PRAYER PARADOXES - Bold Surrender

we have been discovering that prayer often invites us to live in a tension between what's impossible in the natural and what can become possible in the supernatural.

And so as we learn to embrace these prayer paradoxes, we find that the very things that seem contradictory are actually the places where God can often do his deepest work in us.

And so today we're gonna tackle praying bold, surrendered prayers.

All right, bold and surrendered prayers.

A number of years ago, Bill Gaither wrote a song entitled, Have You Had a Gethsemane? Has anyone ever heard this song? Okay, well, you're gonna hear it today.

I want you to listen to these words just to start the message this morning, kind of in a contemplative way.

Think about these words from Bill Gaither today.

entitled, Have You Had a Gethsemane? Here's some clapping.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Just let it out.

Let it out.

Let the clapping out.

One of the most significant examples of bold surrendered prayer comes from the struggle of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus and his disciples had just concluded their observance of the Passover feast, which is also called the Last Supper.

And in the darkness of night, they had made their way through the narrow streets of Jerusalem, crossed the Kidron Valley, and into the Garden of Gethsemane.

The garden was full of olive trees.

In fact, Cheryl and I visited this garden almost 10 years ago now.

And this is what it looks like today.

Some even say that some of these trees are the great grand trees of the trees that Jesus even looked at and sat around.

Gethsemane means olive press.

The garden was a place where olives from the neighborhood were crushed.

for their oil, and Jesus, the Son of God, would go there and soon be crushed in that same garden.

One fascinating detail, and I just love finding these gems of history, is that some theologians believe that Jesus and his disciples used the sheep gate to get to the garden.

And the sheep gate was the entrance nearest to the temple.