Jesus Overcame By Prayer And The Spirit

What Did Jesus Do?

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

There is a story about a passenger liner that was sorely battered by a stormy sea. The vessel was pitching and yawing as huge waves washed over the deck in sickening succession. An upset, and extremely seasick passenger, having been told that the crew was doing what it could to weather the tempest, inquired of the captain what else could be done. When the master of the ship answered, “I suggest you pray,” the passenger responded by saying, “Has it come to that?” The implication being that prayer was the recourse of last resort—when all else fails, pray!

Such a mindset is not uncommon, even among believers. Our typical response to challenges, crises, obstacles, needs, problems, troubles is to throw our flesh at them. Jesus overcame all, even sin and death, by prayer and the Spirit. We instead strive by might and main to overcome. Then, when things look all but hopeless, we essentially resign ourselves to prayer after we have tried everything else. A couple of personal examples come to mind.

I will probably never forget the time I was five minutes late to a meeting of a congregational nominating committee charged with identifying potential candidates for the offices of deacon and elder. When I came in apologetically I was met with, “That's O.K. Pastor, we've already finished.” Finished, after five minutes? “Yep, we've recruited all the officers we need!” How did you accomplish this in such record time? “We opened up the Church Directory and just started calling people who aren't currently serving.” That's it? Did you pray? “No, we didn't need to.” Well, not surprisingly, that congregation did not experience the best of times under the far less than inspired, much less called, leadership which had been recruited without any recourse to prayer whatsoever. The Nominating Committee had thrown its flesh into the task, and in the flesh pretty much failed in its mission, with the result that the congregation went into a tailspin that lasted for years. Needless to say, I learned never to show up late for a Nominating Committee meeting after that!

There was the year our community was anticipating a particularly severe winter. The Director of the Department of Social Services invited various community leaders, including a pastor or two, to come together to see how we might deal with what he described as a coming “train wreck” of a situation, when the very limited resources for heating assistance and the like would be exhausted. As we went around the table people one-by-one either shook their heads in despair, or offered a thought or two about this contingency or that might be tried. When my turn came I suggested that the first thing we should do was to pray to the one who controlled the weather and ask him to send a milder winter than had been predicted. That brought forth more than a few chuckles, and the rolling of several eyes. But I was serious. At the end of the meeting the various ideas and suggestions were reviewed ending with a rather derisive, “And Jim has suggested we pray for mild weather!” I certainly don't claim any credit for my prayers for the unexpectedly mild winter which ensued, but I do know who I thanked for the answer to prayer.

None of this is to suggest that I never fall prey to throwing my flesh at a problem. I do so far too often. Nevertheless, I am more and more inclined to prayer these days. And I thank the Son for asking the Father to send the Holy Spirit to forestall my reacting in my flesh, and instead inclining my spirit to pray.

It is alarming how many more invitations to committee meetings one receives than invitations to prayer meetings. It may be me, but it appears that most everyone, including much of the Church, puts much more confidence in the flesh than in prayer and the spirit. But the thing is, Jesus never did anything in the flesh except suffer on the cross. And then he of course prepared his flesh by travailing in prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. But, if we take a close look a the gospels, we will see that every word the Lord spoke, every miracle he worked, sprang from prayer and the spirit.

The whole idea behind these WDJDs is to present what Jesus did, and encourage us all to follow his example. I hear many today lamenting the state of the Church in our nation and in many of our communities. Something tells me that too much reliance on the flesh, and too little commitment to prayer, may have a lot to do with this situation. And the only way to begin to reverse the disturbing trend is to, you guessed it, pray and call upon the Spirit. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4