Beyond Sunday
Welcome to Beyond Sunday, the Podcast that takes you deeper into the Word of God throughout your week, with your Host Pastor Lee Day.
It's Time to Inspire, Uplift, and dig deeper. Beyond Sunday starts now!
Beyond Sunday
Pastor Lee personal message, Stay Awake
A single request echoes through the garden and into our lives today: stay awake. Not just awake on the outside, but alert in spirit—eyes open to God’s will, ears tuned in, and a heart ready to move when he says go. Pastor Lee walks through Mark 14:32–42 and the scene at Gethsemane, where Jesus asks his closest friends to watch and pray and they cannot hold the hour. From that moment, we follow a thread through Luke 18 and John 4 to see how easy it is to be physically present yet spiritually distracted, missing the very people and moments God is using to advance his kingdom.
Pastor talks about “access to excess” and how constant inputs can numb discernment. Pastor Lee contrasts a surface-level faith with a living, listening relationship that actually recognizes the Father’s work in the small and the surprising—children brought to Jesus, a Samaritan woman who brings a town, a grave about to become a testimony. Along the way, we unpack what watch-and-pray really means: a posture of alertness, humility, and dependency that turns everyday routines into assignments. Expect a pastoral, urgent, and hopeful charge to wake up with practical steps—simplifying your inputs, carving undistracted prayer, staying ready to give an answer, and making yourself available to be used any day of the week.
If you’ve felt spiritually drowsy, drifting, or overwhelmed by noise, this conversation is your alarm clock. Join us as we ask God to open our spiritual eyes and ears so we don’t miss what he’s doing right now. If this encouraged you, share it with someone who needs a wake-up call, subscribe for more conversations beyond Sunday, and leave a review to help others find the show.
What's going on, everybody? Welcome to Beyond Sunday, and I am Pastor Lee, and I pastor Christ Family Outreach Church located in Amelia, Virginia. If you've not yet come and visited with us, please, please, please do so. We have a Thursday night service that begins at 7 p.m. and our Sunday morning service begins at 10 a.m. Normally I have someone sitting with me at the table, but this episode is going to be a little bit different. Right now, it's just you, it's me, and it's the Holy Spirit of God ministering to us as we move forward throughout today's podcast. Next week, we will have a special guest on, but right now, just right now, I want to talk to you about something that's been on my heart for a little while. And if you're taking notes, I want to begin this episode by writing these two words down. Here it is. This is what's been on my heart lately. Stay awake. That's right. Stay awake. That's our theme today. So let's dive right into the deep end of the pool together. I'll be reading from Mark chapter 14, 32 through 42. And this is what the text says, my friends. And they went to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, Sit here while I pray. And he took with him Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch. And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing. Lowercase S there. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. And he came the third time and said to them, Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand. You know, we live in a society, and this is really what I wanted to come to you listeners and just kind of talk to about today. We live in a society where if we are not careful, my friends, we can be lulled to sleep. Maybe not physically, but I want to talk to you today about being lulled to sleep spiritually. We have so much, so much to do at our fingertips. We've we have so much, and listen to how I say this, we have so much access to excess. All right, I'm gonna say it again. We have so much access to excess that there is offered to us an abundance, right? An abundance of life choices that can cause us to miss the choices that really matter. I'm talking about when it's all said and done, those choices that really, really matter. You know, I just mentioned in a recent sermon that we can get so caught up in the temporary things, so caught up, we can have so much stock invested in the temporary right now things that we forget the things that really matter down the road in the eternal. So I want to break down what I just read to you from the text. Here we've got Jesus, and Jesus is going to the garden, and he's he's gonna pray. He's he's getting ready to be taken, he is getting ready to be led, to be crucified, and he finds himself going to the garden to have this prayer. And there's a lot of stress on him, there's a lot going on. He he takes the disciples with him and he gives his disciples some very simple instructions. I mean, you know, you ever you ever had somebody let you down at something and you're like, man, you had one job, right? You you had one job. And maybe you've told someone that today, maybe, maybe you told someone that last week or recently, and it's just kind of jarring a memory for you. But you had one job to do. I just asked you to do one thing, right? I just needed you to do one thing. That's all I needed you to do. Jesus just asked him to do one thing. Just pray. Sit here while I pray. I'm not I'm not asking you to do a whole lot. I just want you to sit here and I want you to pray. And then Jesus takes with him a little further. He's got Peter, James, and John. The 33rd verse lets us know that Jesus is greatly distressed and troubled because he knew what was getting ready to happen. He knew that he's getting ready to go to the cross for crucifixion. So you can see what Jesus is doing here. He's going to the Father in prayer. He's taking with him the 11 of the 12 disciples. Okay. He's taking with him those closest to him. And I'm not saying 12 for 12 because you know what's going on with Judas, right? Judas, the betrayer, he's doing his dirty deed and he's handling that business. And Judas is going to show up to the garden in just a moment, but but he's coming later than everybody else. And so you know what happens. Jesus goes away to pray. Returning, he finds the three apostles sleeping rather than praying. And again, as I mentioned earlier, it's like, hey, he hasn't asked you to do a whole lot. Just one thing. Just sit there and pray. Remember, it's not too long before this that Peter had vowed to Jesus that he would die with his Lord. He would die with Jesus if he had to. But but that's not what's happening right here, right? Here we see Peter that he can't even stay awake and keep watch with them. You know, this the same Peter that said he would go to the death with Jesus is the same Peter that can't even stay awake and keep watch with his Lord. And I'm just telling you today that that we have pastors in churches all over this world that are not remaining awake. They're not carrying the mantle that God has called them to carry. And I I don't think I'm so much condemning today as much as I am encouraging for people to wake up that have spiritually fallen asleep, right? Because it's not just the pastors that have fallen asleep. It's not just worship leaders that have fallen asleep. It's the laity, it's it's the church body that's fallen asleep all over the world, not just locally, not just in America, but all over the world. And don't get me wrong, I know there are a lot of amazing, awesome pastors out there. There are a lot of amazing anointed worship leaders out there. There are a lot of amazing uh body members, body parts in the body of Christ out there. I want to talk today to the individual that you know. You know that you know that deep down you've fallen asleep. And I hope, I hope that this episode is a charge for you. It's it's not to be here and just kind of beat you over the head. It's it's to charge you, to encourage you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to wake up. And and and the reason the church must wake up and remain awake is because we've been given a job. We've been given a job to do. Just like Jesus gave the disciples some instructions, sit here and pray. You know, when we get into the word of God, we see that there is a plethora of instructions that we as the New Testament church are to be doing. You know, we we are messengers of the message, we are ambassadors of Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior. It is our job to proclaim the gospel, and we must remain awake. The instructions Jesus gave to Peter, write this down if you're taking notes. Here it is. Here are the instructions that Jesus gave to Peter according to the text. Write this down. Watch and pray. Watch and pray. So pay close attention to what I'm about to say next. To watch and pray means to be alert and pray. To watch and pray means to be alert and pray. We all know you cannot be on the lookout if your eyelids are closed the entire time. And again, I'm not just talking about physically with Peter. I'm talking about spiritually as the church. The church cannot be on the lookout if our spiritual eyes are closed, if our spiritual ear, our inner ear, as scripture talks about, if our inner ear is not tuned into what's going on around us. But have you ever considered that some people they walk around in life with eyes wide open, physical eyes wide open, but they're still missing the mark. And maybe you've done it, you know, maybe, maybe you've just been walking, eyes wide open, you haven't been paying attention, and you run into something, you know? So along with our physical eyes, right? We need our spiritual eyes to be open because we don't want to be that type of person that walks around eyes wide open, but still bumping into things. We we we want not just physical eyes open, we want spiritual eyes and spiritual ears open. It's no different than having our physical ear and our inner ear, that spiritual ear open and tuned in to what God is speaking to us, to what God is ministering to us, to how the word of God is calling us, to how the Holy Spirit is discipling us. We've got to make ourselves, write this down, make myself readily available. I want to make myself readily available for what God Almighty has called me to do every day. Every day, my friends, not just on a Sunday, not just on a Wednesday, not just on a Thursday. I want to have myself readily available for everything that God wants in my life. I want to be ready to make impact at any moment. I want to always, as Scripture calls us to, be ready to give an answer for what we believe in. Amen. So here's what I want you to think about. How can we know the will of God if our spiritual eyes and our spiritual ears are closed off? How can we really truly know the will of God in this moment, right now, if if all of our antennas are shut down? Physically, we can be looking around, and physically we could be listening. Physically we could be tuned in, but spiritually, we could be missing it. Now, I don't want to just give you some talking points here and then move on. So, what I want to do, my friends, I want to give you some examples of this found in Scripture. I want to take you to the Word of God because anything that we go through in life, we should go to the Word of God to find examples, to support what we're talking about, because it's the Word of God putting it inside of us that causes growth. So, so so Luke chapter 18. Two verses here we're going to look at for a moment. Luke chapter 18, verses 15 and 16. And the word of God says this, my friends. Now they were bringing even infants to him, that being Jesus. Now they were bringing even infants to Jesus that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. So let's talk about that for a moment. The people, according to the text, they're bringing their children in hopes that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is going to bless them by touching them. The disciples saw it as just bringing children, and they're thinking that Jesus had bigger things to do. But how quickly Jesus corrected them for their way of thinking. They miss the heart of God, my friends. The disciples missed the heart of God in that moment. You may remember when Jesus was talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, and the disciples, they had gone away. They're coming back. They see Jesus speaking with this Samaritan woman at the well. And we find their response in John chapter 4, verse 27. And in John chapter 4, verse 27, here's the response. It says they marveled that he was talking with a woman. They literally marveled that he was talking with a woman. It wasn't just the fact that Jesus was talking to a woman. It went much deeper than that. They were blown away that Jesus was speaking with a Samaritan woman because the Samaritans and the Jews, they had nothing that they wanted to do with one another. But this lady, this lady ends up going back and she reports to everyone that she can in town about how this Jesus has told her everything, and I mean everything she had ever did. And because of it, many Samaritans came to trust Jesus Christ as Lord. So here the disciples, they pull up onto the scene. Jesus is there with the woman at the well, and the disciples, they've missed the heart of God. They've missed the heart of God. I wonder how many times, just like we see, just in these two references alone, we see the disciples miss the heart of God when it came to the children being brought to Jesus. We see the disciples miss the heart of God when it comes to Jesus speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well. They'd fallen asleep, my friends, physically, wide awake. Physically, they're there. Mentally, they're there. They think that they're on the top of their game. What is Jesus doing allowing these children to come in? What is Jesus doing speaking to this Samaritan woman? They they were not on target with the will of God. They had lost it for a moment. And I wonder how many times you and I, again, I'm just talking here. It's like I said earlier, it's it's nobody at the table right now. I'm the only one in studio right now. So it's just myself, it's you, the listener, and the Holy Spirit ministering to us. So, so so I wonder how many times you and I have missed it. We've missed the heart of God because we preconceived what we thought Jesus was trying to do with somebody. We preconceived, we had already pre-made it up the best way that we thought it could ever happen. We've already, we've already got the the pregame plan on how things are gonna go down and what God's gonna do. And then when we see it kind of contradict that or not be as close to that as what we had wanted it to be, we go get and been out of shape. Oh no, no, no, it can't be like this. No, no, let me just say this: God never makes a mistake. God never makes a mistake. And here we see Jesus telling the same disciples, he's telling them, like, hey, you guys are missing it. There's a reason I'm I'm letting these children come to me. The kingdom belongs to these children. There's a reason I'm talking to this Samaritan woman because she's gonna go back and she's gonna tell everyone. She's gonna tell everyone in that city who she met out here. And by the way, disciples, you just came back from a busy place. How many people did you tell about Jesus? How many people did you tell that Jesus was out there if they wanted to go check him out? If they wanted to go listen to what he had to teach. How many did you tell? Now, what we do know, I don't know if you've ever thought about this yet or not, but the Holy Spirit's just kind of ministering to me, even as I'm talking to you right now, recording this podcast. What we do know is that the disciples came back with themselves. This woman, this woman, she leads droves. There are droves that want to come here, what Jesus has to say. Droves. And matter of fact, they invite him to stay. I mean, many, many people get saved because of what this woman has done. She goes back into town and she says, Hey, there's this man named Jesus. He's he's told me everything that I've ever done. And because of it, because of it, my friends, many Samaritans, many, many Samaritans have come to trust Jesus Christ as Lord during that time. Or let's take it a step further. How about in John chapter 11? In John chapter 11, we see in the text that Jesus has gone to raise Lazarus from the dead. And Jesus told his disciples that Lazarus was just sleeping. And then you have Mary and Martha mourning, but Jesus is about to raise Lazarus from the dead to bring honor and glory to God the Father. In all these examples, Jesus had a greater purpose in mind than what his disciples were seeing or hearing. See, it's not that Jesus was hiding this from them, because he ends up explaining it to them when they missed a mark. It's simply because they were not tuned into the will of God. They were operating in their own feelings, they're operating in their own experiences. They've missed a mark. Physically there, spiritually, falling asleep. You see, I don't want, and I'm sure many of you do not want either, but I do not want a surface relationship with the God of heaven and earth. I'm not satisfied with just a topical surface relationship with the creator of all things good. I want to know the heart of God. I want to be tuned in to what God wants to do in my life. And I'm hoping that you do, my friend, as well. I want to be tuned in to what God wants to do in my life and how He wants to use my life. I do not, I do not want to be found spiritually asleep when God calls for me to make a move. And I don't want to be found spiritually asleep when God goes to do something and then I'm guilty of not being able to understand it because I've fallen asleep and I'm not tuned in to what he's told me to do. The third time Jesus came back and found the men sleeping in the garden. Let's get back to where we kind of began in this episode. The third time Jesus came back and found the men sleeping in the garden, instead of watching and praying, Jesus responds and says in the 41st verse, he says, It is enough. The hour has come. It is enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man, he says, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Now, Judas couldn't join him because he was too involved with his own plan. The disciples joined him in the garden, but they were too distracted by sleep. Jesus let them know of the urgency of the moment, but they just simply did not comprehend it. Jesus was left to pray all alone. And my friends, I'm just telling you, the word of God lets us know multiple times over that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of God Almighty is at hand. It literally is at stake here. It's what is at stake. The kingdom of God is at hand. And it's our job to share it and testify to it and proclaim it to all those that need to hear it. This was the greatest opportunity. I want you to think about this. This literally, this moment in the garden, this was the greatest opportunity of intercessory prayer ever recorded in history. In human history. Have you ever considered that? It is the literally the greatest opportunity of intercessory prayer ever recorded in history. And there was not one, my friends, not one person willing to go the distance with Jesus. Not one. Not one person went on to watch and pray. Not one person went on to stay awake. Oh my goodness. How would it have been if we were one of the ones in the garden? Or we can kind of get an idea, you know. I've I've I've had people tell me before, when I get to heaven, I'm gonna give Adam and Eve a piece of my mind, right? Because, you know, but but because they took of the, they took of the fruit of the tree in the garden. Now we all have to experience sin. No, no, no, no. The truth is, had it been you or myself in the garden, both of us would have messed up. That's the truth of the matter. We we can gauge that on the fact that, you know, uh we we are not going uh a month, two months, three months, a couple weeks, a week without falling short of the glory of God, right? So consider this. Had we been in the garden, we'd have probably been sleeping too. And maybe, maybe you're maybe you're spiritually asleep right now in life. Maybe you've been asleep spiritually in life. You you know what you need to do, but you're just not doing it. Would you allow God and his Holy Spirit to minister to you throughout this podcast? Would you allow the Spirit of God to be the alarm clock that this is what God uses to wake you up? Let this be the day, my friends, where you begin asking God Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, of all the universe, to open your spiritual eyes and ears, that you, my good friend, would be in tune with Him. Let's pray. Father, I'm so grateful that I believe this episode has been used as a wake-up call. I'm believing that this episode will be used by you to open the spiritual eyes and the spiritual ears to have people be tuned in to what you're doing in their lives. That Father, that this would not be condemning, that this is something that should be encouraging us. We should be excited that you give us the opportunity to wake up. You literally give us the opportunity to wake up and be part of the body, part of the family of God. Father, I love you, we love you, we praise you, and we honor you in the name and the blood of Jesus Christ, all God's people said together, my good friends, my brothers and sisters. Amen, amen, and amen. Until next time on Beyond Sunday. God bless.
