I Can't Take it Anymore

And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, and he said to them, "Why are you sleeping?  Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation." --Luke 22:45-46 

Clarity.

Focus.

Resolve.

Courageous living.

The last three depend on how it goes with the first one.

Keeping our heads clear.  Easier said than done…right?

The air, at least in the United States at the moment, is filled with an eerie heaviness.  People are confused.  Some are angry.  Others want to just sit and cry.  Political gamesmanship is superseded only by the growing concern that governing leaders just don’t understand how to govern or worse, don’t care about the people they were put in office to govern.  Families are stressed.  Know any?  Packed schedules squeeze any semblance of “ultimate things” to the perimeter of our lives.  “It’s the American way” someone lamented recently.  "It’s the only way we know how to live."  Perhaps. 

Being a Christian in this climate is hard for anybody.  Some Christians, like those who live in the Middle East, face the pressure of verbal and physical abuse.  Even death.  Satan can break people that way.  He can also break us by distracting us with living our lives in such a way that we forget what it means to “live our lives…unto the Lord.” Focus, Resolve and courageous living in any of its forms wanes because we allow the stuff that is in the cultural air we breath – not the air that goes into our lungs! – to congest, confuse, paralyze and twist us into proverbial pretzels.  

Spiritual clarity is an intentional thing.  It doesn’t simply fall into place for anybody.  Jesus spent time in prayer.  Alone time with the Father re-established his center.  Sometimes something as simple as thinking about a single verse of scripture or reading a hymn or reflecting on something someone said in a bible class can bring clarity to our lives.  Such reflective moments push back all the stuff that crowds us or that pushes us toward becoming nothing more than reflections of a horizontal perspective that thinks nothing of the One who came from above and who reigns even now and who calls us into his service each day as salt, leaven and light in the midst of all the stuff that screams “Urgent!  Significant!  Stay up or risk becoming a number!”   

 

Do you have such moments in your life?  We all need them.  They help us live awake and alert knowing that each day is a gift from the Lord. 

I like these words from Romans 13:11-14 taken from the Message:

But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!

Father, give clarity to our hearts, heads and spirits as we seek to stay connected with what it means to be your instruments every day.  Thank you for Jesus who shows us both the struggle and possibilities that is clarity in the Spirit.  Amen. 

Randy Daugherty

Stephenville, Texas