Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Priorities and Posteriorities for the New Year

Sunday morning, January 4, 202
Given by Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Senior Pastor, Christ Covenant Church

Priorities and Posteriorities for the New Year

Mark 1:35-39

Watch on YouTube

Download our mobile app

Transcript

Let's pray one more time. 

Gracious heavenly Father, we ask sincerely that you would give us ears to hear or else we will waste our time. Prone to wander, Lord, we feel it – easily distracted, easily thinking about the week that was past, the week to come. So, help us now to focus upon your word, and speak to us, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our text this morning is from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1. I'll be out of town next weekend, and then back, Lord willing, to start a series on Romans, which I've never done before. I decided I need at least 20 years of ministry before I tackle Romans, and hopefully we won't be in it for 20 years. But that will be in two weeks, Lord willing. I wanted to preach from this text this morning. It's one of my favorites in the Bible, because the Lord has often used it to reorient me and help me think very practically about my life and prayer and how I spend my time. And I pray that it will be a means of grace to you. It's just a short passage, beginning at verse 35: 

“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place. And there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him. And they found him and said to him, ‘Everyone is looking for you.’ And he said to them, ‘Let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.’ And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.”

I think you know that I like to read books. I like to read mostly theology and history, but believe it or not, one of my little subgenres that I have read a lot of books over the years is I have read a lot of business/time management sort of books. Now it's not where I go to get my theological bread and butter. They're sort of, like, I think of them sort of like Skittles. They're good. You wouldn't want to make your whole diet out of it. I've tried, but you wouldn't want to. But I read one or two of them a year. After a while, they tend to say a lot of the same things, but I almost always find some helpful reminder or some little tidbit of practical advice that I can implement in my life. And the most – the best of them is really the godfather of this whole genre, and some of you will have read him before – Peter Drucker. He lived into his 90s. He died in 2005. Some have called him the J.R.R. Tolkien of management literature. High praise indeed. Many of today's life hacks are the same advice that Peter Drucker gave decades ago. Interesting guy – influenced by Soren Kierkegaard. Not many business management gurus are, I would reckon. He described himself as a Christian conservative, was a practicing Episcopalian. Probably 15 years ago, I read what may be his most famous book – some of you may have read it; it came out in 1966. It has a terrible title, The Effective Executive, but it had a lot of helpful parts, and one concept that has always stuck with me found its way into this morning's sermon title. 

Now, it’s not often will you have a sermon title that has some language from a business management consulting sort of book, but this one does, and I think you'll agree that it actually fits the text. Two words in the title to note: priorities, which you're all familiar with, and then a word less familiar, posteriorities. Now, we all realize we need priorities – the word “prior” meaning “first” or “head.” There are certain things that we want to do, are more important than other things. The person who never sets priorities in life does not believe in his own finitude. Jesus, as we'll see here, taking upon himself a human nature, living as a human being, was constrained and could not do everything in that human existence. And so, if you want to acknowledge that you are a finite creature, you are not infinite, then you must have priorities. You must have certain things that you realize are more important than others, because we have limited time. 

Now, we all realize we have limited money, but we can forget that time, also, is a scarce resource. In fact, time is much more limited than money. Wealth can be created. There's more wealth in the world than there was 50 years ago, certainly 200 years ago. You can actually print money. Don't recommend it. We've tried it. Has some bad effects, but you can do it. You cannot print more time for your day. Peter Drucker says the supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it, no marginal utility curve for it. Moreover, time is totally perishable. Think about that. It cannot be stored. Yesterday's time is gone forever. It will never come back. Time is, therefore, always in exceedingly short supply. The study of economics is really about the scarcity of resources. And there may be no more precious and scarce resource than time. Perhaps there are things that we can do to extend our days, but really, all of them are written in God's book before one of them comes to pass. But there is certainly nothing you can do each day. You cannot save any hour from this day and say, okay, I'm going to just do 23 hours this day, because I want to bank one more hour for next day. 

And as time is our scarcest resource, it is also the resource that is allotted most equitably. Now, again, we all may live different years, but day by day, week by week, we all have 24 hours in a day. The richest person – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk – cannot buy more minutes for this day. The poorest has the same amount of time on January 4 as the richest. We call it time management sometimes, but you can't really manage time. No one can say, "Alright now, today, to manage this time, we're going to make the clock stand still." Now, that happened in the Bible one time. God doesn't give us the usual ability to do that. You cannot finesse the time to make it do something else. Those seconds and those minutes keep ticking. So, the whole genre of time management, if any of it is useful, is really self-management. We have to manage ourselves because time is finite. And so, we have to discern good, better, best – which means we need priorities, because we cannot do everything. That's part of being finite creatures. 

So, you're all familiar with the concept of priorities. But here's the word that Peter Drucker – I'm not sure if he invented it; it's the first time I saw it, from him – this word “posteriorities.” This is the word for the things – if priorities are the things that should be at the top, at the head, “prior” – then these are the things should be at the end, or posterior. Priorities – the top of your to-do list; posteriorities at the bottom. Or, to put it even more dramatically, these are the things we decide not to do for the sake of the things we ought to do. That's posteriorities – the things we decide not to do for the sake of doing the things we ought to do. This is why it is not enough at the start of the new year that you simply make goals. I do every year. I think it can be useful – goals, resolutions. They say January 1, or if that's closed, the gym, January 2 is the fullest day in the gym. We must establish more than just goals. Every one of you could write down three nice goals for 2026, and you could leave here, and they would probably be pretty good goals. But you will not accomplish any of those goals merely by adding something to your list. You must also have things that you will not do. That's the problem. Many of us just keep on – what are your goals? I'm going to – here are three great things, and I'm going to exercise more, and I'm going to walk every morning, and I'm going to spend – you have all of these methods that say, “If you just spend 15 minutes a day stretching” – who has 15 minutes a day stretching? If you just would spend 20 minutes a day memorizing a new language – and you add that up, and it takes seven days in one to do all of the things. You can't just add. You have to decide what you will not do. That's the point of posteriorities. Making priorities is easy. That's fun. Goals, ambitions. But if you have no posteriorities, they are only aspirations, wishes that will not be fulfilled. 

Again, Peter Drucker says, "Setting a posteriority is unpleasant." Every posteriority – that means everything you decide you won't do – is somebody else's top priority. It is much easier to draw up a nice list of top priorities and then to hedge by trying to do just a little bit of everything else as well. This makes everybody happy. The only drawback is, of course, that nothing whatever gets done. So, as you have this fresh calendar of 2026 in front of you, here is the question I want you to ask this morning, and I need to ask it myself: what things will you not do in 2026 in order to accomplish the one or two things you really must do? What things will you not do in order to accomplish the one or two things you absolutely must do? 

And with that in mind, let's look at Mark 1. I want you to notice three things about Jesus in this text. First, Jesus was extreme extremely busy. He spent the previous day in ministry. Mark explodes onto the scene with Jesus’ ministry. Unlike the other gospels, Matthew and Luke, there's no nativity, there's no birth scene. Unlike John, there's not a rich, theological prologue. We just start, straight away, with John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus, the temptation of Jesus, and then he begins his ministry. And on this first day in Capernaum, he has the quintessential day in the life of Jesus. And he does three things that we will find him doing all throughout the gospels on this first day: he casts out a demon, he heals the sick, and he preaches the gospel. Those are the three things that we find him doing throughout the gospels. Now, they are not equal priorities, as we'll see in just a bit, but those are the three things that he's had on this first day of public ministry in Capernaum. He has been extreme busy. The sense we get for Jesus in Mark's gospel, in particular, is of someone who is constantly on the move. Everyone – a seminary student in a gospel class – will learn that Mark likes to use this word “immediately.” It’s always “immediately.” He's just moving, moving, moving. Things are happening. In fact, Jesus is doing so much, and there's so much attention to him, at one point his family thinks he's gone crazy. 

Mark 3:20, “Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind.’” His own earthly family did not really understand what was happening. Now, they maybe knew something was special about him, and Mary had treasured these things in her heart, but she didn't fully understand. His brothers and sisters did not understand. And so, when he keeps teaching, and he's healing, and all of these crowds are gathering about him, they try to grab him by force and say, "You are out of your mind! You're from Nazareth, Jesus. Come on. You're not that big a deal." He was constantly busy – preaching, healing, casting out demons. I stress that, lest we think Jesus is some kind of Zen master doing yoga on a mat, pondering the sound of one hand clapping. If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? He's just pondering the imponderables of the universe. No, his life is one of hectic, frenetic energy. Let that be some comfort, perhaps, to you, lest you think, "Oh my, I'm so busy all the time.” We tend to say that. That's almost the first thing out of your mouth. How are you doing? How is life? How was, even, your vacation? It was all – it was very busy. That's just – especially in America. It's a very common phrase. Well, Jesus was busy. And if you have creativity, if you have ambition, or if you simply love people, you're going to be busy. You're going to be drawn to needs and have ideas. We're supposed to subdue the earth. That was the creation mandate. We are supposed to work with our hands. We are supposed to love God with our minds. We're supposed to get married, Lord willing, and have babies and raise them and take care of them and change diapers. So, it is not a sin to be busy. It is not wrong to be active. One of the things you find in the history of the church, with so many great men throughout history – famous preachers, pastors, theologians – is that they were initially drawn to a life solely of contemplation. Either they wanted to be monks, or they wanted to be scholars. 

Certainly the scholarly life is admirable and used by the Lord. But God had a way of saying no, it's not enough that you be a contemplative, you also need to be active, and he would throw men in to the hurly-burly of church ministry and throws us in to the frenetic activity of real life. If Jesus were on earth today, he would – I don't know if he'd be a zero inbox guy or not, or maybe like your email or text, it would say 1,032 and just seem absolutely overwhelming. He'd get more emails than anyone. He'd get more texts. He'd get more DMs. He'd have requests for interviews. He'd have requests to be on television, to do podcasts, to do conferences. That's what we see – they are constantly coming around Jesus. He was not sitting around listening to – I was going to say heart music, but we had wonderful heart music. There's nothing wrong with heart music. It'd be a blessing if he had some heart music, but he didn't do that all day and, you know, just wait for the angels to peel bananas for him or something. He was very busy. Look at verse 28: “And at once his fame spread everywhere, throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.” He was famous. Fame by itself is not a bad thing. It can be used for good. It just simply means a lot of people are drawn to you, and they were certainly drawn to Jesus. His fame spread everywhere. 

So, I want you to note that Jesus was extremely busy. People wanted his time constantly. Now, yes, you're thinking to yourself, he didn't have any kids. True. He wasn't married. True. He didn't have to figure out insurance. He didn't have to try to get through the Byzantine labyrinth of some customer service. So, that's true. He lived, in some ways, in a simpler time, but he also couldn't just go to the grocery store and buy whatever he wanted with just a card or a tap, or just travel anywhere around the world by car or by plane. So yes, he didn't have all of the kinds of busyness that you and I may have, but he had other kinds that we don't have. He was constantly bombarded by requests, by attention seekers, by those who wanted a piece of his time, his energy. He was busy. 

Second thing to note about Jesus: he had clear priorities. Now what we see in this text – clearly, prayer was a priority. You say, "Well, where does it say in the Bible, ‘Hear ye, hear ye, the 11th commandment, you must have a quiet time. You must have a time of prayer every day.’” Well, you're right. There's no verse that says that. And we don't want quiet time to be the last bastion of legalism. And yet, what we see are patterns in the Old Testament and in the New Testament of the great importance of prayer, regular prayer. And if Jesus teaches his disciples to say, "Give us this day our daily bread," Jesus assumes that prayer is a daily part of your life. And prayer was a priority. You and I need unhurried times of prayer. It may be that to get 10 unhurried minutes is about what you can do at this season of life. And it may be that you have to plan once or twice a year to have two hours. And maybe once in a while you get half a day or a whole day. But you and I need rhythms of unhurried times of prayer. Notice it says, “Jesus departed and went out to a desolate place.” It's the same word used earlier in chapter 1 with his temptation, where he was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness – same word here, driven into the wilderness. There he's driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, because theologically the wilderness is the place where God meets his people to test them, to speak to them, to refine them. And so, there he's driven by the Spirit. 

Here he, of his own accord, goes out to find the wilderness, a desolate place, which means for us, you need a quiet room, a walk – that’s my preferred method. It's harder to fall asleep when you're walking. A park bench, a table at a coffee shop. It is possible you can have noise around. It's the lack of bother, not necessarily the lack of noise. Some people – I'm not like this – but some of you find that very peaceful, and you like all the hubbub around you, but you can still have undistracted time. It isn't so much the noise level that matters as it is the lack of bother and distraction. You need non-multitasking prayer in your life. Yes, cast all your cares upon the Lord. Short prayers throughout the day are wonderful. When you are in the midst of everything, I can't find my keys, throw up that quick prayer – Lord, help me find my keys. And your car doesn't start – Lord, would you help the car to start? Give me patience. Throw out those short prayers in the midst of life all the time – brief pauses to stop and pray. Yes, do that. But this example from Jesus is about more than that kind of constant prayer. It's about finding and making space for wilderness. When Jesus is baptizing in chapter 1, or rather John is baptizing and Jesus is driven out there, the Spirit leads him into the wilderness, and now he finds it by himself. It doesn't mean you have to get up early in the morning, although that's the pattern here, and for many of us it will be that if you don't do it in the morning, the rest of life is going to collapse in upon you. But you may find another time. Morning may not work. That may be the rush of getting kids out. It may be later in the evening that works better for you. Mark gives us three glimpses into Jesus’ prayer life – here, in the morning; another one at night after feeding the 5,000; and another one at night, he goes into the garden of Gethsemane to pray. So, you could say in Mark, it's 2:1 for the night owls, not for the early morning. There's freedom to figure out what works best for you. 

What you have to do – what we want to do – is to find those desolate places to be alone with God in the wilderness. Jesus was extremely busy, and he made time to be with God. He is God. As the son of God on earth, he, also, was hungry for this intimacy of fellowship with his Father. And if Jesus knew he needed that, how much more do we need that? I hope that the point of this sermon is not so much that you leave here saying, "I have to pray," but you would say, "I want to pray. I get to pray. Now, how can I make that happen?" Imagine if you're a young man, you're dating a young lady, and you want to get to know her. That's what you want to do. How do you get to know her if you only just send quick texts once in a while? Just a quick little conversation, a few sentences, likely with no punctuation. What a shame. Now, depending on your age, you may not want to have lots of time alone – and listen to what your parents tell you – but at a certain age, as you move more seriously in that relationship, you're going to need some alone time. You're going to need to slow down. You're going to need time to talk to that young woman without interruptions, without an agenda. Why? Because that's how you get to know each other. And you may say, "Well, but pastor, it's impossible for me to have any time alone at this stage in my life. I get that Jesus could sneak away in the morning, and you have to make the kids breakfast. You have to be at work by 7 a.m. He didn't have deadlines and emails and business meetings and clients to keep happy, and that's true. He also didn't have an office to go to and close the door. He didn't have lunch breaks by himself. He didn't even have a house of his own or an apartment or a room. He lived in other people's homes as a guest of their generosity. He had disciples following him around all the time. He had crowds pressing in on him. He had so many people after him – such a tension upon him that at times he had to jump into boats into the water just so he could have a breather. 

Jesus made time to pray. He knew he needed time with his Father, as you and I need time with God. He had just as many demands – different, but just as many, and likely more, demands. You have bills that need to be paid. Jesus had lepers who wanted to be healed. You have kids screaming for your attention. Jesus had demons calling him by name. Don't make the comparison. You have pressure and stress in your life. Jesus had crowds all over Judea and Galilee – people trying to touch him, to trick him, and eventually to kill him, and he knew in the midst of all of that, it was an absolute priority – I need to pray. 

The third thing to note about Jesus: not only did he have priorities, but here's where it gets difficult. He had posteriorities. This is why I said this has always been – I don't know if it's a favorite text. It's always been a convicting and arresting and reorienting text to me. Jesus had to say no to good things. Really good things. He wasn't just turning down an opportunity to join the master's swim team. He had to say no to people who had diseases. Imagine – this must be really hard. We have so many good doctors here, and a lot of them will take time throughout the year – they go on trips, and they go where communities are underserved with medical needs, and I know they work themselves really hard to serve, and it must be hard to leave and to come back knowing that there's so many needs that they just humanly cannot meet. You can't do everything. Jesus knew he could not do everything. Look at the previous paragraph, verse 32: “That evening (so this is – he had his first full day of ministry) that evening at sundown (so Sabbath is gone, and now they can come and give him work to do), they brought to him (think about the fact that they're bringing these people to him – these are probably people so sick, so infirmed, they cannot even bring themselves. They're being carried on mats, they're being wheeled around, they're being held in their arms, they're being led – they were brought to him) all who were sick, oppressed by demons. (These are real needs.) And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him.” That's what he had done into the wee hours of the night, and then he rose early in the morning, and he prayed, Now, we're not told what the psychology of Jesus was, but think about what your psychology would be if you had just come face to face with these very real needs – sick, demon-possessed, and not only that, but you can 100% heal them, infallibly solve their physical problems. You don't think you'd feel like “I gotta stay. There's a line of people already. I couldn't get through everyone last night. I had to sleep. And now they're all ready. There's more people.” And Jesus cared for people more than you and I will ever care for anyone. Surely his heart was moved with compassion to see people out there who had real needs, and he could meet them, and he didn't do it. 

Now you can see how this can start to feel dangerous. What do you mean posteriorities? We're not going to have anyone volunteer to do the nursery anymore after this sermon. We're not going to have any deacons left. We're not going to have any women making blankets or bringing meals. Well, I'm going to trust that the Spirit of God can handle this text in your life, and actually, Jesus got more accomplished because he prayed, not less because he prayed. But think of the posteriorities in Jesus’ life. It wasn't enough that he said, “My priority is to spend time with my heavenly Father.” In order to do that, he had to not do something. And this something was really, really good. Here's sort of the bad news/good news for us: most of us could reclaim time for the Lord by just cutting out the garbage time in our life. We probably don't even have to get to the good things, though some of us may have to. Jesus only had good things. He had people he could heal, people he could touch. You can hear the disciples, almost a note of reproach. Verse 37: “Everyone is looking for you.” Yesterday was amazing, Jesus. Blew my mind. That was – we could not have had a day one of Jesus’ ministry. I'm getting the nonprofit set up. I got a board. I got articles of incorporation. I got a website. I got a big donate button right there on the website. We are ready to go. We're going to start Jesus and Disciples. Let's make sure the disciples – maybe same font size as Jesus – Jesus and Disciples Healing Ministry. He didn't do it. He knew not only that he needed to pray, but he understood his mission. Do you see that with his posteriorities? He says, "Let us go on to the next town." He's leaving them. Why? Because he understood his mission. 

Now, this is not your identical mission, but do you have a sense for what your mission is? Jesus knew he could not do everything. His mission – the reason he came out in public ministry – was to preach. Note this very well: there is not one time in the gospels that Jesus goes into a town to heal or cast out demons. It is never Jesus’ healing ministry. It is never Jesus’ exorcism ministry. Now, he does a lot of that. He does that almost everywhere he goes, because he cares for people and as a sign of his unique, God-given authority as the Son of Man. He does that. But here's what he says his mission is – and surely this tells us something about the mission of Jesus and the mission of the church. Yes, he attended to human needs, because he cared for people. But he says, "This is why I'm here: to preach, to announce this message of good news." And so, he's leaving behind very real, tangible need that he could infallibly solve, because he knows that's not the most important need. And he came, and he went to the next town, understanding his mission. 

We see this reflected later with the apostles in Acts 6 – the word of God and prayer. Or you see it with Paul, who said his driving ambition was to preach where the gospel had not been proclaimed. He understood what his mission was. Now, this is a little more ambiguous, I know, than the prayer point, but this is important too, to think about what your mission is. Now, in one sense the Westminster Shorter Catechism tells us every Christian's mission: “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” 1 Corinthians 10:31, “In whatever you do, glorify God.” So that is your mission, but do you have a sense of maybe a more specific mission? And it may be relative to your season of life – when you have young kids in the home, you have a certain mission – that means there's other things you can't do. And when you're a retiree, and maybe your body starts breaking down a little bit, there's some things you can't do, but there's other things you can do. So that mission, under the glorify God and enjoy him forever, may be somewhat dependent upon your season. I wrote down on a piece of paper, a 3x5 card – it was my first or second year in ministry. I kept it in a cupboard for years and years. I think I still have it in a drawer somewhere. And I wrote down what I thought were my threefold mission in life. And I wrote down number one to faithfully preach the word of God, number two to love and lead my family, and number three to be happy and holy in Jesus. It's not that I looked at that every single day, but I can tell you those first years in ministry I did think about that a lot. What is my life about? Now most of you – almost none of the rest of you are pastors – that's not going to be your specific goal, but can you think about something like that? What God wants you to do, knowing that you cannot do everything? Surely it has something to do with your character, your walk with the Lord, your knowledge of God, the discipleship of your children and grandchildren. Or maybe at this point, your schoolwork is very high, maybe you have a business that is accomplishing much, even though it's not Christian per se, yet it does much that is good for people, for your employees, for the community, and it honors God. What do you hope will be your legacy? That's one question. 

Here's the more difficult question. What are you willing not to do in order to leave that legacy? The start of a year is good time to think about what sort of mark you might want to leave on the world, no matter what age you are, but it's not enough to say here's what I want my legacy to be. Say “what will I not do?” I had a friend tell me one time when I was facing a just general sort of life decision – said, “Why don't you fast forward and think if God gave you to, you know, 85, and you were looking back on your life – what would you want to see? What would you feel like?” and he was saying, “You know, would you want to see that you had trained up a number of PhD students?” I said, "Well, that – no, no, you're right. That's not my calling. That's a good calling. That's not my calling. I’d want to see a church and a family that knows Jesus, has been instructed in the word of God." So, you think about looking backward, and some of you are already there, and some of you can hardly imagine what it would be like to be in your 80s, and you look back and you say, "What sort of legacy?" And then work forward – not only what you have to do, but what you will not do in order to leave that legacy. 

So, here's the question I started with, and here's the question I'll leave you with. What good thing will you not do this year so you can do the one or two things that matter most? Certainly, prayer is one of those things that matters most. Have you ever noticed the logic in Luke 10? Luke 10 – at first we have Jesus send out the 72 disciples, they are preaching, they're healing, they're casting out demons. It's a great day of energetic ministry activity. Then, famously, you have the parable of the good Samaritan – will you cross the road? Will you take care of those, even, who are not like you, like the good Samaritan? And then the last part of Luke chapter 10 is Mary and Martha. And Mary chose the good portion – as if to say you can be the disciples active in ministry, you can be the good Samaritan caring for the needs of the least of these, and if you do not take time to sit at the feet of Jesus, you are not doing what is best. Jesus prayed at his baptism. He prayed at the start of his ministry. He prayed before he chose the disciples. He prayed after he fed the 5,000. He prayed after he cleansed the leper and healed the paralytic. He prayed before the transfiguration. He prayed in the garden before his crucifixion. And he repeatedly taught his disciples to pray, told them to pray, commanded them to pray, told stories about praying, gave them an example of how to pray. One of the surest and best signs of spiritual life in the Christian is prayer, because so much of what we do as a Christian is plain to see. People can see if you're at church. They can see if you pray at the dinner table. They can see if you give a nice speech or you write something. They cannot see, except the fruit of it, whether you are finding desolate places to pray. As the famous saying goes, "Character is who you are when no one is looking." 

I don't know if you feel like this coming off the holidays – I do. A lot of sitting around, a lot of eating. My son said, "I think I sat on the couch 80 hours last week." I'm not sure if it was quite that much. And I often feel like, okay I need to – now I'm really going to lose a few of those holiday pounds. I’m going to start the new exercise routine. You want to feel healthy, strong. You ever feel spiritually flabby, like you've just let yourself go, spiritually, a little bit? You've lost some of those – some of the joy, some of the regiment, some of the routine you used to have, some of the earnestness, some of the pursuit, some of the stick-to-it-iveness? I feel like that sometimes, just a little spiritually flabby. What will you not do in order to pray? There's a lot of bad things. Staying up too late, watching things you shouldn't, gambling, scrolling your phone to death – that famous line John Piper said years ago, “God invented Facebook to remind us all that we really do have time to pray.” And that was Facebook. Now it's Instagram or Tik Tok or YouTube to remind you, oh yeah, I do have time to be in the word and prayer. It may be just neutral things. It's not bad, but you may have to cut back on some legitimate form of entertainment or sports or a hobby that's taken over your life. Or it may actually be something good. And yes, this makes me nervous as a pastor who depends upon servants and volunteers and committee members and lay members, but we have to deal honestly with a text like this. And the good news is we get more done when we pray, not when we avoid praying. Do you think Jesus accomplished more spiritual good because he said no to some things in order to say yes to what really mattered? Of course he did. And so it is with you. There may even be something good that you have to say no to in 2026 in order to have time to do not just what is good but what is better or what is best. 

The son of God, of course, did not come to earth merely to set us an example, and it would be a mistake to think Mark chapter 1 is mainly a time management exercise or even an example of prayer, though it is that. And I think we see the importance of priorities and posteriorities in the life of our Lord. But let us not miss why he had those priorities and why he had those posteriorities. For Mark's gospel is absolutely clear what Jesus’ mission was about. He announced it in verse 14: “Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.’" That was his mission, to give you and I that message: repent and believe. Mark 10:45, “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.” The reason Jesus had priorities and posteriorities was so he could accomplish that mission for you. Three times he predicts his death and resurrection. He said no to the healing, to the exorcisms, and went to the next town so he could announce to sinners the way that they could be saved. And so it is for us. Because of the good news of Jesus death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, there is forgiveness available when we fail, and we will, and there is also power within us, so we don't have to always fail. There's strength within us by Christ's Spirit to enable you to do the things you ought to do and to say no to some of the good things you have been doing, that in 2026 we might draw closer to God, and as we do, he promises to draw closer to us. Amen.