Everything Jesus did was strategic. Everything He did was an example for us to follow. When we study His actions, we gain insight about how to live victoriously. I want that. I don’t want my life to be aimless, purposeless, or random. I want to hit a positive, productive, God-glorifying target. I want to know how to win at life. I want to know how to please God in all circumstances.
It is clear to me that prayer played a strategic role in Jesus’ daily life, in His ability to endure persecution, to persevere during adverse circumstances, to stay laser-focused on His mission, to defeat Satan by staying obedient to the will of God the Father.
Jesus prayed. He prayed a lot. The content of His prayers gives us insight into His heart. Prayer was routine for Jesus. Think about the things include in your daily routine. You probably brush your teeth every day. By the looks of all of us, we eat a couple times a day. I assume most of us either spend time on a computer, a cell phone or watch TV every day. I don’t leave my house without painting my face! Perhaps there are some people that we talk to or text every day. They can count on hearing from us. Some of you die-hards hit the gym every day. My point is that there are many things we do every day that are simply part of our routine. We don’t have to think about whether we will do them or not, or whether we want to do them or not. They are simply part of who we are, and they are part of our life because we experience a benefit from them. There is a payoff for us that we are pursuing. There is a reason we have habits and routines. Prayer was like that for Jesus.
If Jesus, the Son of God, who had no confusion regarding His identity or earthly mission, thought He needed to be in regular communication with the Heavenly Father, how much more should we think we need the same? Luke 5:16 says, “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”
Notice that there were times He simply had to get away to really focus on sharing what was in His heart. There were intimate times of communication between the Father and the Son that weren’t corporate moments. I love that Jesus models that there are some things that are private, just between us and the Father. Luke tells us this happened often.
The disciples knew that prayer was fueling Jesus. They knew it was keeping Him connected in a special way to the Heavenly Father. They knew it was positive and something they needed to incorporate into their lives. They asked Jesus to teach them to pray in Matthew 6:9-13. Just a quick read of what Jesus included in His tutorial on prayer, what we call the “Lord’s Prayer,” reveals that prayer helps us acknowledge God as holy and sovereign. It’s a form of worship. It invites God to reveal His will to us. It gives us an opportunity to ask for daily provision. It is a cleansing mechanism whereby we can ask for forgiveness and also forgive people who wrong us. Finally, it becomes a way to access spiritual protection from Satan, something we’ve been talking a lot about recently. How much more practical could you get? As believers, we would be fools to not make use of this strategic gift of prayer.
Not only did Jesus regularly, daily, pray to the Father, but He deliberately prayed at important events in His life. I never had seen it before this week or had just glossed over it, but Jesus was praying at His own baptism. Check it out in Luke 3:21. We think of baptism as something we experience, something that is done for us, something that is enacted upon us, but at the same time, we could be praying for God to do a new work in us as we seek to live for Him. I don’t know what Jesus was praying at His baptism, but He was praying. In verse 22 of the baptism account in Luke, we read that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus and anointed Him for His earthly ministry. A big anointing followed a time of prayer.
He also prayed before the miraculous feeding of the 5000. When all eyes were on Him, and He was seeking to meet a huge need with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. I stress out when I am cooking for more than my family! I can’t imagine the pressure Jesus could have felt in that moment as the eyes of 5000 men plus women and children were on Him. He had to have the Father’s help. A big miracle followed a time of prayer.
One of the biggest moments of Jesus’ life was at the Transfiguration. Read about it in Luke 9:28-36. It was a big reveal moment of who Jesus really was. Peter, James and John were with Him. All of the sudden, there were two others who appeared with them. Moses and Elijah, two Old Testament figures. Moses had died. Elijah had been taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. They represent the way two different groups of people will enter into Heaven. Many will experience physical death, only to wake up in Heaven, but those who are still alive when Christ returns will be caught up to meet Him in the air, I Thessalonians 4:17.
Luke says that Peter, James and John witnessed this meet up between Jesus and Moses and Elijah, like a portal was open and they could see what could never been seen with earthly eyes. Moses and Elijah appeared in glorious splendor, and as Jesus talked with them, His own appearance changed, and His clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. They saw Jesus in all of His glory. It was a big reveal! In that moment, the weight of just Who Jesus was, of just Who they had been following, would have fallen on Peter, James and John. They didn’t want to leave. They wanted to camp out there. All of that followed Jesus having a time of prayer. Luke 9:28 says He took Peter, John and James with Him and went up onto a mountain to pray. Big transformation and revelation followed a time of prayer.
In Luke 6:12, Jesus spent the night, not sleeping, but praying as He was seeking direction regarding the choosing of His 12 disciples. He wanted to get the choosing of His team right, and He did. Big discernment came to Jesus following a time of prayer.
In all of these situations, at His baptism when He longed to be fully immersed in the power of the Spirit and the mission for which He had been sent, at the feeding of the 5,000 when all eyes were on Him to make a miracle happen, at the Transfiguration, when God wanted to reveal the weight and glory of Who Jesus really was to those three disciples, and when Jesus wanted to have wisdom and discernment to make the right call for those 12 who would follow Him everywhere, Jesus prayed.
Do you need anointed for a special task? Do you need a monumental miracle in your life? Do you need a revelation of just Who Jesus is and what He can do for you? Do you need wisdom and discernment to make the right decisions? PRAY!
We need to develop a routine of prayer for sure. We also need to consult our Heavenly Father in all of the big moments of our lives. Prayer fuels us for the daily stuff and prayer prepares us for the big moments, the supernatural ones where Heaven and earth meet in a way that helps people to see the glory of God in and through our lives.
Jesus had learned that His friend, Lazarus, had died, and when He got to the tomb of Lazarus in John 11, He prayed. I guarantee He was praying all the way to Bethany from where He was. He had heard Lazarus was sick, but He confidently told His disciples, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” John 11:4 Those were bold words, and yet, when Jesus got to Bethany, Lazarus was dead. Had Jesus declared something incorrectly? Was He saying something just to make the disciples feel better? I’m sure they all loved Lazarus. Was Jesus just talking to talk out of a desire to comfort their hearts?
He got to Lazarus’ tomb and commanded the stone be rolled away from His friend’s tomb. This bold move followed His bold statement. Martha, Lazarus’ sister, told Jesus it wasn’t a good idea to open the tomb. She said the smell of death would overtake them all. But Jesus spoke again about the glory of God. He said, “Did I not tell you that I you believe, you will see the glory of God?” John 11:40
They took away the stone, as they did, Jesus started praying. Jesus’ bold words and bold action were followed up with bold prayers! Here is what He said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that You sent Me.”
In the hearing of everyone gathered at Lazarus tomb, Jesus declared that He and the Father had no communication issues. There were no misunderstandings. There was no selective hearing. Jesus never gave the Father the silent treatment and vice versa. He said, “I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me.” The two were in sync. Jesus spoke to the disciples with great confidence about Lazarus’ fate because He and the Father had already exchanged messages. They had already had a conversation about this moment. Jesus knew that Lazarus’ sickness wouldn’t end in death, that death wouldn’t have the final say about Lazarus because God the Father had already disclosed that information to Him. Here, Jesus reiterated that their relationship was one of perfect communication. Jesus talked to the Father, and the Father always heard and communicated back.
We also see here, that the quality of Jesus’ prayer life was put on display in His prayer so that the people who were gathered there would understand that He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead because He was sent by God to do so, that He was sent, not just to raise Lazarus, but to conquer death for us all. Jesus knew that whatever the Father said to Him in those prayer meetings, He could confidently count on to take place. Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, and the dead man came out alive.
In that instance, Jesus’ public prayer became a demonstration of His faith in the relationship He and the Father shared. Those who were there would know that Jesus knew the Father and that the Father knew Jesus.
In Jerusalem the week of His arrest, Jesus predicted His soon-to-come death. As He spoke of His coming sacrifice, Jesus prayed a very short prayer: “Father, glorify your name!” John 12:28 When you pray for the glory of God to be revealed through your life, that is a prayer God will always answer!
On the night of His arrest, Jesus spent a few moments with the disciples and prayed an extended prayer. It’s found in John 17. You want to know the focus of that lengthy prayer? It was you and me. Jesus prayed for us. At a time when He would have been justified to be self-absorbed, self-focused, as the time for His crucifixion was closing in on Him, He was interceding for His followers. It’s stunning, really. The connection He had with the Heavenly Father, no doubt developed through His routine habit of prayer, enabled Him to pray for us, even in the most pressure-filled moments of His life.
I’m glad, however, that Jesus modeled praying for Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane. Some people have trouble doing that. It’s truly Ok to pray for yourself. It’s more than Ok. Our Heavenly Father wants to hear what is on our hearts. He wants us to bring our burdens to Him. Jesus asked His disciples to pray with Him in an intense time in the Garden of Gethsemane, but they fell asleep.
Listen to the account in Matthew 26, 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done. 43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.
This was a season of prayer in three segments. Jesus’ friends weren’t there for Him in His agony, but His Heavenly Father was. The One Who always heard His prayers heard them that night, and He heard them in triplicate.
Prayer is the avenue through which we always have Someone to lean on. The Bible says that God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble, Psalm 46:1. Did you know you can ask for anything in prayer? Jesus asked if it was possible to save us any other way, if the Cross could be off the table for Him, if there was any other way, for it to be so.
In His humanity, knowing the severity of the torture that awaited Him, it is understandable that Jesus prayed for a way around the suffering. I certainly pray to avoid suffering, and when it happens, I pray for a way out for sure. But that prayer, in the Garden of Gethsemane, followed a prayer Jesus had previously prayed. He had prayed the Father would glorify His name. God the Father was already working to answer that prayer as God would be glorified as His Son paid the price for the sins of the world on the cross and would also seal Satan’s fate.
I want you to know that the ministry of prayer connects you to the presence and power of God even when God has a reason for not answering the way you would want Him to answer. More than an answer to prayer, you want that! You want to be connected to the presence and power of God. It trumps any “yes” you could receive from your prayers. Notice what Luke tells us about that Garden of Gethsemane account in Luke 22:43-44: 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.[c]
The Father always heard Jesus’ prayers. The Father was listening intently to Jesus pour out His heart in prayer. He sent help. He sent an angel from heaven. Angels don’t come from heaven to strengthen people unless they are sent by God. That is what happened. Jesus’ passionate prayer stirred God’s heart to respond, not in the way He prayed, but in the way that would enable Him to pray on. Look at the way Luke details the sequence of events. The angel came and strengthened Jesus, and even though He was in anguish, He prayed on, more earnestly than He had before, and that is when drops of sweat like blood fell to the ground. The angel came not to rescue Jesus from the cross, but to strengthen His heart, to help Him continue to travail in the place of prayer, and we know He did because He kept on praying!
When you feel like you can’t continue to pour out your heart to the Lord, ask Him to come in power and strengthen you. Ask Him for courage to walk through the fire. God won’t fail you. Keep on praying. Keep on seeking. Keep on expressing your needs to God. He will give you strength to keep on praying, and He will give you grace to accept His will.
Do you know that Jesus even prayed while He was impaled to the cross? I cannot imagine how a person could have the presence of mind and peace in their heart to formulate a prayer while they were in such agony, but Jesus did. In fact, He prayed three separate times. There was an emotional prayer as Jesus cried out to the Father asking why He was feeling forsaken. He was feeling forsake because our sin had been placed on Him on the cross. The Father turned away as He was rendering judgment on the sins of the world. There was a compassionate prayer as Jesus prayed for His torturers to be forgiven for what they were doing. His final breath was a prayer as He committed His Spirit into the hands of the Heavenly Father.
You know what I conclude from these three prayers by Jesus on the Cross? Prayer is what got Jesus through. He prayed because it worked. He prayed because He received supernatural help to glorify God even in the midst of personal suffering and trauma.
Friends, prayer connects you to the God who always hears, to the God who sends help, and to the God who will strengthen you so that you can glorify Him no matter what you face.
We need to pray as a daily habit. We need to pray in the midst of life’s biggest moments. We need to pray when we are making big decisions. We need to pray when we are suffering. We need to pray for God to be glorified in all of it.
Jesus never got over the habit of praying. Did you know that He is still praying today? Hebrews 7:25 and Romans 8:34 tell us so. He is praying for those who haven’t surrendered their lives to Him to do so today. He is praying for those of you who need wisdom to find it in Him. He is praying for those are suffering to stay bowed down to the will of God. There is power in prayer. Jesus prayed. Be like Jesus.
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