Jan
23
Because Jesus prayed…
Filed Under Christian Living, Holy Spirit, Prayer, The Church
Jesus prayed: he prayed daily, he prayed in the synagogue, he prayed at some critical moments in his ministry. When I think of Jesus’ prayers, I recall a conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness nearly twenty years ago in which he tried to prove that Jesus was not fully God on the basis that God would not need to pray to God. I also think back to well-intentioned teachers who tried to motivate me to pray through the guilt of the ‘Jesus never missed a quiet time; what’s wrong with you?’ line of reasoning.
In spite of those memories, more and more I find that a satisfying and comforting answer to the question ‘Why pray?’ is the fact that Jesus prayed. The eternal Son of God, agent and sustainer of creation, felt a compelling need to pray!
When you piece together a picture of Jesus’ prayer life from the Gospels, you find just over a dozen specific prayers (mostly short utterances, John 17 being the exception), along with parables and teaching and comments about prayer. Five times the Gospels tell us that Jesus would go off by himself to pray.
Jesus’ prayer habits, and especially his turning to prayer in times of crisis and at key events (his Baptism, before choosing the Twelve, at the ‘Mount of Transfiguration’ incident, and in dark Gethsemane), suggest that he found rest, comfort, renewal, and strength from praying to his Father. After an exhausting day of preaching and dealing with people and their needs he would withdraw to an isolated place to pray. There he found something he needed when he was drained. I have food to eat that you know nothing about, he replied when his disciples expressed concern over his physical condition at such times.
Consider what we read about Jesus in Luke 6, when Jesus prayed all night before choosing twelve disciples in whom he would invest so much of his energies. “One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles” (Luke 6:12). Actually, Luke’s account is the only example we have of Jesus praying all night. This apparently was not a habit. He slept as every other son of Adam sleeps, but here was a special occasion when he needed to go off alone to pray. He was the incarnation of the wisdom and power of God, but he needed to pray. He was about his Father’s business, but he needed to pray. He had no sin to confess, but he needed to pray. The Father delighted in him and the Spirit indwelt him, but he needed to pray. He had a lot to do, but he needed to pray. No matter how busy he was or how closely he walked with God there were times of prayer which he maintained.
This was a big moment; there were more than twelve from whom he could pick. The task called for power, illumination, guidance. Luke uses a simple phrase to describe Jesus’ intercession; ‘praying to God’, or literally ‘prayer of God’ (only Luke uses it and only on this occasion). Christ spent the night in the ‘prayer of God.’ In other words the emphasis was not on the night-long vigil so much as a praying of divine fellowship—an earnest concentration of heart and mind which was divinely sustained throughout the night. Twelve names were finally fastened on his heart and mind and he went forth that next morning and “called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve, designating them apostles” (v.13-14).
You would think he could say to God, “It’s OK; I can pick twelve–no problem.” Yet if even Jesus, before making such a great decision, needed to go aside and pray, then certainly we do. How can we with our uninformed insight, our own self-confidence, our own overrated abilities for handle life, come to any wise decision if we ignore prayer?
I want you to consider one more thing: how could this group of twelve constitute the answer to any prayer? We would expect the prayer and evaluation to result in an elite team of spiritual commandos fit for the mission. Instead we get a dirty dozen that includes the betrayer Judas, men on the opposite sides of the political spectrum (the Roman sympathizer Matthew and the ultra-right-wing conservative “Zealot” Simon), back-country fishermen (Peter, Andrew, James and John) and the others who do or say little that ever merits mention in the Gospels. More than that, these Twelve regularly disappoint their teacher and master with their cowardice, pettiness, feeble faith and outright stupidity.
This fact makes me hesitant to get so frustrated and put out with Jesus’ followers in my life. And, on the flip side, makes me aware that my wife prayed for a husband…and got me. My congregation prayed fervently over many months for a pastor…and got me. Jesus prayed…and got me. That’s gotta hurt!
Someone has said, ‘Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and unpredictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.’
As the Waterboys sing, “I’ve some to say, and I’ve more to tell” re: Jesus’ prayer life…
Comments
Leave a Reply