You don’t know your own heart.  In the last days, don’t get over-confident in what you’re sensing and what your heart is saying to you.  If you do, you’ll likely fall.  Why couldn’t the disciples cast out those demons?  Jesus reminded them that, in the way, they were arguing among themselves who the greatest was (Luke 22:24), they were over-confident in themselves.  If we want to become less effective in reaching the world, we just need to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to.  Not only as it pertains to our relationships with one another but in our ability to represent the kingdom.  Some of us are pretty confident in how we’re doing and whatever effort we’re lending to the preparation for the coming of the Lord.  And we’re just kind of satisfied with where we are and how we’re doing.  Be careful in this kind of a thinking.  “Though they all forsake You, Lord, You can count on me” (Matthew 26:33).  We should have the same spirit that they had at the communion table when Jesus said, “One of you is going to forsake Me” (verse 21).  And we didn’t hear people saying, “It won’t be me.”  They turned and said, “Is it I, Lord?  Could it be me?” (verse 22).  We’re safer in that kind of a heart condition. 

Watch and pray.  We’re being asked just like the disciples were at Gethsemane.  Jesus is saying to you and me, this generation, those of us here at this fellowship, “Can you watch with Me for one hour?  Can you set some of your other stuff aside and give Me an hour?”  If you study the Scriptures you’ll see those guys were not falling asleep because they were physically tired.  They were falling asleep—and the Greek makes it very clear—because they were depressed.  They were weighted down with the burden and the cares of Jesus’ ministry being fulfilled in a way they weren’t expecting.  They didn’t see this happening.  They saw Jesus rising up and becoming a king and setting up a new earthly kingdom and them being able to be put into positions of power and authority.  And now, all of a sudden, here they find themselves hearing a message like, “They’re going to kill Me.  One of you has a devil and is going to betray Me.”

“Watch and pray” that we don’t enter “into temptation” (Matthew 26:41).  We talk about this spiritual war that’s going on, and one of the things we need to be doing right now to prepare for persecution—synonymous with preparing for the return of the Lord—is to make sure we array ourselves with the full armor of God.  Ephesians 6:13 says, “Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God.”  We can’t pick and choose just certain pieces.  “Take unto you the whole armor of God.”  I hear that saying to me, “Give no place to the devil.”  Don’t give him a crack in the armor.  Make sure that we become arrayed with the very character of God.  Jesus, in His testimony, made reference many times to the fact that He came and did the will of the Father.  “I don’t come to speak My words.  I’ve come to speak the words of He that sent Me” (John 12:49).  “I have meat to eat that you know not of…to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work,” (John 4:32-34).  And because of that He could, then, say, “The devil has nothing to get a hold of Me with.”  And this is what we’re wanting to do here.  We’re wanting to adorn ourselves with the whole armor of God where the devil has no way to get a hold of us.