To have witnessed firsthand the Saviour of the world performing miracles and healings, or to have had Jesus sit to teach wisdom directly from the Father personally, must have been an incredible journey over those three years for the disciples
Yet, despite the fact they were so close to Jesus, they were still flawed by making mistakes, and choices to betray, to sleep, and to run away
It can be so easy for us to read the whole story, and make a judgement call about what they should have done, or even, how we would have acted differently, but I believe Jesus is witnessing His followers doing the same thing today, as the disciples did back then. We still betray Him, we still deny we know Him, we still fall asleep when we should pray, and we again run away, in fear
The other day, the Holy Spirit showed me a picture of Gethsemane of where Jesus was with His closest three disciples in the garden
Here we find Jesus asking them to pray for Him because He was so overwhelmed with sorrow. The Bible says (in specific translations) that John, Peter, and James couldn’t keep their eyes open from their own grief over the situation, and so, they fell asleep rather than intercede on Jesus’ behalf, but in doing so, they missed an important lesson
“Then he returned to the disciples and found them asleep. He said to Peter, “Couldn’t you watch with me even one hour? Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak!””
Matthew 26:40-41
Jesus shows us that even in His grief, He prayed to the Father. Jesus was so overcome by the emotion of knowing what was about to happen, that He went back three times to ask the Father if there was another way?
Friends, I want to encourage us this morning, that Jesus’ struggle was more wrenching than any battle we will ever have to face. Yet, what does it take to be able to say ”as you will”? I think we need to be able to trust in God’s plans through obedience and prayer, every step of the way
This is because Jesus used Peter’s drowsiness to warn him about the temptation that was to come
Therefore, we can overcome temptation by keeping watch and praying to the Father, because temptation strikes wherever we are most vulnerable, and that means prayer is essential in gaining God’s strength to defeat satan’s attacks in our lives
Categories: Matthew
