Scripture

Matthew 27:45-46 (NIV)

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?”

Consider

When Jesus cried out in anguish from the cross, in what way did his Father respond? Or did he?

God’s answer to my prayer may not be in the form I want or expect. Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father, suffered and died on that cruel cross. God did not stop his death, but he delivered him from death by raising him three days later.

Mary stood watching her son die in agony. Loving her son, she may well have prayed that God would send angels to deliver him from his torment. Yet the cross was part of God’s bigger plan that Mary did not understand.

If God had stepped in and stopped Pontius Pilate from ordering the execution, or had miraculously rescued Jesus from the cross, there would be no Easter morning nor the promise of resurrection for you and me. Unlike Mary, Jesus understood God’s plan. In the garden before he was taken prisoner, Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (26:39).

Jesus’ prayer from the cross, in fact, was not that he be released from the cross but that the Father would not leave him to suffer alone. Jesus’ astonishing strength and courage throughout his trial and execution—indeed, throughout his entire earthly ministry—came from his unshakable union with the Father and his trust in divine sovereignty and the rightness of the Father’s plan for his life, as well as for his death.

When we ask God for deliverance from a painful circumstance, we may not recognize the answer. God does not promise deliverance from our suffering but from the tyranny of death that sin brought into the world. In God’s way and in God’s timing, we are delivered into our inheritance of eternal life and freedom from the forces of evil that plague us now. We can trust God’s promise of victory because God did deliver Jesus, not from the cross itself but through the cross, defeating death with death and giving us the glorious hope of Easter.

Pray

FATHER, I praise you for your good and perfect plans. Thank you for the gift of Jesus, who accomplished on my behalf what I could never achieve for myself. Help me to trust that you hear my prayers and always act in my best interest, even when I don’t understand why things happen the way they do.

Reflect

Isaiah 55:8-9; Romans 5:6

Ponder

When did God fail to deliver you from a difficult circumstance? What sort of “deliverance” might God have intended for you instead?