Luke
5:12-16 (NIV) 16 But Jesus often
withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
With the crowds pressing around him, Jesus
withdrew. He did not wait until they left when He would have a few moments of
peace and quietness. He withdrew from the crowd to pray. How many of us have
ever needed some guidance for our life and we could find no one who had the
time to help us? Or perhaps we were sick and needed a doctor and could not find
one. Didn’t He care that people needed the guidance of His word and the healing
of His touch? Obviously Jesus cared. His whole life says that He cares about
every little thing that happens to us. That was one reason why people were
attracted to Him and why His message was called Good News.
We can know that Jesus withdrew from the people
only because He knew He could ultimately accomplish more by praying than by
staying. If we are going to have effective lives, if was are going to aim our
lives according to God’s will and accomplish everything in life that God wants
us to do, we too, will have to withdraw from the crowds and our crowded
schedules to pray. Jesus’ power came from God because of who He was, the Son of
God. His power came also because of what He did. He prayed daily, regularly. He
checked in with His Father to hear what God was saying and to receive power.
Jesus knows that you and I have many demands and
responsibilities pressing on our lives. He is sympathetic with these pressures
and the difficulties that often go with them. And He reminds us that the way
out, the way to lessen these pressures is to do one thing – listen to what He
has to say about our life.
Yet despite this example of Jesus’ life and the obvious
benefits of prayer, there seems to be in most people an almost built in
resistance to setting aside time for prayer. I have felt this resistance within
myself. Why this resistance? Why this resistance to doing something that has
proven for centuries to be of such tremendous benefit and value to our
life?
The flow of life drives us away from discovering
God’s daily plan and purpose for our life, leaving us with only sporadic,
superficial time of listening to God. But, we do not find time to spend
listening to God. We take the time, and that means leaving undone some things
that we feel like we need to do. Jesus withdrew to pray. Will you do it?
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope October
27, 1974
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)
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