Can You Stay Awake?

And He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? (Mark 14:37)

I am not sure why, but this verse came to my mind this morning as I was lying in bed talking with God. Actually I was misquoting it in my mind and was surprised when I looked it up that it didn't say what I thought it said. I was all ready to put together some interesting ideas based on the wording that I thought was in this verse but had to rethink my assumptions after realizing that this verse did not say what I thought it did.

What I thought Jesus asked was for His disciples to pray with Him for one hour. But upon looking more carefully at the verse and its context I realized that something else very important was here for me to discover. Jesus did not specifically ask His disciples to pray with Him necessarily, but He certainly did ask them to do something that is very relevant for me to pay attention to today. And just as the story reveals the weakness of the disciples and their inability to carry out such a simple request by Jesus in a time of extreme intensity in His heart, so too do I find that same weakness in my own flesh when Jesus asks me to do even simple things like getting out of bed a little earlier on a cold morning to have time to listen to Him and deepen my intimacy and knowledge of Him.

The first thing I wanted to do was to look up some of the original words to see what they might really mean. This idea of watching has never really clicked with me. It is another one of those words that religion has generally obscured the real meaning of for many of us. I always like to explore what the words I am hearing really mean before trying to unpack the larger meaning of a text.

I realize that sometimes people around me may think that I am very nit-picky or that I am simply trying to stir up controversy because I ask so many questions about what is really being conveyed in language, especially in the study of the Bible. But I sincerely want to understand much better what is real and unmask what is fake and confusing or blurred over by tradition and counterfeit ideas embedded in our language and culture. I have found it very liberating and refreshing to discover over and over, new and exciting truths as I have challenged the common assumptions about nearly every text and passage that I grew up hearing about.

This word watch means to keep awake, watch (literally or figuratively), be vigilant, wake, watchful. That is pretty much straightforward as far as it goes. But I felt that there was still something I was missing. Why would Jesus only expect His disciples to stay awake and nothing more? So I went back a few verses to find out what it was He had asked them to do in the first place that they were not doing.

And He said to them, "My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch." (Mark 14:34)

"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch." (Mark 14:34 NIV)

What I discovered in this verse was something that really caught my attention. When looking at more of the words in the Greek I noticed that the word for remain here is the very same word used throughout the Bible that is one of the most important things we need to know in order to grow as a real Christian. This word is used repeatedly in the discourse in John 14 and 15 when Jesus was sharing with His disciples how they needed to live. And in fact He had just finished telling them all of this only minutes before He asked Peter, James and John to practice what He had just told them about.

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. (John 15:4)

Remain here and abide are translated from the very same word in the original. So what Jesus was asking three of His disciples to do was to practice for at least one hour what He had just taken time to describe to them in great detail. In essence He was saying to them, I have just told you all about how you must live in order for you to be my loyal disciples successfully. You must learn to abide in me and I in you so that you will be prepared for anything that might happen to you. Now that I have taught you verbally this lesson it is now time for our first test on what you have heard and find out if you were really listening. Take what I have just taught you and practice it for one hour. If you do, you will be empowered to meet what is about to happen to us. If you don't take this activity seriously you will find yourself helpless and clueless as to how to act like yourself when a massive assault is launched against us in a few minutes.

Well, most of us know how that first quiz turned out. They all failed quite spectacularly and ended up running away in fear and shame. Many theologians have analyzed endlessly the events that ensued that night as to why Peter denied his Lord, why each of the disciples did what they did and why everything seemed to go wrong. But much of this would have turned out very differently if just three of the disciples had taken the words of Jesus seriously and instead of thinking more about themselves and fighting over who was the most loyal and most important among themselves, they had actually listened with their heart and received the warnings that Jesus had been giving them all evening.

It is very sad to think about the tragic outworking of their bad choices that night. But the story is not really over yet. Each one of us also receives the very same instructions from Jesus to learn what it really means to abide in Him. And Jesus is hoping that maybe we just might learn enough from observing the results of those disciple's failures in this story to make a different choice ourselves.

Am I willing to learn what it really means to abide in Christ and allow Him to abide in me? Am I ready to carefully study and ponder and meditate on what the real meanings of His words are to me today? Am I willing to practice in real life situations how to abide in Him even when I meet the little difficulties that I am sure to encounter?

Am I am willing to learn in the little things how to trust God, to stay awake when it is easier to roll over and fall asleep? Am I willing to marinate in the presence of God and soak up more of His kindness, His goodness, His grace and be filled with His peace? If I am willing to take to heart the example of the failure of those disciples and in humility choose to take a better option in my own life, I can in some way rewrite the story of that crisis and demonstrate in my life what Jesus intended for all of His disciples to experience. I can learn to abide, to pray and stay alert and listen and be ready to be strengthened by angels of glory just as Jesus experienced in the garden. And if I choose that option in obedience to the invitation of Jesus to abide in Him and stay alert, my story can be different than the stories of His disciples during that last tragic weekend of His crucifixion.

Jesus, teach me what it really means to abide in You today. Help me to pay attention to the messages from Your Spirit to my heart. I choose to listen to You and obey Your promptings today. Help me to avoid all the interfering noise of the world designed to drown out your quite voice inside of me. Make me alert and ready to act instantly for You whenever You need me to be a channel of blessing, comfort or encouragement to one of Your children. Thank-you for Your faithfulness and love in my life.

Ignorant Unbelief

Even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor, yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. (1 Timothy 1:13) I have been starting to read in 1st Timothy over the past few days after finishing up my two year study of the book of Romans. So far I have not decided to do as intensive an examination of this book as I did in Romans, partly because I want to cover more spiritual ground in less time and partly because I did that in Romans because it was one of the more difficult books for me to understand. But I do want to continue to take time to think carefully and meditate on what I am reading and reflect in my spirit on whatever God may want to reveal to me each day. And since I have found that writing has been a most useful process for helping me think more clearly I want to continue to use that tool to help me listen to God each day. In verses 3-7 Paul writes some very compelling things about people who have a lot to say but little understanding of what they are talking about. I thought about exploring this deeper but for now I have decided to camp on the above verse instead. The issue of unbelief is something that I have been thinking about and warned about in my spirit at different times and here I find some very helpful insight about unbelief that I had not thought about much before. I have long believed that unbelief is an extremely dangerous thing, and I still believe it is. However, as I look at this verse more carefully this morning I am seeing that there may be different kinds of unbelief or at least different reasons for it that may create mitigating factors in how successfully God can reach our hearts in this condition. I want to be completely free of all unbelief when it comes to the things of God and the real truth about God. So I welcome knowing how God can rescue me from this most subtle of self-deceptions that prevents God from working freely in my heart and life. I have observed that unbelief is possibly the single greatest reason that blocks people from hearing God's voice to them, from experiencing His miracle-working power in their lives and from perceiving His will for them more clearly. Unbelief keeps us in a lukewarm spiritual condition, feeds our mediocrity in the church and prevents us from being effective witnesses for the real power of God to transform lives. Unbelief keeps many of God's blessings at arm's distance from us and frustrates God's desire to fill us with His true Holy Spirit. It is unbelief that lies at the root of many of our questions, though not always. We must be very careful not to judge others in this area and to keep ourselves reminded of the words of Jesus to remove the log from our own eye before attempting to identify and remove a speck from someone else's. We need to become aware of our own unbelief, confess it clearly and be healed from it before we will be able to assist others in getting freedom from it. Amazingly, pride and unbelief are the means by which puny human beings can successfully hold off all the power of the universe brought to bear on them for their own good. Even though God has unleashed all power in heaven and earth to attract us into a saving relationship with Him, if we choose to remain in unbelief against the truth about Him we can successfully resist His supreme authority and cause ourselves to lose out on heaven and eternity. And sadly this most often happens while believing strongly that we are in fact assured of a place in heaven and we think we are following God. This was the condition of Saul before his conversion on the way to Damascus. Unbelief is a most pernicious and deadly condition, but it is not hopeless as this verse points out. What is interesting to note here, though, is that the unbelief that Paul describes from his own past experience is an unbelief based on ignorance. This ignorance I believe is the lack of a true knowledge of what God is really like, not a lack of knowledge about religious facts. Paul grew up as one of the most knowledgeable people of his day as far as religious facts were concerned and God did not reach his heart by teaching him more facts or new doctrines. Instead, He transformed his whole perspective of reality and God by revealing the truth about His kindness and compassion that melted Saul's resistance and exposed his misinterpretations of all the religious facts that he had amassed and misused throughout his life up to that point. This leads me to ponder what other kinds of unbelief there may be. If Paul here describes unbelief that is based on ignorance, then evidently there must be another kind of unbelief that is not based on ignorance. And quite likely that unbelief is likely much more dangerous if not impossible from which to recover. For as Paul wrote elsewhere, once a person has tasted the goodness of the Lord and then turned away from it back to his old life – of unbelief – it is now nearly impossible for that person to once again repent and return to a real saving relationship with God. Some have become so frightened by this scenario that they sometimes think they may have committed the unpardonable sin if they sin against God after becoming a Christian. Satan has used these verses and others like them to discourage many people into giving up trying to be a Christian because they believe they have gone too far for God to save them. But this is not at all what the Bible is talking about. These notions are all schemes of the enemy to prevent us from really experiencing the infinite goodness and forgiveness of God and believing the real truth about Him. This is not the kind of unbelief in spite of seeing clearly God's glory but is unbelief based on ignorance of the true character and mercy of God. When Paul, then Saul, was living in unbelief in his younger years, that unbelief in the real truth about how God relates to people caused him to be a very violent person against anyone who disagreed with his religious perspective. Likewise, today it is still true that believing wrong ideas about God that we insist have to be true will cause a person to become very defensive and aggressive against others who do not share their viewpoints. There is a large and growing segment of people in my own denomination that are gravitating in this direction and some of my own family members have been caught up in various forms of this intensity. But as dangerous and argumentative and even hateful as these people may become, I must remind myself to see them through the eyes of heaven just as Jesus could see the secret inner condition of Saul even while he was violently persecuting and oppressing the people who followed the teachings and example of their Master. I must remember that as a Christian who is learning the real truth about God and who is under obligation to follow the instructions of the One who came to reveal the heart of the Father to us, I am to pray for my enemies and bless those who persecute me, not curse them. To do this, it makes it easier – though maybe only slightly – to keep in mind that these people are very possibly acting in the ignorant kind of unbelief that can be reversed when their inner heart catches a glimpse of the real truth about God's passionate love and unconditional forgiveness for them. Of course the frightening thing is that God wants to demonstrate His love and forgiveness to them through my own life in response to their mistreatment of me. If I will be so transformed in my heart and spirit by God's presence that I reflect the spirit of Jesus and allow Him to live out His life in me during these assaults against me, then His enemies will get a close-up chance to see the face of Jesus in me and have their hearts offered an opportunity to melt in the presence of God's kindness and grace and mercy through God's presence in my life. This is one of the ultimate callings and responsibilities of each child of God. The grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. (1 Timothy 1:14) God can deal with ignorance. But we tend to be far more impatient and judgmental against people who are violent aggressors and often label them for life based on their outward behaviors from the past. But we easily forget that ignorance is a strong mitigating factor in the eyes of heaven and that our own spirit of judging is far more egregious to God than the apparent wickedness of those who oppose us. We are not called to judge other people's motives no matter how obvious they may seem to us. We are called to allow the Spirit of Jesus to so dwell in us that our spirit and attitude and actions reflect the real truth about God. Then as the beauty and attractiveness of God becomes evident through a living human being in the face of evil, God is again reincarnated in human flesh and His true character is allowed to be demonstrated to draw all into His healing heart of love. Father, this is a very difficult revelation to obey. It sounds so good on paper but when I am under attack or am accused falsely or judged or persecuted, it is so much easier to react in defensiveness and in fear. Please fill my heart and mind with Your love that expels all fear. Show me more clearly Your face, Your grace, Your faithfulness and beauty and perfection so that my life and the atmosphere surrounding me will reflect only Your character and not anything from my flesh. Your will be done, not mine.