Why Did Jesus Pray? What Mark 1:35 Reveals About Getting Refreshed
Pastor Keith Roberson opened the morning at New River Church with a question for the room, not a text: how do you recharge your batteries? When you need to take a breath in life, what do you actually do?
He waited for real answers, and he got them. One person walks in the woods. One has come to love cats over the last couple of years (“grace of God,” Keith added). One plays video games, just mindless, just hanging out. Keith blessed all of it, because the point underneath the poll was serious: we face life on life’s terms. We don’t get to call the shots on what will happen, there will be highs and lows, and even the great and high things take a lot of energy. If the Foundations series is about being people with feet planted on a rock, unmoved by the chaos of life, then part of that is admitting that storms will come and humans will need to be refreshed.
And then the turn that set up the whole sermon: Jesus himself, being fully human, also needed to be refreshed. The most perfect human who ever lived, lived his life in need of the Father. So what did it look like for the Rock to be refreshed?
What this sermon is about
This message asks one question and refuses to let it go: why did Jesus pray? Not the Sunday school answer, but the actual record of Scripture. Because when you trace the moments the Gospels say Jesus withdrew to pray, a pattern emerges that quietly rearranges everything most of us believe about prayer.
If prayer has ever felt to you like religious duty, like a box you’re failing to check, like something laced with shame because “I should pray more,” this sermon is aimed at you.
After pouring out, Jesus got up early
Pastor Keith walked the room through one day in Mark 1:29-39. Jesus has been ministering and teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum all day, and drives out a demon. Then he goes to Simon and Andrew’s house, where it should be time to kick his feet up, except Simon’s mother-in-law is sick, so he heals her. Then at sundown the whole city gathers at the door, and he heals many who are sick and casts out many demons. Keith was honest about the human math here: he preaches two services on a Sunday morning, and “God bless Sunday naps.” Jesus is going and going and going.
And then verse 35, the part Keith called incredibly rich and really challenging:
Mark 1:35 — “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.”
In a normal human mind, the morning after a day like that is for sleeping in. Or for reorganizing your life, scheduling better, building better boundaries so you don’t get exhausted again. That’s not what Jesus does. He gets up earlier, to pray.
And it’s not even close to a one-time event. Luke 5:15-16 — “But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.” Matthew 14:23 — after feeding the five thousand, “after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.”
“What is so striking about the circumstances when the scripture talks about Jesus going to pray is, almost universally, it is on the heels of significant outpouring of himself. Each time he’s coming to the place of prayer, what we see is him coming to get refreshed.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
Jesus didn’t pray out of duty. He prayed to be refreshed.
Here’s where Keith pressed in. We have a long list of reasons we pray: to thank God, to bring a crisis, to intercede for friends and family, to ask for wisdom and direction. All great reasons. And some broken ones too, the fear-based ones: if I don’t pray, I won’t be blessed; if I don’t pray, I’ll be on God’s bad side. But none of that is what seems to drive Jesus to the desolate place. The record is not a rabbi performing a ministry responsibility. The indication of these texts is that Jesus pulls away in prayer because being with the Father was his place of refreshing and comfort and energy for what was next.
So Keith asked the question most of us avoid: what are your actual feelings toward prayer? When you think about praying, what comes to your heart? Is it laced with religious duty? With shame, like “I should pray more”? With hurt, because you’ve had prayers go unanswered?
“I think the problem with our prayer lives is not that we lack a desire to pray, or even that we don’t think prayer is effective. What often keeps us from the deeper places of prayer is that we’re not first willing to approach God from the place of refreshing and connection as sons and daughters.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
Because that really is the record of Scripture: a Son coming to get refreshed by his Father. That’s what kids do, Keith pointed out. They aren’t graceful about how they ask (when kids get hangry, it’s scary), but they know exactly where to go when they have need. Sons and daughters go to their father to be refreshed and recharged. It is the beginning place of prayer.
Come to the fountain first
Keith was careful not to throw out the other reasons to pray. There are dozens of ways and reasons to approach God, and we should bring him all of it. But if you come primarily for answers and the answers don’t come quickly, it is easy for your heart to be offended with God. If you come primarily for wisdom, sometimes the wisdom arrives through tough circumstances. The order matters.
“Prayer is first coming to the fountain to drink, to get known, to be seen, to be with him. Because when you have him, you have it all.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
You go out into your week and get slimed with all the stuff of the world: bosses, employees, tough circumstances, frustrations with spouses and kids. Real life. You can’t get away from it. So where do you go to get washed of the grime? Keith thanked God for walks in the woods and cats and video games and all the things, but there is nothing quite like an open heart getting refreshed by the words of the Father over you. He has endless amounts of mercy, endless encouragement, endless wisdom, endless goodness to share.
He even argued that Jesus trained us to pray this way. Look at the shape of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” is showing up to the good Father in his glory. “Your kingdom come, your will be done” is a cry for connection: whatever’s going on with you, I want it here. “Give us this day our daily bread” is saying, I’m here to get filled by you. And then, refreshed and held, we can confess our sins honestly and ask to be led. When you’ve received the Father’s mercy first, Keith asked, are you really that scared to share your shortcomings? The Lord’s Prayer is a scaffolding for getting refreshed and then being led by God.
The same park, five years apart
Then Keith told a story from his dating years. He and his wife met at Texas Tech (“God’s University, I think that’s what they call it”), six years apart in age. Around the time they got engaged, she told him she wanted to take him to a special place, and drove him to a park on the south side of Lubbock, far from the university. It was where she had gone all through college, on a regular basis, just to get with God.
It was the exact park Keith had been going to five years earlier, for the same reason. Two hearts, the same park, five years apart, both being trained to be with God.
At that park, Keith had been working on a specific discipline: before confessing one sin, before asking God to move in one way, before praying for any need or any ministry, he would sit and say, “God, I’m not gonna move until I receive again your goodness and mercy and love over my life.” Not because diving straight into requests is wrong, but because he wanted connection first. And when he had connection, the worries and fears and doubts and anxieties all started to melt in light of the fact that he had the Father. If God is for me, who can be against me?
The principle he took from that season is the one he handed the church: if you want to love and serve God and do all the things he’s called you to do, you have to have a full well to pull from. And the only way to get a full well is to get filled up by the Father. It’s mission critical. It’s a rhythm we were all meant to have. It’s exactly what Jesus was doing in the dark of that Capernaum morning, and it’s why, when the disciples track him down saying “everyone is looking for you,” he’s ready to move: “Let us go on to the next towns.” He’d been refreshed. He’d gotten what he needed.
The sermon landed at the communion table. The broken bread, his body broken so we could be whole. The cup, his blood poured out so we might have life everlasting, an eternal covenant we couldn’t keep for ourselves. Keith asked everyone to hold the elements for a minute before taking them together, just to get refreshed under the eyes of the King. As the worship team sang over the room, he summed up the whole morning in one line: “I don’t have to strive. I get to receive.”
What this means for your week in Franklin
If you take this sermon seriously, four things change about this week.
- Audit your reasons for praying. Before you change how much you pray, get honest about why you pray. If duty, shame, or fear is the engine, that’s the first thing to bring to the Father, who would rather refresh you than grade you.
- Don’t move until you’ve received. Try Keith’s park discipline one morning this week: before a single request, confession, or intercession, sit still and receive God’s goodness, mercy, and love over your life again. Then pray everything else from the full well.
- Let the Lord’s Prayer be your scaffolding. Father first. Connection second. Daily bread third. Confession and leading after that. The order isn’t legalism; it’s how a son or daughter walks into the room.
- Keep the woods, the cats, and the video games. Recharging hobbies are a gift, not a guilt trip. Just don’t ask them to do what only the Father can. The grime of bosses, schedules, and hard circumstances needs more than a distraction. It needs a fountain.
Watch the full message
The full sermon — “Be Refreshed” from the Foundations series — is in the video above. We post a new message every Sunday from New River Church in Franklin, TN. Browse our message library for more from the Foundations series and other recent teaching.
Coming Sunday at New River Church in Franklin, TN
If this message resonated and you’d like to experience worship and community in person, we’d love to have you with us. New River Church meets Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike in Franklin, TN 37064 — just minutes from downtown Franklin and easy to reach from across Williamson County, Brentwood, and Spring Hill.
You don’t need to dress up. You don’t need a good voice. You don’t need to know much about church or the Bible to come. We’re a community of ordinary people walking through ordinary life, trying to do it together with Jesus at the center. Whether you’ve been a Christian for forty years or you’ve never set foot in a church, you are welcome here.
If you’re new to the area or new to faith, our First Time Guest page walks through everything you need to know before your first visit: parking, what to expect on Sunday morning, what your kids will experience in River Kids, and how to find us when you arrive.
If you’re looking for deeper community beyond Sunday morning, our Community Groups meet across Franklin and the surrounding area throughout the week. Groups are where Sunday morning faith becomes Tuesday afternoon real life.
Whatever you’re carrying right now, you don’t have to carry it alone. There’s a place for you at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Come as you are.
Watch more sermons: newriverfranklin.com/messages Plan your visit: newriverfranklin.com/firsttimeguest Find a group: newriverfranklin.com/groups
📍 New River Church | 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064 | Sundays 9:00 AM & 10:45 AM
