Tag Archives: watch and pray

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Get Up!

Luke 22:46 (NIV), “When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

We all get tired, lazy, under the weather, weary, and lethargic and the list goes on… But God says to us, “Get up!”

Not much good happens while we sit on our backsides. Sure a bit of office work, some reading or computing, but actual work for the Lord, work that wins souls and pleases Him happens when we are up and moving.

Sure Jesus made it through it all without the prayers of the disciples, but perhaps His suffering would have been less, or maybe the real suffering happened to the disciples because they didn’t watch and pray.

We do get down, but make sure you call on the strength of God and get back up.

We feel week and tired, but He promises us rest.

He also cautions us not to grow weary in well doing. That doesn’t mean don’t do good things, it means build yourself up in His most Holy Word and walk in His love and strength.

Get up!

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Watch and Pray

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Right after the last Passover meal with his disciples where he tells them to eat his body and to drink his blood, they go to the Mount of Olives. Jesus is about to spend His “hour in the flesh” and he asks a few of His disciples to watch and pray.

Mark 14:37-38 (NIV), “And He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? “Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

When we remember his blood, shed for us in love, when we remember his broken body that purchased our healing, it helps us to watch and pray. It keeps us from temptation. We aren’t so ready to believe the lies of the enemy. When he tries to tell us that God doesn’t really love us, or that we aren’t worthy, we can remember the love that compelled the Father to give His son, or the great love that held Jesus on that cross. We don’t want what He did to have been in vain. He did so much for us so that we could live a transformed life. Shouldn’t we be diligent then to watch and pray? Yes, our flesh is week, but our spirits are willing.

Those words, “keep watching and praying” are just as important for us today as they were for the disciples that went with Jesus to the garden. Our flesh is still week. Satan’s desire is still to “sift us like wheat.” When we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, when we “set our faces like flint,” we can withstand every temptation.

I Corinthians 10:13 (NIV), “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”

Today let’s purpose to remember His blood, the atoning blood that took away all of our sins, those from our past, those for our present, and those in our future. They are all gone. And let us remember His stripes, the lesions from the thorns, the holes in his hands and feet, and that cut from the spear. Those wounds that He “received in the house of his friends” and let us accept all the redemptive gifts that they purchased for us.

Father, we thank you for your perfect plan of redemption. We choose to remember and accept the finished work of Your Son, Jesus Christ and to cherish His great act of love in our hearts.