Hero WorshipSample

Jesus Prayed

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing - Martin Luther

For Jesus, prayer was just as natural and necessary as any other life-giving exercise. At every turn, we encounter Him lifting up His heart to His Father in prayer. This practice was the foundation of His ministry on earth and permeated everything He did. So as we follow in our hero’s footsteps, it only makes sense that prayer will be the first practice we put into place on our journey toward a Jesus-like life.

Prayer in its simplest form is connection with God. It is the intentional cultivation of the relationship with your Creator. It is “a spiritual transaction with the Creator of Heaven and Earth,” as Charles Spurgeon put it. Prayer encapsulates a hundred different facets of life, and our prayer relationship with God can be complex like any relationship between humans. Throughout the Bible, we see the heroes of Scripture engaging in prayer by crying, laughing, complaining, shouting, whispering, asking, singing, dancing, and at times just listening. Such a wide variety exists because the practice of prayer can run the gambit of human emotion and experience. It happens any time we find God present in our lives and engage Him there.

While prayer was practiced by all biblical heroes, it is especially true of our greatest hero, Jesus. He prayed alone and with others. He prayed over major events and the mundane. He prayed at daybreak, at meals, and at times, all night long. He prayed in celebration, in temptation, in need, and in gratitude. Prayer was consistently present in every corner of His earthly ministry.

So if we are to start anywhere in following our hero, we must start with prayer. Just as Jesus found it essential to seek out His heavenly Father in prayer through every circumstance, so must we. It is this transcendent connection with God that will constantly guide and shape us.

One aspect of prayer is unbroken, daily awareness of our relationship with God, what Brother Lawrence, the famous seventeenth-century monk known for his intimacy with God, called “practicing the presence of God.” Jesus certainly had this kind of constant conscious connection with the Father. But it is important to note that Jesus set aside time to stop every other activity and focus solely on prayer.

Even the disciples needed His example and instruction: “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Luke 11:1 NIV

Prayer has always been a regular part of Jewish faith and culture. It is modeled throughout the Old Testament, whether in the beauty of Psalms or the pain of Lamentations. But for some reason, when the disciples watched Jesus pray, they knew something was different and it was time to relearn how to pray from Jesus Himself.

He answered their request with the words of Matthew 6:9-13:

“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”

And later, the early church added, “For your is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

What a great ending! Even though it isn’t precisely what Jesus said, it still honors the heart of Scripture in proclaiming the sovereignty of God. And while we must keep in mind that Jesus didn’t intend for it to be said verbatim, it is intended to be a model for us as our prayer lives grow in regular intimacy with Him. As such, we will examine it in its respective parts to shape our budding prayer lives.