One On One: 100 Days With Jesus--Ministry YearsSample

Sleepless: The One who prays 

If you’ve ever stayed awake all night, you know the strange stillness that blankets a sleeping world. 

What keeps you up all night? A red-eye flight. A sick child. Worry about a marriage or a mortgage, a diagnosis or a decision. This space in-between often is a time to toss-and-turn—or a turning point, depending on how you spend those hours in the dark.

Jesus was up all night the day before He chose His 12 disciples. Imagine Him in moonlight, walking the hills around the Sea of Galilee. Luke 6:12 says that He spent that sleepless night praying. 

What do you think He was praying about? 

Perhaps Jesus rehearsed the candidates with His Father. These 12 disciples would   not only walk beside Him during the next three years, but it would be through their ministries that the Gospel would spread to the world and the future church would learn and grow. They would become His spokesmen, His ambassadors. 

Perhaps in His humanity, Jesus struggled with choices. A zealot and a tax collector in the same group? Quiet Andrew? Thomas will doubt. And about Judas . . .

Perhaps He prayed for those who would not be chosen. Or maybe He talked with His Father about something totally different . . . about another sleepless night He’ll spend in a garden three years from now. 

No wonder Jesus was up, asking for clarity, needing a connection to His Father, wanting to do His will. Somewhere under the stars, Jesus found resolve. 

Before the sun peeked over the horizon, before the birds signaled the dawn, before the breeze carried the scent of thyme and sage across the lakeside slope, Jesus chose His team. 

Sleepless nights are no stranger to God. The Psalmist says that “He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper . . . He will keep you from all evil; He will keep your life.”

So, rest easy, the Lord will stay up. In the future when your mind won’t rest in those midnight hours, follow Jesus’ model. Talk to your Father in the dark and quiet in-between. Then in the morning, go do what He says. 

Tomorrow: One on one with Jesus in His choice