We know that Christ suffered many things, but it is important to realize that He did not go through any of His life as a victim. Instead it was a choice by His will to live the life that God had chosen for Him. He committed Himself to this choice after seeking God at Gethsemane and confirming that the cross was the will of the Father for Him. We too must have a Gethsemane experience where we confirm and understand the will of God for our lives and stand, like Christ, in faith through everything that we face.

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Show Notes:

It is clear that Yeshua (Jesus) knew and taught His disciples what His destiny was regarding His sufferings and the cross. He perfectly understood His destiny in God even before He went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Then at Gethsemane He confirmed that this destiny was the will of God for Him and He committed Himself to endure the cross through His own will. In other words Christ was not a victim.

This is important for us to realize, especially today when people exalt the concept of being a victim. As Christians, the idea that suffering makes us a victim is something we should be delivered from, not something we should embrace. Whatever is happening to us is not happening so that we have a victim mentality. It is happening so that we, like Christ, can know the will of the Father in our lives and we can choose to walk in His will and therefore stand as Christ did.

We need to understand what it really means to take up our cross and follow Him. It means that we first go through the Gethsemane experience as Christ did. We go before the Father knowing what His will for us is, understanding what we may face and what we may suffer as we walk in His will for our lives. Once we know absolutely that we are in His will, then we commit our own wills to that experience by our own choice. We are not victims of this age. We are not victims of the end-time. We walk by faith with a boldness and with a knowledge that what we are experiencing is the will of God for us.

Key Verses:

• Matthew 16:21–25. “Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things.”
• Matthew 20:17–19. “The Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death.”
• Matthew 26:36–39. “If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”
• Matthew 26:43–46. “And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time.”
• Luke 22:39–47. “Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”
• Luke 9:20–24. “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily.”

Quotes:

• “We need to find a way to rise up, to really get hold of what our destiny is, our purpose in life is, our purpose in being here on this earth.”
• “Let’s pray. Let’s believe that there be an understanding on each of our hearts because each of us has a different destiny in God. And we need to understand what the will of God is for us.”
• “We cannot be like the disciples who passively fall asleep in the garden. We must be checking the will of God for our lives. We must be committing ourselves to the will of God in our lives so that we might walk by faith in the perfect will of God for ourselves.”

Takeaways:

1. Christ had a knowledge and understanding about His destiny. We see that Christ was prepared way beforehand by the Father. And I believe this should be part of our prayer as believers, to reach into the Father, to wait upon the Lord, to ask the Holy Spirit to teach us and bring revelation to us about the events and the destiny that are included in our life and out walk before the Lord.
2. When Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane He was confirming with the Father the destiny of the cross and the suffering so that he knew absolutely what the will of God was for His life.
3. Christ committed Himself by the choice of His will to walk in those things. He was not a victim. We need to go through the same process because as we walk in these last days we cannot have a victim mentality. If we do it will drain our faith and we will not be a witness to the world that we need to be of what it is to walk with the Father and do His will in our generation.

Resources:

1. Help Israel Now | Interviews From Israel