0
0
The call came on a Tuesday. Or the test results, or the conversation that ended the marriage, or the week the work dried up and the car died and your mother got her diagnosis. Whatever it was, it is now three weeks later. The reading plan on your nightstand is still open to day four. You have not prayed in any way you would call praying. You get in the shower and the thought arrives with the water: whatever I had going with God, I lost it exactly when I needed it most.
There is a sentence from the last meal Jesus ever ate that puts a different number on that season. He was hours from being arrested, sitting with eleven men who were about to scatter, and He told them what He thought they had done with their three years together. It was not that they had understood Him. It was not that they had kept anything up.
The One Line He Used to Sum Up Three Years
Luke puts it in the middle of the Passover meal, in a room where nobody yet knows how the night ends:
“Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations.” (Luke 22:28, KJV)
Sit with what is missing. There is no word about how well they had grasped the teaching. Nothing about their courage, their praying, their consistency, or their track record. Jesus has one line to describe what these men had been to Him, and the whole line rests on a single idea: they stayed near Him while it was hard.
Then notice whose hard times He means. My temptations. He is describing His own three years as a run of difficulty, and He is doing it on the worst night of it. The person you are trying to walk with through your hard season is not standing outside the category, offering advice into it.
“Continued” Is Doing More Work Than It Looks
Two words in that sentence are worth opening up, because the English has aged in ways that hide them.
“Continued” is one Greek word, diamemenekotes, from diameno. The lexicon builds it from dia, through, and meno, to abide, and gives its plain sense as to remain or continue or endure. The interlinear renders it simply “having remained.” Not having excelled. Not having followed well. Having remained.
“Temptations” is peirasmois, the word the same interlinear renders “trials.” The King James word sends a modern reader toward being tempted to sin, which is not what is in view here. Jesus is talking about ordeals, the things that came at Him.
Put together, the sentence reads close to this: you are the ones who remained through, with me, in my trials. There is no performance in it anywhere. It is a sentence about proximity over time.
Four Verses Earlier, They Were Arguing About Who Was Most Important
This is the part that changes what the commendation is worth, and it is sitting right there in the same conversation. Back up four verses from Luke 22:28:
“And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.” (Luke 22:24, KJV)
At that table. On that night. Jesus answers them about the kings of the Gentiles, and tells them “I am among you as he that serveth” (Luke 22:27). And then, with the squabble barely cold, He says: you are the ones who have remained with me in my trials.
He credited their staying in the same breath as their worst behaviour of the evening. That matters enormously if you are in a hard season, because a hard season tends to make people worse company. You are short with the people you love. You are absorbed in your own situation. You are not generous, not patient, not much use to anyone. None of that is news to Jesus, and in Luke it is not the thing He is counting.
He Said It Knowing What the Next Six Hours Held
Keep reading in the same conversation and it gets sharper. Three verses on, Jesus turns to Peter:
“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” (Luke 22:31-32, KJV)
Peter answers like a man who means it: “Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death” (Luke 22:33). Jesus tells him he will deny knowing Him three times before the rooster crows.
So the commendation in verse 28 was not handed out by someone with an incomplete picture. Jesus said “you have remained with me” to a room He knew was going to empty before morning, including the one man He names. And He did not take it back or add a condition to it. What they had done over three years was not cancelled by what they were about to do in one night. We looked at where He arranged to meet them afterwards in walking with Jesus again after time away, so it is enough here to say the appointment was already made.
What That Changes About the Season You Are In
Most people in a hard stretch are quietly grading themselves on output. Chapters read. Minutes prayed. Whether anything was felt while praying. By that scorecard a grieving month is a failed month, and the natural conclusion is the one you reached in the shower.
Luke 22:28 is measuring something else entirely. It asks whether you are still here, still turning toward Him, still in the room. That is a question you can honestly answer yes to in a terrible week, which is exactly why it is the one Jesus used.
So here is what tomorrow can look like. You stop opening the app to see how many days behind you are, because the number is not measuring the thing that counts. You keep the contact small and real instead: a few verses, a sentence said out loud in the car, the thing you can actually manage today rather than the thing you managed in a better month. If the problem is that none of it currently feels like anything, that is its own experience and the Gospels are oddly honest about it, which we worked through in how to follow Jesus when you do not feel anything.
One thing this passage does not do is promise that the hard thing lifts. Jesus said these words on His way to the cross, not on His way out of trouble, and the men He said them to were walking into the worst night of their lives. The promise in the sentence is about company, not about rescue from the circumstance. If you are in a season you cannot fix, how to get through a hard season of life you cannot fix stays with that honestly.
When You Cannot Do Much, Pick the Form That Survives
There is a practical problem underneath all of this, and it is not a spiritual failing. Grief and stress take your concentration. Sitting down to read a chapter of the Bible genuinely does not work in some weeks, because the words go past you and you reach the bottom of the page having absorbed nothing. The answer is not to try harder at the form that is not working. It is to pick a form that survives a bad week.
That is what 30 Days Walking with Jesus is built to do. It walks through the life of Jesus one day at a time, a beginner-friendly reading plan through the Gospels, and each day takes under 10 minutes. It comes with 30 short devotional videos, each under 60 seconds, which is about the length of attention a hard day leaves you. There are 30 full-chapter audio readings, so the Gospel can come at you while you are driving to the hospital or lying on the sofa with the lights off. There is a complete PDF study guide with journal prompts, and 5 quick-reference scripture guides for when you need to find something fast.
It is free. No payment, no card required, no upsell, and it is yours to keep on any device. We made it free because the words of Jesus should not sit behind a paywall, and least of all for someone in the middle of the worst year they have had.
You do not have to walk well through this. In Luke, He counted the staying.
Questions People Are Asking
Q: How do I keep walking with Jesus through hard times when I cannot focus enough to read or pray?
A: Change the form rather than the commitment. Concentration is one of the first things grief and stress take, so a chapter of reading can genuinely stop working for a while. Short audio, a few verses, or one sentence said out loud in the car all keep the contact real when a long sitting does not. In Luke 22:28 Jesus described three years with His disciples as “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations” (KJV), which is a measure of staying near rather than of output. The free 30 Days Walking with Jesus plan is built in small pieces for this reason: under 10 minutes a day, with 30 under-60-second videos and 30 full-chapter audio readings you can listen to instead of read.
Q: Does Jesus understand suffering, or only watch it?
A: In Luke 22:28 Jesus refers to His own three years of ministry as “my temptations.” The Greek word there is peirasmois, which an interlinear renders “trials,” meaning ordeals that came at Him rather than enticements to sin. He said it on the night He was arrested. So in His own summary of His life, difficulty was the setting, not an interruption to it.
Q: Did I lose my faith because I stopped my Bible reading plan during a crisis?
A: A broken streak and a lost faith are not the same thing, and Luke 22 keeps them apart. Four verses before Jesus commends His disciples for remaining with Him, Luke 22:24 records “a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest” (KJV), and a few verses later Jesus tells Peter he will deny knowing Him before dawn. The commendation was given anyway and was not withdrawn. Picking the plan back up where you are, rather than starting over to make up for the gap, is the practical next step.
Q: What does the Bible say about staying close to God when life falls apart?
A: One direct answer is Jesus’ own words at the Last Supper in Luke 22:28, where the thing He names about His closest followers is that they remained with Him through His trials. The word behind “continued” is diameno, built from dia, through, and meno, to abide, and the lexicon gives its sense as to remain or endure. It is worth noticing what the passage does not promise: Jesus spoke those words on the way to the cross, so the assurance in them is about company through the hard thing rather than removal of it.
