Fifth Sunday After Epiphany
Sun 5, Feb 2006
Job 1:1-7
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39 (Art Vogel makes a statement before the verse is read, stating that Mark is an action oriented gospel, written in between 50 and 60 A.D.)
Psalm 147:1-12
Children's Sermon: Heidi compared God's grace to a baby bib that kept the food off the baby. She said that God's grace, like the bib, prevents sin from getting on us. Unfortunately, that would imply that it's okay for sin to enter through the mouth.
Sermon: (Art Vogel)
(Pastor reads Mark 1:29-39). Mark explains the celebrity status of Jesus. Verse 35, however, speaks of his praying. Jesus wasn't playing hide and seek with his followers, he was getting power from God through prayer. He was recharging. Jesus was super busy. He had to get his intake somehow. He couldn't live without prayer and God. Often we see prayers as petitions. It is really communication between the human and divine realm. One book says that prayer is the appeal of a soul to God. God is a resource we shouldn't neglect. It's not a laundry list of requests. Who do you share with the most? Who do you talk to the most? Mostly we share with friends. But best friends separate at some point. The hymn says `what a friend we have in Jesus.'
Amazon.com has over 21,000 books on prayer. We need prayer time. One football player prays every morning. One successful missionary began every day with prayer. You have to tune an instrument before you can play it. Some parents teach their kids the prayer "now I lay me down to sleep." Art's parents did more than that. They were very prayerful.
There was an urban legend about a pastor who got his cat stuck in a tree. He couldn't coax it out. He tied a rope to the car and to the tree, driving the car backwards to bend the tree. The rope broke and the cat went flying. He made this prayer, "I commit this cat to your keeping." The next day when he went to the supermarket, he saw a woman, whom he knew to be a cat hater, pushing around a cart with cat food in it. She said the daughter wanted a cat, and she told her, "If God gives you a cat, you can have it." The kid prayed for a cat, and, zing! the cat landed in her arms.
There was a scientific study about prayer and healing. It showed that people who were prayed for did better after surgery.
God knows what's best for us.
One time a certain man fell sick. When a pastor went to see him, he saw a vacant, but well used chair. The sick man wanted to talk to Jesus, so the pastor told him to imagine that Jesus was in the vacant chair near the bed, praying like he was a friend in that chair. Later, the man's daughter came to the pastor and told him that the man had died with his hand on the chair.
(Reads Psalm 23.) Our prayers won't make us superheroes, but we have many opportunities to pray, and God promises to answer our prayers.