Alan Witham preached on Mark 1:35-39 to jump-start our 40 Days of Prayer.
These are my sermon notes, loosely organized. I hope you can be challenged by Jesus' example of prayer as we head into this time of focused devotion to the Lord starting next week (March 6th)
1) Jesus prioritized a definite time for his prayer.
- He was busy. So are we.
- Do I think my life is busier than Jesus'?
- When the sun comes up, things get busy.
2) Jesus established the priority of a definite place.
- Desolate- by himself, without distraction.
3) Jesus had a definite practice
- Jesus made it a priority.
- If Jesus needed to pray, how much more do we need to pray?
- Few people pray who don't allot time for this.
- We need to allot times for prayer.
4) Prayer prepares you for spiritual warfare
- When you strengthen you prayer life, you will be prepared for battle of spiritual warfare.
- When our prayer life is strong, we can over come the world, our flesh, and the devil.
- The more consistently you pray, you can overcome the world, self, and devil.
- Your prayer life affects other as well. It strengthens their walk of faith.
- The disciples knew where Jesus was and what he would be doing.
- He did this until people were looking for him.
- Jesus chose to say no to some good things to say yes to the best things.
- Prioritizing. Many decisions are either for good or best, not just bad or good.
- We need to pray "lord please give me wisdom to say no to what I need to say no to and yes to your will today"
Thank You Alan for a challenging sermon and a commission heading into these 40 days of prayer!
