19. “Doing Battle with Prayer” (Mark 14)

Mark 14:32-42

Last week as we looked at the final verses of Ephesians, we encountered a simple truth: one of the chief ways that you and I are strengthened by God is through prayer. We who are Christians have been called to a task that is too much for us. It is big: we are to be the body of Christ, the temple of God through whom he rescues the world—could anything in this world be bigger or more important than that? And it is also difficult, because the evil one seeks to thwart us along every step of the way. It is too much for us. But God offers us his own power to fulfill this calling: he gives us his armor for the battle. And the way that we make this strength our own is through prayer. As Paul calls us to be strong in the Lord, he says “Pray. Pray at all times in the Spirit.”

But what about if we feel weak at prayer itself? 

Saying that we need to pray is one of the least controversial statements I as a pastor could make. Nobody says, “Prayer is awful. We really should stop praying.” And yet one of the most common feelings for Christians is inadequacy when it comes to prayer. We know praying is important, but often we don’t act like it is. We don’t pray with regularity, because, honestly, we don’t feel good at it. We don’t enjoy it. Deep down, we don’t know if our prayer is making any difference. And as a result, we are not strengthened like we could be.

In our final part of this series, I want to dwell one more week on Paul’s instruction in Ephesians to “pray at all times in the Spirit.” I want to look for help from the human who above anyone else knew how to do this. Jesus, a man filled with the Spirit, battled Satan and won, and he did this by finding strength in his Father, through prayer. And he left us an example to show us how to do the same.

There’s a number different moments in Jesus’ life where we can learn about prayer from what he said and did. But when it comes to learning from Jesus how to find strength for the battle in prayer, there is one moment above all that we should consider, and that is in the night before the cross, when Jesus prayed in Gethsemane.

In just a few hours, Jesus will be arrested, tried, mocked, beaten, and crucified. On the cross he will deal a death blow to Satan. When he breathes out the words, “It is finished,” he will be declaring victory, having dealt with our guilt, overcoming death. Freeing us to return to God, Jesus will have conquered the evil one.

And yet it is really before that moment, in the garden, that Jesus’ battle with Satan is at its most intense point. In the hours before he was arrested, Jesus could have walked away. He could have gone to a place the Jewish leadership would not have found him. He could have avoided the cross. And in those moments, every instinct in Jesus’ body wanted to do exactly that.

Jesus tells his closest friends, “My soul is very sorrowful, even unto death.” He is telling them quite plainly that he is struggling. The sorrow over what he is about to face weighs on him now so heavily that it has the potential to bring him down, to end him. Satan, who has been seeking to lead Jesus astray at every point in his ministry, now is bringing all of his evil strength to bear in this moment, tempting Jesus to turn aside from his calling. Jesus is under attack, and he feels it keenly.

It’s worth noting that this is quite often what the battle we fight looks like. Not in loud and energetic acts of bravery—when those happen, they usually come after the hard work has been done. The real struggle often comes in the quiet of night, when things are dark and lonely and your mind keeps spinning as you contemplate something you feel called to do that seem overwhelming. 

• You’ve done something wrong that you’re ashamed of, and you know that the only right thing to do is come clean. But you’re deeply afraid of what people will think of you if you do.

• You feel called to start a neighborhood Bible study, but you’re afraid that the moment you ask your friends, it will make the relationships weird.

• There’s a problem in your life that you’ve been avoiding for a while. You get so overwhelmed thinking about it that you usually distract yourself or numb yourself. You need to face it, but you don’t think you can.  

• Someone has hurt you, and you know you’re called to forgive. But there’s something deep within you that’s resisting. It feels too big, too important to let go.

Though we will never fully understand the trial Jesus endured, we do know what it feels to struggle inside against doubt, overwhelmedness, and fear. And unlike Jesus, we know what it’s like to fail—we can pretty easily identify with the disciples who all ran away when Jesus was arrested. But of course Jesus doesn’t do that. Jesus battles, and Jesus prevails. And he prevails, not because it was easy for him, but rather, because in the face of immense resistance, Jesus prayed. Verse 35: “he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

As we seek to learn from Jesus how to be strengthened in prayer, I want us to notice three things about how he prays.

First, Jesus Prays to His Father

“Abba, Father” is how his prayer begins. “Abba” was the word Jews used when talking to their father; it wasn’t a childish term, like, maybe “Daddy” would be, but it was intimate. Slaves were not allowed to speak this way to the head of the household, only sons and daughters. Perhaps the closest equivalent in our day would be “Dad.” No Jew in that day spoke to God like that. “Lord of hosts,” “God Almighty,” even my God, but not Abba, not Dad. To speak to the creator of the universe with that level of confidence and familiarity would be seen as breathtakingly presumptuous. 

But that is exactly how Jesus cries out to him. Because the most basic reality that defined Jesus’ identity was his knowledge that the God of the universe is his Father who loves him. Jesus was utterly secure in the relationship he had, that he was God’s Son and could come to his Dad whenever he wanted. And its in this confidence that he cries out to God in the garden. “Abba, Father.”

Well sure, of course Jesus can pray like that to the Father. He’s different. He’s the Son of God! But the extraordinary teaching of Scripture teaches is that now, if you are united to Christ by faith in him, that is also the relationship YOU have with the Father. Romans 8 says God’s own Spirit is right now actively working within us, teaching us to relate to God like Jesus, teaching us to cry to God, “Abba, Father.”  

How different would your attitude to prayer be if you really understood that this is the relationship you have with God? Because it seems to me that one of the main reasons we struggle with prayer is that we don’t understand this.

Say you are going through some tough times, where it might be helpful just to talk about your problems with someone. Let’s say you also work for a big company. Now, is the person you’re likely to call up on the phone to talk through your stuff your company’s CEO? That would be weird, right? First of all, it would feel inappropriate to take up the time of someone you know is so busy with other stuff. But even apart from that, if you talk to someone this important, you’re not going to be relaxed. You’ll be worried about what this powerful person will think of you; you’ll try to say everything just right. This is not a phone call you do spontaneously—any conversation with the CEO will probably involve days of preparation.

I believe that many of us kind of think of our relationship to God in this way. You know that he is incredibly important and powerful—to call him the CEO of the universe would be to trivialize just how great he is. And so a part of you feels, well, like he doesn’t have time for your small potatoes issues. Might you not feel, at least a little bit, like you need to say things exactly right, maybe follow a script, or at least be really careful? If so, is it any wonder you hesitate to pray?

The Bible says that if you think that way, you’ve misunderstood something crucial. Yes, he is the Holy God over the Universe. But he’s also the one who has given his son for us and sent his Spirit to us so that we could learn to call him, “Dad”—to relate to him, not with removed and stilted formality, but personally, intimately, secure in the knowledge that he loves us more deeply and fully than any human father loved his child. To know that we can bring anything to him, and he will care.

Jesus fully understands this. And it shows in how he prays. In the garden, he doesn’t use flowery language, no Shakespearean thees and thous. He doesn’t make extensive statements of theological truths, no long, formal sentences. He doesn’t try to make himself heard with many words. What he says is short and it is simple. 

And, above all, it’s honest. Here’s what he asks, “Remove this cup from me.” “Remove this cup from me.” The cup Jesus is referring to is the cross, is his death. Jesus knows that this is the cup he is called to drink. He has repeatedly said to his disciples that he MUST suffer many things and be killed. But now he’s asking God to let him not do it. He’s asking God for the very thing that Satan is tempting him to want—a pathway without the cross.

He’s asking God even for what he knows he cannot have, because that is what he is feeling in this moment. He is sorrowful unto death. Every fiber in his being feels revulsion at what he is about to do. And Jesus, a great student of Scripture, knows from the Psalms that the prayers God welcomes are honest prayers. Prayers that express all the confusion and desolation and desires of the heart, no matter how inappropriate they might seem. Jesus knows that it does no good to pretend before God, to pray as if you feel how you’re “supposed” to feel. He knows that the way to truly depend on God and find strength in him is to bring everything in all its raw messiness and hand it over to his Dad.  

If you want to be strengthened in prayer, this is how you need to learn to pray as well: not “appropriate” and polished insincere prayers. You won’t somehow get God to like you more or do more kind things for you if you say it in just the right way. You don’t need to impress or persuade God. He already loves you. We pray—We do battle rightly in prayer—as we come confidently and honestly before our Father and bring everything to him.   

Second, Jesus Prays to God

So I realize that that sounds ridiculously obvious. But look again at what Jesus prays. “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.” Why does he say that last phrase? It’s not to butter God up with a compliment. It’s certainly not because God needs to know that about himself. No, Jesus says, “All things are possible for you” that so that he can hold onto this truth. So that as he prays, he can remember that the Father who loves him is also the God of the Universe

When we are anxious, why doesn’t prayer come more naturally to us? Quite often anxiety comes when we encounter a threat that we don’t feel we can do anything about. Our fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, filling us with energy, but that energy has nowhere to go, so our shoulders tense up, our heart races, our mind goes round and round. Why isn’t it more natural for us in that moment to pray?  

I suspect one big reason is that we’re not sure praying will do any good. When we speak these words into the air, or sometimes just in our heads, it can feel almost impossible to imagine that this will do anything about our problems.  It can feel useless. 

And Jesus breaks through that lie—for it is a lie—by grabbing on to a simple truth: “All things are possible for you.” Father, you who I am speaking to are in control. You can do all things. 

God can answer our prayers if he wants to—because he’s God. Because, as Isaiah says, he can hold all the oceans in the palm of his hand. All things are possible for him. And because he’s our Father, he does want to. Paul in Romans says, “Look, the God of the universe gave what was most precious to him above all else—he gave his Son. So if God is willing to do that for you, is there anything that this God won’t be willing to give to you?” The God of the universe delights to answer the prayers of his children.

I believe that one of the obvious indicators of Satan’s deceitful ways is how strangely forgetful we can be when it comes to God answering prayers. Do you know what I’m talking about? There are these moments when God does something that feels like a shaft of light breaking through the clouds and we see: he has unmistakably answered our prayers. And then, over time, the fog descends and it feels less real; maybe we just made it up.

• As a college student in a youth hostel in Amsterdam feeling all alone, having just done a terrible job trying to share the gospel with others, I remember that night just asking for help from God, not even knowing what that might be. The next morning at breakfast a Christian from Australia just so happens to introduce himself to me and says really encouraging words. We end up spending the next couple of days together.

• Jennifer and I and our 3 kids are living in Dallas on a one-year residency, with our future plans for church planting falling apart, and we’re completely stressed and overwhelmed, having no idea where we’ll live our get an earning in just a few months time. We find ourselves praying like we never have before. And then I get this phone call from a person in Hinsdale. One thing leads to another to another, and God brings us here.

• Just a couple of years ago, our church leaders start praying very specifically that God would find for us a permanent home. It seems like a ridiculous thing to pray, because there was no pathway toward that which seemed possible. And yet, here we are.

You know what that’s like, right? For a moment, you see: you in your weakness asked, and your God answered. And you are filled with joy. It’s so clear. 

So why in the world do we not pray for things all the time? Well, in part, because the fog sets in. Over time, it stops feeling as clear; we wonder if it was just a coincidence, or something we imagined. we forget. And yet you forget. The fog becomes so think that the next time we face something hard we once again wonder, “Will praying really do anything?” 

“Abba, Father, all things are possible for you.”

There, of course, is another reason we are uncertain about prayer besides just the fog. Sometimes we pray and see no answer. Sometimes we ask to rescue a marriage, and it ends in divorce. Sometimes when we pray for healing, the sickness ends in death.

It is hard, but not surprising, that God doesn’t always do what we ask. God is God, not a genie who grants wishes. We are mortals who only see in part. So much is hidden from us. We know what in the moment we desire, but we do not have God’s capacity to see the whole plan for us and this world. We can’t see what from the perspective of all eternity is truly good, truly kind to us.  

One day we will see that God never withholds something good from us, that God always answers our prayer. He always hears and always loves to give us good things. Sometimes he delights to give us exactly what we are asking for. And sometimes he chooses to do something better—even if it doesn’t feel better at the time.

Which is why Jesus, after saying to his Father, “Remove this cup from me,” also says, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” This is not just a kind of passive resignation, “In the end, I know you’re going to do what you’re going to do.” Jesus knows better than that. He knows that he has a Father who delights in responding to prayer. But he also knows that in this moment as he lives within his human limitations he is speaking to the God who sees and understands what he cannot. He’s saying, “I don’t want what I want, I want what you want.” He’s saying, “I trust you more than I trust my own desires. Everything I have with all that’s going on inside of me, I bring to you and ask for you to do what you know is best.” 

God always answers prayer. Whether he does exactly what we ask for or something better, he always gives us good things when we ask. And whenever we ask, we are learning to look to God as the one who can do all things and we are learning to watch for how God answers. This is how we are strengthened for battle: Like Jesus, we pray to God.  

Third, Jesus Perseveres in Prayer

There’s one more aspect to Jesus’ prayer that I want us to briefly consider, and that is the simple fact that Jesus doesn’t pray this just once. Notice that after talking to his disciples it says “Again he went away and prayed, saying the same words.” In fact, we are told he prays the same thing 3 different times. 

Why? Jesus himself when teaching about prayer warns against believing that we will be heard through saying many words. God clearly heard the first time—so why does Jesus say it again and then again? 

Well, God doesn’t need repetition, but we do. Jesus does. Every time he goes to pray, he is leaning more deeply into the reality that the one he speaks to is his Father; he is resting more fully in the fact that the one he calls Father is also the God of the Universe who knows all things and can do all things. He is letting his desires increasingly be conformed to God so that more and more his whole self gains certainty as he says, “Not what I will, but what you will.” This is how Jesus battles. 

And this is how Jesus prevails. In verse 34 he says, “My soul is sorrowful unto death.” But in verse 42 he says, “Rise, let us be going.” Over the course of all the terrible things that happen over the next day, the disciples will flee. Peter will deny Jesus 3 times. But Jesus—Jesus will hold firm facing without flinching the path to which God calls him, until he breathes his final, victorious breath.

This will not be the end of the story, of course. He who entrusted himself up completely to the will of his Father unto death on Friday will on Sunday morning be raised by his Father in triumph; he will be exalted to the heavens as the glorious king by the God for whom all things are possible. For his Father heard every word the son prayed in agony, and he answered it all.

And that same victorious king even now is praying for you. And that same Spirit by whose power Jesus prayed is now at work helping you to pray. Because God knows that even for something as simple as asking him for help, we need his help. You have a Father who loves for you to come to him and ask for help. You have a God for whom all things are possible. And as we turn to him, again and again, in prayer, we find his strength for our calling.

Let’s pray.