Devotional

Leaving it Up to God

Michael Beck

“And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” (Matthew 14:36)

With God all things are possible. It is possible He will do other than we wanted Him to do. But though we don’t understand now, in the end, we will understand that His answers were better than ours. He knew better.

We see through a glass darkly. We know in part. Our God sees and knows perfectly. When our prayers align with His will He is glad to grant our requests; when they are not aligned, and we are “asking amiss,” no amount of demanding and commanding will work.

God is God. He is free to do whatsoever He pleases in the heavens and the earth. He will do a million things He already is willing to do when His children ask Him; but He is not bound by our will or faith to do one thing He chooses not to do. He has His reasons.

Will the world one day be exactly the way God wants it to be? Yes, but that will be in the day when this world has passed away and a new one has come into existence. Until then God uses the imperfections of this life to perfect us. Like His Son, we learn obedience to God through the things we suffer. Loss is the chief vehicle of our suffering. We fight the prospect of losing the things we love with every fiber of our being. Like Jesus, we pray for the cup to be taken from us, because with God all things are possible. But our best prayer, and the one He will always answer is, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

No, despite what some contend in this wicked day, God has not left His throne to us. You may “take your authority,” but you will never take His. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He uses what we have no use for to fulfill His purposes. Cups of suffering and death will one day be a thing of the past; but for now, they have a place in His plan. It’s possible He will deliver us from what we dread; it’s possible He will not. And we can do nothing about it, except submit to the will of our God and King.


Michael Beck is a pastor in the Dallas, TX area and the main author on Signpost. Receive a daily devotional he publishes every morning via email.