Luke 22:39-46 Fighting in Prayer Produces Strength in Life.

INTRO: E.M. Bounds on Prayer said “Prayer blesses all things . . . How much is the bitter of life sweetened by prayer! How are the feeble made strong! Sickness flees before the health of prayer. Doubts, misgivings, and trembling fears retire before prayer. Wisdom, knowledge, holiness, and heaven are at the command of prayer. Nothing is outside of prayer. It has the power to gain all things in the provision of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

A. You Have To Fight. v.39

NOTE: The first thing and the last thing Luke records Jesus saying to His disciples is “pray that you may not enter into temptation.

1. Jesus is about to leave these guys on their own. They would be challenged on this night like never before. A guys ear would get cut off, Jesus would be arrested, they would all be scattered, and then there is the dreadful sound of a rooster crowing after Peter had denied Jesus 3 times.

2. Making right choices, mastering relationships, not being selfish, controlling anger, and overcoming sin in general doesn’t happen naturally for us and it won’t be a way of life if we are not finding ourselves Fighting in Prayer.

NOTE: The word agony in verse 44 came to mean “conflict”. first meant “a place of assembly, then a contest, and applied figuratively to life as a struggle with a prize. You realize life is a battleground in which there is a spiritual enemy who does not want your life to be strengthened or successful in living right. This enemy will grant you things of the world but they wont last, wont satisfy and lead to destruction.

TRANS: We have to Fight in prayer if we are to find strength to overcome life’s trials.

B. Lessons Learned From Jesus. v.40-44

1. Pray before the trial comes. V.40-41

NOTE: The mount of olives is a place Jesus was familiar with.

Luke 21:37 "Now during the day He was teaching in the temple, but at evening He would go out and spend the night on the mount that is called Olivet."

Jesus modeled prayer as a way of life, not a want to or even a natural thing but essential and intentional. Prayer is the preparation before the recital, the game, the test. Prayer develops our dependence on God strengthened by His presence to handle whatever life throws at us.

2. Make time alone with God.

ILLUST: Jesus taught us Matthew 6:6 “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”

NOTE: Most conversations with God are just you and Him. I mean, It never hurts to ask others, even Jesus asked his disciples to pray. You may be blessed to have others fighting with you in prayer about a trial in your life but be determined that if no one else fights with you, you will fight alone.

3. Always search for the will of the Father not your own. V.42

NOTE: 1 John 5:14-15 “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.”

ILLUST: Cutting our tree down before it fell on someone was the will of the Father but we didn’t have the money. So I began to ask. one year later my neighbor had a friend owed him by a tree company and requested that tree to be cut down. 4 months later the tree crew came and the tree is now down with no cost to us.

NOTE: Does God want you addicted to a substance? Does God want you angry all the time or to live in anxiety and fear? does He want you abusing people and manipulating people to get what you want? If you begin to fight in prayer and talk to Him about it, He will bring strength and victory.

4. We are Divinely Strengthened Through Prayer. V.43

NOTE: Some have said this is an addition possibly because scholars have a hard time believing that Jesus needed angels to minister to Him and strengthen Him. However Angels ministered to Jesus after His temptation Matthew 4:11.

ILLUST: In our physical bodies God has chosen to dispatch His spiritual forces to our rescue and our help. We know that Jesus laid down His divine and Godly attributes in order to be flesh which is why it wold make sense that in His body he would need strengthened as well.

Hebrews 1:14 "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?"

ILLUST: Daniel 9:20-23 The Angel Gabriel is dispatched to bring a message and in Daniel 10:10-14 A spiritual being comes and says he was held up by the “prince of the Kingdom of Persia for 21 days. . .”

So do not forget that it is in prayer, searching God’s mind and heart that we fight and prepare for the trials of life and in that place we are Divinely strengthened by God’s army.

Which brings me to the last lesson.

4. Prayer is a spiritual battle. V.44

ILLUST: Paul says in Ephesians 6:10-18 That “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. . .”

NOTE: Jesus was in a conflict in that garden. Matthew and Mark both say Jesus was “distressed and troubled” and Jesus Himself said in Mark 14:33-34 "My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; . . ."

ILLUST: You are going to deal with spiritual forces one way or another that will try and wreck your world. You also will make decisions that will wreck your world and others will make decisions to wreck your world.

wake up one day and wonder “who raised those kids”

“thats not the person I married”

“Why me God?” when tragedy strikes.

Jesus was fighting in prayer so fervently, “like drops of blood” was his sweat. because He knew trouble was coming.

Jesus spent His life alone with the Father, He spent his life seeking His Fathers will, He knew that without Strength from on high, without Divine power to fight other divine powers,

He would not be able to love 12 messed up guys, speak truth,

treat people right, heal the sick, to raise the dead, and now to face death for all of creation and carry the weight of our sin.

CLOSE:Fighting in Prayer is where we find divine strength and intimate wisdom before the day or trial ever shows up preparing us to live in full dependence on Him so that we can live victorious lives no matter what the situation.

You have to learn to fight in Prayer because it is prayer that produces Strength to live life.

C. Quick thought on Sleepiness in Prayer V.45-46

NOTE: These guys were asleep Luke says from “sorrow”. They were feeling the impact, Jesus was stressed and they were getting worn out from all the pressure.

1. Follow lesson 1 from Jesus Pray before the rials come. Learn to practice time alone with God.

2. Stress and other distraction make us too tired to fight in prayer.

Give God the best times of your day not the last or worst. Don’t sit and watch T.V. Until 11:30 and then go up to bed try to pray and say I fall asleep. When you sense stress or busyness coming on thats when you know I have to be intentional about giving God QUALITY time in my life.

3. Recognize you are in a spiritual fight for your soul and the souls of others and that everything you do in life has the potential to bring glory to God and destruction to the enemy of our souls. and then you intentional find time to train with God, get into His word, meditate on His word, talk to Him about things that are on your heart and let Him speak to your soul about things on His heart and know that there is no sleepiness in there but only DIVINE STRENGTH TO HELP YOU LIVE VICTORIOUSLY!