He Told Them to Pray About It Before, and He Told Them in the Garden

There is a man I have known for years who described his week to me once as twenty minutes of road.

He meant that on a particular evening there is a stretch of about twenty minutes when he is driving, and he knows before he gets in the car what that stretch is going to do, and he has known it for a long time.

He said the worst part is not the failing. He said the worst part is standing at his own front door with his coat on, knowing exactly what the next hour holds, and going anyway.

That is a specific and terrible thing to carry, and it is far more common than the people carrying it believe.

And what has been said to almost every one of them, by well meaning people who love them, is some version of be stronger.

That is not what Jesus said, to anybody, in any of the accounts. And what He did say is more useful and a great deal kinder.

Both halves of the petition are requests

Start with the petition itself, because everything else in this article follows from who is being asked.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:13, King James Version)

Two clauses and both of them are addressed to God. Lead us not. Deliver us.

There is nothing in that sentence that instructs the person praying to hold on, to resist, or to try. The whole petition is somebody asking somebody else to act.

Which means a teaching on this subject that ends with an exhortation to effort has inverted the very prayer it is about.

You are not being asked to hold, and every verb in that petition is addressed to Him rather than assigned to you (Matthew 6:13), and it is the Spirit who does the keeping that the words actually request.

And James rules out the reading that has troubled people for centuries, and he does it in one sentence.

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. (James 1:13)

Neither tempteth he any man. So nothing in the first half of that petition is an accusation, and nobody praying it is suggesting anything about God's conduct.

You are not accusing anybody when you pray that line, and James settled the question in writing so that nobody would have to carry it privately (James 1:13), and the Spirit is the one who takes an old suspicion out of a person's praying without making them feel foolish for having had it.

What He said in the garden, and when

In the garden, hours before it all came apart, He gave men who were about to fail an instruction, and the timing of it is the entire point.

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41)

That ye enter not. Before the entering.

He is not standing over them afterward, and He is not asking them to be stronger in the moment. He is telling them, in advance, to do the one thing that can be done in advance.

And look at the second half. The spirit indeed is willing. He grants it. He is not questioning whether they meant it, and He names the gap between wanting and capacity without one word of contempt in it.

You have a willingness that Jesus Himself granted, and He named the weakness in the same breath without blaming anybody for it (Matthew 26:41). The Spirit is the one who supplies at the door what a person does not have when they get there.

The prayer He prayed for one man in advance

There is a scene at the same table that I want everybody carrying this to have, because it is the most direct answer to it in the Gospels.

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not. (Luke 22:31 and 32)

Three things in there, and every one of them is worth stopping on.

He tells Simon what is coming. Not vaguely. He describes it, in advance, sitting at a table, before anything has happened.

He says He has already prayed. Past tense. Before the failure, before the denials, before the fire in the courtyard, the praying was already done.

And He names what He prayed for, and it is not what anybody would expect. Not that Simon would not fail. Simon does fail, comprehensively, within hours. He prayed that his faith would not fail, which is a different thing entirely, and it held.

You have been prayed for in advance by somebody who knew exactly what was coming, and He said so out loud before it happened (Luke 22:32), and it is His Spirit who carries that intercession to a person standing at their own front door.

And this belongs here plainly, in every article in this category. If the twenty minutes you are describing puts you or anybody else in real danger, that is not for an article to hold. Tell somebody before the next time: a doctor, a counselor, a sponsor, a pastor you trust, or call the 988 crisis line, in the United States. Going is strength.