The Burden of Prayer

Mark 14:32-42
In this passage we gain much of Christ's heart, and we learn much about prayer. Jesus needed people with Him, to join and stand with Him in intercession as He prayed.
They fell asleep...
I love that Jesus wanted his closest friends praying with him in his moment of greatest trial and pain. I love that Jesus had prayer partners! My prayer partners are like lifevests in the storm! I send out the S.O.S. and the next thing you know I am buoyed by God's grace for the moment.
And if I am brutally honest, I have to tell you I love that the Disciples fell asleep! A little grace for those times I flippantly promise someone I will pray, or the times I need to stand in the gap for something God has laid on my heart and I just give it lip service. But as much as this passage eases my conscience, it makes me sad! Seriously, if Jesus asked me to be His prayer partner I surely wouldn't fall asleep! :)
But hasn't he? Are we the one's standing in the gap until he returns? Aren't we the ones that He died to open the throne of grace to so that we could come boldly and ask anything in His name in our time of need? If we aren't His prayer partners for the world, then who is? If I am asleep, who is awake?

Jesus also states that His soul is deeply grieved to the point of death! Now I am often accused of the dramatic, but I know what it feels like to be so heavily burdened in spirit and soul that you think you will die if there isn't some relief. Jesus used prayer to release the pressure, to give Him breath, to give Him strength to carry on, courage to press through, and the assurance of God's will and plan....and prayer led Him to obedience.

Do I allow prayer to take me through the process of unburdening a drowning heart or do I turn to something or someone else for relief? Do I allow prayer to be the release, the breath, the strength, the courage, and the assurance of God's will that I seek? And once I am clear, do I allow prayer to bring me to obdedience, to death to self, to less of me and more of Him?

Lord,
I am so excited to gain this perspective that I am your prayer partner. Lord, I don't want to be asleep on my watch, to be apathetic to the needs of this world, to be unresponsive to the burden of your heart. Grant me the desire, the passion to pray uncessingly for a world that you are so burdened for, and may I stand in the gap one prayer at a time to share in your pain. Give me your heart, O God, for the lost and the hurting. Teach me to pray as you do, Jesus, and how to allow prayer to lead me from burden and dying inside, to clarity of God's will and obedience.
I love you Lord.
Amen.