Luke 5:12-26

 Luke 5:12-26 

If the opportunity to eavesdrop on Jesus presented itself, nothing would be more interesting than to listen in on His prayer time. Frequently, we see Jesus going off alone to pray. What did He say? How much time was spent in silence? What role did Scripture play in these prayers? What posture was He in when He prayed? The fact that we are not told the particulars means that we do not need to know the particulars. Beyond that, prayer is such an intimate and personal thing that it would be an indecency to listen in.

For us, the practice of our Lord to get away is lesson enough to start with. To pray, really pray, is the hardest thing to do. It is easier to read the Bible or to study, to listen to a sermon, to sing or talk, but go to pray that is very hard. If we list all the things that describe our lives, prayer is nearly the perfect opposite. We want action now. Prayers are about waiting on God. We want to be the center.  Prayer is about focusing on others. We like noise and distraction.  Prayer demands we silence ourselves and calm our spirits. In almost every way, our fallen human nature desires the opposite of what prayer desires or requires.

Our best efforts at prayer are woefully inadequate. But it is also a grace, a means of grace and a medium of grace. The Lord will take our feeble but sincere efforts at prayer and treat them better than they deserve. Those beginnings are as simple as a child's recitation of the model prayer, into them the Lord breaths His Spirit and power. In this He meets us. The power of prayer is disproportionate to our holiness or our goodness or our ability. When we come with a true and sincere heart with the motives of dying to self and longing to be with our Lord, we have the beginning of prayer and it will have great effect. This beginning makes us a novice at prayer.  As a novice we desire to move into deeper intimacy with God and to seek Him is the beginning and the end of all prayer. Begin.  That is enough to start with.  After all, we are all novices at intimacy with God.

“Lord, You never reject those who honestly seek You.  Help my weak prayers to draw me into You.  AMEN”