On the Mount of Olives, on the night before he was arrested, Jesus prayed a prayer that many of us have prayed without knowing its name. Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done. He knew what was coming. The cup in Scripture is the cup of suffering, and he was asking, plainly and without pretending, whether there was any other way.
Notice what he does not do. He does not bargain. He does not announce a technique for getting what he wants. He asks honestly and then hands the outcome to his Father, whom he calls Father precisely because he trusts him. And notice how the prayer is answered. The cup is not removed. Luke tells us that an angel appeared and strengthened him. God's answer to that prayer was not escape; it was strength to walk the road that was actually in front of him. That distinction matters more than we usually admit.
This is where the passage touches the small, unglamorous decisions of ordinary life. Most of us will not pray in a garden at midnight. We will pray in a car before a difficult meeting, or at a kitchen table after a phone call, or in the minute before we have to tell someone the truth. And often what we want is for the cup to be lifted. Sometimes God lifts it. Often he strengthens us to carry it, and the carrying is exactly where our faith becomes visible to the people around us.
So what does surrender look like on a Tuesday? It looks like doing the honest thing when a slightly dishonest thing would cost less. It looks like making the call you have been putting off, apologizing for the remark you let slide, keeping the commitment no one would notice you breaking. Faith the size of a mustard seed is not measured in heroic leaps. It is measured in these small, repeated acts of trust, done without any guarantee about the outcome.
Laura Story's story does not promise that faithfulness removes hardship. It does suggest something more quietly hopeful: that a life can be handed over to God again and again, and that God meets us there with enough for the next step. Not my will, but yours. That prayer is not the end of hope. It is where real hope begins.
⚓Faith
Not My Will, but Yours Be Done
Learning to pray the hardest prayer in the middle of an ordinary day
October 15, 20266 min readNIV
Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.
— Luke 22:42 (NIV)
Jesus prays on the Mount of Olives
Today's Story
📖True Story
Two years into their marriage, Laura and Martin Story received news no couple plans for: Martin had a brain tumor. Laura was a worship leader at Perimeter Church in Atlanta and a Christian recording artist, and the diagnosis arrived in the middle of an ordinary life the couple had assumed would simply continue being ordinary. It did not. The tumor left Martin with a brain injury and a long-term disability, and the future the two of them had pictured quietly stopped being available to them.
That kind of change does not tidy itself up over a weekend. It settles in. Laura kept working, kept leading, kept writing. She wrote songs that churches still sing on Sunday mornings: "Indescribable," recorded by Chris Tomlin, and "Blessings," which won a Grammy. She also wrote books, among them When God Doesn't Fix It and So Long, Normal. The titles were not accidental. The years behind them shaped them.
In an interview about So Long, Normal, Laura spoke about Martin's diagnosis and about what came after it. She described learning to live with that changed reality, and she described reflecting on faith while uncertainty remained part of the picture. She did not present her prayers as having removed the hardship. She did not claim that believing harder had produced a cure. What she described was faith held open in the middle of a life she had not chosen, an ongoing conversation with God rather than a resolved equation. Her work as a musician and a writer grew out of those years and drew on them honestly, without pretending the story had ended the way anyone would have wanted.
A worship leader's voice carries in a room full of people, and hers carries for a congregation that does not know the cost behind the words. She stands where many of us stand, in the gap between what we asked God for and what we were given, and she keeps singing. That is not a small thing. It is one of the hardest things a person of faith ever does.
SOURCE: Laura Story Talks About Her New Book 'So Long, Normal' (CCM Magazine Staff, 2021) / https://www.ccmmagazine.com/features/laura-story-talks-about-her-new-book-so-long-normal/ / BIO (Laura Story, n.d.) / https://laurastorymusic.com/bio/
Source citation: Laura Story Talks About Her New Book ‘So Long, Normal’ (CCM Magazine Staff, 2021) / https://www.ccmmagazine.com/features/laura-story-talks-about-her-new-book-so-long-normal/ / BIO (Laura Story, n.d.) / https://laurastorymusic.com/bio/
Reflection
Think About It
• Where in your life right now are you asking God to remove a cup, and what would it change to add "yet not my will" to that request? • Jesus' prayer was answered with strength rather than escape. Where might God be strengthening you to walk a road rather than lifting you off it? • What small, concrete step have you been avoiding because it feels risky, and what would taking it today actually look like?
Prayer
Father, I am tired. I have asked you to take this cup from me more times than I can count, and it is still in my hands. I do not understand why some prayers are answered with relief and others with endurance, and I am not going to pretend otherwise in front of you. You did not spare your own Son the cup; you strengthened him to drink it, and through it you saved the world. So I ask for strength for today's portion, not tomorrow's. I declare that you are good even when my circumstances are not, and that your will is a safer place than my own plans. Not my will, but yours be done. Yet I will trust you.
Live It Out
Name one small step you have been avoiding because it feels risky — the honest conversation, the apology, the costly decision, the commitment you keep deferring. Take it today. Not because you can control how it turns out, but because you are handing the outcome to a Father who can be trusted with it.