“Get up, let us be going.” Jesus, The Garden of Gethsemane, Matthew 26:46

Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.

Imagine the sense of despair that the disciples must have felt at falling asleep while with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. The disciples did a downright unthinkable thing. They fell asleep instead of staying awake with Jesus. But our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and said, in effect, “Get up, and do the next thing.”

There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of despair caused by real events. And we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, “That opportunity is gone and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing.” In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.

If we are inspired by God, what is the next thing? It is to trust Him absolutely and to pray on the basis of His redemption. It is to get up and do the next thing.

Adapted from My Utmost For His Highest, Oswald Chambers (1874 – 1917)