell on His face, and prayed: "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matthew 26:39, KJV).
In many Old Testament passages, the cup represents God's judgment against sin (Psalm 75:8; Isaiah 51:17; Jeremiah 25:15). That was the cup in front of Jesus. At the cross, He would drink it for us as He bore the sins of the world. He knew the Father's purpose and why He had come, and He still asked if there might be another way.
I'm struck by how Jesus asks for the cup to pass and yields to the Father in the very same prayer. His anguish and His surrender sit side by side. The Son of God brought His honest desire to the Father.
That ministers to me deeply.
I don't have to pretend I want the cup in order to trust God with it.
Then Jesus went away a second time and prayed again: "O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done" (Matthew 26:42, KJV).
Thy will be done.
Many of us have prayed that line from the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:10) since childhood, often without a second thought. In the garden, Jesus prayed it on the hardest night of His earthly life, with the cross in full view.
Then Luke adds a detail I treasure. As Jesus prayed, "there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him" (Luke 22:43, KJV).
The cup stayed, and Heaven sent strength for it.
Strength still breaks through in the garden.
The Greek word translated "strengthening" is enischyō, which means to strengthen or to restore strength. It appears only one other time in the New Testament, also in Luke's writing. After Saul of Tarsus met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he spent three days blind, without food or drink. Then, "when he had received meat, he was strengthened" (Acts 9:19, KJV).
The same God who sends nourishment to a weary body knows how to strengthen a weary heart for what lies ahead.
Enischyō is a word for weakness met with strength. In the garden, Heaven met the Son of God that way, but it didn't make the assignment easy. The next verse says of Jesus, "being in an agony he prayed more earnestly" (Luke 22:44, KJV).
Strength had come, and the agony was still there. Sometimes that is how God answers us, with strength in the anguish.
Now, our circumstances are vastly different from the unique, redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ. Yet Jesus' example teaches us something essential about trusting God. We can bring Him our deepest desires. We can tell Him what hurts. We can ask Him to change our circumstances. We can pray with expectation, knowing that nothing is too hard for Him.
And we can trust His wisdom with the outcome.
The apostle Paul did. When he pleaded with the Lord three times to remove an affliction he called a thorn in his flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7-8), the thorn stayed. The Lord answered him: "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9, KJV).
Strength in weakness, grace in anguish, while drinking from a cup you'd rather pass on. That's the promise.
Maybe you're holding a cup you never would have chosen. The betrayal you never saw coming. The end of a relationship you thought would last forever. The death of someone you cannot imagine living without. A career setback or financial upheaval. A dream you carried for years that may never unfold the way you envisioned.
You've prayed. You've hoped. You've waited. You may believe with everything in you that God is good and still wrestle with why He has allowed something painful to continue. Surrender and longing can live in the same heart, the way anguish and surrender shared the same prayer in Gethsemane.
Jesus prayed about the same cup more than once. You can too. And here's something I have learned over five decades of living: if God chooses not to remove the cup, He will strengthen you to drink it.
To remind you of this truth, I'm stirring Psalm 46:1 into your cup of inspiration as today's sweetener: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1, KJV).
The Hebrew word translated "strength" is ʿoz, meaning strength, might, or power. Here, the psalmist declares that God Himself is our strength. Then he turns to the upheaval: "Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea" (Psalm 46:2, KJV).
He knew who God was before the ground ever moved.
As you drink down the contents of your cup, know this: when turmoil is all around you and the cup stays, God's strength stays too.
Now, let's pray.
Father, thank You for being my refuge and strength, my very present help in trouble. When I face a cup I would rather not drink, give me a surrendered heart that says, "Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours, be done." I can do it through Christ who strengthens me. In Jesus' name, Amen.
