FOCUS Day Thirty-One | Mark 14:32-40 by Abigail
DAY THIRTY-ONE | Mark 14:32-40 by Abigail
Then Jesus led his disciples to an orchard called “The Oil Press.” He told them, “Sit here while I pray awhile.” He took Peter, Jacob, and John with him. An intense feeling of great horror plunged his soul into deep sorrow and agony. And he said to them, “My heart is overwhelmed with anguish and crushed with grief. It feels as though I’m dying. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
He walked a short distance away, and being overcome with grief, he threw himself facedown on the ground. He prayed that if it were possible, he would not have to experience this hour of suffering. He prayed, “Abba, my Father, all things are possible for you. Please—don’t allow me to drink this cup of suffering![z] Yet what I want is not important, for I only desire to fulfill your plan for me.”
Then he came back to his three disciples and found them all sound asleep. He awakened Peter and said to him, “Simon, are you asleep? Do you lack the strength to stay awake with me for even just an hour? Keep alert and pray that you’ll be spared from this time of testing. For your spirit is eager enough, but your humanity is feeble.”
Then he left them a second time and went to pray the same thing. Afterward, he came back to the disciples and found them sound asleep, for they couldn’t keep their eyes open and they didn’t know what to say to him.
After praying for the third time, he returned to his disciples and awoke them again, saying, “Do you plan on sleeping and resting indefinitely? That’s enough sleep! The end has come and the hour has arrived for the Son of Man to be handed over to the authority of sinful men. Get up and let’s go. Don’t you see? My betrayer draws near.”
WAIT, WATCH AND PRAY
This passage gives us a good view of what happened during the last hours in Gethsemane, before Jesus’s capture. I remember walking there, looking at all of the beautiful and wonderful things around me. I thought how crazy it was that I really might have been standing where Jesus had been.
As my love for scriptures has been growing, it has been so cool to let Jesus point things out to me in brand new ways. In this passage, Jesus is inviting us into Himself, especially in the phrase, “Stay here and keep watch with me”. This invitation has an interesting/crazy application to our lives. Even though Jesus really didn’t “need” the three disciples help in keeping watch, He was still inviting them to be active in this important time in His journey.
Jesus is still inviting us into this same place. Here are three things that stood out to me from this Scripture: Stay Here, Keep Watch and Pray. I believe that these are important because they foundational parts of having a “secret place” relationship with Him today.
STAY HERE – One of the things that was crazy for me about being in the Garden of Gethsemane were these trees. Some of them are over 700 years old. (There are a few that they believe date back to the time of Christ.) Over all of that time, their roots have grown really deep. I remember being in awe of how much they have weathered and been through, and how steadfast they are now.
As Christians, we also need to be steadfast and patient as we are growing and keeping our eyes on the Vine. Jesus calls us to be like those trees, to grow into amazing structures that are the perfect result of the matured blueprint that’s in DNA of their seed.
KEEP WATCH – Jesus is still inviting us to “Stay in this place and keep watch and pray with me, in these final hours.” It is the same call that we see in Revelation (which is my favorite book in the New Testament), “Behold, I come like a thief! God’s blessing is on the one who stays awake.” Revelation talks a lot about keeping watch for our Beloved to return.
Part of what keeping watch means is “staying awake”. Matthew 25 tells the story of the wise virgins who had bought oil so that they were ready when the Bridegroom came. We are called to be ready and watching for Him today.
Some of you might be asking yourself the same question I asked myself. How do I buy oil? That leads us into the final part of this beautiful invitation.
PRAY – I was going to work with my dad when I realized how big the coronavirus was getting here in the United States. Neither one of us had gotten much sleep the night before so I was REALLY tired and was needing to remind myself to not be grumpy. As we walked in at about 8:30 (after traveling for about an hour and a half), I was trying to pray about my day, and how I really needed to work on being with Jesus or I would probably get sort of cranky. The office was pretty much empty other than two of the woman who also work there.
Dad randomly asked, “Does anyone have any ringing in their right ear?”. One of the women said, “Yes. I always have really bad ringing in that ear.” So Dad, the other woman and I started to pray for her. I found myself saying my normal prayer that I pray for healing. It goes somewhat like this, “Daddy, your will be done in (whomever I am praying for), and let Your healing come. Let heaven come in this person’s body because there’s no sickness in Heaven.”
As I prayed for her, I felt Jesus urging me to really stop and think about what His will was, not just for her, but for all of us, in this time of fear in the world. While I was asking for God’s will to be done and for healing to come, I heard Him reminding me of something that He had told me very shortly after the coronavirus was becoming a big deal. “Right now I am calling the body to bring Heaven down to earth and to release that heaven from within, and I want My people to be light in this darkness.”
Even in just the simplest of prayers for healing, Jesus let me see a small part of His will for me and the rest of the body of Christ, especially in this time of panic. It has given me a vision of what I need to do now.
My prayer for us all is that we can know that waiting, watching and praying with Jesus really is so powerful. It really does change our perspectives when we tune into God’s will and pray for heaven to come to earth. That is how we can live out of a yes to Jesus’s invitation to “Stay here and keep watch.”
