“One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and He prayed to God all night. At daybreak He called together all of His disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles.” (Luke 6:12-13a NLT)
Prayer is not an easy process to learn or to maintain. It’s a discipline that must be sought fervently and can only be found in the presence of the Lord. It would be nice if I could tell you I’ve “arrived,” in terms of getting this prayer process down, but I’m a seeker and a learner like many of you. I’m growing in my love for and dependence upon the Lord through prayer, but I have a long way to go.
The context of the above verses is the healing of the man with the deformed hand on the Sabbath and the choosing of His original 12 Apostles. Both were pivotal events in Jesus’ life and ministry because they demanded a clarion call from God and a heart of steel in our Savior to move forward against great opposition.
Jesus’ decision to launch a ministry in clear opposition to the Jews was, in their minds, blasphemous, but also dangerous. The Jews had a firm hand on the Jewish people because everything in a faithful Jewish person’s life revolved around the Temple. Not only worship, but sustenance, because to not obey the dictates of the Priests could alienate them from the resources available only through the Temple. It was a very bold decision for a Jew to follow Jesus.
Jesus understood as no one else could, the value of conversation with His heavenly Father. He’d stood with the Father on the days of Creation when the Father channeled His creative power through His Son to create everything that would exist, including me and you. Jesus knew that every detail of His life and ministry was dependent upon the power, authority, and approval of the Father. His heart was to be so in tune with the Father’s will that nothing else really mattered, not even the approval of the established religious leaders who would ultimately demand His life on the cross.
Are we beginning to grasp the vital context of prayer? Prayer isn’t simply our demands of God to get our way; wrongly believing we can treat God like He’s the “Amazon” delivery guy, through whom we order what we want, and He delivers at our beck and call. That’s ludicrous and blasphemous! Prayer is the platform upon which we beg God to show us what He wants, what His will is in any given situation. It literally doesn’t matter what we want, if it runs against the plans of God, it’s not worth having.
As I understand prayer, it’s the means whereby we wean ourselves of the world in order to teach our heart and mind to long more for God’s will than our own. I believe that’s the struggle Paul was describing in Romans 7, especially verse 24 when he wrote: “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?” And the very next verse explains what the Lord had taught him, no doubt through prayer: “Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.” That’s the dilemma of every person unless and until they turn from death to life, from sin to forgiveness and new life in Christ alone by faith alone.
There’s so much more here. Let’s pick this up in tomorrow’s post.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 