The Father's Will

I have been doing some reading in the book "Changed Into His Likeness" by Watchman Nee. Here below is a quote from the book...

"In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus knelt and prayed saying, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done" (Luke 22:42). This request of his that the cup might pass from him does not represent fear of the cross. We cannot doubt our Lord's courage. If martyrs have gladly died for him through the ages, certainly their Lord did not fear crucifixion.

But there is a distinction here between what Jesus called the cup and the will. The cup was surely the work that God had sent him to do, and this included the cross. The will was something lying behind that, in the heart of God himself. The cup in this passage is just one work - redemption. Jesus knew he had come for that work, even before he left heaven. Yet he had not become so bound to it that he could not let it go. There was an "if possible" in it, and of course there were real human reasons why some other alternative might be welcome, if God so willed. But for him there was no "if possible" about God's will; that must be done, "possible" or not. Right up to the night before his crucifixion, Jesus never thought, "I must be crucified at all costs," but only, "I must do the will of him that sent me." The one is subsidiary and might possibly be changed; the other, the will of God, is something in God himself, and must be done. Important-nay, vital-as the cross most certainly was, the Lord Jesus had not grasped it to himself. All that mattered to him was the Father's will, and the decision of how that will should be fulfilled remained in the Father's hands, not his.

So the cup represents the work, and the will represents God himself. We are concerned with God himself, not with the thing he wants us to do. With Christ the will of God was an ever-present thing, ever to be done. He was not even tied up to a single point in that will, such as the crucifixion." By Watchman Nee ~ Changed Into His Likeness

We must come to know the Father, not simply as a giver of gifts, but as the source of "everything". ~Watchman Nee