“Bible prayers: Jesus prays”
Mark 1:35
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Five years ago, back in April of 2018, during the Commonwealth Games on the eastern coast of Australia, a youth pastor by the name of Ben Thompson had an idea. Seeing as how literally thousands of people would be coming to their city for the games, what would be the best way to share God’s love? That’s when he got the idea of a prayer chain.
So what’s a prayer chain? Normally, it’s a network of people who message each other by phone calls, emails, or texts, to pray for one another’s needs. But in this case, the words “prayer chain” became literal.
You see, he asked people to write down a prayer request--a real-live, heartfelt prayer to God--on a wrist-band, so his youth could link them all together into a giant chain, and then roll that chain onto large wooden reels.
So that’s exactly what they did! And let me tell you, just as soon as word got out via Youtube and Facebook, those wrist-band prayer-requests started pouring in.
So what were people praying for? In the words of Pastor Thompson, “People who want children are praying for children. People who have children are praying for wisdom and balance. People are praying for evil-doers, murderers, and worse, and for the victims of that. They’re praying for schools and for churches.” And he said, “It is far broader and deeper than I ever would have imagined.”
He said, “When one lady saw us coming from a distance, I sat down across from her and said, ‘How can I pray for you?’ And as tears welled up in her eyes, she asked me to pray for her daughter and for her husband who had left after nineteen years of marriage.”
As another put it, “Prayer is the grease that keeps the gears and wheels of life in good working order,” “Prayer is like the needle on a compass, that’s restless until it turns toward the pole,” and “Prayer is the perfect therapy for our tense, knotted, and stressed spirits.”
And it’s free! We can take a moment for a quick spiritual “rubdown” in the form of a silent prayer anytime and anywhere we want throughout the day.
And that’s just the way it ought to be! After all, when we get hungry, we eat. When we get thirsty, we drink. When we get tired, we sleep. And in the same way our bodies need to recharge, so do our souls. And what better way to refresh and recharge than to pray?
As Martin Luther once said, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” And he said, “I have so much to do today, that I will need to spend the first three hours in prayer in order to get it all done.”
And we should pray, for there are needs which only prayer can meet. There are problems that only prayer can prevent. There are hurts that only prayer can heal. There are battles that only prayer can win. There are atmospheres that only prayer can create. And there are souls that only prayer can reach.
And as prayer is so important to us, it was important to Jesus too. In fact, not only did He pray, He was constant in prayer. He prayed about who would be His twelve disciples. He prayed to multiply food when He fed the thousands. He prayed to show that He was the resurrection and the life when He raised Lazarus up from the dead. In Gethsemane, He prayed to do His Father’s will. And even while dying on the cross, He prayed “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
And here in the words of Mark chapter 1, He prays once more. I’ll start at verse 29: “And immediately He left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told Him about her. And He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
“That evening at sundown they brought to Him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And He healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And He would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew Him” (Mark 1:29-34).
The book of Mark chapter 1 takes us to the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry on earth. Just as soon as He was baptized by John in the Jordan and tempted by Satan in the wilderness, He went to live for a time in a little fishing village on the coast of the Sea of Galilee called Capernaum. It’s where He chose His first disciples--Peter and Andrew, and James and John--and where He healed the sick and those who were possessed by demons.
Now I don’t know what you were doing last night, but imagine if, at the end of a really, really long, busy day, the doorbell rings. And when you open the door, you’re surprised to find that every sick and demon possessed person in the city just showed up at your door, and they’re crying out to you for help. And you’re the only one who can do anything to help them!
And that was how Jesus spent His night. For all practical purposes, He was the only doctor working at a downtown emergency room on one of the absolute busiest days of the year.
Hour after hour, he listened to, touched, and healed all kinds of people with all kinds of illnesses and injuries, all the while dealing with demon possessed people who shrieked into the night.
And he was tired. Absolutely tired. Bone tired. It was a long, hard, difficult, completely exhausting night.
Now I know you’re busy. There are days that you, as they say, “meet yourself coming and going.”
And when you have those days, what do you do? Do you shut down, catch your breath, turn off your phone, and take time for a little personal time, a little “R and R”?
Let me tell you what Jesus did. Verse 35: “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, He departed and went out to a desolate place, and there He prayed” (Mark 1:35).
Let’s look a little closer at the text, because it’s important.
Though many translations say “very early in the morning” or “first thing in the morning,” the original language doesn’t use the word “morning” at all. Instead, Mark used the word “night.”
So instead of translating it as “very early in the morning” or “in the early morning,” it’s far better to translate it as “while it was still very dark” or “while it was still night.”
Sometime in the middle of the night, somewhere between 3 o’clock and 6 o’clock, long before anyone else was up, Jesus got up and went out to a place far from the lights of the city and the noise of the crowd. Why? Just so He could be alone with His Father and pray.
Now I’m not a Stephen King fan. His genre isn’t exactly my “cup of tea.” But a little over ten years ago, he wrote a book we can learn from, one he called On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
And in that book, he talked about the importance, if you want to be a successful writer, of having a place where you’re not distracted by anything, where you can be all alone.
This is what he said: “If possible, there should be no telephone in your writing room, and certainly no TV or video games for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall. For any writer, but for the beginning writer in particular, it’s wise to eliminate every possible distraction.” And he said, “But you need the room, you need the door, and you need the determination to shut the door.”
And that’s just what Jesus did. Long before anyone else was up, far from the noise of the city and the distraction of the crowd, He got up to be alone with His Father to pray.
Then what? Well, let’s just say that things didn’t go as well as He had planned. You see, sometime after He got up, Peter and Andrew, James and John got up too. And just as soon as they searched for Him, they found Him and said, “Everyone is looking for You” (Mark 1:37).
Let’s stop there once more. “Everyone is looking for You,” they said.
Do you see the problem? They wanted to plan the daily schedule according to what the people wanted Him to do, rather than what the Father wanted Him to do.
So what did the Father want Him to do? He told us in verse 38. He said, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out” (Mark 1:38). And as the Bible says, “He went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons” (Mark 1:39).
A little over eighty years ago, a woman by the name of Grace Naessens wrote this: “I woke up early one morning and rushed right into the day; I had so much to accomplish that I didn’t have time to pray.
“Problems just tumbled around me and heavier came each task; I wondered, ‘Why doesn’t God help me?’ He answered, ‘You didn’t ask.’
“I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on gray and bleak; I wondered why God didn’t show me. He said, ‘But you didn’t seek.’
“I tried to come into God’s presence; I used all my keys at the lock. God gently and lovingly reminded, ‘My child, you didn’t knock.’
“I woke up early this morning, and paused before entering the day; I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray.”
Born in 1890, Christiana Tsai was the eighteenth of twenty-four children of the vice-governor of the Jiangsu Province in China. And since her father held such an important position in the province, she lived a life of luxury and wealth.
But she was a sad and serious girl, so she thought about becoming a Buddhist nun instead.
But she was also fascinated by the English language, so she enrolled in a Christian missionary school, determined to learn the language, but to close her mind and her heart to the gospel.
Until one day, a visiting American pastor came to preach. And eager to listen to his English, she attended the service and she heard his message, Christ, the Light of the World. And wonder of wonders, she believed!
When her family learned that she had become a Christian, they refused to let her return to school, and pressured her to turn from the faith of, what they called, the “foreign devils.” Finally, since she would not stop reading her Bible, her family sent her back to school, just to get her out of the house.
Then in 1930, she contracted a devastating case of malaria. And after suffering from middle-ear damage, she had no choice but to spend day after day in a darkened room, doing all she could to avoid sound and light.
Finally, at the age of fifty-nine, she came to live here in the United States, in Paradise, Pennsylvania. And it’s there that she wrote a book called Queen of the Dark Chamber.
This is what she said: “Throughout my many years of illness, I have never asked God why He allowed me to suffer so long, I only asked what He wants me to do.” And she said, “There is not a day that I have not prayed for China, my homeland, and the millions there who need Christ.”
As Joseph Scriven once said, “Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged--take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our ev’ry weakness--take it to the Lord in prayer.”
We thank You, Father, for the power and the privilege of prayer. Help us to open our hearts and minds to You, as You reveal Your love and will for us, for Jesus’ sake. Amen