Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, October twelfth. Today we begin a focus on those called to lead God's people, but these lessons apply to every believer because each of us is called to represent Christ in the world. Here's part one of prayer and personal life.
Now let me just say in the very beginning that you're going out into a society that you're not going to be prepared for. Because there is no school in the face of this earth that can prepare you for what is coming in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and so I want to encourage you to listen very, very carefully to what I want to say to you in these next four sessions. It is not my purpose to demonstrate my ability to exegete a passage, to what I want to say to you in these next four sessions. It is not my purpose to demonstrate my ability to exegete a passage, but what I'm interested in is that you listen carefully about your life, because you're going to have to live in a very trying society, and you're going to have to minister in situations and circumstances that our forefathers never ministered in. If you listen carefully and you take to heart what I want to share with you.
You'll make it, no matter what happens. But if you don't, some of you are not going to make it. And I want you to turn, if you have your Bible, to Mark chapter one, verse thirty-five. I want to look at several verses, but I want us to look at this one as the beginning. The Scripture says in verse thirty-five of Mark one, and in the early morning, while it was still dark.
He that is Christ arose and went out and departed to a lonely place and was praying there. I believe that prayer must be the priority activity in the life of the servant of God. And if you'll think for just the moment, the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. In this particular passage, the Bible says that early in the morning Jesus was up and out there alone praying in a place by himself. And so, if you look at the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and all of His wisdom and knowledge and understanding and His relationship to the Father, if He out praying early in the morning, late in the evening, all night long, slipping away even amidst people who are thronging Him because of their needs, it should say something to you and to me about the place of prayer in our own personal, private life.
But oftentimes, even though we know it's a priority and should be, we don't do it. But let me just remind you of something: the Bible nowhere says that you're not to be great preachers, a great teachers. Doesn't say we're to be great missionaries, the great servants of God, build great churches, have great ministries. But it does say that you and I are to live a holy life. And my friend, there's no such thing as holy living, unless prayer is a priority in our life.
There'll not be any quietness and peace, no abilities to sustain the storms and the trials, the temptations, the heartaches, the heartbreaks, the suffering, the pain, the trials, the tribulations, unless prayer is a priority in your life. If you don't make it a priority, then that won't be later on. I think in my own life how grateful I am to my mother, because as a kid growing up, my father passed away when I was about seven months of age, and so it was just my mom and myself. But so early, I can't remember that before I would go to bed at night, my mother would get me down by the bedside—not after I got in the bed, down by the bedside—and she and I would pray. And I can still hear my mom praying some things that she prayed for me every single night.
She wasn't educated. Had to quit school in the sixth grade because her mother passed away, and she had to raise the rest of the family. My mom learned to depend upon God, but my mom was wise enough to teach me very early that the most important thing in my life was to learn to pray. She didn't say, "Here's how you pray." She just demonstrated it to me. And so when I got my first paper route.
The truth is, to be honest, I was afraid of the dark, and so I got up in the morning at five o'clock and had to deliver newspapers for about an hour or so. And my first couple of weeks or so, I prayed all the way around the paper route because I was afraid. And after a while, I realized I was no longer afraid, and the Lord Jesus Christ and I became intimate companions delivering newspapers. But I remember to this very moment the time in my life when God said to me, "This is why it must be a priority in your life." I used to live in Fort Worth, and I remember being over in the corner of the living room, which was my prayer place, one morning or one evening, and I was praying. And I remember God so clearly said to me that night on my knees, "Whatever you accomplish in life." You will have to accomplish on your knees, and my friend, I can tell you, I believe that's God's best way of accomplishing His work.
It is a whole lot less troublesome than trying to do it in my flesh and in my own strength. And as I look back over my failures, and I have a long list of them, they have always come as a result of getting too busy. To do it God's way, and to do it my way, which is on my feet rather than on my knees. But you see, in order for prayer to be a priority, there has to be a discipline, because it's not just going to happen. You're not going to say, "Well, I'm going to start putting prayer as a priority in my life." Doesn't work that way.
There's a discipline that is required, and that discipline demands that I have a time. And the place, and the plan, and the purpose—very simple. But listen to me: if you don't have it, it won't be a priority. In my own life, I have a time, but I have a place, and I think the place is just as important as the time. In somewhere, nobody ever taught me this, but I learned that having a place was very important.
And when I was growing up, and I didn't have a place in my home where I lived that I could get aside, I had a place in the Sunday school room down in the basement of the church where I was attending, and I would go up there oftentimes, a couple of times a day in the morning and the evening, and I had the privilege of getting into the church and back in the basement, back in that Sunday school class. But I discovered something about having a place and having something to remind me of it. At this point in my life, my favorite place is in my study at home. But in my study at home, I have an afghan which my mother made for me, and a pillow, and it happens to be stretched out.
So when I walk in my study, the first thing I see is that afghan and an open Bible and a pillow, because I get busy just like you do. I travel just like you do, and I could give you a lot of reasons not to have any time to pray, as many reasons as you could give me. And I discovered something by accident. If I have a place, and I have something that remind me, every time I walk in that study, the first thing I see, is the place where God and I carry on business. That's where He and I fellowship.
That is the place. And when I'm kneeling over there, the only thing I'm doing is talking to God. I'm not studying for sermons. I'm not trying to figure out something else. It is a place.
You say, "Well, I live in a small apartment. I don't have a place." You can always choose the bathroom. Go in and shut the door. Stretch out on the floor, and you're alone with God. It doesn't make any difference where.
But I want to tell you, there's something about a place where you talk to God. When your heart is aching, and when you've got difficulties and hardships, when you want things to work out in your life that seem to be impossible, a time and a place. And if you don't set the time, and I know that you feel right now that your schedule is such and your studies are such, you just don't have time to pray. I didn't say you had to pray more than study. Priority doesn't mean that you do that more than anything else, but it has the quality time and the priority time.
And my friends, you can explain it away all day long, only to suffer the consequences of it. There's something about a time and a place and a plan. And may I give you a very simple plan? Get yourself a little stenographer's pad, and you write in that pad. Your prayer request, the date, and then when God answers it, you put one line through it.
Don't scratch it out. Just put one line through it, and the date that God answered your prayer. And here's what'll happen: that prayer book of yours will become several things. First of all, it will become a systematic reminder to bring you back to pray for some things over and over and over again. Secondly, it will become An impetus to your own faith, because every time you've drawn a line through and put a date by it, it is an answer.
And what happens is that on page after page after page, those lines are drawn, those dates are there. God has answered this prayer, and He's answered this one, and He's answered this one, He's answered this one. But a third thing it becomes is this: it becomes a little biographical sketch of your walk with God. Because as you set down your goals and your dreams and the things that concern you, the things about your family, your wife and your children, your financial needs, your studies, those for whom you are concerned, over a period of time, that little book begins to sketch your own personal walk with God, and my friend. One of these days, if you'll keep that book and you'll be keep adding them to them, you'll have no greater gift to give your children than your prayer diary, because it will say something to them about their dad, about their mom, that nothing in the world will ever equal.
Because they're going to be able to flip through those pages and see, well, my dad was having a problem here, and. He was having a problem here, and I'm having the same kind of problem in my own life, my friends. You'll build up their faith, you'll strengthen their walk with God, with your own simple little prayer book, that nothing else in the world will substitute for it. But notice, I said that in order to make prayer a priority in your life, there had to be a discipline. And that discipline not only is a time and a place and a particular purpose and plan.
I'm going to talk about the purpose in a moment, but that discipline demands something else, and that is that these two principles you and I settle in our heart, and that is to be able to say no without feeling guilty, is a principle you have to learn to live by. I want to tell you something. You have to learn to say no to some good opportunities, wonderful opportunities, great opportunities. But you just have to say no if Jesus Christ is going to be the priority in your life, and if the activity that is priority is prayer, you're going to have to say no. No, I can't do it.
And the second principle is this. The need alone is never proper motivation to do anything. And if your goal in life is to minister to everybody, you can forget it. You can't to meet everybody's needs. You won't be able to do it.
And if you place prayer as a priority in your life, you are going to be misunderstood by some folks. They're going to think you are a loner. Are they going to say, "Well, you know, you don't have a heart for the ministry"?
Well, they'd have to accuse Paul and the Lord Jesus Christ of the same thing. But you're going to have to learn to say no. I can't do it.
Well, why can't you do it? And the truth is, you don't always have to give everybody an answer for why you can't do everything they ask. As long as you know in your heart that your first priority in life. Is your relationship to Jesus Christ that's more important than winning souls, preaching the gospel, teaching the gospel, ministering to a church? Your personal relationship to Christ is first, because if that's not right, everything else you and I do will not carry much weight, won't be very fruitful, won't have any real lasting value.
So we said first of all that prayer must be a priority.
Now here's the catch: what usually happens when everything gets to going our way? What usually happens if we're honest is we spend less time praying, and maybe that's because our purpose for prayer is not what it ought to be. If prayer is going to be a continuing priority, Then I must understand what the ultimate purpose of my prayer life ought to be. When you look at the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, what is it that kept him going back early in the morning and late at night, and praying all night and walking away from all these people? Here is what I believe his ultimate motivation was, and that was his intimacy with the Father.
He didn't have to confess or repent of anything. He had the power to do anything and everything and all things that fit into the Father's will for him. But why did he spend so much time talking to the Father? Because Jesus' love for the Father, his desire for intimacy with Him, kept him on his knees early in the morning, late in the evening, in the middle of the day, and all night long. Let me ask you this: What does it take to get you on your knees longer than thirty minutes at a time?
What would it take to get you on your knees for a whole hour? What would it take to get you on your knees all day long, or just just through one night? What would it take to get you on your knees that long? Would it take bad news, sickness unto death? What would it take to get you on your knees that long?
And when you pray, what does your prayer focus on? Financial needs, and God knows them. Needs in your family, spending some time with your wife or your children. Or maybe difficulties that your children are going through. What is it that you have your focus on when you kneel to pray?
Let me go back again to say, if our focus is always based on need, when the needs are fulfilled, prayer will no longer be a priority. But none of these things was the priority of Jesus Christ. There was something else in His prayer life that motivated Him and kept Him coming back. And what was that? His desire for intimacy.
Now, think about this for a moment. If you kneel to pray, and your prayers are hurried, and they are focused primarily on your material needs, your needs for your studies, your health, your family, your finances, all of these things, and You're not particularly interested in spending a lot of time at it, and really, you're willing to be able to spend time and then receive what you've asked for, and you have no real, genuine hungering, thirsting, longing just to kneel and be quiet and ask for nothing, but to be satisfied with His presence alone.
So I just want to challenge you to ask yourself the question: To be honest, Lord, what is the focus of my praying? Is it me, myself, and I? Am I really happy, satisfied, just being in your presence, being alone? Or do I get restless? Does my mind wander?
Do I honestly feel it's a waste of time kneeling and saying nothing and doing nothing, just being in your presence, my friend? With all of my heart, I want to tell you: you're not going to make it in the ministry. That is, make an impact, unless prayer is a priority in your life, and unless the motivation for that prayer. Is a yearning, hungering, thirsting desire to be the man and woman God wants you to be, which is the result of not great sermons and great churches and great ministries, but quiet, private time alone in the presence of Jesus Christ. That will make your life.
Have an impact, and Lord Jesus, we thank you for making it simple and plain. For loving is enough to accept us just the way we are. For the privilege of walking in your forgiveness, and most of all, for the wonderful privilege of enjoying. Your presence. For you said we're to be holy men and women.
That we're to live godly lives. And we know that a godly life is one that lives in the never-ending awareness that we are walking in the continuing presence of an awesome. And holy God, I pray that each one of us would be honest enough to examine what our priorities are—not only in our time, but in our love—is my prayer. In Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you for listening to Prayer and Personal Life.
For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online twenty four seven station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by in touch dot org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
