The other day while I was trying to catch up on a 5-day devotional that I started earlier this month (I'm still not done reading it), the Holy Spirit drew my attention to the following verse:
"When He came to the place, He said to them, 'Pray that you may not enter into temptation.'" - Luke 22:40 (NKJV)
According to the Strong's Concordance Greek Dictionary of the New Testament #3986, Jesus commanded His disciples to watch and pray against entering into temptations by their own carelessness or disobedience. The word careless is defined as not taking or showing enough care and attention. This is important because we know that Jesus' prayer in the garden of Gethsemane was a landmark moment on His journey of doing the will of the Father and providing salvation to all who believe in Him. It was shortly after this that He would suffer physical affliction at the hands of His enemies and still have to trust in the LORD even unto death. Yet Jesus understood something that His disciples would have to wrestle with during His crucifixion and after His ascension to heaven, which is that carelessness is as detrimental to our faithfulness to God as deception and idolatry are.
Heed what you heard.
The Holy Spirit said this to me a few weeks ago and I think we all need to hear it because it's too easy to be careless with our faith in God and with the assignments that He has given us. Not to mention how easy it is to slip into carelessness when the suffering intensifies or on the flip side, when life is going exactly the way we want it to. The truth is, we would much rather ride the high of being comfortable instead of having to trust God through the pain of crucifying our flesh daily. Plus, being careless is way more appealing than laboring in prayer (don't even get me started on fasting!) to avoid the trap of bitterness, jealousy, laziness, or anger yet that's exactly what this blog post is meant to do. Provoke you to pray.
"Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip." - Hebrews 2:1 (KJV)
I don't want any of us to slip away from following Jesus and to prevent this from happening, we must be anchored to our faith in God and devoted to seeking His counsel in prayer. By the way, if you're worried about whether God has heard your previous prayers, He did. If you're wondering if He's still listening, He is. But none of that matters, if you're not willing to keep listening to Him too.
