Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, “Sit here while I go over there to pray.” He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Then he returned to the disciples and found them asleep. He said to Peter, “Couldn’t you watch with me even one hour? Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak!”

Then Jesus left them a second time and prayed, “My Father! If this cup cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.” When he returned to them again, he found them sleeping, for they couldn’t keep their eyes open.

So he went to pray a third time, saying the same things again. Then he came to the disciples and said, “Go ahead and sleep. Have your rest. But look—the time has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Up, let’s be going. Look, my betrayer is here!” Matthew 26:36-46

Jesus desperately needed human companionship. He wasn’t asking for a lot. Just someone to stay awake with him and pray. It was such a simple, human request. It was probably the time Jesus was the most humanly vulnerable. He needed to know He was not alone. It was a very simple thing He asked for. He didn’t get it. No one cared enough to get over their own droopy eyes to wait up with Him. They simply did not capture the gravity of what was about to go down that night, even though Jesus had told them numerous times.

Three time He asked for the cup to pass from Him, and three times He said He wanted God’s will to be done, not His. This marks the first time He struggled with what the Father put before Him. Up until then, it had always been His joy to do His Father’s will. He even said it was His daily food. But here He was in conflict.

He went this far in His identification with us — to have a conflict of wills with God. It was tearing Him up inside. And yet this was part of what was necessary in the experience of our humanity. He knew the conflict and still He chose the Father’s will. He faced it, fought with it three times, and finally resolved it. From there, He went willingly, and never struggled with His decision to drink the cup of suffering and death.

Have you ever struggled over what God wants you to do versus what you want to do? Are you aware of two wills inside you? Do you ever pray, “Nevertheless not what I want but what You want”? Do you ever ignore what He wants and do what you want anyway?  Did I just perhaps explain an average day for you? I did for me.

This one event says that Jesus gets us. He gets that we want to do the right thing but there is, as Paul records in Romans 7, another will warring against our desire to do the right thing. Which means that life is made up of this war of the wills, and we need to be constantly choosing, as Jesus did in the garden, not my will, but Yours be done.