{"id":405381,"date":"2024-02-19T17:13:18","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T11:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.com\/?p=405381"},"modified":"2024-02-19T17:13:21","modified_gmt":"2024-02-19T11:43:21","slug":"taking-the-initiativeagainst-despair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/2024\/02\/19\/taking-the-initiativeagainst-despair\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking the InitiativeAgainst Despair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-vivid-red-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-24c8d6c49e7b76a0fdfde954f705991d wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rise, let us be going.<br>\u2014Matthew 26:46<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done it produced despair. The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, \u201cWell, it\u2019s all over and ruined now; what\u2019s the point in trying anymore.\u201d If we think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. It is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair. But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, in essence, \u201cSleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever and you can\u2019t change that. But get up, and let\u2019s go on to the next thing.\u201d 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.<br>There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. The disciples, in this instance, had done a downright unthinkable thing\u2014 they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus. But our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and said, in effect, \u201cGet up, and do the next thing.\u201d 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.<br>Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.<br>By Oswald Chambers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rise, let us be going.\u2014Matthew 26:46 In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done it produced despair. The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, \u201cWell, it\u2019s all over and ruined now; what\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[686],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-daily-devotion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}