Let me throw some numbers at you. Imagine that you were in charge of an operation that involves, on the average, some ten thousand people a week, almost all of whom come together at one time. Of these ten thousand or so, not all will get there every time, but sometimes many more than that will show up. A variety of factors, including weather and whim, means that sometimes it will be down to six or eight thousand; other times it will climb to perhaps fifteen thousand. And you who are in charge do not know until it happens how many are coming. Do you see the potential for things getting out of control?
In addition, when they gather for a few hours, creating logistical problems ranging from traffic management to restroom maintenance, there are to be a couple of large meetings and about 300 smaller meetings, all at once. Most of these little groups are to be led by people who may or may not show up prepared to lead their groups. If you have 300 meetings going on simultaneously, it is almost certain that some of them will go spinning out of control.
In addition, the bill for running this enterprise comes to more than ten million dollars a year. Where does it come from? You don’t actually know. It’s uncertain. But you are in charge of getting it to come! As well as of getting various other things to happen. As well as of attending to the individual needs of the ten thousand. People are pulling at your sleeve all the time, asking you to do this, be that, go somewhere, get it done. You are supposed to be in control.
At the end of the day, when one of these huge gatherings is over, the last car has left the acres of parking, and the last door has been locked, then someone hands you a brochure advertising a prayer retreat: five days out in the woods, no telephone, locked in prayer.
What is your response? What do you reply?
Now I know that you think you know what I want you to reply! I know what you think will please the pastor! You think you are supposed to say, "That sounds great, just what I need. Five days of peace and quiet with the Lord. I’ll go."
But come on, now, get real. What do you really say? Managing ten thousand people, dealing with uncertain helpers, finding ten million dollars, and somebody wants you to get away for a prayer retreat? And you say, Oh, how wonderful!" Get real! No, what you are far more likely to say is, "I don’t have time for that. I have too much to do. I couldn’t afford five hours, let alone five days. I’m just too busy to pray."
Too busy to pray. That is the mark of Christians living in a fast-paced, high-powered world. Too busy to pray.
There are dangers in being too busy to pray. I want to insist this morning that in fact we are not too busy to pray. Instead we are too busy not to pray. Do you get that distinction? It is not that we are too busy to pray. It is that, if we only really knew it, we are too busy not to pray. Because we are busy, we have no choice but to pray.
The issue at its heart is the issue of control. How do you control the situation you are in? How do you control your own life? One avenue is prayer.
The situation I was telling you about a moment ago is the story of Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, near Chicago. It’s one of those fast-growing churches in the outer suburbs. It has to be an absolute nightmare to manage.
As I read about Bill Hybels and Willow Creek, of course I made the obvious comparisons to myself and Takoma Park. How can one man begin to manage ten thousand church members, when I can scarcely deal with half of our seven hundred? How can one person even grasp what is going on with 300 plus classes and ministries, let alone plan any of it, when it seems we here labor mightily just to keep a few programs going and start a couple of new ones?
Most intimidating of all, how can Bill Hybels find time to write a book, when Joe Smith can scarcely find time to read it? I suspect the answer is found in the title of his book, Too Busy Not To Pray. This morning’s message is derived from that book title, although the development of it is mine.
Too busy not to pray. The issue, I say again, is how to be in control of our own lives.
I am taking you to the stories Matthew records in his 14th chapter. He paints a picture of Jesus dealing with out-of-control experiences. The stresses built on Jesus, beginning with an implied threat on his life, then multiplying into a huge responsibility. Matthew shows us how, when the stress built in Jesus’ busy life, then Jesus interrupted it all and went to pray. He went to pray because He knew that in order to regain control of His life, He was too busy not to pray.
I
Early in this chapter there is the story of the arrest and execution of John the Baptist. John had been detained by agents of King Herod, mainly because John had had the courage to denounce the King’s immorality.
But now Herod, smitten by his mistress’s daughter, had cavalierly agreed to behead John. Just a casual wave of the hand and the terrible deed was done.
The text tells us that the disciples of John the Baptist recovered his body, buried him, and then came to tell Jesus what had happened.
Now can you get in touch with what Jesus must have felt at that moment? His cousin, friend, and mentor, John, has been wiped out to satisfy the whim of a cheap little dancing girl. King Herod cares absolutely nothing for the lives of wandering preachers. And Jesus could be next. What did He feel? I am confident that Jesus felt the hot breath of that dragon on His neck. There were things happening here over which He had no control.
In fact, that is true for you and me, isn’t it? Suddenly, swiftly, without a moment’s warning, something happens and everything changes. Those families whose loved ones were riding on a train over an Alabama bayou this week – their lives were suddenly thrown out of control. Whatever their agendas were, whatever they had planned to be doing, it’s all washed out because of one horrible moment which no one has the power to change. Out of control. The stress is unbelievably high when you are out of control.
There are plenty of times when our lives just get beyond our control. Life is very often not fair, and things threaten us deeply. Like Jesus hearing of His cousin’s awful and unjust death and thinking that He could easily be next, we see that we are not guaranteed anything beyond this very moment. All of our plans for tomorrow and next week and next year and when we retire ... all of them can come unglued in an instant. Out of control.
That says to me that somewhere along the way, instead of trying to control the uncontrollable and manage the unmanageable, we would do well to focus on the one thing most central, the one thing most crucial, and that is our relationship with our creator. If I knew I would step out of this building and die before nightfall, I would spend that time in prayer and in the embrace of the people I love. I would be too busy not to pray.
What did Jesus do? It says here that when He heard the news about John, He withdrew to a deserted place by Himself. The assumption is that it was to pray. In the face of the uncontrollable, He chose fellowship with the living God as His priority. No matter how much distress we feel, no matter how lost we are, all we know is that when life goes out of control, we are too busy not to pray.
II
But then, Matthew records another story in this chapter. The next thing that happens with Jesus after He hears the news about His cousin John is what we call the feeding of the five thousand.
Here they are, a crowd of folks, thousands of them, in overwhelming numbers, having stayed around all day, and now very hungry.
Jesus’ disciples wanted to do the obvious thing. Send them home. Abdicate responsibility for them. Why own the problem when you can just get rid of it? Why allow yourself to be controlled by the circumstances when you can just shrug your shoulders and say, "It’s not my job. Feeding five thousand folks is not in my disciple job description. Hey, it’s five o’clock and I get off now. No can do."
But again the real issue is control. Control of our own lives. We do not want to lose control. We do not like the needs of others to reach in and take control of us. We want to be free.
But there are times when we cannot avoid it. There are times when we have to rise to the occasion and do the monumental task. I think all of us are aware of that. Almost all of us have just had to put our hands to those huge, huge, tasks and get them done.
Women suddenly alone have raised their children anyway. Men faced with failing businesses and mounting debts have worked extra hours to pay the bills. Young people with enough school assignments and job duties to fill a 26 hour day have just set aside their social lives and have done it. We have surrendered control of our time and energies long enough to get done what needed to be done.
But here is where we make the mistake. Here is where we can regain control of our lives, but we do not. When we have exhausted our resources and used up our emotions as well as our strength in doing all that needs to be done, we fail to replenish ourselves. We fail to rebuild our reserves. And our very failure to do so is an act of sin, of sin. Let me demonstrate.
Suppose you had been there feeding the five thousand. Well, all right, if you can’t imagine that, imagine yourself in the church kitchen feeding a score of hungry day campers. Or imagine yourself in your office, knocking out fifty computer printouts. Or imagine yourself in your home, handling two whiny preschoolers. Imagine yourself wherever you pick up responsibilities. When the job is all done, how do you feel? What do you think of yourself? Here is where sin happens.
If you’re like me, maybe you get to feeling sorry for yourself. “Poor little me, I stuffed five hundred envelopes and schlepped it all to the post office all by my little lonesome self.” You get to feeling sorry for yourself. Or you get to feeling very proud that you are a miracle worker. “I drove every nail, I washed every window, I painted every square inch, all by myself, because nobody else does it right. Yes, I took charge and I took control.”
Yes, but what happened to your spirit in the process? What happened to your heart? The issue is always control. Who is in control of your life? Even when you choose to give it away and to exercise that mammoth responsibility, there is still the question of your motives. There is still the matter of whether you are trying to do it all yourself or whether you are in partnership with the living God.
When the task is huge and the responsibilities are overwhelming; when there is too much to do, but you are going to do it anyway, no matter what the consequences, then watch out. For then you are not too busy to pray. You are too busy not to pray.
III
And so, Matthew tells us, as soon as the five thousand had been fed, immediately Jesus made the disciples take Him by boat to the other side, where He could go to pray. Impressed with the threat of something out of control happening to Him as it had happened to John; then exhausted from giving control of the last few hours to the overwhelming needs of the crowd, Jesus now set as an absolute priority His time alone with His God.
Unhurried, calm, focused, He simply dismissed the crowds, went to a place of His own choosing, and gave the Lord His heart. He had been immensely busy, but the time had come when He was too busy not to pray. The only way He could get focus back in His life was to pray.
May I offer a word of testimony? In my daily work, I find that there are any number of things out of control. There are people who do not do what I would hope they would do. There are interruptions of various sorts. There are distractions of all kinds. I find I literally must take time just to be still and know who is God around here ... and, you know what, I always find out it isn’t me! I find I must take time to be still and find out who is God, because the question is always control. Who is going to control my life?
Will it be uncontrollable circumstances to which I will have to react? Those things will happen, but in prayer I may choose to be ready for them.
Or will it be the enormity of the responsibilities I face? The work list doesn’t get any shorter, but when I pray, priorities come into focus. Needs emerge. Some things I had expected to do now appear to be trivial, not worth doing. The issue is who is in control of my life?
Circumstances? The jobs my ego wants me to do? Or may I be in control, in partnership with the living Lord?
I love the fact that the chapter in Matthew ends with Jesus walking on the water. Walking on the water! What a wonderful picture of being totally in control of His life! What a complete image of being able to rise above every circumstance, overcome every obstacle, and quietly, calmly do what seems impossible. I don’t pretend that that is the whole meaning of that story. But I do see the picture of Jesus walking on the water as just another way of saying that a life replenished by prayer and revitalized by a relationship to the living God is capable of far, far more than we have ever imagined.
The issue is what? Control. We think we are too busy to pray. In reality, we are what? Too busy not to pray.
Several weeks ago, as I was planning these two messages on the courage to pray, I wanted to find some Scripture passage that would contain something about praying and something about courage. And so I punched up the key words on the little hand-held computer Bible the deacons gave me a few years ago. Up came Psalm 27:14, which reads, "Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."
Good verse for this emphasis. But was there another one? I started to punch up some more words. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. The computer wouldn’t search anymore. Nor would it go back to the menu. It wouldn’t move forward, it wouldn’t move backward. It just stalled, right there.
I finally figured out that the batteries had gone down low. But I saw a gift from the God who, as one of our members likes to say, works in mischievous ways! What a wonderful irony that the batteries would drain and stall the computer right on the verse that says, "Wait ... take courage ... wait."
Maybe that means that if you and I are trying to run on drained batteries, we are too busy not to pray.
