Title: The Power of Prayer
Contents
power of prayer
Mark 14:32-42
A few weeks ago (early February) it was still cold. As we neared the end of the climb, we could see people sitting all over the valley. There were no groups of people, and most of them sat alone. I can only occasionally see the two of them sitting together. Looking at his attire, he wasn't wearing hiking clothes. It was just plain clothes.
But each seated person was swaying a little from side to side or back and forth. If you look closely, you can see that it was from a church that had been praying. Even though it was still cold, I could see them praying earnestly without regard for the cold.
What best expresses your faith? It seems to be a prayer. The object of prayer is God. Therefore, it can be seen that there is nothing that expresses faith as well as prayer that asks God. Therefore, you can see that each church places a lot of emphasis on prayer.
Let's take a look at the gathering first. Early morning prayer meeting, Wednesday prayer meeting, and Friday all night (or late night) prayer meeting are the basics, and each institution holds a prayer meeting at a set time.
You can see that the reason for most of these gatherings is prayer itself. Also, when each church sets its motto, there is a lot of talk about prayer. And there are formalized phrases about the prayer itself. Examples of such words would be ‘Prayer is power.’ ‘Prayer makes God’s work happen.’
In this way, prayer itself expresses faith. Therefore, no matter how much we examine prayer, we cannot say that we have done enough. Today, I am going to look into that prayer.
In particular, today, we will examine the ‘power of prayer’ through the prayer that appeared at the end of Jesus’ life. In the text known as the Prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord shows us two aspects of the power of prayer: content and effect.
■ First, let's look at the content aspect.
When we often say, 'Prayer is power', what does 'power' mean? It usually refers to the results obtained through prayer. It means that when you prayed to God, something truly amazing happened. For example, ‘I was in the late stages of stomach cancer, but I was healed after praying’. Since God has healed the parts that cannot be healed by medicine, it can be said that it is the power of God.
But when we look at prayer in terms of power, we do not only see these results. It is necessary to pay attention to the content of the prayer before the outcome. This is because when we talk about prayer, if we are only interested in the results, we cannot properly see the contents of prayer, ‘how should we pray’.
And it is because prayer that does not contain the content ultimately leads to faith in ups and downs. Therefore, after experiencing the amazing ability to even cure cancer, there are many cases where they cannot stand in the right faith. Therefore, we need to talk about ability over content, not about ability based on results. So, the first thing to look at is the content. Not a result.
In that sense, it is important to know what Jesus prayed for.
The Lord first prays, “Remove this cup from me” (verse 36). The cup here refers to the cross. The Lord knew you had to take up the cross. It was not by accident that I was crucified. His coming was only to take up the cross. So Jesus focused his life here.
But, although bearing the cross was your way, it was by no means easy to bear the cross on Him who was truly human. That is why Jesus was greatly astonished and troubled (verse 33). You are asking your disciples to pray for you. “Watch and pray for me, for my heart is so troubled that I am about to die” (verse 34).
This was the Lord's request. Then he himself begged for “these times to pass away from him” (verse 35). “Remove this cup from me” (verse 36).
This supplication was an earnest prayer for your desperate situation. I think this prayer is not the most humane supplication. If you look at the text, you can see how great his earnestness was by seeing that he prayed like this three times.
Importantly, this is not all of his prayers. The prayers up to now have been the prayers that everyone has prayed for. Everyone prays for this difficulty to pass while looking at the difficulties that lie ahead. The Lord's prayer did not stop there.
From now on, important prayers are continuing in terms of content. It is “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (verse 36). What the Lord was asking for was not just to let the difficulties pass. In that the Lord also took on a body, he started with the same content as we usually pray. But the Lord's prayer was for the Father's will to be done, not his own. Therefore, the Lord's prayer is the same as the first time, but again and again, again and again, it also ended with 'Father, do your will'.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are more important things than results to become powerful prayer. That's the content.
Prayer is not just a desperate cry for what we need or the problem we need to solve. More importantly, what is the will of God to be revealed in the midst of it?
Therefore, prayer is the work of discovering God's will in which I should go before bringing God's amazing work to this earth to solve the problem. Prayer without God's will is nothing but an empty cry.
Beloved, let us pray earnestly like the Lord. However, please do not just pray vaguely, but pray to discover God's will. Please pray that your will is aligned with God's, not your will to fit God's will. I hope that the more we pray, the more clearly we realize what God wants. The power of prayer starts here.
So, how can we pray to discover God's will? Are you doing lip-service by saying, ‘Please remove what is not in accordance with God’s will and allow only God’s wishes to be fulfilled’? no.
First of all, we need to pray a lot. What we really lack in our appearance is that we have little time to pray. In order for our souls to be awake, prayer itself is necessary first.
Look at the disciples. The Lord is praying until the drops of sweat become drops of blood (Luke 22:44), but they are just dozing off.
Isn't that exactly what we are? It's like you're not awake and praying. In order for us to pray to discover God's will, we must first be awake and pray. Even in terms of the amount of time, you must invest a lot of time in prayer. Also, even if you are busy, you must first make time for prayer. This is the priority.