Praying With Jesus

(Christ in the Desert (1872) by Ivan Kramskoi/Wikimedia Commons)

This year we're collaborating with writers across the Augustine Collective, a network of student-led Christian journals, to bring you a series of short devotional articles during this season of Lent, the 40-day period prior to Easter. Find this series also published by UChicago's CANA Journal and UC Berkeley's TAUG.

by nikko wheeler, university of chicago

“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, ‘Everyone is looking for you.’ And he said to them, ‘Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.’” (Mark 1:35–38)

In our prayers, we in our sinful states too easily slip into asking solely for supplication from God—that he supply us with heavenly goods and services. There is certainly a time and place for praying for God’s provision in our plans. Even Jesus teaches the apostles to ask God, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). However, because of the materialism of Western culture and society, Christians in the West tend to adopt an all-too-common self-centered therapeutic deism. Thus, we overextend our requests and fail to investigate the ends with which we stammer in our prayers for God’s supplication.

In Mark 1:35–38, we see how God may respond when we pray in his Son’s name, seeking only our ends. The passage opens with Jesus—called “he” in the text—waking up early and searching for a quiet place to pray. But the lesson for us is not in Jesus’s unrecorded prayers. It is in how he responds to those looking for him. When Simon and others find Jesus, they explain that “everyone is looking for him.” However, this is not just searching for the sake of finding.

The night before, Jesus was in Peter and Andrew’s house in Capernaum. He healed many who had been “brought to him,” and “the whole city [was] gathered together at the door” (Mark 1:21–34). The people heard he was healing, so they came for healing. They came for what Jesus could do for them. Thus, when Simon finds Jesus the next morning, the “everyone” he mentions means the whole city of Capernaum. The people wanted him to return and keep performing miracles. They continued to seek Jesus for what he could do for them.

Jesus’ response says it all. Instead of returning to Capernaum, he says, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” The healings are not Jesus’s sole purpose. It is preaching. It is to tell people—as Mark notes of Jesus’s first words—“the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). So, rather than go to Jesus only to ask, let us go with Jesus in our prayers. Instead, ask God that “not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). Or take from the Lord’s Prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Rather than pray to Jesus seeking only our ends, let us pray with Jesus seeking God’s ends—that his kingdom come, and his will be done.

Nikko is an alumnus of the University of Chicago and a current student at the Chicago Course on Preaching.