Learning To Practice His Presence Series

0400: Learning to Practice His Presence

Series: 24: A Day in the Life of Jesus

March 26, 2006

In season 5 of the series “24”, Jack Bauer has his hands full tracking down a nuclear missile before it detonates on U.S soil. Every minute of the show is packed with action. However, your name doesn’t have to be ‘Jack Bauer’ in order to be busy this morning. How many of you here today would say you lead busy lives? Yea, the fact is…I can hardly believe how busy some of you are. If married, both of you are working during the day. You get home and….

…Monday is baseball practice,

…Tuesday is Youth group,

…Wednesday is a bible study or some club you’re a part of… …Thursday is meetings & Karate practice,

…Friday and Saturday are game days,

…Sunday is church day and after that you go shopping or clean the house, and then after stopping the kids from killing each other OR helping them with their homework… you have 2 hours before you go to bed and start it all over again the next day! Most of you would be glad to have Jack Baur’s schedule!

Unfortunately, our society makes us feel guilty if we’re not on the run. If you meet someone at the grocery store and ask them how they’re doing, almost invariably they’ll tell you how ‘busy’ they are and start rattling off a list of activities and appointments. Americans are busier than ever. For example, ‘dinner time’ used to mean sitting around the table at six o’clock eating a home cooked meal. Now, when Mom calls, "Dinner time!" and the kids don’t head for the dining room… they head for the minivan! If that’s not bad enough…we’re eating meals while we’re doing other things -- working, driving, watching television. We don’t eat…we graze!

How many of you wish you could slow down? That was the question asked in a recent CNN poll. And 59% of Americans answered by saying, "Yes. I wish I could slow down. I wish I could cope better with the busyness of life." In the 1st chapter of Mark, Jesus is incredibly busy. In fact, all through the book of Mark, we get the impression that everyone’s in a hurry. Mark uses the word ‘immediately” over 50x’s …

· Jesus was baptized and ‘immediately’ the Holy Spirit sent him into the desert

· Jesus invites Simon and Andrew to be his disciples and ‘immediately’ they leave their nets.

· Jesus heals people and ‘immediately’ the news spreads all over town

It’s a fast paced book, yet for all the hustle and bustle, in today’s portion of Jesus’ 24-hour day we’ve been looking at the past few weeks, Jesus shows us how we can cope with the frantic pace of life. It happens right after one of the most hectic days of his earthly ministry. In Mark 1, he preaches all morning. In the afternoon, he heals Peter’s mother in law. And just when it looks like he can kick back and relax, someone comes to the house and says, "Lord, I saw what you did in church this morning for that demon possessed man! Can you do the same thing for my kid?" And then someone else comes over and says, "Lord, is it true that you can heal diseases? My wife’s been sick for a long time… can you help her?"

The Bible says in Mark 1:32 that pretty soon, the whole town was standing outside the door. Because Jesus loved them, he healed everyone he touched. And because more and more kept showing up, he healed them late into the night. I’m sure at the end of this day, when he finally crawled into bed and his head hit the pillow…he was wiped out. The disciples assumed that after a day like that, he’d probably ‘sleep in’ the next morning… so when they went in to wake him up… they were surprised to find that he wasn’t there! They looked high and low… but without result.

They couldn’t figure out where he would have gone, and they were getting a little concerned… when one of the disciples finally found him. You know what he was doing? Praying! “There’s work to do Jesus… why are you wasting time praying?” Yet Jesus recognized a need in his fast paced life to retreat to a quiet, lonely place for reflection, meditation, prayer and communion with God. Which as we’re going to see this morning, is the key to dealing with the busyness of life. Now think about this for a minute, Jesus was the most productive man that ever walked the face of the earth. He got more done, and had a greater impact in 3 years… than most of us will accomplish in a lifetime! How did He do it? The answer is found in vs.35 of Mark 1… “Early the next morning, while it was still dark, Jesus woke and left the house. He went to a lonely place, where he prayed.” To put it simply, the reason Jesus was able to do what He was able to do, was because He had “L.E.A.P” A “Life Empowered Around Prayer”.