PPPPrayer

So if you look at your program, I didn’t make a typo on the bulletin, I purposefully put 4 P in the word prayer.

Prayers are something very special. It’s our way to communicate with God directly. Now I can see some of you sitting there and you are thinking, “Major, I can’t pray, I don’t know what to say...” Well, let me give you some examples of prayers,

Dear God, please make my parents understand that if I don’t eat salad, I do better at school.

Dear God, I need you to make my mom not allergic to cats. I really want a cat and I really don’t want to ask my mom to move out.

Dear God, my Mom tells me that you have a reason for everything on Earth, so I guess broccoli is one of your great mysteries...

Dear God, can you get me a smartphone, Santa must have forgotten.

and finally, my favorite,

5. Dear God, I hope my dog is with you in Heaven, please take care of him… sorry if he chews on your sandals.

Okay so those were some humors prayers, but to be honest, we all need as much help as we can get to pray. Our text gives us much needed help through the example of Jesus. I want to point out 4 helpful things from our passage of scripture this morning.

This morning we are going to look at Prayer in the book of Mark and I want to share a few things about this book.

If you want to start reading the Bible more, start with the book of Mark. It is the shortest book of the 4 gospels, (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). To give you a little background on Mark, scholars believe that it was actually written first despite it being the second book of the New Testament. They believe that it was written between 64 and 70 AD. Mark emphasizes more of what Jesus did than what he said. If you like fast paced things, Mark is your book, Mark moves quickly from one episode in Jesus’ life and ministry to another.

Mark seeks to explain how the Jewish Messiah was rejected by His own people because he didn’t come in the way that they expected. Not as a glorious warrior-king, but as a suffering servant. By doing this, Mark grounds the gospel message in history so that the readers will know that the message they have heard is true and that the Gospel is the fulfillment of God’s promises.

Mark is a great book to read and I would encourage you to take time this week to read through it. Mark only has 16 chapters or a total of 662 verses. Now that sounds like lot but it’s a quick read I promise. But of all those 662 verses, I want to focus on just one of them this morning but before we go any further, let’s pray.

The Person who Prayed

So, like I said, of all the 662 verses in the book of Mark, I want us to focus on just one this morning. Mark 1:35 “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

Believe it or not, there are some people who feel that they don’t need to pray. They feel it’s a waste of their time.

Once there was a rich man who had a son to whom he promised an annual allowance. Every year on the same day, he would give his son the entire amount. After a while, it happened that the only time the father saw his son was on the day of allowance. So the father changed his plan and only gave the son enough for the day. Then the next day the son would return. From then on, the father saw his son every day.

This is the way God deals with us, when we pray and ask for his blessings, He sends them to us daily. Shouldn’t we come to him in prayer daily? It’s doesn’t have to be these long drawn out prayers with huge theological words that are hard to pronounce. It’s a conversation between you and God. How many of you here had a conversation with a friend or loved one this morning? We all did. So you can’t use the excuse that you don’t know how to pray. When you talk to your friends, you do the same thing when you pray. The difference is that you are talking to someone that can actually make things better in your life.

So, looking back at our scripture, it says, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, He got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”. Who is the “He” in this scripture? Anyone??? Right, it’s Jesus. Now I don’t know about you but… if Jesus felt the need to pray, wouldn’t you think that it’s something important that we should do as well.

Jesus prays throughout his time here on Earth. As a matter of fact, even when He was on the cross, Jesus offered 3 prayers, “Father, forgive them...” “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” and “Father, into your hands I commit My spirit”. So you see, the first helpful thing from this is the Person who prayed…Jesus. If Jesus took time out during His activities during the day, we should also.

The Passion for Prayer.

The next helpful thing that comes from this is the “Passion for Prayer” Look at the beginning of verse 35, "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, He got up.” Now I am passionate about a lot of things, I love my Cowboys, I love my Dodgers, I love my family, I love my sleep… so getting up before the suns up may be a problem. Several times it is mentioned that Jesus got up while it was still early. He knew the importance of starting off each day talking to his Father. We should do the same. Prayer was so important to Jesus that he put forth great effort to do it. I saw a saying about prayer, “If you are unwilling to put out energy for prayer, you will not do much praying.” And as the other saying goes, “7 days without prayer makes one weak - spelled W E A K.” We put out energy and great effort in many areas of our life, but we seldom put out much effort in spiritual matters. Maybe that explains why we are so spiritually deficient much of the time. One of my favorite sayings goes like this, “If you have any long standing problems, try kneeling”. Let that sink in for a minute. You can search the internet, you will find so many good quotes about prayer, “It’s better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without heart”. One powerful prayer came from Martin Luther King Jr., he said, “Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”

Could you imagine what would happen if we all took that prayer and prayed it daily. Asking God to use us for a purpose greater than ourselves? So we must make prayer a priority in our daily life, not just on Sunday’s but on every day that ends with the letter “Y”. The third help is

The Priority of Prayer

Why should we make prayer a priority in our life? Well for starters, by making prayer a high priority in his life, Jesus was able to maintain constant communion with His Father and draw on God’s wisdom, guidance and power to fulfill His mission here on Earth. Another reason that we should make prayer a priority is because it helps us develop a personal relationship with God. Take a minute and think about your best friend in the whole world. Why are they your best friend? Do you enjoy talking to them? Isn’t that how you became good friends, by talking and getting to know each other? I know that is how it happened for Major Monica and me. I kept trying to talk to her to get to know her until she finally gave in and started talk to me. As a result, we became best friends. That’s how it is with God, the more we talk to Him the more we get to know Him. This can only be accomplished by talking “praying” to God.

The final helpful thing that we can get from this passage is this...

The Place of Prayer

We can pray anywhere can’t we, while we are sitting at the table, while we are walking outside, while we are walking on a treadmill inside, while we are driving (don’t close your eyes). We can pray when we are alone, we can pray when we are in a group, we can pray anywhere!

Here is the thing, in verse 35 it says that Jesus “… went off to a solitary place to pray”. I don’t want you to miss the importance of this part of the scripture. The fact that it states a “solitary place” tells us the importance that Jesus put on being in a private place to pray. The reason for this is so that there are no distractions while you pray. How many times have you been praying and something happens that distracts you? I know it’s happened to me, if you have a private place to pray it helps to reduce or eliminate the distractions so you can focus on speaking with God and listening for His voice. The important thing to remember about all of this is that you must “want” to spend time in prayer with the Lord. How many of you have something weighing on your heart or mind this morning? I do. I just a moment, we are going to spend just a few moments in prayer. It can be for whatever is on your heart, a loved one, someone that is sick, whatever God has laid on your heart this morning. Before the music plays this morning, I want you to clear your mind of all distractions. Don’t think about what you’re going to do for lunch, or what you are going to watch when you get home. I want you to spend a few moments in quite prayer, just a conversation between you and God. I want you to lay before him all of your concerns and then be still for just a moment and let God speak to you and truly listen for his voice this morning. Let’s Pray. (Play Hush Now)