Jesus’ Pattern For Prayer

“But He Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray”  Luke 5:16

        We are given Jesus’ pattern for prayer in this verse and Luke notes two important truths in this passage for us to realize in order to give prayer its proper place in our lives.

1. Luke takes the time to emphasize to us that this pattern was routine for Jesus.  Imagine, the person who had the most intimate relationship with God often got away in order to pray. Maybe the reason for this is that being so close to God sharpened Jesus’ vision to the greatness of humanity’s need.
    It is important to note then our great need of prayer! If Jesus needed to do this often, how much more do we.

2. Interestingly Luke 5:16 refers to Jesus as retreating, or “losing ground,” in order to pray. He lost ground in ‘getting things done,’ touching lives, growing His ministry, engaging with people, etc. This is exactly our temptation at times isn’t it?  We are often hindered from taking time to pray because we believe that we will lose ground by taking time away from something else we could be doing.
    These are challenging words for such busy people as us but make a choice today not to buy into Satan’s lie. You never truly lose anything when you take time to pray.  Before the day is out lose ground and spend some time with our Heavenly Father through prayer.

‘Heavenly Father, help us to see our great need to meet with you for our own mental health and for our life’s strength. Then, give us the commitment to take the steps necessary to stop from our busy lives to pray. Amen.’