The human body desires comfort; it constantly fights for homeostasis. As a society, we gravitate toward what is comfortable or easy. We don’t want anything that adds pressure and threatens our comfort. This isn’t a bad thing but it can be a warning sign. If all we ever want is comfort, or we run when things start to “press” us, we are actually bypassing the very blessing that God is trying to do in our lives.
2 Corinthians 4:8 tells us that although we are pressed, we will not be crushed. Pressed is pressure, crushed is broken. When we feel the pressure that God is allowing it will never break us, but he is pressing us to get something out of us.
The night before Jesus was killed he was feeling pressure. He knew what was coming. He was God and man. He knew all, understood it, yet was confined inside a body of flesh. He had seen his own death, he had already watched the movie of his own killing. The Bible says he was so distressed, in so much anxiety, that his sweat was as drops of blood. Many believe this was figurative, but in actuality, under intense stress, sweating blood is 100% possible. The condition is called hematidosis. It’s when the pressure is so great in a person that the capillaries around the sweat glands rupture and the blood from the rupture mixes with the sweat. Leonardo DaVinci wrote about soldiers who were sweating blood before battle – a sign of their intense duress.
Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, felt the pressure. He was being pressed. This is the first time in his recorded life that we see that he did not want to do the will of God. He asked three times for “this cup to pass” from him. I submit that many times when we do not do or do not want to do the will of God we will always feel pressure or a “pressing”. Appropriately enough, the place when Jesus begged for another way was in a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives. The Garden of Gethsemane means “oil press” or “press”. Very often in our lives, we can not overcome the mountains of our lives if we don’t go through the pressing place.
There Jesus prayed for God to make another way, but his ultimate desire was to do God’s will. He said,” Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” Never-the-less. In other words, “Lord, let me never do less than your will.” The heart of Jesus was still in an attitude of humbleness and surrender even though he knew exactly what he was in for.
But why was Jesus grieved and feeling uneasy? Why was he sweating blood? He was a man but also God. He knew he would rise again three days later. He knew the promise of what was to come. So why was he so troubled?
Perhaps it was because, it was in the garden, that the “man” in him was dying to his own will. It’s often in our pressing place that we die to our own will. It’s in the pressing place that God shows us we need to die to ourselves so that we can really live. Jesus was already bleeding in the garden! He was sweating drops of blood! His body was breaking down because his death started there! His flesh (will) was already being crucified figuratively speaking.
As seed in your garden has to “die to itself” to reach its potential, so does man have to die to itself to see and understand the potential and gifts God has placed in them (John 12:24). You can never have what God has for you if your own will doesn’t die because God will never share His glory with anyone. God will NEVER let you take credit for what he has done… he hates pride. Dying to self destroys pride. Even Jesus had to die to himself so that it wasn’t the man Jesus who brought redemption but the God, Jesus!
Could it be that if Jesus never experienced the Garden, the pressing place, that he would have never made it to the cross? Could it be that if Jesus’ will never died in the Garden, the “man” in him would have destroyed our redemption at Calvary?
Absolutely!
Just like the first Adam opened the door to sin and Satan through his will in the Garden of Eden, Jesus in his own will could have destroyed those beating and whipping him. He had the power to strike everyone dead just at one word from his mouth. His will had to die in the garden because it was in a garden that one man’s will destroyed life!
So we can be pressed in the Garden, or we can be hardened in the Garden, just like the original Adam. When Adam sinned, he blamed his wife. Not even man enough to stand up to his failure. But the interesting thing is that God didn’t come down to “find Adam” when Eve ate of the fruit. It’s only when Adam sinned that God had to look for him. Adam was the head of his home. Adam was where the unity and blessing of his family stopped and started. When Adam sinned it brought destruction to himself and his family, the very symbol God created to reflect his love and order.
Jesus had to make right what Adam had so royally messed up. He had to make a way where there was no way (Isaiah 43:16) and, if you let him press you in the Garden, he can still do it for you today. He can take what you broke and make it a blessing. He can make the death you caused into life again! But only when he presses the will out of you. It’s only at the pressing place where you can experience the life He had always intended for you, but you have to die to yourself. What you want, your will, your attitude, your fear, your pride, your control, your plans, your words, your feelings all have to die if you really want to see the blessing from the pressing!!!!
Interestingly enough, when Jesus went to pray in the Garden he took Peter, James, and John with him. The picture above shows how olives are “pressed” to make oil. Notice a stone is used to break the olive down to squeeze out the oil. Peter’s name means “rock” or “stone”. James means “supplanter” or “deceiver” and John means “gift of grace”. Could it be that Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him to show us that he is the stone being used to crush the deception Satan used to bring sin into the world and give us the gift of grace?
So if Jesus had to die to himself and we are called to live like Jesus, then we have to allow God to press our lives through our pressures. Our weakness for his strength; doing it as his word commands us. There is always a promise in the process… there is always life after death! Don’t stop the pressing until you see the blessing!
It’s coming!
Becoming Invincible 