Pray to Receive Your Reward Five Lessons from Jesus’s Prayer Life

Prayer can be difficult. As one theologian of the past said,
“There are times in my life I’d rather die than pray.” When it
comes to communion with God through prayer, we often need all the
help we can get

One way for us to find some success in our prayer life is to
consider the prayers of Jesus. Instead of being made to feel guilty
that we do not pray enough — which may be true — we should fix our
eyes on Jesus and see if his example can help us in our
understanding and enjoyment of prayer.

The prayers of Jesus offer us a window into the most precious
relationship between a man on earth and God in heaven. There are
many salient and important features of Christ’s prayers that are
worth discussing, but I want to offer five that might help us to
think a little differently about the prayers offered by the Lord of
glory.

1. Praying “My Father” Was Revolutionary

In Jesus’s day, and indeed before that, Jews typically referred
to God in prayer as “Yahweh,” “my Lord,” “my God,” or “God of my
father.” When Jesus speaks to God in prayer as his Father
(Matthew
11:25^[1]) we are seeing an
address that was virtually unheard of in prayer. Whether fixed
liturgical prayer or free prayer, there is no precedent for someone
calling upon YHWH as his Father.

In the case of our Lord, we must note that he really had no
other choice but to call God his Father because of who he is in
relation to the Father, namely, the eternal Son who became flesh.
That we should also be given the opportunity to call upon God as
“Father” is principally due to the fact that, in union with Christ,
we share in his identity and so have every right to call God our
Father in heaven because we are his children on earth.

2. Jesus Frequently Prayed Alone

Mark tells us that Jesus rose “very early in the morning, while
it was still dark,” and went to pray in a “desolate place”
(Mark
1:35^[2]). He left Capernaum to
pray alone. Here, Mark possibly likens this act to Israel’s sojourn
in the wilderness, where they should have fellowshipped with God.
Interestingly, Jesus’s prayers in Mark’s Gospel are always solitary
(Mark
1:35^[3]; 6:46^[4]; 14:32–39^[5]) and in connection to
either explicit or implicit opposition to his ministry.

Luke also records several instances of Christ praying, often
alone:

• Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had
  been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened (Luke 3:21^[6]).
• And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place
  (Luke
  4:42^[7]).
• But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray (Luke 5:16^[8]).
• In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all
  night he continued in prayer to God (Luke
  6:12^[9]).
• Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples
  were with him. And he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I
  am?” (Luke
  9:18^[10]).

It may be the case that Jesus had to pray alone often because he
alone understood the unique nature of his ministry and his
disciples simply were not able to bear the type of communion that
would take place between God (the Son) and God (the Father) in the
power of God (the Spirit). In addition, there is nonetheless an
important lesson as well for us: we should aim to pray where we
will not be easily interrupted.

3. Jesus Knew He Would Be Rewarded

In Matthew
6:6^[11] Jesus promises his
disciples that their Father will reward them when they pray in
secret. In that one chapter, the word “reward” occurs seven times,
which points us to the blessings our Father gives in response to
private prayer. We do not have, because we do not ask (James 4:2^[12]), and that exposes our
lack of faith (Matthew
21:22^[13]). Christ asked, because
he had such strong faith.

Note his requests in John 17, for example. In turn, he wants to
draw us near to God in faith, believing that he exists and that he
will reward those who seek him (Hebrews
11:6^[14]). As we see in John’s
Gospel, Jesus believed God existed, drew near to him, and also
prayed for his reward: “And now, Father, glorify me in your own
presence with the glory that I had with you before the world
existed” (John
17:5^[15]). We must do likewise,
as long as we do so biblically.

4. Jesus Found Joy in Prayer

We typically think of Jesus as a man of sorrows (Isaiah 53:3^[16]). This is true, but
Jesus was also a man of joy. Christians must be joyful always
(Philippians
4:4^[17]) and for good reasons.
We should be joyful because of God’s work in the salvation of
sinners. And this work also includes the role of the Spirit in the
life of God’s people. Those in the Spirit necessarily respond to
God’s mighty acts of redemption, and never without joy.

The joy of Jesus exists as the foundation for our own.
Throughout his Gospel, Luke clearly manifests the relationship
between the Father and the Son, with the Holy Spirit acting as the
bond of love and joy between them. What are the specific reasons
for Christ’s joy?

First, we must establish an important truth about the life of
Christ on earth during his time of ministry when he faced many
difficult challenges, culminating at the garden of Gethsemane and
Golgotha. The Lord Jesus, while “a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief” (Isaiah
53:3^[18]), always experienced
joy. We might find this surprising until we realize a few important
facts about Christian joy.

Christian joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians
5:22^[19]; see
also Acts
13:52^[20]). The possession of the
Spirit implies the presence of his fruit in its entirety. A child
of God may claim, “Well, I possess love, but I do not have joy or
self-control or patience.” But our love is joyful love. Our
patience is joyful patience. The fruit (singular in Galatians 5:22^[21]) of the Spirit means we
must and will be truly (though imperfectly) loving, joyful,
faithful, patient, and so on.

In the case of our Lord, the man of the Spirit, he was filled
with the Spirit beyond measure (John
3:34^[22]). In this manner,
Christ possessed the fruit of the Spirit, including joy, fully and
perfectly. Anointed with the Spirit to accomplish his mission
(Luke 3:21–22^[23]; 4:1^[24], 14, 18), Jesus was
necessarily filled with the Spirit of joy. In other words, if Jesus
lacked joy, he would be devoid of love, and vice versa. This
explains why he could have joy even in the time of supreme
suffering (Hebrews
12:2^[25]). No matter how intense
his suffering was, Jesus knew there was a purpose in that suffering
that would lead to his glory and ours.

Jesus “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” (Luke
10:21^[26]). Indeed, “rejoiced” is
not quite strong enough; rather, the idea behind the Greek word is
something akin to “exulted” or “jumped for joy.” Prayer for him was
joyful. This causes me a great deal of (I trust) holy envy of our
Lord.

5. Jesus Prayed Because of Distress

Trials and tribulations spur us to pray. This was the case for
our Lord. In the context of prayer, Jesus was “distressed and
troubled.” These words are uncommon in the New Testament. Word
studies fail to give us a complete understanding about what occurs
here. Yet we get a glimpse into the intensity of his experience
when Jesus testified, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death”
(Mark
14:34^[27]).

Remarkably, Jesus freely confessed his own struggles before men
who had seen him “in power” (for example, raising the dead, casting
out demons). The sufferings of Job, the agony of Abraham leading
his son Isaac to the altar, the grief of Joseph, David’s sorrow
over Absalom’s death, and the many laments of the Psalms are
pointers to the ultimate agony of Jesus, the only one undeserving
of any despair in his life.

Only Jesus could understand what was awaiting him, because only
he perfectly knew God. In turn, Christ’s knowledge of God gave him
confidence, joy, and a resolute spirit to do the Father’s will.
This knowledge triggered in him the affirmation of his soul’s
sorrow to the point of death. How could our Lord not have the
piercing realities of Isaiah 53 racing through his mind at
this point?

Christ’s life was a sort of perpetual Gethsemane,
as Luke
12:50^[28] seems to suggest:
“I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress
until it is accomplished!” The flood of God’s wrath would engulf
the Savior. As such, Jesus was a man of perpetual prayer because he
was a man who lived with the perpetual reality of all that he would
suffer for us and our salvation.