“Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.”
(This is good advice to remember during the New Year. A good New Year's resolution would be to watch and pray.) The context of this verse is in Gethsemane where Jesus prayed His agonizing prayer of commitment. Jesus left Peter, James and John to watch while He went alone to pray. When Jesus returned to them, they were asleep. Jesus said to Peter, who had vowed to protect Him, “What, could you not watch with me one hour?” Then Jesus said, “Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Just as Jesus knew Peter’s weakness of the flesh, He knows ours as well. We would do well to heed the warning of Jesus to watch and pray. Due to the fact that the flesh is weak and that the devil is smart, it pays to be vigilant. In 1Peter 5:8 Peter warned: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour.” Jesus did not mention the devil in this verse, but it is understood that our number one enemy is the devil, who would like nothing better than to bring us down. The devil makes sure that we encounter perils and pitfalls along the way. He tempts us to have moral lapses. He tempts us with greed. He tempts us with fear. There are no limits to the ways that the devil will trick us. Peter found out about this soon after Jesus gave this warning, for he denied Jesus three times. He did make a vain attempt with a sword by cutting off Malchus’ ear when the people came to arrest Jesus. Seeing the fruitlessness of that, he gave up. It is a message that we all must learn sooner or later. Understand this: THE DEVIL NEVER GIVES UP. He will keep up with his “devilishness” until the day that we die. We need to pay attention to Jesus when He tells us to watch and pray, for it is still true that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Prayer should be our first and last line of defense. There is nothing that can keep us from praying. If we are put into a situation in which we can do absolutely nothing, we can still pray. If we can think, we can pray. God listens to our hearts, so He will hear the silent pleas of our hearts. We are without excuse when we do not pray. Jesus is available to us 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We can call on Jesus any time, and He will be available to hear our prayers. The hymn is correct: “Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer.” We have sure promises in the Bible that if we pray, God will listen and He will answer. The Bible does not lie to us. We need to remember the admonition to pray. Nothing should be beyond our need to watch and pray. Jesus told Peter, James and John to pray “that ye enter not into temptation.” If we prayed as we should, we would be pre-conditioned to avoid the devil’s wiles. The reason that Peter, James and John went to sleep in the first place was because they did not watch and pray as Jesus told them to do. This serves as a warning to us to pray in order to avoid temptation. But there will be times when we will have to pray in the midst of temptation. For example, after this warning, Peter still denied Jesus. Though Peter did not heed the warning that he enter not into temptation, he could have, and should have prayed in the midst of the temptation. Let’s not be too critical of Peter, for we often find ourselves in similar situations. We need to learn to “take it to the Lord in prayer.” “Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation.” But if you do enter into temptation pray anyway. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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