My Thoughts On Mark 1:35

Mark 1:35 “And rising early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.”

If you just take one look at Jesus’s life you will recognize that He is the ultimate example of a life lived in discipline. He got up while it was still dark to pray. When I lived in Pennsylvania I knew that I wanted to get up and do my devotions in the morning, but I could never give up my precious moments of sleep to actually do it. Some mornings I would wake up and force myself to keep my eyes open and read the Bible and then I would “pray” with my head on my pillow which is funny because I wouldn’t be praying for more than a minute before I would be back asleep. I don’t know if there is spiritual significance behind the fact that “he departed and went out” but I think in my life at home that could have been and will someday be very applicable. Lying in bed trying to read your Bible after you just woke up is like hanging out with drunks when you just gave up drinking yesterday. It doesn’t work. In my life, sleep was an idol in a sense, but I think a lot of other things were idols too because I slept as late as I could in the morning simply due to the fact that I had stayed up late the night before doing the things that in my mind were priorities. I really struggled with getting up before I absolutely had to. I still am tempted to sleep in until I HAVE to get up here, but there is one thing that I am learning: pushing the snooze button is the most unsatisfying thing you’ll probably do all day. That 10 minutes of sleep that you so desire is an illusion. It really won’t help, but I know something that will: Spending those 10 minutes with Jesus. And I am not perfect. I still so much struggle with this, but I am learning that there is nothing satisfying about the snooze button and everything satisfying about getting to know Jesus. I try to not let my fuzzy, sleepy mind distort that. 

Application: For the next three days I will not hit the snooze button at all.