The Scripture this morning contains two entirely different stories which seem unrelated, but, in fact, have much the same message. The first is an early meeting of Jesus with Peter, James and John before they became disciples. They had worked all night with all the skill of professional fishermen who knew the sea like the back of their hands. They knew where the fish were and how to catch them, but after a full night of effort, they had caught nothing. After Jesus finished teaching he told them to go out into the deep and put their nets down once more. They protested since a full night of work had not produced a single fish, and were polite enough not to tell him that they did not think he knew what he was talking about. They lived by and on the sea all their lives, and they knew that he was from the inland town of Nazareth. But at his word they put their nets down one more time if only to prove him wrong. They were shocked to find a catch so big that they were hardly able to haul it in. It was an important lesson for them, for when they came to the end of their own ability they learned to rely on his ability.
The second story is that of Jesus healing a leper. After this healing, the news began to spread about Jesus so that he was besieged by crowds of people. Jesus’ response was not to work until he was exhausted by the pressure of the needs around him, but rather to withdraw to a “lonely” place to pray. And the Scripture informs us that it was his habit to get away by himself to pray.
At first, the stories may appear unrelated. But on closer examination we see that their message is actually the same. The true work of God is not in the feverish activity of life. It is not accomplished by great human effort. It is primarily accomplished by being with, and listening to, God. It was in listening to Christ that Peter, James and John were enabled to do what they could not do by themselves, even though they had been working all night. They saw that listening to one sentence of Christ was of more value than all their personal experience and all the wisdom of all the fishermen they had ever heard combined. It demonstrated for them the fact that human effort alone is not always sufficient. The real power and sufficiency of life is found in taking the time to be with God and draw upon his power.
Even Christ relied on frequent times of renewal as he communed with his Father. In coming to earth, Jesus had limited himself to the human condition and knew that, being in human form, he had to rely on something more than the bodily strength he had. Divine though he was, there were limits to the human mind he was given, and he went aside frequently to a lonely place to commune with the Father — something that he found thrilling. The most important work Jesus did on earth was in those times of quiet retreat as he prayed. If Jesus Christ himself needed regular times alone with God, what makes you think you can do it without taking the same kind of time?
The most important work you will do for God will not be in feverish activity for him, but the time you spend renewing your spirit and discerning his will for your life. It will be the time you calm and collect your soul so that you may receive his strength for the work he has given you to do. There is no time in history when this is more necessary than today. Think for a moment what life used to be like for those a couple of generations ago. Their lives were filled with a lot of hard physical labor. Men worked in the field, but they were close to the earth and there was time to think and time to pray as they went about their labor. Going from one place to another involved long rides in the country air, but there was quiet and no rushing traffic to bristle your nerves. Today we are so efficient that we can run to Columbus and back in a very short period of time. For the people who lived a century ago it would have been an all day trip just to get there. Instead of quiet, we have our stereos and televisions going full blast. Because we can make trips faster we are expected to do more and do it more often. Because of the speed we can travel and the technology we have, we can do more in a day than our great-grandparents did in a whole week.
Sue and I noticed that since the last time we were at the Columbus airport every seat in the gate area now had its own electrical plug and USB port for personal computers. People were buzzing the Internet, reading files, writing reports, sending documents and email. They were talking to business contacts, filling every second with business. Not long ago all they would have been able to do was to wait for the next flight and maybe read a book. The technology is good, but the stress and rush of doing more and more can take its toll.
In place of the quiet, we now have the noise of the larger cities. Radios blare from the cars as they go down the street, and their speakers make it sound like they are right in your car. People walk with earbuds in their ears with constant noise pumped into their head. Televisions are left running all day. Businesses and shops have noise piped throughout their establishment. I sometimes wonder if constant noise is so important to us because we have forgotten how to think — or that we are trying not to. That is why God asks us to observe Sabbath. There is a need for reflection and thought. We are a society of doers. Time spent in prayer, reflection and thought is often looked on as wasted time. But Jesus is saying to us, “Go out into the deep and let down your nets.”
The irony of all this is that if we would stop to pray, and listen to him, we could do so much more with so much less effort. Peter spent all night and a lot of physical effort trying to do what the Lord helped him to do in one moment. There is a difference in human effort and effort that has been divinely inspired and directed. The first accomplishes nothing of lasting value. The second is the only way we accomplish anything of eternal worth.
Peter Kreeft, a Roman Catholic theologian, says, “We have time and prayer backwards. We think time determines prayer, but prayer determines time. We think our lack of time is the cause of our lack of prayer, but our lack of prayer is the cause of our lack of time. When a little boy offered Christ five loaves and two fishes, he multiplied them miraculously. He does the same with our time, but only if we offer it to him in prayer. This is literally miraculous, yet I know it happens from repeated experience. Every day that I say I am too busy to pray, I seem to have no time, accomplish little, and feel frazzled and enslaved by time. Every day that I say I’m too busy not to pray, every time I offer some time-loaves and life-fishes to Christ, he miraculously multiplies them and I share his conquest of time. I have no idea how he does it, I know that he does it, time after time. And yet I resist sacrificing my loaves and fishes to him. I am an idiot. That’s one of the things original sin means: spiritual insanity, preferring misery to joy, little bits of hell to little bits of heaven. We must restore our spiritual sanity. One giant step in that direction is to think truly about time.”
How many of you took time to pray for the service this morning? How many have taken out time to pray any time this week? One Christian leader kept a sign on his desk that read, “Beware of the Barrenness of a Busy Life.” Our lives can be extremely shallow and barren as we get caught in the rush of things to do. Some call it the “tyranny of the urgent” — the urgent replaces the important and our lives become drained as a result. The Bible says, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).
Time magazine reported recently: “In the past 30 years, doctors and health officials have come to realize how heavy a toll stress is taking on the nation’s well-being. According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, two-thirds of office visits to family doctors are prompted by stress related symptoms.” I read once of a race in Pennsylvania called, “The Race to Nowhere.” Without realizing it, many of us have registered for and entered the race to nowhere. It is the frantic and directionless race in which we get caught that produces the stress. But in our frenzied attempts to escape boredom we try to run faster, rather than go deeper in life. Someone has compared the way we live to drinking from a fire hydrant. “A little bit of water from a gentle fountain can go a long way,” he says. But we are being blasted from every side to do more, experience more, take in more, and have more fun.
From the book, Springs in the Valley comes this story which occurred during African colonial history: “In the deep jungles of Africa, a traveler was making a long trek. Workers had been engaged from a tribe to carry the loads. The first day they marched rapidly and went far. The traveler had high hopes of a speedy journey. But the second morning these jungle tribesmen refused to move. For some strange reason they just sat and rested. On inquiry as to the reason for this strange behavior, the traveler was informed that they had gone too fast the first day, and that they were now waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.”
One of the things that concerns me about many churches is that they become frenzied with activity. They have a wider and wider ministry that had less and less depth. Without the ministry of prayer and gifted people who will pray for this church we will be lost. We need an army in this church who will take on as their ministry the difficult work of prayer. I’m calling many of you this morning to ask that you will be one of those who see this as your special ministry. All of us need to pray. We need to lift our fellow Christians before God. We need to ask God to anoint and direct this church to do his will. But there are those with a special gift of intercession. People who can intercede with God for the needs of his people — his church. We need to take Christ seriously when he said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We all know this, we just don’t act as though it is true.
When I was serving in Carrollton, Ohio, we have had a real tragedy in our area as a young man fell through the ice of Leesville Lake and lost his life. The ironic thing about his death is that he was an experienced outdoorsman. He had been hired by one of the camps in the area as a professional naturalist. In addition to that, a course on ice safety and rescue had been held at the camp where he worked just a week before his death. But still he went out on the ice. He went against all his training and rational processes due to over-confidence. We have all done things that were against everything we knew and had been taught, but unfortunately in this case it cost him his life. The point is that many of us are trying to walk on thin ice. And it is not because we do not know better. We know we are in danger of going under. Other people have even tried to tell us that we are in danger, but we failed to listen. The Bible says, “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15).
Joni Eareckson tells a story of how prayer works. She writes, “It all began when I received a letter from a quadriplegic in China. He had recently come to Christ and now saw his disabled friends as his mission field. He couldn’t use his hands, and so he needed a power wheelchair to get around. He wrote, asking for help. I thought, ‘Where am I going to get such a chair, and how will we get it to China?’ At the same time, I received a late-night call from John, a friend in Ohio. His disabled wife had recently passed away. ‘We just purchased a new $20,000 power chair. My wife hardly used it. Think you can find someone who needs it?’ Remembering the quadriplegic in China, I blurted, ‘Of course!’ Then I wondered, ‘How are we going to get a hold of this wheelchair? There’s crating and shipping and...’ Before I could say another thing, John added, ‘We received some financial gifts at the funeral... I’d love to cover the costs of sending this chair to whoever needs it, no matter how far away.’ I was breathless. I told John about the man in China. We rejoiced together, utterly amazed at how the eyes of the Lord were on a quadriplegic on the other side of the earth... his eyes were on a widower in Ohio with a slightly used wheelchair, too. And the Lord wanted to strengthen the hearts of both! It happens in China. It happens in Ohio. And it can happen to you. Of all the places in the earth, God has his eyes on you.”
The question remains: Are our eyes on him?
Rodney J. Buchanan
February 12, 2012
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
