Friends For The Journey

Sept. 25, 2006 – The teaching of Jesus I am focusing on this month is Jesus’ encouragement to us to “watch and pray” that we not enter into temptation.

I want to thank you all for your prayers for us in this past year…probably the most difficult year of our lives. Debbie is doing much better…and Ruth is really happy serving God in Costa Rica with Jamie and Cathy Johnson and company.

However, I would like to ask for a few people to pray for me in a different way. I finished my master’s and started my PhD this semester. I went from about 30 hours a week doing the part-time masters to nearly 60 hours a week as a full-time PhD student and TA (teaching assistant). The TA pays for my tuition and gives me a little to live on and provides health insurance (very important right now).

I have spent the last two-plus years learning how to relate to secular, post-modern academics. It has been good cross-cultural training. This semester, the training is over, and I am in the middle of 30 or more relationships with students from a variety of backgrounds.

This past Thursday I was able to pray with a couple of my grad friends in the library. It was a divine appointment, and God showed up and touched a distressed friend. I recently gave several copies of the “Purpose-Driven Life” to several students…and they have started reading it.

Here is my prayer request: please pray that I can effectively let my light shine as I pursue my doctoral studies on the campus.

For years I have wanted to get “out of the box”. Now I am way outside the box. Now, finally, at this stage of my life, I am doing the work of a ‘herald of good news’ all the time. I am learning how to fish for people—young people.

There are about two hundred people on this “teachings of Jesus” distribution list. I am praying that 2 or 3 will feel a call from God to “holding the ropes” for me in prayer as I serve those around me here on the university campus.

#45 WATCH AND PRAY

Matthew 26:41 “Keep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

What does it mean to watch?
Greek gregoreuo (to keep awake, i.e. to watch). It can be used in a physical, moral or spiritual sense. Hebrew: shamar (to hedge about as with thorns, to protect, to attend to).

What are biblical examples of watching?
A shepherd watching all the sheep under his care. He would build a hedge around them and lay in the gap or door (John 10:7). Job was a righteous man, he kept watch over his children (Job 1:2, 4-5). Job’s hedge of protection was so effective that Satan complained about it (Job 1:9-10).
God built a hedge of protection around Israel (Hosea 2:7). God sought a man to stand in the gap of the hedge for Israel (Ezekiel 22:30-31). God gave Adam the responsibility to keep (shamar) the garden (Gen. 2:15; 3:24).

How can we watch and pray? Jesus in the garden on the Mt. of Olives (Matt. 26:36, 38-39). The disciples were unable to keep watch one hour (Matt. 26:40-41). The prayer of Jesus was “not my will, but thine be done” (Matt. 26:39). He was in anguish of soul…an angel strengthened him (Luke 22:43-44). During times of agonizing and watching, The Spirit Himself makes intercession for us (Rom. 8:26). If Peter had watched and prayed, he would have been in a better position to face the temptation (Rom. 8:27).