One Thing.

Jesus said, “One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42). Jesus was a guest at Martha's house and had been invited to dinner. Martha was busy preparing the meal, and Mary was sitting by Jesus, listening and being in dialogue. Martha was concerned that Mary wasn’t helping with the serving. “But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me. But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:40-42). What do you choose?

Jesus certainly was encouraging laziness or finding ways to avoid serving. The point is that at that time, there was nothing more important than spending time with Jesus, and Jesus used it as a teachable moment. Mary was even willing to endure her sister's scorn to invest her life in Jesus and highly valued the time with Him. How highly do you value time with Jesus? Your actions will show it.

Jesus’ example helps us understand the primary focus of prayer in Mark 1:35. Jesus got up early and went to a quiet place to pray. Why did Jesus, God in the flesh, need to pray? It wasn’t so much that he needed to pray as that he loved to pray, to spend time in quiet, in a loving communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This is the greatest form of prayer and is often called contemplative prayer. Of course, we not only desire to pray, but we need to pray to walk in his grace rather than the flesh, and to request assistance from Him and for others. Certainly, we should go from our despair or discouragement to praise as is described in the Psalms. Desires for God will increase as we spend more time with him in prayer. If you want to release your desires to God and Godliness, we need to spend time in love communion with God in prayer. We are called to be Olympians of prayer.

It is said that children spell love as T.I.M.E. If we spend time with them and hopefully quality time, they know they are loved. How you spend your time reveals what you value, especially in your spare time.

Do you rise early to pray like Jesus? (Mark 1:35) The disciples who were with Jesus during the apprenticeship as disciples noticed that he valued prayer and practiced it. They said to Jesus, “Teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). Jesus said to pray with focus and gave them what is called the Lord’s prayer. (Matthew 6:0-13). It was not just about saying a rote prayer but living a life of prayer. Jesus lived a life of prayer. He invited us to follow Him. As John of Chrysostom said, “Prayer should be the means by which I, at all times, receive all that I need, for this reason be my daily refuge, my daily consolation, my daily joy, my source of rich and exhaustible joy in life.”

The Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians place a very high value on prayer. In the monasteries, prayer is their main focus. They also encourage their people in their churches to also spend quality time in prayer and become people of prayer. They also teach the importance of Christian spiritual formation in prayer. There is one primary way to learn to pray, and that is by praying. Prayer is about spending quality time in prayer, communing with God. The prime reason we pray is for love of God and character transformation. Prayer is a big part of the process in aligning with God in heart, mind and strength.

Jesus said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers” (Matthew 21:3). God’s priority for the people of God is to be people of prayer. This is especially true as wickedness increases. Jesus said as the end draws near, “And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold” ( Matthew 24:12). People who pray are people of faith for there lives are refreshed in God and His presence. However, prayer does take discipline and resolve. Satan and the world, with all its distractions, will fight you at every turn. As Martha was distracted with many things so we will have to fight against distractions as we learn to pray. We can learn to be quiet before the Lord and then to be in dialogue with him. If we get distracted, we can refocus by saying the name Jesus or some other faith word that brings us back into focus. It will be especially hard at the beginning. As Eugene Peterson states, “But until we are in prayer, we are not teachable. It is better to pray badly than not to pray at all. A ship is dead in the water and can’t be steered.”

Evangelicals tend not to make the life of prayer a high priority in practice. There are a few prayer retreats, or teaching people on Spiritual formation, assisting people in prayer as a way of life. There is a tendency only to receive Christian spiritual disciplines when they are easy. Of course, as Evangelicals, our second priority should be evangelism, which is also lacking in many Canadian churches. " “Research indicates a significant lack of evangelism in Canada, with 65% of church leaders reporting it has not been a priority in their congregations in recent years. As Canadian society becomes more secular, 55% of churches do not equip congregants to share their faith, and many Christians are reluctant to evangelize due to fear of offending others." If we pray, we will have God’s heart for the lost, and we will be bold in love.

The Third high priority of disciples of Christ is discipleship. Being conformed to the image of Christ is our calling. As the Bible says, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). What are we doing as churches to assist people in being conformed to the image of the Son? Yes, knowledge is very important, but more than that is Christlikeness and this occurs as we live a life of prayer.

Worship is also a very high priority. Our focus has been to appease man rather than to please God in worship. What are we doing to instill the majesty of God in worship, giving room for quiet and confession to the Lord and a sense of His transcendence and holiness in worship as well as his immense? There may be too much focus on the imminent and casualness in worship.

One thing is necessary. When we arrive at the commitment and practice of prayer, everything else comes out of the overflow. Because the early disciples had such a love for Jesus, they were willing to suffer and die, because they found one thing necessary in God. The people noticed that the disciples had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13) To be Godly, you must put in the effort and discipline. It does not come to the slacker. (Proverbs 10:4). We can express our love to God by spending time with him. Communion with Jesus is so beautiful and life-filling and transforming.

“A life of prayer forces us to deal with the reality of the world and of our own lives at a depth and with honesty that is quite unheard of by the prayerless, and much of that reality we would certainly avoid if we could. Do we really want to feel this deeply? Do we want to go this far? The Psalms take us to the painful heart of rejections and alienations and guilts that we could live on the surface of much more happily. If we knew that was where prayer takes us, would we ever have signed on? Is this a pious deceit?” (Eugene Peterson) Reality is based on fact, and faith has its foundation in fact. Do you want to live in an illusion or in the truth?

John the Apostle states, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). One thing is necessary: it is Jesus and prayer. Everything comes out of our communion with God.

Resources

Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster.

Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard,

Hearing God, Dallas Willard

Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer, Eugene Peterson.

Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard.

The Prayer of Faith, Leonard Boase.

The Fulfillment of All Desire, Ralph Martin.

Enjoying God: Prayer and Spiritual Formation, Alan J. Niebergal