"Mark 14:32-42"
Getting sleepy.
Do you often get sleepy in times where you initially plan to pray?
You start off with the right motives, and you end up feeling so sleepy that you can't really pray. Then you feel guilty or worthless as a worshipper, because what kind of worshipper goes to pray and ends up falling asleep?!
You-kind.
Me-kind.
Human-kind.
I was grading papers on several passages from the gospels and two of them talked about how the disciples got sleepy when they "should have been" praying.
Jesus brings His closest friends with Him to a place far away from people to get some quiet time for His soul. He expresses to them that he is deeply distressed and even horrified. Jesus is scared. And His friends respond the only way they can, they go with Him.
Then He came and found them sleeping.
“Simon, are you sleeping? ” He asked Peter.
“Couldn’t you stay awake one hour?
Stay awake and pray so that you won’t enter into temptation.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Imagine you're in the hospital room, on the bed, and they're about to amputate both your arms and legs in 2 hours....meaning you're about to become fully leg-less and arm-less in less than 2 hours because of a poisonous infection! You call your closest friends to be with you and pray for you because you're horribly scared of the surgery and you just need some comfort to get through this.
You ask the nurse to call your friends in, and she returns with the news that they're all asleep in the waiting room. So you tell the nurse to kindly wake them up and bring them in. They arrive and you ask them to pray for you in the room while the doctor preps you for the surgery behind the curtain. These are your best friends, maybe your husband or wife or mom or dad. And as the doctor is prepping you, you hope that your loved ones are praying for you to help you get through this. The curtain opens and there they are, every one of them is asleep, some are drooling and others look like they're having a nice dream.
You're about to become limbless, utterly just a trunk and a face is what you'll become, and more terrifying than this is how alone you suddenly feel in your demise.
This is probably how Jesus felt when He went off to pray to His Father for some other way than the way of suffering and when He was told "No other way" He also had to come back to find His friends fast asleep.
Perhaps some of us might want to think that we surely would not have fallen asleep! If our mother or best friend or child was about to be chopped up in a hospital we want to believe that we would be their prayer warrior! They could count on us to stay awake with them! Because we love them!
But the truth is that humans cannot derail sleep if sleep comes over them. It's strangely revealing, because as hard as we might try to do things and accomplish things, everyone will eventually fall asleep. Regardless. Because our bodies were made so that sleep comes when sleep comes. The hardest worker and the laziest worker will both need to sleep. The person who makes millions and the person who is neck-deep in debt will still require sleep.
Falling asleep is not to condemn us, but to humble us in recognition of the control of God. The only person who does not require sleep is God. If it did it would mean God had no control over something. But God controls everything, and sleep is one of the most obvious reminders that He is in control and we are not.
Jesus asks Peter to try and stay awake, but three times He returns to find them sleeping. However, this is never something they are condemned for, rather, it is something used to show them that although the Spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. Peter in particular needed to be shown this because he talked the most up-talk about dying for Jesus and doing everything for Jesus like a real soldier! But in reality, it seems like Jesus was showing Peter that there is a battle of the spirit vs the flesh. Not a battle for the outcome of God to be done, God has no trouble getting His way because He's in control.
The battle is within us. To believe even when we don't feel like it. To hold to hope even when we fail to stay awake in prayer times. To remember that the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, so how can we target the true enemy...our weakness in the flesh. While remaining steadfast in our willing spirit by faith.
The answer is simple: stop looking at yourself and what you can do, and keep your eyes on Jesus and what He has done.
When Christ returned from praying to the Father the third and last time and found His friends sleeping again He said:
“Are you still sleeping and resting?
Enough!
The time has come.
Look, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.
Get up; let’s go!"
In other words, He found them sleeping when they should have been praying but regardless of what they should have been doing Jesus told them to look at Him. Something was about to happen that would save them from their "shoulda" lives. Jesus would be taking the penalty of every "should have" so that when we look at Him at a His resurrection we can say with deep humility: thank You. What should have been my punishment became His and His life became mine. Jesus traded our kind for His kind by becoming one of us and taking down the outcome of our should haves so that we might see His love for us and would have eternal life.
The next time you get sleepy during prayer time, remember to look at Jesus. He took our "should have stayed awake to pray" by being crucified, so that the freedom we live in is all thanks to Him. He is worthy of our praise. Who else would die for the very people that left us in our greatest time of need? Only the One who does the Father's will would do such a thing.
For if it were dependent on man all would be doomed for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but Jesus finished it by becoming one of us to make a way for us to be reconciled to the Father. Not because we pray but because Jesus prayed. Not by what we do but by what Jesus did. Not by who we are but by who Jesus is. We are now free in Him who gives us the Holy Spirit to remind us of our life in Him.
Here's to looking at Jesus all day today,
Jmegrey
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