Are you too busy to pray, or too busy not to pray? /// Prayer: Part 1

Welcome to the Flum Creek Church Podcast.

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Now, before we get into the message, we want to remind you of one thing.

We really believe that if Jesus is right about God, about life, about the soul, then it only makes sense to rearrange our lives around what he says is true.

Because when you choose to follow Jesus like that, it really does change everything, including the lives around you.

Okay, let's posture our hearts for what God has in store, this message.

Woo-hoo! Busy, busy, busy.

Good.

But busy.

Let's be honest, when was the last time you asked someone how they were doing and you didn't get some variation of that answer?

Good.

But man, we're busy right now.

My name's Tommy Cummins.

I'm on the student team here at Plum Creek, and I would certainly say that that's true for my wife and I, but I guess maybe the better question is why do we tend to give that answer so often?

Maybe somehow we've been like socially programmed that that's just what we're supposed to say, or or maybe we really kind of wear busyness as a badge of honor in our culture.

Or maybe, again, we really are just collectively that busy.

Again, Mindy and I are incredibly busy right now.

We both work full-time jobs.

They're incredibly fulfilling jobs, and yet they're demanding as well.

Our kids are at the age where they're in sports right now, and and we host a home group every Tuesday night at our house of some of our favorite people on this planet, and it's such a joy, and we love it.

And yet it's one more night of the week, and so it adds to the busyness.

And then Mindy is actually in her second semester right now of getting her dual master's degree in clinical mental health counseling and school counseling from Denver Seminary.

And so you want to talk about adding to the busyness.

And in the midst of all of that, we thought it was also a really good time for me to be kind of coming to the finish line of publishing my first book.

And so, truly, you start adding all these things up, and we're like, golly, there's a lot going on right now.

So much so that I went to Mindy the other day and I was like, babe, there we've got just so many things on our plate right now.

And it's all good stuff, which makes it really hard to ask, where do we give?

How would we even start to think about where do we pull back in some ways?

And so, babe, I think it would be really helpful for me if you could just help me to know like, what's the bare minimum amount of time that I would have to spend with you so that you don't divorce me?

Okay, if you think I actually said that to my wife, come on, man.

Like, I'm I'm not an idiot.

I know that's not gonna end well for me.

We hear something like that and instinctively we recognize, like, that's ridiculous.

Of course not.

Because we know that relationships, at least healthy, flourishing relationships, they're not built on bare minimums.

And yet, if we're not careful, I think that's exactly the mode we can slip into when it comes to our relationship with God.

It's almost as if we go to God sometimes and we're like, God, I love you.

It's just I got a lot of stuff going on in my life right now.

Like, there's a bunch of things happening, and so I don't know how much of my time and energy I can sacrifice for you.

And so, like, I certainly don't want to go to hell.

So if you can like help me to know what's the bare minimum here that I have to do to make sure that doesn't happen.

Again, we would never say that.

We would never even probably overtly think that.

And yet our lives can start to reflect that if we're not careful.

And yet again, we know that relationships they're not built on bare minimums.

And it is a relationship that God is inviting us into, but we can start to treat it as if actually it's just a set of intellectual beliefs.

Because even Paul says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.

And it's true, it really is that simple.

The problem is for Paul, confessing that Jesus is Lord would automatically also mean that we are rearranging our lives as if Jesus is Lord.

And we sometimes miss that part.

For Paul, a belief that God raised him from the dead and that he is resurrected, he is God, it would go beyond just a set of intellectual agreements to something that would completely change our worldview, change the way that we live in some incredible ways.

Because again, what he is inviting us into is a relationship.

We're invited into a deep connection, a deep sense of abiding.

And this is what we see Jesus talking about in John 17, 21, he says, I pray that they will all be one.

Just as you and I are one, as you are in me, Father, and I am in you, may they be in us.

The they in this passage, by the way, is literally us.

Jesus is talking about future disciples that would be made.

And so if you're a follower of Jesus, he's talking about you in this passage.

If you're not a follower of Jesus yet, this is what he is inviting you into, that we would become one.

Again, this relationship that reflects a deep sense of connection and purpose, a deep sense of abiding.

If you've been around Plum Creek for a while, I think you would probably agree that the culture of our church started to shift a couple of years ago when collectively we went through our first guide together called Remain.

And that guide was all about how do we remain in Christ, not just like dip in every now and then on a Sunday or a Saturday for a little bit of Jesus, but that we would truly live a life of deep abiding.

Because he told us that apart from him we can do nothing.

A branch cannot produce fruit unless it is connected to the vine.

And then we doubled down on that this last year with our follow guide that continued this progression as we talked collectively for weeks about what does it mean to rearrange our lives around what Jesus said was true?

Because it only makes sense to do so if he's right.

And we talked about these practices that will help us to rearrange our lives, these spiritual formation practices that will shape us to become more like Jesus as we learn to surrender more and more.

And we're incredibly excited as we continue this very conversation with our next guide on prayer.

Because as we start to practice these things, we believe that the very first one that we should be focused on is prayer.

Because, friends, prayer is the language of abiding.

It's how we learn to actually abide in Christ.

And what I hope that collectively we start to understand is that as we go through this guide together as a church body, as we go through this series together, that we would start to recognize that we actually can experience the same kind of connection to God the Father that Jesus modeled for us if we start to adopt the practices and rhythms of prayer in the same way that Jesus modeled.

Because again, prayer is the language of abiding.

That's why Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5.17, he says, never stop praying.

Never stop.

In the ESV, it says, pray without ceasing.

That we would constantly be turning toward prayer, which again on the surface level, it's like, that sounds great, Paul, but I also have a job that I'm working right now, and I got kids to raise, and and I got a family to support, and and all of these different things that are going on in my life.

And so, how what are we supposed to just like forget all of that and like move up to the mountains and just pray together constantly?

Honestly, that kind of sounds pretty awesome on some days for me for sure.

I don't think necessarily Paul is saying, hey, just ignore everything else, but that we would do everything else with prayers constantly on our lips.

That we would constantly be speaking this language of abiding.

There was a monk, uh a Benedictine monk by the name of Brother Lawrence, who a collection of his letters became known as a book called Practicing the Presence of God.

And in these letters, he unpacks how he literally trained himself to just, when he wasn't actively talking to someone else, he was actively talking to God.

Literally.

Like he would speak out loud while he was doing the dishes, or while he was cooking lunch for the entire monastery, or while he was walking around, while he was doing his chores, he would just actively be talking out loud to God as if he was right there because he believed that God was right there.

He is with us constantly.

I'm sure that would have been a sight to behold in that day and age to see someone just talking out loud to God as if he was right there.

In our day and age, no one would bat an eye.

They would just assume you have your AirPods in and you're talking to someone else on the phone, or you got your meta glasses and you're just having a conversation.

So we could do this without anyone even thinking we're weird.

But that's what Paul's talking about, this idea of that we would never stop praying, that everything we do would come out of an overflow of this communion with God.

Pastor Craig Rochelle said it this way: He said, It's rare for me to pray very long when I pray, but it's also rare for me to go very long without praying.

I love that sentiment because I think that's what it looks like to have prayer constantly on our lips throughout our days.

To make sure that again, we're we're turning towards this language of abiding so that we can experience that kind of deep-seated connection that Jesus modeled for us.

Because ultimately that's what he wants.

Not that he wants more from us, but that he wants more for us as we learn to turn toward him more and more.

And so to see Jesus' rhythms on full display, we're gonna unpack an acronym together today.

So I would encourage you to write these things down.

And the first one is that Jesus prioritized prayer.

Jesus prioritized prayer.

In Mark 1.35, it says, Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray.

It was honestly really hard to find a singular verse to capture this because we have verses like this over and over and over again throughout scripture.

Because Jesus prioritized prayer.

He was constantly getting up early, going out onto the mountain, out into the wilderness, out to an isolated place to pray.

Which, on one hand, we can be like, well, of course Jesus was.

He was Jesus.

Of course, he can do those things.

If anything, though, it's like, wait, hold on, yeah, he was Jesus, which means he was God as well.

And yet, even for him, it was important to prioritize prayer as that central point of connection.

And even for Jesus, it cost him something to prioritize that prayer.

We see moments of Jesus getting exhausted to the point where he's like falling asleep on boats in the middle of storms.

So it's not like it didn't impact him.

And still he prioritized prayer enough to get away early in the morning.

And not only did it cost him something, though, it cost the people around him as well.

If you keep reading in verse 36, it says, Later Simon and the others went out to find him.

When they found him, they said, Everyone is looking for you.

Not only did Jesus get up early and go out to pray, but he stayed there long enough that people had to come looking for him.

It cost him something.

Can I point out this is chapter one of Mark?

This is the very beginning of Jesus' public ministry, and already people are clamoring for his attention.

Why is that?

Well, of course, it's because they could feel the power in his words as he shared the gospel.

They said that he was one that taught like no one else that they had ever experienced, which makes sense because no one else had ever experienced the word become flesh, sharing the word.

It was powerful.

Not only that, but then they're hearing these constant reports of like so many people are being healed by this guy.

And so already early on in his ministry, there are people just demanding his time and his attention.

And even still, Jesus prioritized prayer.

I have to imagine it would have been a good thing for more people to hear the gospel preached by Jesus.

It would have been a good thing for more people to be healed by Jesus, and still he prioritized prayer because he's like, No, I have to lead out of a place of overflow of this relationship with God the Father.

If that's true for Jesus, how much more important is it for us to keep that kind of connection?

What he was weighing here is what we would call an opportunity cost.

He knew that it was going to cost him something to do it, but he knew that it would cost far more to not do it.

It would cost him far more to lose this sense of connection with God the Father.

What would it look like if we tried to up our prioritization game?

If we said, hey, if if it was something Jesus prioritized, maybe I should do it as well.

And so I'm sure most of us in this room, we get woken up just about every single morning by an alarm clock.

Unless you're like a military person for a long time, you're like, nope, that internal clock's got me waking up at the same time every single day.

If that's true, maybe it's time for you to get an alarm clock and set it for like 15, 20 minutes earlier than you would normally wake up.

We can start small.

It's it's small habits that when they become a habit we can improve upon later.

But if you do have an alarm clock again, what would it look like to just set it 15, 20 minutes earlier, 30 if you want to get really wild?

So that we can get up and start our days in prayer.

If that's already part of your rhythm, what would it look like to add 30 minutes to it?

To spend more time in prayer, to get to the point where people have to come looking for you because it's like this is too important for me to not do this.

What we see Jesus modeling here is that he was unwilling to sacrifice his connection with God the Father on the altar of busyness.

And I think it's important that we would do the same thing.

What if we started our days in prayer and then we never stopped?

Just constantly throughout our days, it's gonna take some reminders to get into this habit.

But what if on our phones we put a lock screen that just said pray so that every single time we pull out our phones, we're reminded to just take a moment to pray first.

I mean, let's be honest, how many times do you touch that phone throughout the day?

What if we had that many reminders throughout our day to pray?

The younger you are, the more opportunities you're gonna have to pray now, all of a sudden.

I promise you, okay?

It's a good thing.

Just be reminded.

Or even set like a screen time limit so that when that goes off, you can always just ignore it and keep going, but at least it's a reminder to pause and pray until it becomes part of this prioritized rhythm the way that it was for Jesus.

Because here's the truth we make time for what's most important to us.

I just talked to you for a while about all the ways in which Minnie and I are so incredibly busy right now.

It feels like we barely have a spare moment.

And yet, guess what is about to happen?

The NBA postseason is upon us.

And I promise you that somehow, magically, I'm gonna find time in my week to watch a game or two here and there, right?

Because we will make time for what's important to us.

So, how do we get prayer a little higher on that prioritization list?

I think it comes down to truly and honestly asking ourselves: do we want a flourishing relationship with God?

On surface level, it's like, well, of course we do.

But do our actions reflect that?

Are we willing to sacrifice something so that it becomes the priority?

Or if we're really honest with ourselves, have we gotten into this mode where we're like, I don't know, I think I'm okay kind of doing the bare minimum here.

I don't know if I want to give up anything more for that.

And I don't ask that question to shame anyone, so please don't hear that.

It's not again that God wants more from you, it's that he wants more for you.

He is inviting you into something so much more.

If only we will learn to give him more of ourselves.

If we're gonna do that, it starts with speaking the language of abiding and prioritizing prayer.

But not only did Jesus prioritize prayer, the next thing we see here is that Jesus responded with prayer as well.

Jesus responded with prayer.

If you have your Bibles, I'd love for you to turn with me to Luke chapter 5 for this one.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

And what we're gonna see here is that Jesus heals a per uh a leper.

Uh if you've never seen a picture of someone with leprosy, it's not pretty.

Like their bodies are literally physically decaying, and yet Jesus touches this untouchable man, he heals him, and then he does something that, in my opinion, is really weird.

Because Jesus then tells him, Now don't tell anyone.

It's like, how in the world do you expect this guy not to tell everyone what just happened for him?

We see this multiple times throughout the Gospels, where Jesus is like, It's not my time yet.

I don't need the attention of the Pharisees quite yet, so don't tell anyone.

And yet in Luke 5, beginning in verse 15, it says, But despite Jesus' instructions, again, despite the instructions to not tell anyone, the report of his power spread even faster, and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases.

But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.

I don't want us to miss what's happening here.

Not only is Jesus prioritizing prayer by getting up early in the morning, but as the demands of ministry go up, so too does his intentionality to spend time in prayer.

Now he's also responding to these pressures with prayer.

As more and more people are hearing about his teaching and the power in his hands to literally heal people, the demands for his attention, his time, his presence go up even more.

But now he's not only prioritizing prayer in the morning, he's getting away in the middle of the day to pray.

He's responding to those pressures with prayer.

What would it look like if instead of when we get really, really busy?

I don't know what it looks like for you.

I'll just be honest, for me, when I get overwhelmed, my response is typically to get more controlling.

I'm like, well, I gotta focus on all these details, I gotta be the one to own this, I gotta do this like you guys just get out of my way, let me do my thing.

And I feel like God has so intentionally over the last couple of years, but especially the last few months, has been inviting me to instead of becoming more controlling when things get chaotic, to become more surrendered instead.

To turn to him more instead, the way that we see Jesus modeling this because again, if it was important for Jesus to say, Hey, actually, I'm gonna spend more time in prayer, I'm gonna spend more time connected to Jesus, what if that became our response?

As well.

That again, like Jesus, we would say we're not willing to sacrifice our connection to God on the altar of busyness.

Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, he's quoted as saying, I have so much on my plate today that I have to spend the first three hours in prayer.

Rather than letting that be crowded out, it's like, nope, I gotta prioritize this even more.

Because there's this understanding that I can do nothing, at least nothing of eternal consequence, without being deeply connected to God by speaking this language of abiding.

And it's not even just the chaos of busyness, but when like really intense moments happen as well.

I shared with our students a few weeks ago the story of my niece Emma, who when she was 18, 20 months old, something like that, she was almost two.

Um she fell out of a motorhome, an RV, and she hit her face on a concrete parking block.

Whatever amount of blood you're picturing, it's not enough.

It was awful.

It was an awful experience.

And yet, what I remember even more than the trauma of the experience is that as we are tending to my niece's wounds, as we're literally like sopping blood from her mouth, my sister was just praying out loud over her the entire time.

It was so powerful for me because I kind of recognized after the fact that her response was immediately prayer, because she had already learned to prioritize prayer in other parts of her life.

I think prayer becomes the response when we learn to prioritize it.

In many ways, these other letters of this acronym that we're unpacking are what happen when we learn to prioritize, that it also becomes this response that as the chaos, as the demands go up, we learn to turn to God even more in that response.

So Jesus, he prioritizes prayer, he responds in prayer, but then we also see him proactively asking in prayer.

Jesus asks in prayer, and we're gonna spend an entire sermon later in this series talking about prayers of petition, meaning prayers where we are asking for a specific outcome in a specific set of circumstances.

But that's not what we're talking about today.

We're talking about ask more in the sense of it being part of our rhythms of prayer.

If you turn your pages on your Bibles to Luke chapter six, in Luke six, beginning in verse 12, it says, One day soon afterward, Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night.

At daybreak, he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles.

What was the significance of this that Jesus felt like he was compelled to stay up all night long praying?

I think this was Jesus modeling this kind of asking rhythm of prayer, of knowing, hey, this is a big moment that's coming up.

I have to stay connected to God the Father.

These 12 men that he ascribed and decided they're gonna be the ones that are my 12 apostles.

We are literally here today because of the work that they continued after Jesus went to heaven.

And so it's like this is a big moment.

I have to make sure that I'm asking, meaning I'm asking God to give me wisdom, clarity, guidance to make sure that our hearts are completely aligned in this before I step into this moment.

What an incredible thing for Jesus Himself to model for us.

That is, we would recognize, hey, there's a big thing coming down the pipe here.

I gotta make sure that I'm preyed up on this.

Not because I'm trying to manipulate God in any way, but because I need to make sure that I'm asking for clarity, for guidance within this.

Eight years ago, this month, when I first had a conversation with Pastor Doug, and he was asking me if I'd be interested in maybe coming to Plum Creek to work here.

My wife, Minnie, and I, we spent a lot of time in prayer because to be perfectly honest, it didn't make any sense.

Not because of Plum Creek, Plum Creek's great and all, but we had literally just that same month purchased a new house down in Colorado Springs.

And there were lots of other reasons as well.

And we're like, this just doesn't make sense right now.

And yet we started praying, God, give us clarity, give us guidance.

Really, for Mindy and I, oftentimes when we're asking these kinds of prayers, what we ask for is peace.

God, if this is your will, will you give us an immense sense of peace?

And what happened over the course of several months in this process is that as we were praying for peace, we started to experience it.

We had no idea what we were gonna do with that house.

We had no idea about a lot of details that just didn't make sense.

And it's not like we got answers to those things, but we did start to experience incredible peace whenever we thought about them.

And so we took that as God's sign of like, we we want you to want you to move forward in this.

And what's incredible is that after we started to take those steps of faith of saying, yes, if you uh know anything about the housing market at all, you know that this mathematically does not make sense.

And yet somehow we broke even on that house, only being in it for a couple of months.

It was like God showed up in some incredible ways, saying, like, hey, you honored me and seeking me after this, I'm gonna honor you in that as well.

And there were still some hard things about the move.

And yet we asked, and God was faithful to make it clear what we were supposed to do, and we're incredibly grateful for the last seven and a half years that we've been here at Plum Creek.

Not only were we praying, but we also had like an army of prayer warriors in our life that we will go to often and say, just like, hey, will you pray with us for this?

Because we're not alone when it comes to prayer either.

We've got people in our corner.

In fact, this corporate aspect to prayer is so important for us in this particular season here at Plum Creek.

It's why we're doing the prayer practices on Tuesday nights.

Starting on April 21st, we're excited.

We're gonna come together at six o'clock.

It's only gonna be about 45 to 50 minutes, but it's a chance for us to align our hearts together as we learn to practice the types of prayer that we're learning about in this guide together.

Because Jesus prayed corporately as well.

And so we we think it's important for us to be practicing these things, not just learning about them.

So we see Jesus prioritizing prayer, responding in prayer, getting proactive and asking for prayer in these big moments.

And then we also see moments of Jesus yielding in prayer.

When we get intentional about prioritizing prayer as part of our rhythms, part of that naturally becomes that such a big piece of prayer is that we want our hearts to be aligned with God, which means we are yielding to his will, not our own.

Probably the clearest example of this in scripture is in the Garden of Gethsemane.

In Mark 14, beginning in verse 35, it says, He went on a little farther and fell down to the ground.

He prayed that if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by.

Abba, Father, he cried out, everything is possible for you.

Please take this cup of suffering away from me.

Again, Jesus doesn't hesitate to petition for a specific outcome in this moment, and I can only imagine the dread that Jesus must have been experiencing.

Knowing the excruciating pain that he was about to go through, the suffering, the separation from God the Father that he was going to experience for the first time by taking on our sins, mine and yours.

And so it gets to be a lot, and he's like, God, if the Father, please, if it's possible, will you take this away from me?

I don't want to go through this.

And yet, how does he end this prayer?

He says, Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

Not my will, but your will.

In John 6.38, Jesus says, For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do my own will.

It's clear that part of Jesus' rhythms of prayer, as he prioritized it, it led to this place of yielding, of saying, No, what's more important is less about trying to bend the will of God to my desired outcome, but to become the type of person that wants what God wants.

What if that started to happen for each and every one of us?

To say, God, I want what you want more than what I want.

I want some things, believe me.

And it's way easier said than done in so many instances, especially if you're walking through a season of deep-seated pain right now and really hard things happening.

It can be so hard to see beyond the pain of what you're going through.

And yet to get to a place where it's like, yeah, but I know, I know, I know you are in control.

I know that what you want for me is better than what I could ever ask or imagine.

And so, Father, I want your will to be done.

I'm not gonna hesitate to petition for a specific outcome, but ultimately I'm gonna say, God, I want to yield to you in prayer.

I want you to shape me to become the kind of person who wants what your heart wants more than what my heart wants.

As we say to Jesus, teach us to pray, to prioritize prayer.

So that naturally we just start responding in prayer because it's who we are.

We start to ask in prayer proactively, knowing that things are coming, that we just we have to turn to God for those things in advance.

And yet ultimately, God, I want to yield to you.

I want what you want more than what I want.

I believe that in this season as a church body, if we were to up our prayer game in these kinds of ways, my goodness, what a significant difference it would make.

As we walk this journey of formation to reflect Jesus better and better in this world around us, because again, this journey of formation is way more about asking God to help us to rearrange our lives around what he said was true, and also by modeling and the practices, the rhythms that Jesus Himself modeled for us.

So we would adopt those things.

Again, what would happen even this week if we were like, I'm just gonna take the next right step?

We can only start on this journey of prayer wherever we are right now.

So if you're gonna try to jump to the very end of where you want your prayer life to be, it's not gonna feel sustainable.

But what if you took the next step?

Again, what if you got up 10, 15 minutes earlier tomorrow morning and sought God in prayer?

And then on your phones, you're just constantly reminded to spend time with God in prayer, and it becomes such a priority for us that all of a sudden now we're looking for other opportunities to prioritize it even more.

Because our response to the chaos around us becomes even more of that.

What's the next right step for you today, tomorrow?

Because again, I've said it multiple times.

God does not want more from you, He wants more for you.

As we learn to turn to Him more and more, we get to experience more and more freedom.

We get to experience a more and more abundant life, deeply rooted in Him.

We'll get to the point where we're like, man, I wish I would have done this a long time ago.

Because when I'm experiencing what I had to give up for, it was so worth giving it up to prioritize it in this way.

Friends, we believe that God has some incredible things in store for us as a community as we move forward, and we will get to experience those things if we learn to adopt these same rhythms that Jesus did.

But it has to start with prioritizing prayer so that we can actively pray and live a life that would say, God, I want your kingdom to come in Castle Rock as it is in heaven.

And so, Father, we pray that you would indeed move in our hearts, that you would stir us toward this life of deep abiding.

God, we collectively have been moving this way for multiple years now, and we're ready to take that next step toward you.

Help us to move beyond any semblance of just intellectual agreement when it comes to our faith.

And let it be something that deeply shapes who we are as we spend more time with you.

God, we want to be people that every step of the journey we are turning toward you.

We are living out of a deep connection to you.

Because again, relationships are just not built on bare minimums.

Help it not to become just checking off a box because we feel like we have to do more.

May it turn into something that we are eagerly looking forward to every single day because we're just excited to continue to build that relationship with you, to see the fruit of that relationship in our lives.

So, Father, we thank you in advance for the work that you're going to continue to do.

Help us to become a community of deep-seated, prioritized prayer.

We love you.

Amen.

Thanks again for listening.

Our prayer is that this message encouraged and challenged you in your journey to follow Jesus.

If you'd like to learn more about our church, please check us out online at plumcreek.church or if you find yourself within driving distance of Castle Rock, Colorado, we would be honored to see you in person on a weekend.

So until next time, race and peace in the name of Jesus.