I’ve been reading a lot about prayer recently and feeling challenged by how much my prayer life is in lack when I look at the prayer life Jesus modelled to his disciples. One thing he did regularly was to leave the crowd to be with his father.

Many mornings he withdrew to a quite place and spent many nights without sleep talking to his father. I have been thinking a lot about what kind of conversations Jesus had with his father ? Wondering what he really encountered in those moments of his day, what he poured out and what his father poured back in?

There is something very special and significant about having that sacred place. That place where one can get away from the crowd that allows for a deeper level of intimacy with our heavenly father that’s hard to cultivate in any other place.

We all need that place to talk with Jesus and to listen and hear what he has to say. More and more I am realising just how important it is to have this in the everyday rhythm of life and to make it a priority.

It’s a big a challenge in our culture and society today with the busyness of life that seems to creep in and erode that space. The way our culture and society has developed seems to dictate the rhythm of life that we have been moulded into and everything else is shaped around it. Yet for Jesus this was his biggest priority and he didn’t compromise it. It was crucial for him to talk with his father and to hear from him for each and every day. Everything in his daily life was shaped out of that daily encounter with his father.

Tom Wright from his book “New Testament Prayer for everyone” quotes;

Prayer is one of life’s great mysteries. Most people pray at least sometimes; some people, in many very different religious traditions, pray a great deal. At its lowest prayer is shouting into a void on the off-chance there may be someone listening. At its highest, prayer merges into love, as the presence of God becomes so real that we pass beyond words and into a sense of reality, generosity, delight and grace. For most Christians, most of the time, it takes place somewhere in between those two extremes. For many people prayer is not a mystery but a puzzle. They know they ought to do it but they aren’t quite sure how.