Thursday December 1, 2016 Watch and Pray

December 1, 2016
Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:40-41 NKJV

Jesus in the garden...with the disciples...those closest to Him. Those ones who were hand chosen and walked with with daily during those years of His public ministry. Those ones who not only heard his teachings, but afterwards received private tutoring. Those ones who loved Him deeply. And yet, in the hour when he so greatly needed them, not once, but three times the disciples failed Him. If those who were with Jesus face to face on a daily basis, listening and learning directly from Him needed to watch and pray so as not to enter into temptation, how much more we who follow Him today?  Perhaps now, more than at any time in history,  worldly distractions tug at us and threaten to lead us away from all of our good intentions. The world is full of loud and shiny things that cry out for our attention, more so at this time of year than any other.  Jesus' voice, though persistent,  calls quietly. The world speaks to our fleshly love for ourselves and concern with our own well being. Jesus calls us to love and serve Him by loving and serving the least of these. The irony is that this season which exists to point us to Jesus has become something so different that we have to work   against our consumer culture to even keep in the front of our minds what we are actually celebrating. As Jesus tells us in this passage, our watching needs to be intentional and it needs to be fortified by prayer. In prayer we connect our spirit to that which we cannot see with our eyes: our triune God. In prayer, if we practice it regularly, we can sense that tender love that  God has for us and which we so desire, yet so often miss in a world where how we look and what we do is often valued more than who we are. But prayer does take practice...regular practice and we fool ourselves if we think otherwise. So in these days of watching, let us respond to Jesus call to watch and pray, that when he comes he finds us ready and waiting to receive all that he has for us...heavenly treasures that nothing in this world can ever match.

Prayer
Loving God, Source of all that is good, help us, we pray to be strong against the temptations all around us. Open our ears to hear Your voice calling to us to watch for You. Lead us and guide us that our feeble attempts to meet You in prayer would be engulfed and overwhelmed by Your almighty power and great desire to draw us to Yourself as demonstrated by Your coming to this very earth as a helpless child, Jesus, in whose name we now pray. AMEN!