Last week, we saw Jesus' awesome, staggering, absolute, complete authority over everything and everyone. He is in authority over everyone, including you and me. So, is it a good thing or a bad thing to be under that kind of authority? Well, it depends. It depends on how wise the authority is and it depends on whether or not he's a loving authority, a kind authority. If you have someone in charge who's foolish or somebody in charge who is cruel, then that's a bad thing. But if the one in authority over you is both wise and loving, that's the best possible life. It really is. And when I say best possible, I mean that I mean that it's a lot better than being your own authority. Most people think they would be happiest if they were just their own authority. They just control their own lives. They think if I could just, if I could call my own shots in life, then that would be the ideal situation. That is dead wrong. It's dead wrong. The fact is we need a king over us because we are incapable of ruling ourselves. I'm incapable of being my own king because I'm utterly unqualified for the position. I don't have enough wisdom. I don't know the future. I don't control the future. I don't love people enough. I don't prize God's glory enough. I make mistakes. I do dumb things. I'm a terrible candidate for the role of being king over my own life. I've proved that a million times in my life when I've tried to take control. And yet, what do I do? What do we all do? We do the same thing. We keep trying to climb up on God's throne in our lives and be the king of our own lives. And you can see that in the way we react. Why are we impatient? Why do we get impatient with people? Why do we retract into ourselves and become oblivious to the needs of the people around us? Why do we become selfish so often? It's because we're immersed in our own kingdoms, our own little private kingdoms. And so we get uptight. Somebody stands in the way of something we're trying to do, and we get uptight. Why? Because we're concerned about God's kingdom? No, if we're honest with ourselves, most of our anger has nothing whatsoever to do with God's kingdom. Our anger has to do with our kingdom. I don't want people to be obstructionists and hinder the agenda of King me. And that's why I get upset. I'm constantly jumping back and forth between two kingdoms. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of Daryl. The kingdom of me. And the kingdom of Daryl is a place where Daryl Ferguson sits on the throne and expects his wife and kids and the people around him, everybody, the weather, circumstances, everything to fall in line with accommodating my preferences and adjust for my comfort and my convenience and all that. And here's the thing. The kingdom of me is not a happy place. The truth is, I hate my time in the kingdom of Daryl. Every hour I spend in that kingdom is miserable. It's miserable. The whole time I'm on the throne in my own life, I'm typically annoyed, right? Because things aren't going. Somebody or something isn't following in the line. I feel slighted. The momentary pleasure that I get in this kingdom is good, but there's no real happiness when you're king over your own life. There's no real happiness because you're expecting everything to go according to your will, and you get aggravated because the world doesn't cooperate. I don't belong on the throne because I don't have omnipotent power to control anything. So I need a savior, I need a king to come and save me from my lame kingdom and put me under his perfect good kingdom. And that's what Jesus came to do. My biggest need right now isn't for Jesus to come and take care of ISIS or defeat Kim Jong-il in North Korea or anything like that to bring justice, annihilate the wicked in the world. He'll do that one day. I do need him to come do that one day. But what I need, my biggest need right now is for King Jesus to come and defeat King Daryl. We all need that because our kingdom is a place of nothing but frustration and anger and disappointment and eventually total destruction. But being under the kingship of Jesus Christ is a wonderful thing if King Jesus is both powerful and loving. Now, last week we saw He's powerful, right? He's got a total authority, no question about that. But what about the tenderness side? What is it like to be ruled by Jesus? Is He going to be compassionate with my suffering? Is He going to care about the things that go on in my life? What's it going to be like to be under Him? And that's what Mark is going to show us next in Mark chapter 1. Last time we saw Jesus' power, now we're going to see Jesus' heart today. So we left off last time with Jesus preaching in the synagogue, and while Jesus is preaching, suddenly this guy with a demon just starts screaming at Him. And Jesus instantly sent that demon packing. And a few verses later Jesus casts out all the demons of all the people that came, silences them all, He gives them orders, shut up, and He won't let them talk. Jesus started out His ministry rattling the cages of hell. That's how He started out. He gave notice that He was there to destroy them. Demons are very powerful. They're awesome, powerful spiritual beings, way more powerful than any human. And they absolutely terrorized the people of Jesus' day. And now we've got somebody who came along in Jesus Christ who can manhandle those demons. What's it going to be like to be ruled by somebody that powerful? Is He going to be a hard master? Well, so far in the Gospel, it kind of sounds like it, right? Because He called the disciples, He said, all right, come, follow Me, and leave everything. They had to just pick up and leave right on the spot. That sounds kind of demanding, right? What about their families? James and John left their father in the boat, out in the middle of the lake, just left him in the middle of a work day. What about his father? How's he going to run his business? Does Jesus care about that? Or is he like some kind of cult leader who just says, oh, disown your family and come follow me and don't even worry about your family? Well, look at verse 30. Mark 1, verse 30. Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand, and helped her up. And the fever left her, and she began to wait on them. That's a beautiful miracle. And sometimes you read that miracle and you think, well, that's like the most unspectacular miracle in the whole Bible, right? I mean, that's not very, it just seems like a very ordinary thing. But what does it show us? It shows us that Jesus, yes, He does require that we make Him a priority, even above our families when we follow Him, but that's not to say that we neglect our families. He doesn't want us to neglect our families. He still cares about Peter's wife and Peter's wife's mom. who's sick in bed. Jesus cares, He's going to take care of her. And this miracle, again, you wonder, why is this one singled out? It's three different Gospels it's mentioned. It's a very important miracle, but why is it so important in Scripture? Well, one reason is to show that Jesus did care for the families of His disciples, including a mother-in-law, which is significant. Because in that culture, women were not considered to be important. Women were not important. Nobody who was trying to start up a new religion in that culture would give any attention to women. Because that's not how you got respect in that culture. Especially not older women. Very often the elderly in cultures are pushed to the side, neglected. I'm sure some of you have experienced some of that. And so by doing this miracle, showing a special attention to this mother-in-law, Jesus is shaking up the value system of the day. He's shaking up the value system of the whole world by including it in the Bible three times. Christ's values were not shaped by the culture. They were not dictated by the society. They were dictated by the heart of God, and Jesus loves mother-in-law. That's why this miracle is here. So you can see his tender heart. And you can see his tender heart not only in the fact that he healed the mother-in-law, but how he did it. It's so tender. Jesus has various ways that he heals people in different times in the gospel, but how does he do it this time? Such a gentle, soft, tender gesture. He reaches down and just takes her hand. And he helps her up. It's beautiful. So we see the tenderness of Christ. We see his care for those who are neglected. And we also see that His love extends to just ordinary situations. Jesus' mighty power isn't just for big spectacular moments of history. It's for all of life. Because let's face it, that's where we live, right? 99% of our lives, if not 100, is just a series of a whole lot of very unremarkable moments where ordinary aspects of this broken world press in on us and we need God's mercy in these ordinary problems that we have. In those moments of life, they're so boring. If you were writing an autobiography, you wouldn't even include them, because they're so boring, they're just nothing. But God even cares about those. Jesus cares about those. So He heals this woman, and look at her response, verse 31. The fever left her, and she began to wait on them. Typical mother-in-law, she just starts serving everybody immediately. As soon as she's got some energy, she starts serving. And that response teaches us a couple of things. First, it teaches us the completeness of the healing. She was really healed. She didn't need to bed rest for another week or two to get her strength back up after having a fever. No, she's instantly right back to full strength. That's how absolute Jesus miracles were. But another thing it shows us is the reason why God gives us healing and strength. The reason you have whatever strength you have is so you can do what she does, to serve. To serve the Lord Jesus Christ and His people. This great powerful authority over us, this great king, the Lord Jesus Christ, gets people to serve Him. How? By demanding it with heavy-handed threats of punishment if they don't serve? No. That's not how this king operates. He gets us to serve by winning our hearts, by touching us and taking our hand and helping us up and giving us strength and health and making us want to serve Him. Peter's mother-in-law served because she wanted to. Jesus gives us health so that we can serve. And what this woman did for the kingdom of God, you might say, well, it's not very earth-shattering, right? I mean, she made a meal. That's not a big deal. She helped make preparations for lunch. But you know, God doesn't need us to do earth-shattering things in His kingdom. He'll do the earth-shattering stuff. What He wants is for us to simply humbly serve His people. You want to hear something really, really amazing? When it says she began to wait on them, that word wait on, that's the same word as used one other time so far in this Gospel. And it's back in verse 13 when the angels waited on Jesus out in the desert. When He's in the desert for 40 days without any food and Satan is attacking Him, then the angels came at the end of that time and they waited on Him. I just thought that was interesting because there's two parties that have the staggering honor of waiting on the Lord Jesus Christ. John the Baptist says, I'm not worthy to wait on Him. I'm not worthy to even touch His sandals. But there's two parties that get that high honor of being able to wait on the Lord Jesus. The holy angels and Peter's mother-in-law. and us, we get the same honor. And that's evidence that Peter's mother-in-law had the right response. which is something for us to learn from, right? We learn from her example. Later on in the book, chapters 9 and 10, we're going to see that Jesus is going to teach that the objective for his followers is that they become humble servants. He came into this world not to be served, but to serve, and that's what he wants for us, too, to be servants. And the greatest of his disciples be the ones who are the servants of all. If you want to be like Jesus, you will serve everyone around you. You'll just serve everyone around you. And so when James and John come later in the gospel and they ask Jesus, hey, we want to be number one and number two in your kingdom. We want the highest spots. And Jesus said, that's not for me to grant. Father's going to take care of that. For all we know, the father might have been up in heaven looking down and saying, sorry, guys, that number one spot, that's going to Peter's mother-in-law because she's a servant or someone like her, a humble servant. Peter's mother-in-law teaches us the right response to Jesus, and then verse 27 we see the wrong response. And it might not be what you expect. Look at verse 27. People were all so amazed that they asked each other, what is this? So they're amazed and they're confused. That is not an adequate response to Jesus. He did not come into this world to bring about amazement and confusion. He came into this world to bring about what? What does it say back in verse 15, remember? Repent and believe. That's what He wants. That's the only adequate response to Jesus. Not, oh, I'm amazed and I'm confused. I don't know who He is. No, repent and believe. It's not enough to just listen to Jesus. It's not enough to be amazed at Jesus. It's not even enough to be so amazed that you go and spread the news. Look at verse 28. News about Him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee. That's still not enough. We haven't responded properly until we repent and believe. Alright, so mom is now up and running. She gets this meal together. They all sit down, enjoy this nice dinner, some fellowship. Then they do whatever they did after worship service. Maybe they watched the Broncos game or whatever it was they did. And then finally the sun goes down and it gets dark, and so they light some lamps in the house, but they can't go to bed. yet, because there's a knock at the door. Somebody comes to the door, they hear a knock, so Peter's wife gets up, she goes and opens the door, and she looks out there and her eyes are as big as quarters, and she steps back from the door and kind of takes a breath, and so Peter runs over there to see what it's about, and looks out and just sees a sea of people outside the door. Mark says the whole town gathered at the door. Verse 32, that evening after sunset, people brought to Jesus all the sick and demonized, all of them from the whole city. That's not really a surprise. Once word gets out, you can imagine, if word gets out, this guy will heal anything. I mean, if you got word about that, if there was somebody here in Broomfield and they said, you just go show up, it'll heal any problem you have, I would go, right? I mean, I'm sure we would go, right? And so it's not a surprise they all get there. So what does Jesus do? It's late at night, it's after dark. They wait till after dark because they want to wait till the Sabbath is over. What does Jesus do? Well, verse 34 says He healed them. He healed all of them. And Luke's gospel tells us that when He did it, He gave each one personal attention. He didn't. Jesus could have just stepped back and just waved His arm over the whole crowd and healed them all in one shot. Just say, boom, you're healed, now go home. He could have done that. He didn't. He wanted to lay His hand on each individual person, give them each attention one-on-one. And He did that. So again, we see His tender, loving heart, not only with Peter's mother-in-law, but with this whole crowd. See, it's good to have Jesus as your authority, because not only is He powerful and wise, but He's also loving and tender and compassionate. And if you ever doubt His compassion, just remember this, He knows what it's like to be like you. He knows what it's like to be human. He knows what it's like to suffer and to have human weakness. He lived a human life and he faced the same kinds of struggles and temptations and difficulties that we all face as humans. That's one of the main points of the book of Hebrews, is to teach us, to remind us of that, and it says you can see that in his prayers, like Hebrews 5, 7, where it says, during the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Okay, so there's something, Jesus prayed, he prayed earnestly, he had to cry out to God because he was weak. He was weak. And so he understands what it's like for us. And so he gets up very early in the morning and he prays. He goes off to pray. And there's something special about praying first thing in the morning. It doesn't always have to be in the morning. You can pray whenever you want. But most often, the people that you run into who have a really good regular prayer routine, daily prayer routine, this is the first thing in the morning. Because that's the time when nothing's happened yet. Nothing's happened, you just woke up. Nothing's happened yet, no distractions. Any other time of the day, life just sort of intrudes, right? Things pop up, they get in the way, and they'll intrude on your prayer time. The later you have it in the day, there's more chance of something unexpected happening or whatever. Generally speaking, the more important something is, the earlier in your day you will do it. And so, first things first. So a routine of morning prayer is good. This was not Jesus' routine. This was beyond Jesus' routine prayer. Now, Jesus' routine prayers, I'm sure, were unparalleled. He taught us to do that in the Sermon on the Mount, but this is something else. He needs some extended time, so He leaves town just to pray. So I want you to imagine this. After staying up late into the night, because he didn't even start on healing that whole crowd one at a time until after dark, so he must have gone way into the night. Finally, everybody's gone. Jesus goes to bed and everybody in the house is fast asleep, including Jesus. But then Jesus wakes. And he's got something on his mind, something big, something important, something he needs to talk to the father about. So he slips out of bed, gets dressed, goes outside, makes his way through the deserted, pitch black streets of Capernaum. and keeps walking until he gets to the wide open fields outside town. Demons out there are shudder as they see their worst nightmare now coming close to them, but he's not coming for them this time. Beyond the fields, There's some hills. He walks through the fields, gets up into the hills. He sees there's a little hollow up there in that hillside. Oh, that's perfect, that's perfect. That's where I can go. No one will see me there. No one will bother. I won't be interrupted. I can spend time with the Father. That's the spot. It says he went to a solitary place. It's interesting, that's the same word used to describe the desert where Jesus did battle with Satan earlier in the chapter. The place where Satan attacks us the most and the place where God's presence is the most accessible is very often the same place. So, what did Jesus pray about when He went out there? Well, it doesn't say. Mark doesn't tell us. He just wants us to know. He doesn't want us to know what Jesus prayed about. He just wants us to focus on the fact that it was early in the morning, and that it was secluded, and that Jesus went way out of His way to do it. This was a very, very important thing to Jesus. Why? Well, because He needed guidance and strength, just like Hebrews 5 says. He had to cry out to God for what He needed. He needed grace. Jesus is Almighty God, but He never, during His life in this world, He never utilized His own divine nature in ways that would give Him an advantage in living the life that He calls us to live. Because then what kind of example would He be? We couldn't follow His example if He's cheating and using His divine power to live that life. We don't have access to that. So He lived just the way we live. And he had to get strength the same way we have to get it. He had to cry out to God for it. So he subjected himself to weakness and then showed us the way to do that so that we could follow in his steps. He blazed the trail for us. And so getting away early in the morning to pray like this once in a while, he didn't do it every day, but he did it often. And that's an example for us. So what do we learn about Jesus' examples? If we look at all these times when Jesus does this, He goes off to pray, what can we learn about prayer from those? Sometimes we see Jesus in His life offer just quick one-sentence prayers, you know, just a quick little thing, and He says to the Father, that's great, that's great, little quick interactions with God during the day, as you go through your day, that's a wonderful thing to do. Jesus taught us to have a daily prayer routine. He said, go into your room, close the door, and pray, and that's just part of a regular routine. That's good, that's important. We need to do that. But there are times when you need more than that. You need more grace than that. Every once in a while, something happens in your life that's just really big, it's really important, some big decision, or a time of great suffering or loss, or a threat to your family, or some major temptation or a major failure, or maybe you're just feeling distant from God, you're in a spiritual desert or whatever. You always need prayer, but there are certain occasions in your life where you just really need it, right? And in those times, Jesus taught us to get alone in a secluded place for several hours of uninterrupted, extended, intensive, focused, private communion with God. And that takes some planning. It really does. If you're waiting for this to just spontaneously happen, you know, like you're thinking one of these times you're just going to have in a sudden fit of spirituality, you're just going to get up and grab your Bible and go off somewhere and spend the whole day in prayer or something. If you think that's going to happen, ask yourself, how many times has that happened in the last year or decade or lifetime? No, this kind of prayer doesn't happen spontaneously. It's intentional. It takes some planning. when all our prayers that we offer God are distracted prayers. We never pray where we're just totally alone, totally focused. We're always kind of half distracted. The reason we do that is because we forget we're actually talking to a person when we pray. Do you remember that? You're talking to a person. But goal of prayer is intimacy with God. And relationships become intimate in seclusion, don't they? That's why a guy usually doesn't say to his girlfriend, hey, why don't we just hang out with your parents and your little brother tonight? No, that's usually not what they say. It's like, well, let's get out of here. I want to be alone. They want to be alone because intimacy requires seclusion. And that's true with God, too. You have to be secluded. There are times when your relationship with God needs some time alone, uninterrupted for a long period. It may be that you need an extended time of just contemplating the various attributes of God, certain attributes of God that aren't really having an impact on your life and you need more. Or maybe you need to focus on gratitude because little five-minute segments of being grateful to God, that's not cutting it. That's not bringing joy into your life. You need a few hours. Maybe you've fallen into self-pity. You look at all the aches and pains and problems and difficulties and your loneliness and everything, and you're into self-pity, and your little five-minute prayers aren't doing the job. You need to get away and spend a lot of time just focusing on the goodness of God and how much He's given you. You need to readjust your emotions. You know, getting joy from the presence of God, it's kind of like getting a suntan. You can't just do it in two minutes. It just has to sort of soak in over a long period of time. Maybe there's a sin in your life, and your repentance is just kind of hollow and shallow, and you're not really taking it seriously enough, and you really need to get away and cry out to God to readjust your heart. It's like any other kind of relationship. You know, for a married couple, sometimes a peck on the cheek is just fine, but other times you need to go out for a nice dinner or a weekend away and spend time together. You see, it's so easy for us to just forget about the relational aspect of prayer. We want to say our prayers. We get so caught up in a legalistic, regimented attitude about our devotions and our prayers that we forget about God. We're focused on praying, I've got to have my devotions. I've got to get through my prayer list. I've got to say all this stuff. I've got to read my chapter in the Bible. And we forget, oh yeah, God. We forget He's even there. You know how sometimes a wife will say to her husband, you know, I feel like you're here, but you're not really here. You know, you're not really present. What does a wife mean when she says that to her husband? What she means is, his body is there, but he's not really paying attention to her. His mind is somewhere else. His mind is on other things. And a lot of men think that they can do that. A lot of men think that they can multitask, right? I'm going to multitask. I'm going to listen to my wife, and I'm going to watch the game simultaneously. I can do it. But did you know that actually there's no such thing as multitasking? The human brain can't not multitask. The human brain can't ever think about two things at once. When somebody is multitasking, when they think they're multitasking, all they're really doing is just switching back and forth really fast. So there's a little bit of the game, wife, a little bit of listening to wife, game, little wife, little game, back and forth. And that's how we multitask. And it's not very satisfying to the wife. And it's not really that great of an enjoyment watching the game, either. If you want real intimacy in a relationship, it requires full, undivided attention for an extended time. And when you're seeking the presence of God, it's the same way. When you seek God's presence, realize this. He's seeking your presence, too. You ever think about that? Rule number one for experiencing the presence of God is this, be present. You be present with Him. If you want Him to be present with you, you need to be present with Him. Stop obsessing about everything going on in your life, all these things going on, and turn your attention to Him. Take a moment to enjoy the incomprehensible fact that you are in that moment alone with God. Let the rest of the world fade away and just realize it's just you and me right now, God. It's just you and me. I'm looking up to you and you're looking down at me right now from heaven. I'm attending to you, you're attending to me. And I have your full attention, you have my full attention. That's how you have intimacy. And that kind of intimacy with God is worth whatever it costs. Because it does cost you. It does cost you. You might be saying, you know what, Jesus, that sounds great. Jesus could do that. Because, you know, He didn't have the difficulties that I... He didn't have a job. He was a young man. He didn't have the difficulties that come along with old age. Or a young mother might see this and say, yeah, Jesus could do that. He could just take off whenever He wanted and spend the morning in prayer. He didn't have to make kids breakfast and pack lunches and do all this. I've got responsibilities. I've got stuff to do. I've got bills to pay. I can't just go off and do that." Well, it's true. Jesus didn't have all the same problems that you have, but He had just as many problems, and they were just as difficult, if not more. Don't ever think it was easy for Jesus. It was not. It might be hard for you because of physical limitations, family, work, whatever. We've got really important responsibilities. But think about Jesus. What about Jesus? How important are the things that I have in my life that I would have to set aside in order to spend a day in prayer compared to the things that Jesus had to set aside in order to do this? I think it's safe to say that the most important thing on my to-do list is less important than the least important thing to do on Jesus' to-do list. And yet, He was willing to set those things aside in order to do this. That's how important it was. And you know, Jesus, He had a lot. He was very busy. He had a lot of important stuff to do. And it's not like He had 10 or 20 years left on His life. He only had a couple years. There are people who are sick and dying, and He could have healed them, but He let them continue to be sick and dying this morning, because this morning He needed to spend time with God in prayer. That's how important it was. So you might be busy, but I don't know if you're as busy as Jesus. When was the last time that you were so busy that so many people were pressing for your time that you had to climb into a boat in order to avoid being crushed, like we saw with Jesus a couple weeks ago? You may have bills that need to be paid. Jesus had lepers that needed to be cleansed. A young mom might have kids screaming for her. Jesus had demons screaming at Him. You might have a lot of stress in your life. Jesus had a lot of people trying to kill Him. It was just as hard, if not harder, for Jesus to get away for a morning in prayer than it is for us, but He found a way to do it because that's how valuable it was to Him. Extended times of being alone with God are extraordinarily valuable, incalculably valuable. It's worth, it's so valuable, it's worth whatever it costs you. It's worth whatever the cost. The more pressure you have in your life, the more you need this kind of prayer. See, we don't pray because God needs it, we need it. And if we don't do it, it's just because we just don't think it's worth It's not worth it. If some rich person came up and offered to pay you $10,000, I'll give you $10,000 if you'll spend an afternoon alone. You'd do that in a heartbeat, right? Well, that's because the reward's high enough. And what I'm saying here is we learn from Jesus the reward is even greater than $10,000's value. You're not going to do this until your soul is convinced that it's worth it, and Jesus was convinced. It won't cost you as much as it cost Jesus, because His time is worth more than ours, but it was worth it to Him because of what He got out of it. So what did He get out of it? What is this great benefit that's worth more than $10,000? What did Jesus get as a result of this prayer time? Well, let's look at verse 37. One thing He got was clarity of direction. because Jesus had a decision to make. What should He do next in His ministry? Where should He go? Verse 37, when they found Him, they exclaimed, Everyone is looking for you. Well, that's a great ministry opportunity, right? I mean, He's out there. They kind of say, Jesus, word got out. Everybody's looking for you. Wow, that's great. But then again, there's other towns that need Him, too. Should He go back to Capernaum, where everybody's looking for Him? Or should He go off to these other towns and preach there? Hard decision. How do you know? How do you know what to do? How do you know when it's time to leave one place and go to another place? Well, look how Jesus responds, verse 38. Jesus replied, "'Let us go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, so I can preach there also.'" There's no hesitation. He knows exactly. There's no equivocation, no collaboration with the disciples, no talking it over. Jesus knows exactly where to go and what to do and when. It is time to leave that place and go to another place. He knows it for sure. How is He so certain about the right thing to do? Because He just spent that morning in prayer. That's what happens when you seek God like this. You get direction and it refocuses. You get direction because it refocuses your priorities on your calling. See, look at verse 38. He says, let us go somewhere else so I can preach. That is why I have come. Verse 39, so he traveled throughout Galilee preaching. See the crowds in Capernaum were clamoring for Jesus and that seemed like a great ministry opportunity but it really wasn't because after spending the morning in prayer it was clear in Jesus' mind that the strong compelling sense of why He was in this world Those people in Capernaum were clamoring for Him, but they were clamoring for Him because they wanted physical healing and miracles. And that was not why Jesus came. He came to preach. That's what His calling was. That's what His purpose was. And after spending all this time in prayer, that was clear in His mind. And so He says, no, I'm not going to do that. It's time for me to go. You know, when a lot of people are putting pressure on you and you're being pulled in a million directions, it's easy to get pulled away from your calling. The one thing God has called you to do. And you can end up spreading yourself too thin. But a time of extended prayer can refocus your understanding on exactly what God has called you to do and what He wants you to do right now. What is it that you desire most in life? If you really desire it, you'll pray like this for it, because God responds to this kind of prayer. Intense, extended prayer. James 5.16, the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. The reason God answered Elijah's huge prayer was not because he was Elijah. It was because of how hard he prayed. He was a man just like us, but he prayed really, really hard, and that kind of prayer that he prayed with is available to all of us. We are under the authority of an awesome, powerful King, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is wonderful news for us because not only does He have awesome power, but He also is loving and compassionate. He has compassion on us as one who has actually experienced the same weaknesses and troubles that we have. And so He's blazing a trail for us to follow in His steps. And if we follow in His steps, those steps will lead us out into seclusion for times of extended, intensive, prolonged communion with the Father. And whatever that costs you, It'll be worth it. Let's pray. Father, I ask that You would give us the grace to believe the value of this, to have a perspective like Jesus, so that we might seek hard after You, run hard after You. Because You said, when we seek You with all our hearts, that's when we'll find You. So we ask that you give us the grace to do that. We pray it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. All right. Well, thanks so much for coming, everyone. Lord bless you. No.