About This Guide

The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.

Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.

pdf download

Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.

Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.

more Resources

Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.

Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.

Love

Teaching Text: Mark 1: 29-39

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”

Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

Walking the Way of Jesus | Exploring the Practices of Jesus
Withdrawing in Prayer

Formation

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

What is your first impressions about fasting?
Have you fasted before?
- What was your experience?

"If we knew what happened when we prayed we would pray all the time."
This highlights these two broad aspects of prayer
- What we see and experience or think or feel as we pray, what happens that we are aware of.
- And what happens that we aren't aware of, that is hidden, sometimes draped in mystery, responses or answers to prayer, changes in other places, or over time that we don't see?

We want to ask and answer this question: What does prayer do?
People ask does prayer work? And what we often mean is WILL I GET WHAT I ASK FOR IN PRAYER?
This is the measure of a good negotiation. “Did I get what I want?”
And thats not an unimportant question, but there may be a better one... DOES CONVERSATION WORK?
We have seen Jesus fasting, we have seen Jesus resisting temptation, and today we see Jesus Withdrawing in Prayer
Jesus made a priority to talk and listen to the Father.
Jesus made a priority to get away and to commune with the Father.
Jesus made a priority to let prayer direct his life and ministry.
Right before the passage we read, we see this:
- “The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him. 28 News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.”
  – Mark 1: 27-28
- Jesus is having success. Jesus has been through an exhausting day. Jesus knows the feeling of having to be “on” all the time.
- And so…
  - “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed.”
    – Mark 1: 35
Threats to our spiritual life
- To base our identity on vocational achievement
  - “Jesus before any miracles had begun his public ministry hearing the Father say “THIS IS MY BELOVED SON IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED.
- The crippling of our lives by distraction
  - Withdrawing in prayer is a way to pay attention. To God, to your relationships, to the world
- But many of us are becoming wondrously accomplished at things that don’t matter
- The uncontested inner monologue of shame and lack
  - One of the most crucial things we encounter in prayer is just how much God loves us.
  - Without that we can often slip back into an inner monologue of shame and deficit, of past mistakes and future worry.
  - Many of us are in a fight with voices of shame.
    - Withdrawing in prayer is a rebellion against shame
“The most important discovery you will ever make is the love the Father has for you. Your power in prayer will flow from the certainty that the one who made you likes you, he is not scowling at you, he is on your side. Unless our mission and our acts of mercy, our intercession, petition, confession, and spiritual warfare begin and end in the knowledge of the Father’s love, we will act and pray out of desperation, determination, and duty instead of revelation, expectation, and joy.”
– Pete Grieg
The exhaustion of prideful self-sufficiency
- Somewhere along the line some of us picked up a deadly weakness disguising itself as strength
Each of these threats …
- Basing our identity on our achievement
- The pervasiveness of distraction
- Our inner monologues of shame
- Or pride and self- sufficiency and the exhaustion that comes with it
These are the very things we press back against when we get on our own to pray.
We offer these to God. We invite God in. We hear God speak in these areas. We often experience a kind of reset.

So Look at Jesus’ pattern
- Very early in the morning (there may be sacrifice in making time to pray)
- Left the house | Solitary place (there may need to be some intentionality in location)

“God alone knows the selfish motives behind my every act, the vipers’ tangle of lust and ambition, the unhealed wounds that paradoxically drive me to appear whole. Prayer invites me to bring my whole life into God’s presence for cleansing and restoration. Self-exposure is never easy, but when I do it I learn that underneath the layers of grime lies a damaged work of art that God longs to repair.”
– Philiip Yancey

We can guess what He prayed
- The Lords Prayer
- The Psalms
- From His own heart for Himself - John 17
- For others - John 17
You can pray this way
- Remember who you are
- Pray through what you want
- Adjust how you live in response to God’s love
  - Identity
  - Desires
  - Rhythms

What would need to happen for you to move your understanding of prayer to move from fixing things to conversation?

Rate yourself 1-10: (1=not vulnerable at all, 10=totalaly vulnerable, I’m toast)
How vulnerable are you to these threats:
- Basing our identity on our achievement
- The pervasiveness of distraction
- Our inner monologues of shame
- Or pride and self-sufficiency and the exhaustion that comes with it
What is your vulnerability score out of 40?