I was invited to an online devotional on Holy Thursday where we were studying Luke 22—the account of the Last Supper and the hours that followed. As I participated in the study, something stood out to me, something I never thought of before and wasn’t discussed in our study
What if it was more more about spiritual readiness and less about receiving new information?
Jesus wasn’t trying to cram in a set of last-minute instructions. He wasn’t suddenly introducing something new because time was running out. For three years, He had already been teaching, modeling, and demonstrating exactly what His disciples would need.
And yet, in those final hours, He repeats it again: watch, pray, stay awake, remain steady, don’t let your hearts be troubled (Matthew 26:41; Mark 14:38; John 14:1).
That’s what caught my attention.
These weren’t new instructions. They were reminders.
For the past three years, Jesus had been taking them on a journey of spiritual readiness for this exact moment.
And the more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of something from my own life. When I was an older teen, my parents would go away and leave me, along with an older sibling, in charge. By that point, we had already been told many times what to do. Meals, routines, responsibilities; it all felt familiar. I always thought I was ready and well-prepared.
But looking back, what I didn’t always take seriously were those quieter instructions—the “what if something goes wrong” parts, the things meant to help prevent problems before they started.
I assumed I had it covered.
And because of that, I didn’t always listen as carefully as I should have.
In a small way, I can see that same pattern in the disciples.
Jesus had not hidden what was coming. On more than one occasion, He told them plainly that He would suffer and die (Matthew 16:21; Mark 9:31). Yet when He spoke about it, they struggled to understand or even avoided engaging with it (Mark 9:32). It didn’t fit what they expected.
They heard—but they heard only what fit their expectations.
So when the moment came, they weren’t ready.
They slept instead of watching (Matthew 26:40–41).
They scattered instead of standing (Matthew 26:56).
They struggled instead of praying (Luke 22:45–46).
Not because they hadn’t been told, but because they hadn’t fully taken in what they had been told.
And that lands a little closer to home than I’d like. Spiritual readiness isn’t all about getting the best training, it’s about obedience, it’s about actually living it out.
I have to admit, there have been times when I was almost too familiar with the words of Jesus and missed their weight. It would be foolish for me to assume I’m prepared simply because I’ve heard something more than a few times before. It’s not enough to recognize the instructions. I have to actually follow them.
But Jesus wasn’t just repeating Himself that night. He was calling them back to what He had already been teaching all along: to watch (Matthew 24:42), to pray continually (Luke 18:1), to stay alert (Mark 13:33).
Not as emergency measures, but as a way of life.
Because the real issue wasn’t a lack of information. It was a lack of practiced readiness.
Preparation isn’t about learning something new in the moment of crisis. It’s about what has already been formed in us beforehand. It’s about whether we’ve been paying attention to the parts that didn’t feel immediately relevant—the parts that didn’t match the narrative we created, when all along it has been about God’s story.
Because when things do go wrong—and they will—it’s not the assumption that we know what to do that carries us through.
It’s whether we have actually been living what Jesus has already been teaching us, long before the moment comes, that matters most.
Until next time,
©2026 Katherine Walden
