First Things First -- February 8, 2009

Kitty Bean Yancey, a USA Today reporter, wrote a 2006 article describing a unique camp experience for adults. Camp Get-Away and others offer adults the chance to rejunenile one's life. Author Christopher Noxon coined the word which describes one "seeking a vacation from their adult side." Camp Get-Away is not alone. Most major league baseball teams have fantasy camps; there is Rock and Roll fantasy camps and even Michael Jordon's Flight School in Las Vegas.

The reason many adults need to rejunenile one's life is partly due to our world's pace. In 2006, a survey of 1,313 managers on four continents found that "one-third of managers suffer from ill health as a direct consequence of stress associated with information overload. This figure increases to 43 percent among senior managers." This may be due to the huge number of tasks, memos, emails, phone calls and expectations heaped on them.

Ronald Rolheiser, President of Oblate Seminary, describes many of us as "pathologically overextended." It's a desire to "have our cake and eat it too". He writes: "We want to be a saint, but we also want to feel every sensation experienced by sinners... we want to have a simple lifestyle, but we also want all the comforts of the rich; we want to have the depth afforded by solitude, but we also do not want to miss anything; we want to pray, but we also want to watch television, read, talk to friends, and go out."

At the root is losing touch with who we were designed by God to be—people intimately in touch with a loving creator and savior.

For the overextended and out of touch among us the best hope we have is Christ and how He lived. Not as an empty example but as a powerful witness what is in store for those who follow relying on the Spirit of God as He did. In the gospels Jesus is never in a hurry. In the gospels Jesus is never out of touch with is purpose and focus. Why is this?

Dr. Archibald Hart of Fuller Theological Seminary wrote: "The life of Jesus was a prototype of calmness and composure—the very opposite of what most of us experience in our hassled and hurried existence. The life of Jesus was a model of unhurriedness and balanced priorities.

Jesus and his four cohorts left the synagogue and headed to Peter's for Saturday dinner. What they find is that Peter's mother-in-law, yes he was married, was laid up with a fever. What caused it? We have no idea. Would it have been fatal? We have no idea. But what we do know is that Jesus helped her up and the fever left her and she started getting things ready. She served them.

At sunset, when Sabbath was over, the people came to Jesus. The experience in that morning may have left them shaking and wondering if my kid can get healed I'm there. If my crazy brother-in-law can be cured I'm going to take him. So they came. They brought those who were ill and demon possessed. And Mark writes the whole town came out.

In a very simple way of writing Mark says Jesus "healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons" v. 34 That is why the Son of Man comes. He comes to heal, to grant release and freedom and proclaim the acceptable Year of the Lord. Isaiah passage describes the work of the Lord who refreshes:

29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

There is something to be said for a Savior that answers the needs in honest, clear and meaningful ways. To the weary and busy, the put upon and the clueless Jesus is the hope that life makes sense. To the ill and demon possessed Jesus is the answer human cures hadn't helped.

It had already been a busy day for Jesus and now it's a busy evening as well. The next morning when the disciples get up Jesus isn't there. As life starts to stir in the town people begin to come back by Peter's but Jesus is not there. The bible tell us that "while it was still dark", Jesus headed out to pray.

When the disciples find Jesus they are anxious to get back to the village and get going with that day's agenda of healing and teaching. Jesus has other plans and says, "let's go someplace else". Why move? There's a group of people here, now. Let the other villages come to you.

Christ's power came from His prayer life, from the time He spent with the Father. This is where Jesus got His Father's directions. It is where He sought the answers to the next step along His journey. His power didn't come by being busy but by being available to God. He didn't get jazzed by having been part of a cool miracle. He was jazzed when He knew He was doing what the Father told Him to do. This is why he was never in a hurry or hassled, He was in touch with the one who is in control of the universe.

Our Center is Renewed
Prayer, biblical prayer, forces us to pay attention to God. I said "biblical" prayer for a reason. Prayer that merely lists things we want God to do for us, with us, or to others is not the type of prayer we see in Jesus'. This is the difference between "saying our prayers" and "being at prayer". Prayer is being in the presence of God. Prayer is waiting for God to give us our orders not the other way around. Prayer is an act of trust in the one who has our best interest at heart and who has the power to make it happen.

Try this, pray and don't ask God for anything except to lead you. Don't ask for help, power, healing, answers, or directions. Wait on Him and let His Spirit speak to you about what He needs us to do, where He needs us to go.

He already knows the number of hairs on your head. He knows the intent of our hearts, and the needs we have before we can ask. We already know how to ask for things the challenge is whether we know how to listen to Him.

Clarity is Enhanced
The tyranny of the urgent is broken when meet God in a place of quiet listening. We discover we can first things first, and relegate the "must do" items to further down the list of importance. Those hundreds of emails, calls, expectations, friendships and the like are suddenly put in perspective. Then we can begin to deal with them according to God's agenda not our felt needs or emotional desires.

Not only do you want to pray not asking God for anything but I want you to pray with a sense of expectation that God will tell you what His most important task, goal, or issue is for you tackle. You might want to spend that time in prayer with a piece of paper and pen so you can jot things down.

Here is my personal test for spiritual maturity when it comes to listening to God. When there is a sense of leading they don't expect everyone else to be led the same way. Those still discovering this spiritual maturity tend to believe if God is telling them to wear bright yellow bathing suits when preaching everyone else also has to wear bright yellow bathing suits, or God won't bless them.

Calm is Restored
There is a balance in one's life that has discovered this kind of empowering prayer. I wish I could say I have it down but it's not easy. But each time I make headway I discover my life becomes a bit simpler, it seems to make more sense.

Life is lived in a proper relationship between work and play, interaction and solitude, joy and concern. The truth of that passage in Ecclesiastes, for everything there is a season a time and a purpose under heaven becomes truer.

For a week, or at least for the rest of today, we are going to seek God's face rather than ask God for things. We're going to listen to God's voice not our own words. We're going to be uncomfortable because it isn't what we're used to. But I think we'll have taken a big step forward in discovering what it means to pray as Jesus prayed. Amen.