Jesus' model for prayer: He often withdrew to lonely places and prayed


Autumn has arrived late here in Sydney, but isn't it the most beautiful time of year! It's my favourite season :)

Jesus was a Man on a mission! He knew He had a very limited time on earth and had to maximise His time here. In the short three years He had, He knew He had to preach the gospel, heal the sick, train His disciples to carry on His work after He was gone, prepare them for His death and resurrection etc. There wasn't a lot of time and there were a lot of demands on Him due to the miracles He did. Yet, in the midst of all of this, we see Luke recording this for us:

"Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed". Luke 5:16

No matter how busy He was, He knew He could nothing apart from staying vitally connected to His Father in order to hear from Him, and to be connected to the source of His power -the Holy Spirit, in prayer!

How busy are you? We may not all be in full time ministry like Jesus was or some are, yet, do we take the time to spend time with God in prayer, amidst our busy schedules?

Our decisions follow our priorities in life. If we make it a priority to spend time in prayer, because we know we can't do anything of eternal significance without God, then we will prioritise time with God.

Repeatedly you see Luke 5:16 demonstrated in the gospels, where Jesus woke up early to spend time alone in prayer (Mark 1:35), He would spend the whole night in prayer sometimes (Luke 6:12), after spending the whole day ministering to people, He went up to a mountain to pray by Himself (Matt 14:23) and so on.

No matter what we've thought of prayer in the past, I'd like to strongly encourage us all, to let Jesus be the model for us in prayer.

If we aren't careful, we can let the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things, come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful (Mark 4:19). Let's search our hearts and if we have fallen short, allow God to change us to be more like Jesus. His grace will enable us to be more like Jesus.


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