You are able to do greater than pray after you will have prayed, however you can’t do greater than pray till you will have prayed.
—John Bunyan (The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations, 235)
On a lonely hillside within the dim gentle earlier than daybreak, a person sits by himself, praying. He rehearses the Scriptures, sings traces from the Psalms, praises God, and pours out his coronary heart. An observer may think the person a monk or a minimum of a devotee of the solitary, contemplative life — so desolate is the setting and so early the hour.
However not lengthy earlier than, an entire metropolis had gathered round this man, begging for his consideration. Even now, the town stirs once more, remembering final night time’s wonders and wanting extra. And in a number of moments, the person’s buddies will discover him and inform him of wants to fulfill, duties to do, crowds to reply, folks to see. He prays within the eye of a hurricane.
Rising very early within the morning, whereas it was nonetheless darkish, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. (Mark 1:35)
Busier than a businessman, extra sought out than a star, wished as a mom of many toddlers, and bearing a activity as large because the world, Jesus prayed.
The Lord’s Prayers
The Gospels supply only some glimpses into the routines of Jesus’s life outdoors his regular ministry. They present him touring usually. They present him consuming at many alternative tables. They often present him resting. However maybe above all, they present him praying.
He prayed by himself and with others (Matthew 14:23; John 17:1). He prayed in crowded locations and in quiet corners (John 11:41–42; Matthew 14:13). He prayed as an everyday every day sample and with spontaneous expressions of pleasure, grief, longing, and wish (Luke 5:16; 10:21–24; 23:34, 46). The multitudes noticed his public energy; the disciples noticed the lifetime of prayer that made all of it attainable (Luke 11:1).
However such a prayer life didn’t come simply. How may it, when his recognition may make even mealtimes laborious to return by (Mark 3:20; 6:31)? Jesus prayed as he did as a result of he prioritized prayer — typically ruthlessly so. And in his prayer life, we discover a mannequin for our personal.
Prioritizing Prayer
The concept of prioritizing prayer sounds fantastic — till prioritizing prayer means not doing one thing we might very a lot love to do. We are able to speak about prioritizing prayer all we wish, however we don’t actually accomplish that except we commonly put aside second-best priorities, a few of them urgent, to get alone with God. The lifetime of our Lord supplies the most effective illustration.
Generally, Jesus prioritized prayer over ministry. When Jesus prayed within the pre-dawn darkish outdoors Capernaum, he may have been ministering. “Everyone seems to be searching for you,” his disciples informed him, even at that early hour (Mark 1:37). The wants have been actual and pressing: the sick wanted therapeutic, the wayward wanted instructing, the misplaced wanted saving. However first, Jesus prayed.
“When Jesus’s priorities competed, prayer didn’t lose.”
Generally, Jesus prioritized prayer over sleep. In the identical story, he rose “very within the morning” as a substitute of sleeping very early within the morning, though yesterday’s ministry lasted lengthy after sunset (Mark 1:32–35). On one other event, “he went out to the mountain to hope, and all night time he continued in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). Much more than his physique wanted sleep, his soul wanted prayer.
Generally, Jesus prioritized prayer over planning or pondering. The all-night prayer time in Luke 6 got here simply earlier than Jesus “referred to as his disciples and selected from them twelve” (Luke 6:13). The choice of which twelve males to decide on required cautious thought and discernment. However greater than any of these, it required earnest prayer.
Generally, Jesus even prioritized prayer over the folks who have been with him. “Now it occurred that as he was praying alone, the disciples have been with him” (Luke 9:18; 11:1). As we’ve seen, Jesus usually prayed in solitude (Luke 5:16). However he wanted to hope extra usually than he may get away. So, with out ignoring or neglecting others, Jesus typically constructed a prayer closet proper within the midst of firm.
False and Tyrannous Urgency
Now, to make certain, ministry, sleep, planning, and folks have been all priorities for Jesus. All all through the Gospels, he provides folks his deep and undivided consideration. His ministry bears the marks of cautious planning (Luke 9:51). He typically sleeps whereas others are awake (Mark 4:38). And one time, whereas on his manner “to a desolate place by himself,” he sees crowds in want and resolves to hope later (Matthew 14:13, 23).
On many days, Jesus most likely fulfilled all these priorities (and extra) with out sacrificing any. And that’s a worthy superb for us to attempt for. However the lesson for our prayer lives is that this: When Jesus’s priorities competed, prayer didn’t lose. When his schedule was pressed, he didn’t go prayerless. Ministry may wait, sleep may very well be shortened, and different priorities may take second place, however a technique or one other, he would pray. Even when circumstances stole his solitude, he both prayed in public or made positive he prayed later.
Jesus’s instance strikes me to ask some laborious questions:
- How usually do I let busyness — even the most effective type of busyness — justify prayerlessness?
- When was the final time I set my alarm sooner than regular to verify I pray?
- How usually do I pause my planning or cautious pondering to have interaction within the seemingly (!) unproductive act of prayer?
- When my typical prayer time will get taken, how creatively and desperately do I discover some approach to nonetheless pray?
Many people within the trendy world dwell with a tyrannous and sometimes false sense of urgency. Loud voices inside and with out inform us we have now a lot to do, that different persons are relying on us, that maybe tomorrow will afford extra time for prayer. But when anybody had motive to heed such voices, it was Jesus. And he didn’t. In a ministry crammed with pressing wants, pressing alternatives, pressing counsels, pressing risks, he handled prayer as essentially the most pressing precedence of all.
What did he know that we don’t?
What Jesus Knew
Above all, Jesus knew himself, and Jesus knew his Father.
Jesus knew himself. “With out ceasing to be divine,” Donald Macleod writes of the Son of God, “he took on the qualities of human nature: createdness, finitude, dependence, ignorance, mutability, embodiedness, and even mortality” (The Individual of Christ, 194). Jesus prayed as a result of, at the same time as excellent Man, he wanted his Father. He wanted knowledge in decision-making, fortitude in temptation, discernment in instructing, pleasure in sorrow, energy of soul in in any other case insufferable agony.
Do we all know ourselves? As people, we have now all of the wants Jesus had. And as sinners, we have now so many extra. So can we get up understanding ourselves liable to wander with out God — inclined to talk corrupting phrases, comply with silly paths, waste valuable time, and consider the satan’s lies?
Jesus additionally knew his Father. He knew him because the God who speaks stars into being, who scatters nations and sends plagues, who fills dying wombs with life and fells enemy armies as quite a few because the sand on the seashore. He knew him because the God with energy incomparable, knowledge unsearchable, compassion unimaginable, magnificence past evaluate, and steadfast love higher than life.
And he knew him because the God whose ear is open. He provides good issues to his kids (Matthew 7:11). He solutions the asking, opens to the knocking, and leads the searching for to search out (Matthew 7:7–8). He sees in every single place and hears in any respect hours (Matthew 6:6). He is aware of what we want however nonetheless loves after we converse (Matthew 6:8). And although we could not perceive his timing, he doesn’t delay lengthy towards his personal (Luke 18:7).
If we all know him, what busyness can preserve us from him? And what urgency can converse louder than his invitation to attract close to?
What Wonders Prayer Has Gained
In a world of self-sufficient, godless effectivity, oh what number of wonders prayer has received! By prayer, a number of loaves and fish fed 5 thousand (Matthew 14:19), and Lazarus left the realm of the lifeless (John 11:41–42), and sorrow grew to become a sanctuary of communion with God (Matthew 14:12–13, 23), and Peter’s religion didn’t fail (Luke 21:32), and phrases of forgiveness flowed from the cross (Luke 23:34), and the cup of agony was set down empty (Matthew 26:42), and frail and failing disciples have been saved (John 17:11).
God desires us to run and construct and work on this world, however not aside from prayer. Jesus knew as a lot. So, although busy, although sought out, although wanted, although weighed down by a world of pressing accountability, Jesus prayed. Will we?
