Nothing is too hard for the Lord, but redemption didn't cost "nothing."
On the Thursday before Good Friday, Jesus—with His 11 best friends who couldn’t stay awake in the Garden of Gethsemane—couldn’t go to sleep, and prayed instead: “Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36)
Not what I will, but what you will…I wonder how many of my own declarations of God’s power, omnipotence, and strength carry with them my expectations that He do things my way?
Is my “nothing is too hard for the Lord” steeped in the reality that He might call me to do very hard things for His glory? Things that are simply impossible, apart from dependence on Him.
When God does the impossible, it’s always to prove His faithfulness…His way.
“Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
Jesus answers centuries later, “Father, all things are possible for you.”
Jesus knew the cost, and—for the love of the Father—surrendered to the Father’s will, as dreaded as it may have felt to His earthly flesh. Anything is possible with God, and nothing is too hard for the Lord—when His will, and not our own, is the hero of the story.
Friend, every too hard or impossible that you and I face (even today on this Maundy Thursday—the day Jesus washed His disciples' feet before supping with them one last time), is meant to shape our hearts to cry, “Yet not what I will, but what you will, Lord.”
As this Good Friday comes again, we anchor our somber remembrance and our grateful praise to the cost of Redemption and the wild wonder of His will —unthwarted and victorious.
Even now, in our forgetful, and sometimes fearful hearts...hearts that rejoice that Sunday is coming, just like He said.
Because of grace,
Much of this post first appeared on Instagram on April 18, 2019.