Being Awake

Harold Perkins, former professional baseball player and now author, describes in his book How God Took Me from $300 to $30,000 a Month Overnight what I believe many of us can learn from, but it was his recounting of Jesus in the garden just before the traitor identified Him that particularly got my attention.

I've heard explanations of why the disciples would have been extremely sleepy. They had just finished a large meal and so forth, but it's still difficult for me to accept. I now believe there's much more to it than that.

Jesus, we know, has been telling us over and over to be awake so we won't be caught off guard when He returns.

The question is this. How do we throw off the very heavy weight of sleep?

The answer is that Jesus was working it out the three times He went away from the disciples to pray. Each time, He returned to them only to find them sleeping again and again.

How many of us long for another way through difficulties other than the way things are going now in our lives? If we could only change this, or if only this hadn't happened, or if only this certain thing would happen? All this deflects our attention from the real matter at hand, the condition of our hearts.

Jesus, however, overcame the problem of our hearts there in Gethsemane. Hebrews chapter 8 states:

10 because this [is] the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord, giving My laws into their mind, and upon their hearts I will write them, and I will be to them for a God, and they shall be to Me for a people;

The covenant He writes on our hearts is what enables us to obey Him in every way including in the very simple things.

It's time to wake up to walk with God as Jesus did. Jesus passes His will to us. It's our inheritance through the power of the new covenant, ratified through the body and blood of Jesus. 

We can now walk in love for God and love others without putting upon them the demands of the law, for Christ Himself has set us free from its bonds.