Prayerful like Jesus

Bible passage: Mark 1:32-38

Last week Phil Jump spoke prophetically into our church situation. What kind of church we should be. Should be more concerned about the love among us that the activities we put on.

"hallmarks of our church will be measured against the kind of person Jesus was"….

Take qualities of Jesus – all that marked out his life – and see how we can apply that to our lives as individuals and as a church.

Not so much what Jesus did as the kind of person he was – though as he said "by their fruits you will know them" and so we do have to look at the things Jesus did as evidence of what he was like.

Lots of biographical things we don't know about Jesus. Don't know exactly when he was born or died. Don't know what he looked like at all – except by knowing very generally what people looked like at that time and place.

But we do know what kind of person he was, and when people through the last two thousand years have got to know what Jesus was like, millions of people have said: I want to be like that – if there's one person who's life I'd like to emulate it's the life of Jesus.

Start the series by looking at Jesus the prayerful person. Jesus was man of prayer.

I don't find prayer easy. I'm active by nature – a doing person, and I'm not naturally predisposed to find time to pray. But Jesus teaches me that the life of faith is based on prayer.

Look at three passages, examples of Jesus in prayer see what we can learn about being like Jesus in our prayer life.

1. Mark 1
35Very 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. 36Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you”. 38Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39So he travelled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

We know Jesus had a regular pattern of prayer which meant that he put spending time with God above spending time with other people.

Jesus was superstar of his day – the crowds loved him. Not just the religious people – in fact most of them didn't like him at all – but ordinary people wanted to be with him. Most of the time he wanted to be with them. Once or twice the disciples tried to act as bouncer and keep people from seeing Jesus, but when they did Jesus usually told them to let the people see him.

Spoke to someone this week who is seen by many Christians as a superstar – though I know he doesn't see it like that. There's an Alpha Conference in Widnes this week, being led by Nicky Gumbel. If you've seen the Alpha videos you'll feel as if you know Nicky Gumbel, and millions of people have seen the videos – Alpha has now been done in one form or another by ten million people.

Wanted to speak to Nicky to get him to talk about Alpha on Daybreak – hoping to see him  again next week when he comes to the conference and have a good long time to interview him for next week.

Anyway it didn't prove easy to get to Nicky Gumbel – his church HTB has a whole department of press officers whose job seems to be to make it as difficult as possible to interview him – in person or even on the phone.

Jesus was public property – didn't have press officers and wouldn't have wanted them.

But he still found time to pray. I can easily say I'm too busy to pray – but if anyone was busy it was Jesus – but he still found the time. Not just to say a quick arrow prayer but to get away on his own, early in the morning if necessary and find time just to be alone with his father.

We aren't told he did it every morning but as you read the gospel you read again and again that Jesus spent time alone in prayer, feeding in his spirit on his relationship with his Father so that he could do what he did.

When Simon found him he said: "Everyone's looking for you" – hear his frustration and indignation – "where have you been?"

But Jesus just says "Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." And then they set off on a new stage of the ministry – travelling all over  Galilee, preaching and driving out demons.

It was because he'd made prayer a priority that he was able to see clearly where his new priorities were – what God wanted him to do next. Sometimes we can be too busy to hear God and then we lose our sense of direction – we don't know where God wants us to go.

To be like Jesus in the way we live is to make personal prayer a priority.
2. Mark 6 – after feeding 5,000
45Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.
47When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land.

Jesus had been in the spotlight again – feeding the 5,000. What he did that day was one of his most significant miracles, changes the way people saw him. If life had been hectic up to then, it just became more so. And now people saw him as a meal ticket – stick with him and you could have an easy life, just sit around and Jesus will feed you.

Jesus knew human emotions and he must have known the danger of the way people felt about him – didn't want the crowds thinking like that. He'd said come and lay down your burdens but now people were starting to choose dependence rather than discipleship.

So he went up a mountain to pray, and stayed there to get things talked through with God.

Ironic notice on a church notice-board said "why pray when you can send all day worrying?". Jesus knew how to turn his worries into prayers, and if we're going to be Christ-like we need to develop the habit of taking our concerns to him in prayer.

3. Matt 26
36Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
40Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”
42He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
43When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.

For Jesus prayer was about submission to the will of his father. For us prayer can be just a shopping list: God bless the family, God bring peace to the world, or yes and God look after me today. Prayer can easily just be telling God what we want him to do, how we want him to do it and when it should all be completed.

When Jesus prayer it wasn't like that his prayer was, Father, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven  - in other words Lord do it your way, Lord all I want is that this world gets to be the way you want it to be.

Jesus in Gethsemane prayed as he always prayed – Father you know what would make my life easier but do it your way – not as I will but as you will – may your will be done.

Is that the way you pray? I know the way I'm tempted to pray is more like: Lord I know you've got a lot to be getting on with but can you sort it out for me to have an easy life?!

To be like Jesus is to be submissive to the will of God. That's not to say that God wants you to be unhappy.

God says he will give us what will delight us. He's not a spoilsport. There's joke about a son who says to his overbearing mother: I've met the woman I'm going to marry. What I'm going to do is to bring home three women for you to meet and I want you to decide which one I've chosen to marry. So he bring three women home and his mother gets to know them all and when they'd all left he said, so which one do you think I've chosen to get married to? She says, it must be the redhead. That's right he said, how did you know, to which the mother replies, "I didn't like her".

But God isn't like that. He loves us and gives us good things. But Jesus knew in prayer that God doesn't the starting point of knowing God's good things is submission to his will.

To be like Jesus is to be prayerful: to pray regularly, to pray through the hard times and to pray submitting to his will.