Friday
Friday
The Lord’s Prayer Life
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
Mark 1:35
It is difficult for us to imagine how demanding Jesus’s threefold ministry must have been. Mark gives us the outline of a sample day in Capernaum. It began with teaching, and Jesus amazed his hearers by the authority with which he spoke. News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee, so that people flocked to him to be taught and healed. That evening after sunset, when it was cooler and he might have expected a meal and some rest, “the whole town gathered at the door” (v. 33), and he healed the sick. It sounds easy, but when later he healed a woman with a hemorrhage, we read that power went out of him. He must have felt drained. And most wearing of all was his confrontation with evil spirits. The kingdom of God had broken in; the devil’s kingdom would not retreat without a fight.
I wonder what time Jesus went to bed that night. All we are told is that after a hectic day of ministry, he needed both physical and spiritual refreshment. So very early in the morning, Jesus got up and went off to a solitary place to pray.
Luke is the evangelist who took the greatest interest in this aspect of Jesus’s behavior. He mentions about ten particular occasions when Jesus prayed, several of which have no parallel in the other Gospels.
Jesus certainly knew Old Testament verses like Isaiah 40:31: “They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength” (KJV). And he sought this renewal in prayer. We also know how intimate his relation to his Father was from his use of the diminutive Aramaic form of address, “Abba.” The late Professor Joachim Jeremias wrote, “Nowhere in the literature of the prayers of ancient Judaism … is this invocation of God as Abba to be found…. Jesus on the other hand always used it when he prayed.”1 Thus renewed and refreshed from prayer, Jesus would return to the pressures of his busy ministry. It is this rhythm between prayer and ministry, renewal and engagement, that enabled Jesus to endure the strains of his ministry. And if he needed it, how much more do we?
For further reading: Mark 1:21–39