Jesus and Prayer

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
[Luke 5v16]

It seems that Jesus healed without effort. A word here. A gesture of the hand there. A look. Demons flee. Fevers depart. Skin cleaned. Paralyzed dance. And people were flocking. With all the people who needed healed, and with the ease by which Jesus healed, and with him only being on earth a short time, how could he justify taking a break to pray or sleep or eat or play?

But Jesus did get away to solitary places, he did get away to pray. It seems that he needed to be re-energized. And so do we.

Jesus came to do the work of his Father; for those of us who follow Jesus - we have a similar mission. Just as Jesus needed alone time with this Dad in order to get reaffirmation, correction, and inspiration to keep on the journey, so do we. We think that much of our life is too mundane for the LORD to care about. But we fill up our life with so much mundane stuff that we too easily give up on making time to get alone with our Father. So we get accustomed to our life of mundane-stuff. We let God break in once in awhile and do something marvelous, but then it's back to busyness as usual.

If we belong to Jesus, our life is not our own. If we don't make the time to be alone with the LORD, we easily slip into self-direction. When we do that, we cut ourselves off from the mystery, the marvelous ways that God can heal and save through our everyday life. A conversation here. A gesture of the hand there. A kind look. A smile. Attentive ears. And God can take those mundane acts and use them for good, when we are attentive to Him.

If Jesus needed to get alone and pray to his Father, how much more do we?

If Jesus thinks that we - the body of Christ - can do greater things than he did - how much more ought we to be alone with the Father?

If our life is to be a poured out offering unto others, ought we not to be letting the LORD pour into us while in solitude?

Listen to the LORD. Withdraw to a solitary place to pray. And hear.