WHAT HAPPENED IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE?

In The Garden of Gethsemane

The garden at Gethsemane, a place whose name literally means “oil press,” is located on a slope of the Mount of Olives just across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem. A garden of ancient olive trees stands there to this day. Jesus frequently went to Gethsemane with His disciples to pray (John 18:2). 

The most famous events at Gethsemane occurred on the night before His crucifixion when Jesus was betrayed. Each of the Gospel writers describes the events of that night with slight variations, so reading the four accounts (Matthew 26:36-56, Mark 14:32-52, Luke 22:40-53 and John 18:1-11) will give an accurate picture of that momentous night in its entirety.

As the evening began, after Jesus and His disciples had celebrated the Passover, they came to the garden. At some point, Jesus took three of them—Peter, James and John— to a place separated from the rest. Here Jesus asked them to watch with Him and pray so they would not fall into temptation (Matthew 26:41), but they fell asleep. Twice, Jesus had to wake them and remind them to pray so that they would not fall into temptation. 

This was especially poignant because Peter did indeed fall into temptation later that very night when three times he denied even knowing Jesus. Jesus moved a little way from the three men to pray, and twice He asked His Father to remove the cup of wrath He was about to drink, but each time He submitted to the Father’s will. He was “exceedingly sorrowful unto death,” but God sent an angel from heaven to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43).

After this, Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, arrived with a “multitude” of soldiers, high priests, Pharisees, and servants to arrest Jesus. Judas identified Him by the prearranged signal of a kiss which he gave to Jesus. Trying to protect Jesus, Peter took a sword and attacked a man named Malchus, the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. 

Jesus rebuked Peter and miraculously healed the man’s ear. It’s surprising that witnessing this amazing miracle of healing had no effect on the multitude. Neither were they shaken by His awesome display of power as described in John 18:5-6, where either at the majesty of His looks, or at the power of His words, or both, they became like dead men, falling to the ground. Nevertheless, they arrested Him and took Him to Pontius Pilate, while the disciples scattered in fear for their lives.

The events that occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane have reverberated down through the centuries. The passion Jesus displayed on that momentous night has been depicted in music, books, and films for centuries. From the 16th century, when Bach wrote two magnificent oratorios based on the gospel accounts of Matthew and John, to the present day with the film The Passion of the Christ, the story of this extraordinary night has been told again and again. 

Even our language has been affected by these events, giving us such phrases as “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword” (Matthew 26:52); “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38); and “sweating drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). 

Of course, the most important impact of this night was the willingness of our Savior to die on the cross in our place in order to pay the penalty for our sins. God “made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). This is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Recommended Resource: Jesus: The Greatest Life of All by Charles Swindoll.

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Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die( THE WONDROUS CROSS)

  

Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

1. To Absorb the Wrath of God
2. To Please His Heavenly Father
3. To Learn Obedience and Be Perfected
4. To Achieve His Own Resurrection from the Dead
5. To Show the Wealth of God’s Love and Grace for Sinners
6. To Show His Own Love for Us
7. To Cancel the Legal Demands of the Law Against Us
8. To Become a Ransom for Many
9. For the Forgiveness of Our Sins
10. To Provide the Basis for Our Justification
11. To Complete the Obedience That Becomes Our Righteousness
12. To Take Away Our Condemnation
13. To Abolish Circumcision and All Rituals as the Basis of Salvation
14. To Bring Us to Faith and Keep Us Faithful
15. To Make Us Holy, Blameless, and Perfect
16. To Give Us a Clear Conscience
17. To Obtain for Us All Things That Are Good for Us
18. To Heal Us from Moral and Physical Sickness
19. To Give Eternal Life to All Who Believe on Him
20. To Deliver Us from the Present Evil Age
21. To Reconcile Us to God
22. To Bring Us to God
23. So That We Might Belong to Him
24. To Give Us Confident Access to the Holiest Place
25. To Become for Us the Place Where We Meet God
26. To Bring the Old Testament Priesthood to an End and Become the Eternal High Priest
27. To Become a Sympathetic and Helpful Priest
28. To Free Us from the Futility of Our Ancestry
29. To Free Us from the Slavery of Sin
30. That We Might Die to Sin and Live to Righteousness
31. So That We Would Die to the Law and Bear Fruit for God
32. To Enable Us to Live for Christ and Not Ourselves
33. To Make His Cross the Ground of All Our Boasting
34. To Enable Us to Live by Faith in Him
35. To Give Marriage Its Deepest Meaning
36. To Create a People Passionate for Good Works
37. To Call Us to Follow His Example of Lowliness and Costly Love
38. To Create a Band of Crucified Followers
39. To Free Us from Bondage to the Fear of Death
40. So That We Would Be with Him Immediately After Death
41. To Secure Our Resurrection from the Dead
42. To Disarm the Rulers and Authorities
43. To Unleash the Power of God in the Gospel
44. To Destroy the Hostility Between Races
45. To Ransom People from Every Tribe and Language and People and Nation
46. To Gather All His Sheep from Around the World
47. To Rescue Us from Final Judgment
48. To Gain His Joy and Ours
49. So That He Would Be Crowned with Glory and Honor
50. To Show That the Worst Evil Is Meant by God for Good

EMAIL: wesleyansymphonicchoir@gmail.com

 

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THE WONDROUS CROSS

The Cross is a symbol of the atonement and reminds Christians of God's love in sacrificing his own son for humanity. It represents Jesus' victory over sin and death.

The Cross of Jesus Christ is central to the Christian faith. The cross reveals to us the Character of God: His love for lost sinners and His perfect Justice meet at cross.

The Wondrous Cross enables our love for God to grow, which is the first and greatest commandment in the Holy Bible. There is the need to understand and appreciate the Wondrous Cross which shows us His great love.

Experience the Wesleyan Symphonic Choir singing in an Easter Concert dubbed "WONDROUS CROSS"

| Wondrous Cross | 26-03-2017 | Accra | GH |

| Wondrous Cross | 16-04-2017 | Takoradi | GH |

How Music Affects and Benefits Your Brain

Belle Beth Cooper

I'm a big fan of music and use it a lot when working, but I had no idea about how it really affects our brains and bodies. Music is such a big part of our lives, and we react to it in many ways without even realizing.

Of course, music affects many different areas of the brain, as you can see in the image below. We're only scratching the surface with this post, but let's jump in.

Happy/Sad Music Affects How We See Neutral Faces

We can usually pick if a piece of music is particularly happy or sad, but this isn't just a subjective idea that comes from how it makes us feel. In fact, our brains actually respond differently to happy and sad music.

Even short pieces of happy or sad music can affect us. One study showed that after hearing a short piece of music, participants were more likely to interpret a neutral expression as happy or sad, to match the tone of the music they heard. This also happened with other facial expressions, but was most notable for those that were close to neutral.

Something else that's really interesting about how our emotions are affected by music is that there are two kind of emotions related to music: perceived emotions and felt emotions. This means that sometimes we can understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling them, which explains why some of us find listening to sad music enjoyable, rather than depressing. Unlike in real life situations, we don't feel any real threat or danger when listening to music, so we can perceive the related emotions without truly feeling them—almost like vicarious emotions.

Ambient Noise Can Improve Creativity

We all like to pump up the tunes when we're powering through our to-do lists, right? But when it comes to creative work, loud music may not be the best option.
It turns out that a moderate noise level is the sweet spot for creativity. Even more than low noise levels, ambient noise apparently gets our creative juices flowing, and doesn't put us off the way high levels of noise do. The way this works is that moderate noise levels increase processing difficulty which promotes abstract processing, leading to higher creativity. In other words, when we struggle (just enough) to process things as we normally would, we resort to more creative approaches.


In high noise levels, however, our creative thinking is impaired because we're overwhelmed and struggle to process information efficiently.

Our Music Choices Can Predict Our Personality

In a study of couples who spent time getting to know each other, looking at each other's top ten favorite songs actually provided fairly reliable predictions as to the listener's personality traits. The study used five personality traits for the test: openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.
Interestingly, some traits were more accurately predicted based on the person's listening habits than others. For instance, openness to experience, extraversion and emotional stability were the easiest to guess correctly. Conscientiousness, on the other hand, wasn't obvious based on musical taste.

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Here is the break-down of how the different genres correspond to our personality, according to a study conducted at Heriot-Watt University:

• Blues fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease
• Jazz fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, and at ease
• Classical music fans have high self-esteem, are creative, introverts, and at ease
• Rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing
• Opera fans have high self-esteem, are creative, and gentle
• Country and western fans are hardworking and outgoing
• Reggae fans have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle, and at ease
• Dance fans are creative and outgoing but not gentle
• Indie fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle
• Bollywood fans are creative and outgoing
• Rock/heavy metal fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease
• Chart pop fans have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing, and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease
• Soul fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Music Training Can Significantly Improve Motor and Reasoning Skills

We generally assume that learning a musical instrument can be beneficial for kids, but it's actually useful in more ways than we might expect. One study showed that children who had three years or more musical instrument training performed better than those who didn't learn an instrument in auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills.

They also tested better on vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills, which involve understanding and analyzing visual information, such as identifying relationships, similarities and differences between shapes and patterns. These two areas in particular are quite removed from musical training as we imagine it, so it's fascinating to see how learning to play an instrument can help kids develop such a wide variety of important skills.

Classical Music Can Improve Visual Attention

It's not just kids that can benefit from musical training or exposure. Stroke patients in one small study showed improved visual attention while listening to classical music.
The study also tried white noise and silence to compare the results, and found that, like the driving study mentioned earlier, silence resulted in the worst scores. Because this study was so small, the conclusions need to be explored further for validation, but I find it really interesting how music and noise can affect our other senses and abilities—in this case, vision.

Music Helps Us Exercise

Research on the effects of music during exercise has been done for years. In 1911, an American researcher, Leonard Ayres, found that cyclists pedaled faster while listening to music than they did in silence.


This happens because listening to music can drown out our brain's cries of fatigue. As our body realizes we're tired and wants to stop exercising, it sends signals to the brain to stop for a break. Listening to music competes for our brain's attention, and can help us to override those signals of fatigue, though this is mostly beneficial for low- and moderate-intensity exercise.

During high-intensity exercise, music isn't as powerful at pulling our brain's attention away from the pain of the workout.

EMAIL: wesleyansymphonicchoir@gmail.com

 

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