THE LORD IN THE EVERYDAY

The Lord, as we have seen, prayed at the critical points of His earthly life; but equally, He prayed in the ordinariness of life. So, we find the Lord praying here.

Communion and fellowship, between the Father and the Son was continuous, but at times the Lord was drawn to prayer by various factors. Was the chief factor here weariness in service? For the Lord had been giving and serving; we read that ‘great multitudes came together to hear [Him], and to be healed by him of their infirmities’, v. 15. Perhaps it was because the Lord had been cheered and encouraged by a simple believer, a leper, who had exhibited faith, and He wanted to share this with the Father? So out of positive and negative factors we may be drawn to the Father in prayer - He is the One who ever listens.

There is potential temptation in many situations, such as we find in the scriptures when the Lord prayed. How easy for us to become boastful, and puffed-up, feeling we are someone special if multitudes should follow us, if a fame went abroad about us, as happened here in verse 15. The remedy for this is also here to draw aside, and to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. In His presence there can be neither boasting nor self-exaltation. The more we find ourselves in public prominence the more we need to put ourselves in the secret, private place before God, that we might be ‘poor and of a contrite spirit’, Isa. 66. 1, 2. When Solomon had just been appointed king, in praying to the Lord, he refers to himself as a ‘little child’, who knew not ‘how to go out or come in’, and as God’s ‘servant’, 1 Kgs. 3. 7, 8. Happy would he have been, and his people, had he continued in that attitude.

The Lord withdraws into the wilderness, as no doubt was His practice, shutting the ‘door’, Matt. 6. 6. The busy hum of the world is not conducive to spiritual meditation. Sometimes He went to a solitary place, Mark 1. 35; sometimes to the hills and the mountains, Mark 6. 46; Luke 9. 28; and to a garden, Luke 22. 39.

The example is clear; in any ordinary day we need a secret place - an inner chamber, to be alone with the Father - shut away from men, shut up to God.