Failure To A Future

So here we go, we start off and he's starting a little too fast, but I just hang with him. We get to the middle part of the race, about 2 miles into this 3.1 mile run, and we are away from the crowds on the back side of Cameron Park. And I hear his little voice, "Daddy, why are you making me do this? I'm tired Daddy, why are we out here? It hurts." And I hear him hyper-ventilating a little. But he started to ask, "Why?" and I say, "Dude, I told you this before." I hear, "Daddy, I don't care, I want to stop. I want to go home." I'm like, "C'mon dude. We are going to make it. You just stay with me. Look, there is no option. We are finishing, stay with me. We will slow down, but we will not stop."

He's with me and we come around, and about 2.5 miles, the crowd starts picking up again and he begins to get it together. He waves to a couple people here and there, and then as we get closer and closer, we see mom and siblings saying, "C'mon Daniel! You can make it!" All of a sudden, he says, "Ya, I got it." He cruises across the finish line, and he does great. Someone asked, "How was the race?" "It was awesome!" On my back, it was awesome.

It's true with a lot of life. Sometimes we know that something will be difficult to accomplish, but the middle part is the hardest, not to lose focus of get distracted. The disciples will see eventually they got distracted in the middle. What happened was, after three years of all this and Jesus telling them it would happen, it did happen. On a Thursday night, He gathered them together for a Passover meal. This time it was a little different, He gave them some bread and He said, "This is my body broken for you, and every time you take it remember me." He said, "This wine we drink to celebrate the Passover, this is now my blood, shed for you. One of you is going to betray me." They are laid back, and they say, "Well, who is going to betray you?" He says, "The one who sticks the bread in the cup." Judas sticks the bread in the cup, and He looks at him and said, "Do what you must do." Judas takes off, and you would think they would start clueing in. This is a big night, but they are like, "Whatever, oh, where did Judas go?"

He says, "Look I am grieved of heart for what is coming. Come with me to the garden and pray." "Sure, Jesus, we'll go to the garden and pray." So they go to the prayer meeting, and they fall asleep. He comes over and wakes them up. "Oh, ya, ya we are just praying, Lord." He came back and woke them up again. Finally, a third time Judas had showed up and betrayed Him to the Roman soldiers. He had lied about Jesus and He was falsely accused. Mayhem breaks out, and the soldiers are taking Jesus away. People are screaming and shouting, "What's going on?" The majority of the disciples immediately just scattered. Fear for their own lives took over. They weren't putting the pieces together that this is what was spoken about. Jesus had already promised them, but they were distracted and scattered in a hundred directions. A couple of them stayed close, they wanted to find out what was going on.