Receive God’s call well, then pray and ask for help

Hebrews 5:7 In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. We are encouraged today by Jesus’ example to us of what to do when we are faced with suffering and death—not just physical suffering and death, but also death to self in fulfilling God’s call to love with Him. That’s what Jesus was doing—He was obeying His Father’s command to love with Him. He knew it was going to cost Him His life. He had been appointed by God as a high priest for the purpose of bringing us to God on the basis of the sacrifice of His life. How was He to overcome death and fulfill His office of bringing us to glory? We learn that as Jesus suffered, He drew near to His Father’s throne and offered up prayers and supplications to His Father. He alone was able to save Him from death. In this context, I take death to mean separation from God. The passion and earnestness of Jesus’ intercession is highlighted in how He prayed—with loud crying and tears. We know from the gospels that Jesus agonized in the garden as He performed His appointed office, and surely that agony only intensified as He obeyed His Father and expressed His love in this world. This encourages us to do the same as we live to love with Jesus. The only way we can obey His command to love is to lay down our lives for others, agonizing in prayer for their deliverance and salvation. How are we to overcome ourselves? How are we to obey? Only by the grace of God through Jesus Christ! We too must offer up both prayers and supplications to God, recognizing God has called us into this place of blessing. In fact, Jesus encouraged His disciples in His last hour or so with them to confidently pray and ask for help in His name (John 14:13; 15:7 16:26). We are also encouraged as the author reveals why Jesus was heard. He was heard because of His piety. The word translated piety is a compound word in the Greek. It’s a combination of eu, meaning well or good, and a from of lambano, meaning to take or receive. This tells us that Jesus received His office, with its command to lay down His life on behalf of God’s people, well. He received it as an honor. We get this same idea from Heb. 2:9. “But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.” It is also the focus of the previous verses where being called to be our high priest is an honor bestowed upon Jesus by God. That’s how devout and pious Jesus was. He wanted God’s will above all things. He found His satisfaction in the love of His Father to be greater than life itself. This the only way we can live to love with Jesus. We identify with His life in us, and trust that He will display Himself in us. We must first receive God’s call to love well—with faith and satisfaction in the love of our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We must not receive it with complaining and reluctance. That’s not receiving it well. How can we pray and ask God for help with any confidence if we don’t like having to love others—if we don’t like what He’s called us to do? If we receive His call to live to love with Jesus well, we then agonize in prayer and supplication for the grace we need to help us love well. We agonize, not for what we are going through personally, but for the blessing, salvation, and deliverance of those He sends us to. For Jesus, there was no way we could be saved if God didn’t give Him grace to obey. For us, there is no way the people God puts in our paths may be blessed, saved, or delivered if God doesn’t give us grace to obey and love with Him. We’ll talk about this again tomorrow. Today, remember, we are called to lay down our lives for others. If we receive His call well, we will pray and ask Him for help, expecting Him to hear us because of our piety