DAY 5
ONE THING
JOHN MACDONALD, LEAD PASTOR, THE WOODS CHURCH
Prayer is the way you defeat the devil, reach the lost, restore the backslider, strengthen the saints, send missionaries out, cure the sick, accomplish the impossible, and know the will of God.
—David Jeremiah
There is a woman in the Bible who really understood the importance of one thing. She understood what nearness to Jesus was and why it was important. Her name was Mary of Bethany.
We see her in the scriptures only three times. But in all three instances we find Mary at Jesus’ feet. The only recorded words
she spoke are found in John 11:32, “Lord if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” This verse is referencing the story of Lazarus. At the end of this story we know that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.
Every time we see Mary in the biblical text, Jesus is either defending her, praising her, or calling us all to look like her and model our lives after her. Somehow Mary had stumbled upon the one thing that captured Jesus’s attention. She figured out what moved him. She learned what his love language was; this is why we see Him defending her and fighting her battles for her. Let's read this popular story from a fresh perspective.
Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.”
And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing [emphasis added] is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” —Luke 10:38-42
This is the first time we meet Mary in Scripture. And from the very beginning, Mary was breaking through the norms and expectations of the day. She obliterated the protocols, ignored the culturally accepted systems, and refused to allow others’ expectations to control her. She broke through into a place most have never had the courage or grit to break into.
She broke through business, activity, distraction, anxiety, and all outside voices to be found where she was called to be. Where we are all called to be. With Him!
Mary had the courage to sit down and begin to cultivate a history with God, through building intimacy with Jesus by listening intently to His words. She learned to wait on Him.
Martha is a different story. According to Scripture, Martha is found being troubled by many matters. She is distracted, worried, troubled, and caught up in much serving.
Distracted, worried, troubled, and caught up in much serving. Sounds like the vast majority of churches and people today. There are many things distracting Christians today. Our careers distract us, the busyness of our lives distracts us, social media distracts us, our frustration with our government distracts us, and all of this also creates a great anxiety within us which leaves us with fear and doubt.
This recurring cycle continues to take place all the while creating the same symptoms over and over again. However, it is this cycle that we see Mary push through.
In our day we must cultivate and raise up Marys! Those who will refuse to worship the god of distraction and be found sitting at His feet, listening for His voice, hearing every word He speaks. Marys who will break agreement with the gods of busyness, distraction, and anxiety. Those who will begin to prioritize their minutes, their hours, their days and their weeks, which will turn into years and decades creating history through the priority and rhythm of sitting at Jesus’s feet. These are the ones who hear his voice regularly, these are the ones who see answers to their prayers daily, these are the ones who live free, truly free, from fear, or want, or worry. These are the ones you will find doing the one thing that matters.
Mary simply invested the most valuable commodity she had into eternity. She invested her time! She sowed into the kingdom, into eternity, and into things that moth and rust cannot destroy.
In Matthew 6:19-21, Jesus states, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
One of the most impactful points in Mary’s story is that while at His feet she heard Jesus’ words. You can’t move with God and in His timing if you are not listening and hearing Him speak. Hearing Him is only learned through times of waiting on Him practicing the one thing.
Corey Russell says in his book Teach Us To Pray, “We’ve lost the power of His Word in our mouths because we’ve lost the power of His Word in our ears.” How can we ever act or speak on His behalf if we can’t hear what He is saying?
Scripture highlights this same pattern in Jesus’s life of practicing the one thing.
Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”—John 5:19
Jesus lived off being able to hear His Father’s voice and discern what the Holy Spirit was wanting to do. That is how He operated every day. For three and a half years, the disciples experienced Jesus’s prayer life. From Jesus’s baptism until his death, we find Him praying. He prayed in joy, in grief, in sorrow, and in suffering. There are close to 175 verses where Jesus was either praying or teaching on prayer. Prayer wasn’t something Jesus did on the side or when it was convenient or only when He was desperate. Prayer was the very foundation and core of everything else He accomplished.
Listen to a few of the many verses showing Jesus’s priority of prayer.
After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. —Matthew 14:23
Very 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. —Mark 1:35
After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray. —Mark 6:46
But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. —Luke 5:16
One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. —Luke 6:12
Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?” —Luke 9:18
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” —Luke 11:1
The whole chapter of John 17 is Jesus praying. We haven’t even touched on the 40 days in the wilderness after Jesus' baptism where he was praying. Or the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus often withdrew to pray. Or the crucifixion where we find Jesus praying. The point is prayer was evident throughout Jesus’s Life. His life
was saturated in prayer. Prayer was His priority. It was first, it was central to all He did, and it was the supply line for His intimacy with the father. If prayer was so important to Jesus, if He spent everyday in prayer and He treated prayer as His lifeline, then don’t you think prayer should also be first in our lives? Shouldn’t prayer be our go to, the one thing that trumps all others in our lives?!
The truth is if you are not living a life that prioritizes prayer, you're not walking in intimacy with Jesus. If you lack intimacy with Him, then how could you ever follow Him? You can’t follow Jesus unless you hear His voice. With that in mind, let’s get really practical so you can build your history with God and develop prayer as a priority in your life. Three quick principles as you practice the one thing and develop your prayer life:
You learn how to pray by praying. Just start somewhere.
When you pray, don't think list, think person. Remember prayer’s
purpose is to encounter Him, it’s intimacy with Him.
Build your prayer life by setting and committing to a time and place.
This is a decision that will change your life. Set a time and place daily and fiercely guard it.
PRAYER
If you don’t have a consistent time of prayer already scheduled and set up in your life, take some time and set it up. Commit to it. And 32 don’t let anything distract you from it. Now pray!
