When was the last time you prayed? What compelled you to pray? Was it because you found the act of praying to be important?
There are many different motives by which we make our decisions to do or to not do something. One of those motives is necessity. We need to eat food, drink water, and sleep in order to survive. The necessity of each of those actions makes seeing the importance of doing each of them very simple.
Does prayer have the same level of importance as eating, hydrating, and resting though?
While there’s a highly likely chance we will all wake up to live another day physically if we didn’t make the decision to pray today, is it just as necessary to do?
While not everyone we know is going to answer this way, I’m going to bet that if we asked Jesus this question, his answer would be “yes,” and he lived his life on earth accordingly.
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. Mark 1:35-39
We see in this passage that Jesus made it a priority to get up and pray. When his disciples find him, a couple of different reactions take place. The first is the shock of the disciples that Jesus is up in solitude while there are so many people who are looking for him. The second is Jesus replying by saying they’re going to go somewhere else rather than back to the place where everyone is looking for him. Why did he do that? He didn’t say that out of spite for the people who were back at the other place looking for him, he said that wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
How did Jesus know where he was supposed to be? He knew because he made prayer a priority, and he did nothing outside of God’s guidance.
So Jesus answered them, “I am telling you the truth: the Son can do nothing on his own; he does only what he sees his Father doing. What the Father does, the Son also does.” John 5:19
Think about it for a minute—if Jesus can do nothing on his own and only does what he sees God doing, and prayer is the way in which we are able to communicate to God here on earth, how far would Jesus actually have gotten if he didn’t pray? Not very far.
The same can be said about our own journey here on earth. We do not serve a Father who holds back on us. When we see the necessity of prayer and make it a priority, God guides us on our path here on earth just as he did Jesus.
How can you make prayer more of a priority in your life? Where is it that God is wanting to take you?