Matthew 26:52-54
Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.  Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?  But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

Not only did Jesus have to accept the Father’s will for His life, but so did the disciples.  They also had to submit to this plan and accept that Jesus would be taken away and crucified and die on that cross.  And Jesus had spent time in prayer and was ready to accept it and move forward.  Peter, on the other hand, had failed to pray and so responded in a wrong way.  He was not helping by drawing his sword against the mob of soldiers.  His part was also to submit.

God’s will for all of us is very individual, and we have to accept whatever God’s will is for others, as well, and not try to fight against it.  We don’t really get to have a say in that, even if we don’t like what has to happen.  We can’t try to tell other people what to do, because we don’t know what God knows and we don’t know other people like He does.  And so we have to let them go forth into whatever God calls them to.  We can’t fend it off with a sword or change it by our efforts.  Our proper course is submission to God’s will not only for our lives, but for the lives of others, too.

If there was another way, Jesus is saying, God would have done that.  If it was possible for God’s plan to be accomplished without Jesus having to go to the cross, the angels would have come and fought on His behalf.  But that wasn’t the course that He was going to take.  And sometimes it’s hard to stand back and watch those things happen.  Sometimes people we love are called to something that takes them away from us.  Sometimes we have to watch them endure difficult things.  Sometimes we have to watch as hardships and challenges arise.  Sometimes it hurts us.  Sometimes we just don’t understand.

But when we understand that it is God’s will, submission to Him is to be our course of action.  We put our swords down and stop fighting.  We let Him be in control.  We don’t try to interfere or manipulate circumstances.  The disciples would have done anything at this moment not to lose Jesus, not to see Him arrested and tried and killed.  But after they understood, after they saw what resulted from that death, they would have never wished it to be different.  So let us trust God to lead others and allow Him to help us deal with whatever changes may come.