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“He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘”Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.”
(Luke 22:41-43, NIV)
There is a beautiful song by Mark Barlow, an independent musical artist, called Nearness. The lyrics speak of being close to Father God, needing only His presence.
More specifically, some of the lyrics say:
‘Nearness is all that I need
Your presence is all around me
Veil torn apart, face to face
With glory, your glory.’
The song is very comforting, very mellow and gives a feeling of peaceful worship as you listen to it. I highly recommend it.
I think the reason this song speaks to me so deeply is because of its simplicity.
The message of the song is in its title, and the lyrics don’t overcomplicate the desire of the singer – to be close to the Lord.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
When I consider my own walk with Jesus and the times when I have been closest to Him, they are often in times of great hardship and distress.
For example, the most difficult seasons of my life have often centred around struggles with my health and it is in those seasons that I have leaned all the more on my relationship with Jesus and felt His closeness as I travelled the road from illness to health.
I am not drawing comparison between my seasons of hardship and the anguish that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ experienced in the garden of Gethsemane, prior to His death on the cross. I do, however, believe that I can understand a miniscule percentage more of the nearness Jesus needed in His toughest hour as I have walked my own dark pathways.
Scripture tells us that:
“Come near to God and he will come near to you.”
(Jame 4:8, NIV)
When Jesus was kneeling in deep distress, bearing the weight of the world on His shoulders, in the garden of Gethsemane, He was reaching out to His Father.
He asked God that if the cup of His suffering could pass from Him, let it be so, but not His will but the Father’s be done.
How beautiful that an angel of the Lord should come down from heaven and strengthen our Saviour in that moment.
How beautiful that God would come close in one of Jesus’s most desperate times of struggle.
I labour this point of closeness with God because we live in an increasingly distant society, where physical interaction is progressively being replaced with online interaction.
We stay at home and FaceTime or WhatsApp instead of meeting, face to face, for true connection. We ask Chat GPT our darkest, most insecure questions and digest AI’s answers rather than bringing our vulnerable hearts to the Holy Spirit for guidance.
If you sense a distance between yourself and Jesus, I hazard a guess that He is not the One who moved.
Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you – see James 4v8.
Every promise in Christ Jesus is yes and amen, so take the Lord at His Word and come to Him when you are in need of closeness, connection and proximity. He will never turn one of His children away.
If you are in a blessed and favoured season of closeness with the Lord, relish it! And do all that you can through reading scripture, prayer, worship and communion to remain in that space.
The nearness of God – His very presence – is the most valuable treasure you and I could ever gain.
