What If Peter Prayed?

Thank you, kids and families, for leading our service so far. It’s so good to be in a church full of energy from young families. If you’re here for the first time, welcome. I don’t think it’s an accident you’re here. I believe God has something to share with you today. Thanks also to Andrea and the team, and to Judy and the musicians.

We’re continuing our series Cosmic Conversations, exploring the mystery of prayer. A few exciting things are happening during the week too. There’s prayer meeting on Monday nights at 7:30 here. There are prayer challenge cards in the foyer that you can take and step into. And there’s a prayer space in the old minister’s office: go through the hallway from the foyer and turn right. Anise has created an amazing space there to pray and talk to God.

Recap

We’ve been looking at prayer in light of the cosmic conflict, the bigger picture. Prayer helps us see reality from God’s point of view. We’re prone to shrink our view of God and carry on as though we’re the centre of everything, but prayer puts things in perspective and lets us see the world as God sees it.

I started the series by asking why we pray at all if God is all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing, and we saw that prayer gives God permission to do what he already wants to do. In week two Davison spoke on unanswered prayer: even when God doesn’t answer as we hope, he’s present and he strengthens us. Last week Jared looked at the two wills of God, his ideal will and his remedial will. Weighing every factor, God knows what’s best for us.

Today we tackle an honest, hard question: why is it so hard to pray?

Why do you find it hard to pray?

Let’s start with something we can all take part in. Scan the QR code on the screen, or go to menti.com and enter the code, and answer this: Why do you sometimes find it hard to pray? It’s anonymous, so be real. Let’s be a real church today and not pretend everything is fine.

Here are some of the answers coming in:

• Unanswered prayers. Very real. When God doesn’t answer, it’s hard to keep going.
• Distractions. I’m one of the most distracted people out there. I’m praying and thinking about what’s next today, or that I’m hungry.
• Because I’ve done something wrong. Thank you for sharing that. Guilt can make us feel we can’t approach God.
• Falling asleep. We’ll get to that!
• Feeling disconnected from God. Rushing. Life is hectic.

(If you can’t get on, sorry. Only fifty people can join because I’m too cheap to pay for the full version of Menti. Enjoy from the crowd!)

• Lazy. Tired. Busy mind. Busy family. Sin. Lack of commitment. Discouraged. Scared. Emotionally disconnected. Feeling far from God. Busyness.

There’s a whole range of answers. Thank you for sharing them honestly with your church community. I hope this message can be honest and real, and also encouraging for those of you struggling with prayer. (Thanks, Jared, we can go back to the slides.)

Gethsemane: the battleground of prayer

The struggle to pray is universal. Even those closest to Jesus found it very hard. Each week in this series we’ve looked at a different angle on the same story, the Garden of Gethsemane. So far we’ve focused on Jesus’ prayer. Today we look at the disciples and contrast them with Jesus.

Gethsemane was the battleground of prayer for Jesus. It was his darkest moment, and he was in great distress. He knew the crucifixion wasn’t far away. He invited his disciples to come and support him. If they’d been alert and engaged, they’d have had a window into their Saviour’s posture before God and into what was coming.

John tells us Gethsemane was a place Jesus and his disciples often went to pray (John 18:2). In his moment of greatest distress, Jesus goes to what is familiar, to the place where he’ll fight this battle: a place of prayer and wrestling with God. And what happens there shapes what comes next, for Jesus and for the disciples.

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.

Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”

— Matthew 26:40–46

Sleep was a real struggle, just as someone wrote on the screen. Luke gives us another angle:

Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.”… When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

— Luke 22:39–40, 45–46

Luke gives us a window Matthew doesn’t: they were exhausted from sorrow.

Why Peter?

Notice that Peter is singled out among the three. In Mark, Jesus even uses his old name: “Simon, are you asleep? Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour?” (Mark 14:37). Why Peter, when others were there too?

It makes sense when we look at what comes just before and just after. Right before this, Peter is bold and confident: “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you” (Matthew 26:35). He’s confident in his own strength to stand firm under trial: “Even if everyone else deserts you, Jesus, I’ll stay.”

After Gethsemane the exact opposite happens. He denies Jesus in front of three different people: “I don’t know the man!” And just as Jesus predicted, the rooster crows.

Gethsemane is sandwiched between those two moments. It’s the in-between. I believe Peter is singled out because he was the one who had boasted of his loyalty, and that in-between moment shaped what came next.

It makes us ask: what if Peter had prayed? What if he’d kept praying for another hour, tired as he was? What would have happened? What we do know is that the gap between Peter’s intentions and his actions was meant to be bridged by prayer, or in his case, left open by the lack of it.

The spirit and the flesh

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” That statement gives us insight into why prayer is so hard.

For Peter, in that moment, his flesh’s top priority was sleep. He was exhausted from sorrow, and his body wanted to sleep.

We have two competing forces in our lives: the spirit and the flesh. The flesh is our body’s natural needs: food, sleep, comfort. The spirit is our truest identity, connected to God’s Spirit. God made our spirit to be intertwined with his, to guide our mind and govern our body.

After the Fall that order was reversed. Instead of the spirit governing the mind and body, the body began to control the mind, and the mind controlled the spirit. Following Jesus is about reversing that order again and bringing the body under the spirit.

So why is prayer so hard? Because it’s a battle of priorities. Our body tells us we need sleep, or a dopamine hit from scrolling social media. It’s easier to watch YouTube or Netflix and escape. Prayer resists what the body says it needs.

Prayer is also a cosmic battle. Gethsemane was a place of cosmic battle for Jesus and for the disciples. If prayer is a weapon in that conflict, of course it will be hard. The enemy would love nothing more than to take away your prayer life, because that’s where the battle is won and lost. So the enemy goes after the very thing that shapes what’s to come.

Prayer is resistance. It’s saying no to the flesh and yes to the spirit. Our spirit moves us to pray, but our flesh pulls us towards what feels natural: sleep, social media, YouTube. Even when we know we need to be praying, because that’s where the battle is won and lost, we default to what’s easy.

So how do we fight back when the flesh wants comfort but the spirit craves connection with God?

We fall to the level of our training

Jesus shows us that prayer isn’t glamorous. It’s training.

Jesus’ prayer stands in contrast to Peter’s sleep. Peter missed the moment. Jesus seized it. He knew what was really needed. Prayer was his priority, so he went to Gethsemane to fight on a spiritual, cosmic level, not merely a physical one. Gethsemane was a true battlefield. The victory was won there before it was won on the cross, in that honest, earnest pouring out of his heart before God.

We might think the battle was won before Pilate, before the high priest, or before the crowds. But it was won in Gethsemane, in prayer.

Jesus’ words there echo the prayer he taught his disciples. They’d noticed something different about his prayer life, something that shaped everything he did, so they asked, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). He taught them: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9–10).

In Gethsemane we hear the same prayer. “Abba, Father.” He relates to God as Father. “Not my will, but yours be done,” which echoes “your will be done.”

Jesus goes back to what fuels his whole life. Like Daniel, who kept praying even with death in front of him, Jesus goes to what he knows works: prayer. He pleads honestly and fervently before God.

Meanwhile Peter, instead of praying the prayer Jesus taught him, is asleep. He’d been so bold about the occasion. But here’s the key:

In moments of pressure, we don’t rise to the occasion. We fall to the level of our training.

The disciples hadn’t put in the work of prayer the way Jesus had. Again and again we see Jesus going up the mountain early in the morning, finding solitude and drawing his strength from God. We don’t see that in the disciples. They weren’t there yet. Peter fell and Jesus stood firm because each fell to the level of his training.

Prayer is something we train. You don’t flip a switch and arrive overnight. You start small, and you keep growing and training.

Steph Curry’s shot

I’m not much of a basketballer, but I love Steph Curry. He can shoot threes from anywhere. I watched a video of him hitting 115 three-pointers in a row without missing one.

I also watched a documentary called Court of Gold about the Olympic final, Team USA against France. The USA were behind and struggling, and there was a moment when the game could have gone either way. Curry gets the ball and passes to Kevin Durant, another great. LeBron James, arguably one of the greatest ever, is open on the other side. But Durant passes back to Curry, who is double-teamed.

No one takes a fadeaway three while double-teamed. Curry takes it, and it goes in. Then he pulls out his classic “night night” celebration, his way of saying the game’s over.

We watch that and think, “How? That’s impossible. LeBron was right there!” In the interview afterwards Curry said, “Yeah, they were definitely open. But when I got the ball, muscle memory took over. I’d taken that shot so many times in training. I knew if I could get it off, it would probably go in.”

We think he rose to the occasion. He didn’t. He fell to the level of his training.

A beautiful waste

Prayer is hidden training. It’s totally unglamorous, laborious and a struggle. It’s unseen, and you often don’t see results straight away. It’s a long labour of persistence with God when you may not see visible outcomes.

That’s part of why prayer is hard. We like visible, tangible results, but prayer means trusting a God who doesn’t always deliver them immediately. We’ve all heard stories of people who prayed earnestly for years, even decades, before a prayer was finally answered. Those stories inspire us for a while, and we pray for a bit, then we lose stamina and heart and give up.

Prayer can seem like a waste of time, especially to productive people. I like efficiency and productivity, and prayer often doesn’t feel like either. The world may see it as a waste of time. But it’s a beautiful waste. God has a soft spot for the unglamorous work of prayer. That’s where he shapes us, moulds us and forms us into who he wants us to be.

And he delights in our prayers:

The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.

— Revelation 5:8

I don’t think we grasp what this is saying. Every prayer you’ve prayed, from the simplest one-liner to a throwaway comment to pouring out your heart, is received by God, and it’s precious to him. He stores your prayers in golden bowls of incense. They’re not perfect, but they’re personal, and that’s why he delights in them. They don’t disappear into thin air or hit the ceiling, even when it feels like they do. They’re treasured in heaven, and God calls them his.

Jesus stays awake for you

Some of you feel discouraged with prayer. It feels like it isn’t working, and you want to give up. Maybe you feel you’ve failed because your prayer life hasn’t been strong, because you haven’t stepped into a rhythm of prayer like Jesus.

I want to leave you with something. Just before Gethsemane, Jesus said this to Peter:

Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

— Luke 22:31–32

When our prayers fall short and we fail because we haven’t lived in a rhythm of prayer, Jesus prays for us. He’s the great Intercessor. When we mean to pray and don’t, Jesus has already prayed for us. When our prayers aren’t perfect, we have a perfect God who intercedes for us perfectly.

Peter failed. But because of Jesus’ prayer, Peter was restored. He turned back, strengthened his brothers, led the early church, and preached so powerfully at Pentecost. Jesus prayed for Peter.

So prayer is where the battle is fought. But even when you fall asleep in your Gethsemane, Jesus stays awake for you, and he has already prayed for you.

Praying together

Throughout this series, instead of the preacher praying at the end, we’ve given you the chance to pray with the people around you. So turn to the people near you in twos or threes and ask, “Are you comfortable to pray and be prayed for?” If they are, spend some time praying for each other. Then we’ll finish with a final song.