Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Stay Awake! | The Gospels | Mark 13

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Have you grown spiritually drowsy? Could comfort or distraction be pulling you off course? How do we stay faithful when the timeline is uncertain? In today’s episode, Jeff explores how Mark 13 reminds us that Jesus is coming again and calls us to live awake, guarded, and dependent on him.  Read the Bible with us in 2026! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Mark 13

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Sometimes we listen to obnoxiously loud music, or we might pinch ourselves as hard as possible, or we ingest unusual amounts of caffeine and sugar that would make our physicians squirm if they knew about it. I have a friend who's even clung to a $20 bill holding it outside of his car window to accomplish this goal. Of course, these are just some of the inventive, if not downright strange or unhealthy ways that people have tried to stay awake when their eyelids are weighed down by fatigue while driving. And while nothing can replace the wise, sensible choice of just pulling over to the side of the road to rest, our odd attempts to stay awake on the road indicate the significance of not only arriving to a destination, but arriving in a way that's safe to others and ourselves. Many say that drowsy driving is on par with the danger of drunk driving.

We need to stay awake to complete the journey and do so in a way that's faithful. Our shared need to stay awake on the driving roads of highways at interstates is obvious to most people. Yet our need to stay awake on the journey of faith is often ignored in our day-to-day lives. There's a kind of spiritual sleepiness fueled by fatigue and distracts. that can cause us to fall asleep at the wheel and veer off course. Why does spiritual drowsiness matter so much? And what would it look like to stay alert as we travel through the life of faith together? To not only make it to the destination, but arrive faithfully.

Those questions are addressed in our passage today in Mark chapter 13. In this epic chapter of Mark's gospel account, Jesus challenges us to be on guard against the impact of spiritual sleep calling us to stay awake as we travel down the road he has placed us on. As we get ready to approach God's word together, let's slow down and ask for His grace to move through this time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath and for the gift of your word. We bring before you every part of our lives in this day, our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety and our excitement, our calendars and our contingencies.

meet us in this space. Jesus help us abide in you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in Mark's gospel account. As we read your living word, may it read us and restore us to new life with you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Mark chapter 13 covers a section of Jesus's teaching as he leaves the temple with Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Olives. Hence, the nickname for this teaching, the Olivet discourse. Now, some Christians view this as a purely historical teaching in Mark 13 about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. Others see a future-oriented nature in this teaching about Jesus and his return when he comes to restore all things. things. And still, others believe Jesus is talking about the historical destruction of the temple in 70 AD, yet doing so in a way that serves as a type or a preview of the final judgment when he

returns one day to make all things new. Now, if you want to dig into those views a little bit more, I'd encourage you to read and discuss all of that with a community of other people who follow Jesus, and you might even consider using a good study Bible along the way. The one thing that is clear from this passage from this teaching is that Jesus is coming back to make all things new. Jesus summarizes this truth in verses 26 through 27, and then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory, and then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. Now, it's interesting talking about the return of the Son of Man, how so many people bend over backwards with mental and biblical gymnastics

to try to figure out exactly when this return of Jesus will happen. They read this passage from the Olivet discourse and other biblical passage, and they read them alongside the headlines of current events and try to decipher a specific timeline for Jesus' return. Now, this always strikes me as an interesting move in many other Christians as well, because Jesus himself says that such efforts to estimate timelines will be fruitless in the end. He says this in verse 32, but concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven nor the son, but only the father. Okay, so if Jesus says that we can't know something, it's always a good idea

to just take him at his word. Because the main point of the Olivet discourse isn't to confuse us or to capture our curiosity on timelines. The main point here is to catalyze our faithful. on the journey of faith together, because Jesus is keenly aware of our tendency to experience a kind of fatigue or distraction as we long for his return on this side of the new heaven and new earth. We know that Jesus has our wakefulness and our alertness in mind because of the commands included in the first part of the Olivet discourse. Amidst the challenges, the temptations, and the distractions of our world, Jesus tells his followers to be on guard. Two times in verses 5 and 23 to stay alert in such a way that we aren't able to be let astray and so that we aren't

anxious when we face opposition from others this sense of being on guard is repeated again in verse 33 yet it's amplified as it's mixed with imagery of staying awake let's pick up in verse 33 and go all the way to the end of the all of the discourse in verse 37 be on guard keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, eats with his work,

and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore, stay awake. For you do not know when the master of the house will come in the evening or at midnight or in the rooster crows or in the morning, lest he comes suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you, I say to all. stay awake. Okay, we can't help but notice the repeated command here to stay awake. It's emphatic, especially in light of the earlier commands to be on guard. Jesus knows that his followers will be

prone to a kind of spiritual sleepiness that might cause them to veer off course. So he calls us to pay attention to where he's taking us, to stay awake and finish the journey faithfully. Now, here's the tricky bit for a lot of us. We might think we're staying awake when really we're falling asleep at the wheel. In fact, it's possible to appear as alert and active as ever, but at the same time to have your guard down and be drifting into a kind of distracted slumber. Are there any signs that your eyelids are heavy with the fatigue of spiritual sleepiness? It might be a certain secret sin pattern that you have learned to hide over the years. And therefore, you've made a polite agreement with yourself that it's one thing that can stay under wraps until the journey is finished.

But what you don't realize is that your guard is down and that this sin could take you off the road if it's never brought to the light in a community of grace. This sounds counterintuitive, but spiritual sleepiness might even look like a high-level spiritual activity in functioning that's devoid of any real heart connection to Jesus or his body, the church. In our day and age where busyness is the ultimate flex, there's a chance that our incessant and overfilled schedules are actually lulling us to sleep, keeping us from the things that matter most. If your pace of life has kept you from having a vulnerable conversation with someone,

kept you from serving someone, or kept you from slowing down enough to just be with Jesus, in a community of faith, there's a chance that you're falling asleep at the wheel. It's possible to be full of busyness, yet be spiritually bedridden. Of course, none of this is meant to be a guilt trip. It's meant to be a wake-up call from Jesus.

It's certainly a wake-up call for me in this season of life. And here's the really freeing truth. This is not a call to find some kind of inner strength that allows us to stay awake. The whole point here is to stay awake. because Jesus is steadfast. He is the one who died and rose again for us. He is the one who reigns over all things now and will return to make all things new forever. In Christianity, staying awake is not a tactic that we employ with our strength. It's a truth we embrace in God's strength,

a truth we embrace together. If you look back over this passage, the commands to be on guard and stay awake are all plural. It's not an individual sport that Jesus is talking about here. We are called to be on guard and stay awake together. Just like one of the best ways to fight fatigue in a car is to have a companion with you. The best way to stay awake on the road of faith is to have your companions right there with you, to have your people who help you stay on guard and stay awake. Here's the thing. You need those other people to stay awake. And at the same time, under God's sovereign grace, they need you as well. So I wonder, is there someone you can call this week or ask out to coffee or a meal or someone

you can go on a walk with, even if it's just in your parking lot at the office, someone that God might be placing in your life to help you slowly build that community, to stay on guard and stay awake together? Whoever you are and wherever you are, let all of that discourse encourage you to take a little step in the direction of connection. Be on guard together because the journey is hard. Stay awake together because Jesus is steadfast and he's returning. His faithfulness will not only take us to the journey's end, his faithfulness will be the thing that causes us to finish faithfully with him. God, we ask that you take us further in the direction of connection so that we can be on guard

and stay awake, traveling down this road you've placed. us on. We ask this because of your grace, for your glory, and in your story. In Jesus' name, amen.