When Desires Collide

The text that has struck me this Holy Week comes from John 12. Jesus realizes that the moment has come for Him to go through all the events surrounding His crucifixion. He talks about His upcoming death and His desire that we follow Him. He ends the conversation with these powerful words in verse 27 and 28: “Now is My soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.”

I meditate on this story and become more in love with Jesus than before. I recognize the hard choices that He forged His will to make. I see desires I want to have.

I am in awe when I consider how He handled the struggle of competing desires that were within Him. It makes me think of my life and what I am to do when my fleshly desire collides with the desire to obey God’s will.

Isn’t that what’s there? I see Jesus having a desire to stay away from suffering. He doesn’t want to go through the inevitable events. He wants another way—a way without pain. But then there is a deep desire to glorify His Father. He wants to obey and please His Father. Both desires are slamming into each other like rams lunging at each other in a field. Which will win?

Jesus clearly shows us which desire won out. His words, though, reveal to me how the battle was won.

I see a Son who was honest before His Father. He knew He could go to His Heavenly Father and share His struggles to do what was right. I believe He also openly struggled before His Father not as a way to question Him but as a way to gain strength from His Father to do His will. He seemed to know that His desire to do the Father’s will would win out, but that did not mean that there weren’t questions.

Jesus was a Man who knew His purpose in life. It was simple and yet extremely hard. His purpose was to show off or magnify the Trinity’s great love by going to the cross to take the judgment of our sins. When things got tough, He reminded Himself of this purpose and used it to keep on the road before Him.

Jesus chose to obey, no matter what the cost. He used His deepest desire to glorify His Father as the motivation to obey. He thought not of Himself but of His Father.

Oh, I long to be more like Him.

painting by El Greco