Part 1

By Jim Johns

 

The heavenly Father’s purpose for every Christian is that we be conformed to the likeness of His Son (Romans 8:29). The most characteristic element of the life of Jesus is His prayer life. If we are to be like Him, we must begin with an understanding of what His prayer life was like -- what it meant and the part that it played in His earthly pilgrimage.

This article is the first in a series to encourage us to learn from Him the true meaning of a life of prayer, and thus to have that same communion with the Father that was the source of direction and of power in the Master’s earthly life.

"I just don’t understand what God is doing in my life. Things aren’t going the way they ought to go."

You may have heard Christian friends making such a statement. Struggling to cope with seemingly unexplainable events in your life, you may have said it yourself. As I travel and engage in prayer and discipleship conferences across the country, I hear those words with increasing frequency. I always respond, with great confidence, that I know exactly what God is doing: "He is conforming you to the likeness of His Son." In Romans 8:29, Paul writes, "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers."

I don’t presume to explain the precise meaning of each step He is taking, but I can tell you without hesitation that, if you are a child of God, what He is doing in your life right now is a part of His determination to conform you to the likeness -- or image -- of His Son.

The important thing for us to do is to gain, through the Scriptures, an understanding of what it really means to be in the likeness of Jesus Christ. And for our purposes here, we need to put that in the context of prayer.

What would it be like for my prayer life to be like His prayer life?

What characterized His prayer life?

Certainly the most dramatic and illustrative passage of scripture describing Jesus’ life of prayer is found in the epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 5:

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 5:7-10 NIV)

Here we have a concise presentation of the Master’s prayer life. The first important thing we see is that this is what His prayer life was like during His life on earth (in Hebrews 7:25, we find that He is still praying in heaven, praying for us as intercessor. The life of Jesus always was and still is a life of prayer.)

On earth, His prayer life contained:

1. Passion and Compassion

He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears. Is it any wonder that we have so few true intercessors in our time? How long has it been since your communion with the heavenly Father led you to loud cries and tears? But I can tell you that in our day God is raising up men and women whose hearts can be broken over a lost world and a lost neighbor and a brother or sister drifting into sin and rebellion. We’re seeing that more and more wherever we go. God is doing a work in His people to conform us to the likeness of His son in passion and compassion.

2. Reverent Submission

Do our prayers reveal a reverent submission to the will of the Father? The prayers of Jesus always did. The writer of Hebrews here reminds us of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me..." Was His prayer heard? Yes. But the answer was "no." The will of the Father was that He endure the cross, despising the shame, and thus become the firstborn among many brothers. And when Jesus heard the will of His Father, He yielded in reverent submission.

Is it in your heart to yield to the will of the Father in reverent submission? When the evident leading of God takes you in a direction that you don’t wish to go, and the end of which is hidden from you, are you able to respond in reverent submission?

That is a characteristic of the prayer life of Jesus, and it must become a characteristic of ours, if we are to be conformed to His likeness.

3. Obedience

He learned obedience by what He suffered. And that is the way you and I will learn obedience. Not one of us will ask God to give us suffering, but I can tell you that suffering will come. Without a doubt, it has already come into your life, and will come again. That is why you’re seeking to learn more about prayer, and about your personal relationship with the heavenly Father. Because God is molding your life just as He molded the life of His Son -- through the purifying fire of suffering.

4. Victory

Once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. That was the culmination of God’s will for the Lord Jesus. Everything that came before was preparation. And everything in your life and mine so far has been preparation, as God has been crafting us into the vessels of His choosing.

Can we be made perfect? Yes. Perfect here means complete. Jesus, on the last night of His life, prayed, "Father, I have finished the work you gave me to do." That is what spiritual perfection is: completing the work God created us to do. Paul wrote to Timothy, "I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will ward to me on that day -- and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing." Would we have looked at Paul and called him "perfect"? No. This is the same Paul who in Romans 7 says plainly that he doesn’t do what he knows he should, and does the things he knows he shouldn’t. But what he did was finish what God gave him to do.

The writer of Hebrews is giving us the example of Jesus in that same light. It was in His obedience to the Father, in accomplishing the will of the Father, that He became the source of our eternal salvation.

Look inward

Examine your own prayer life. How does it measure up to that of our Lord in passion and compassion? In reverent submission? In obedience? In victory? Yield your prayer life to the transforming power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and allow the Father to do in you all He desires to do.

If the Father is to conform us to the likeness of His Son, the first steps will be seen in our conformity to His life of prayer.

Part 2

This article is the second in a series on the Prayer Life of Jesus. In the first article, we examined the elements of His earthly prayer life as described in Hebrews 5:7-10. Here we turn to the first of two significant Scriptural examples that graphically illustrate the important place that prayer occupied in the carrying out of His earthly assignment.

Why did Jesus pray? Was He not divine? Did He not know the Father’s will for Him from the very beginning of His life?

Those are questions that naturally arise as we examine the prayer life of Jesus. The truth is that there are no easy answers. Because we are finite creatures, we can never fully understand those things we encounter as infinite. We cannot understand the Trinity (how can three be one, and one three?) We do not grasp what Paul means as he writes in Philippians 2 that Christ "made himself nothing" (or "emptied himself," as the King James Version says) in order to leave heaven for earth and take on Himself the form of a human servant. How much emptying did He do?

In the same way, we cannot know how much Jesus, in His earthly journey, knew of His own nature. He seemed to know, from his childhood, that He was on mission for God ("I must be about my Father’s business" [Luke 2:49], age 12). More than once, He predicted His own impending death (Mark 8:31, 10:33; Luke 18:31-33) with clear description of the what, the how and the why. What did He not know?

While these are perplexing, if significant, theological questions, we must rely on the evidence of Scripture to guide us through those deep waters where there is much we cannot know for certain. And what we can discover in Scripture is that Jesus prayed. If there is a single dominant characteristic of His life, it is that He prayed. Prayer was the indispensable fact of His relationship with His heavenly Father.

What should an understanding of His prayer life say to us as His present-day disciples? Are there some fundamental truths for those of us who really desire to follow our Lord and begin to live the life of prayer that links us to the heavenly Father in the same way?

Truth #1: It was in prayer that Jesus learned the Father’s will

We know this from the many references to His prayer life, not merely from the prayer in the Garden where he yielded to the Father’s will when it was evidently contrary to what His humanity desired. One illustration that I like to ponder is the one we find in Luke 11:1.

He had been praying, about what we don’t know, but as soon as He was finished, his disciples came to Him and asked, "Lord, teach us to pray."

What was behind that? I really believe that the request came out of a realization that He had something they didn’t have. They saw that it was after seasons of prayer that He exhibited power, that He made decisions affecting their lives as well as His, and that He found wisdom for dealing with the difficult parts of His life.

That is a request that you and I can make. Do you think it is in God’s will for your life that you learn to pray? That you learn to pray as Jesus prayed? Ask Him. God promised that if we ask for anything within His will, and in the name of Jesus, we will have it. James says we have not because we ask not. And Jesus said "Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full."

What we can have, if we ask in that way, is the ability to perceive God’s will. That is because we are praying in union with the Son, and in His Name. It is God’s pleasure to show us His will, and then to enable us to do it in the everyday working of our lives.

Truth #2: The Major Decisions of His Life Were Made After Extended Seasons of Prayer

Look at Luke 6:12-16. This is just one of many illustrations of the extensiveness of the prayer life of Jesus. In this passage, He is in the process of selecting the twelve disciples whom He will designate Apostles -- those who will be close to Him and will minister with Him during His earthly ministry.

What we learn here, I believe, is that Jesus spent the night going over the names and faces and personalities of a great many of those disciples who were now following Him. How did He decide there should be twelve? Was that a counterpart in His life to the sons of Israel, fathers of the twelve tribes?

More importantly, how was He to know which of the many disciples would best serve Him and do the Father’s will?

Henry Blackaby, among others, shares insight at this point. The reason Jesus spent all night in prayer, Dr. Blackaby believes, is that it took the Father that long to reveal to Him the twelve that the Father had already picked. Jesus needed to hear from the Father, and there was a long process of revelation and explanation.

This view from Dr. Blackaby and other modern disciples makes perfect sense. Is not this the way our prayer life should be, if we are to follow Christ as our model? When we have a major decision to make, we need to spend the time to hear from God. We need to be sure we have weighed all the evidence He may bring to our minds as we are in the process of asking His guidance. He may not do that quickly, and we must be patient and purposeful as we listen and as we allow the Holy Spirit to reveal the will of God to us.

When you obligated yourself for a 30-year mortgage on your house, did you pray it through? Did you ask God to show you whether this is the house for you, and whether just the idea of buying a house is His will? What about the college you attended? Or the college your kids attend? How much prayer went into that decision? Were you willing to spend all night in prayer on a matter that would forever shape the life of your son or daughter -- or your own life? How about your business partnership, your career, your church membership, your acceptance of the committee chairmanship? Was that God speaking to you as you prayed and made the decision, or was it desire and political opportunism?

The key: Are we seriously praying about the most important things we do in this life, or leaving them to chance and to the siren song of the highest or lowest bidder?

You see, all of these things have to do with our relationship with our heavenly Father and with our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit living within us.

"He has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us," says Peter (2 Peter 1:3). This includes the right to ask Him for guidance -- and the right to expect an answer.

 Learning from the Master -- Lessons from the Prayer Life of Jesus

This article is the third and last in a series on the Prayer Life of Jesus. In the first article, we examined the elements of His earthly prayer life as described in Hebrews 5:7-10; in the second, we learned from the Gospel of Luke that it was in prayer that Jesus discovered the will of the Father. Now we turn to an illustration of His obedience to the Father when, in prayer, Jesus learned how to react to the pressures of the crowd that followed Him.

Jesus’ disciples frequently were caught up in the reactions of the crowd to the miracles and teaching of the Master. The crowd wanted to crown their hero as their king. He was their hero. He could have had enormous political power on the strength of the willingness of the crowd to follow and respond to Him.

But Jesus could ignore the praises of the crowd, sticking to the mission to which the Father had called Him. Many a Christian leader has lost his effectiveness by responding to the crowd rather than to the guidance of the Spirit.

How did Jesus stay on course?

In Prayer He Made the Necessary Adjustments in His Life to Be Able to Hear from the Father and to Follow the Father’s Direction.

In Mark 1:35-39, Jesus -- having just chosen His first four disciples -- goes to the synagogue, teaches and casts out a demon. Then He goes to Peter’s house and heals Peter’s mother-in-law of her illness, and by evening the whole town is at the front door. He again heals many and drives out demons. Then...

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. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you."

Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else -- to the nearby villages -- so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. (Luke 1:35-39 NIV)

Notice that He gets up early in the morning -- to do what? To pray, in a solitary place. His disciples go and find Him, to tell Him everybody’s looking for Him. He has a following. He should capitalize on His miracles and the crowd’s attention. You can be famous, Jesus!

What does He say? "Let us go somewhere else -- to the nearby villages -- so I can preach there also. That is why I have come."

How did He know what to do that day? He prayed that morning. Very early.

Throughout His life, He got up early and prayed. On some occasions He stayed up all night and prayed. He was constantly and consistently in prayer to the heavenly Father. And He came up from the place of prayer knowing what to do.

What shall we do?

Having heard what the Father wanted, Jesus refused to be swayed by what the crowd wanted. He came to do the will of the Father; nothing else mattered.

How ready are we to turn away from other people’s agenda for us? Is it more important to know what will make us popular, or to know what the Father has in mind for us? God speaks today, and He’s ready to give us a word for our day every day, if we are ready to listen.

The Prayer Life Touches Everything

Our prayer life will have more to do with the rest of our life than any other single thing in our life! In Hebrews 5, we learned that it was after Jesus learned obedience that the Father could make Him exactly what the Father was looking for -- and Jesus was able to save a whole world because He became what the Father wanted Him to be.

That process must be the same with us. In prayer we can learn what God wants us to be and to do. Prayer is not designed to get Him to do what we want. In full communion with Him through prayer, we can become something He can use.

Here’s the point: God has to tell somebody what He wants -- but He needs somebody who wants to hear, who can hear, and who is listening. Is it time for you to listen? To be quiet and hear from the heavenly Father what He wants from you in this critical hour?

The Prayer Life of Jesus is Our Example

• In prayer Jesus exhibited passion and compassion, reverent submission, obedience, and victory;
• In prayer Jesus learned the Father’s will;
• The major decisions of Jesus’ life were made after extended seasons of prayer;
• In prayer Jesus made the necessary adjustments in His life to be able to hear from the Father and to follow the Father’s direction.

Is your prayer life following the Savior’s example? Is it completely submitted to Him? Are you as concerned about how God sees you as about the opinions and reactions of others?

Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6) That is true in the life of prayer, as it is in the life of faith. He is our way. Learn from Him, and follow Him -- in prayer -- into the presence of the Father. There, the great Intercessor, the living Christ, is ready to lift your prayers as sweet-smelling incense to the One Who made you for fellowship with Himself.