JESUS PRAYED

by Executive Pastor Kaitlyn Forster

At Lord of Life’s Karing Kingdom Preschool, the students begin each prayer time with “My hands I fold, my head I bow, it’s time to talk to Jesus now…” As they speak, their little hands fold together, their heads bow down reverently, and they are ready for what comes next. While it only highlights one way to pray, these young humans are learning about being in relationship with God and feeling it in their bodies and through their movements.

One particularly astute four-year-old last year asked me, “Why do we pray?”

It’s a great question and two answers came to mind. The first is that we pray because it’s how we talk to God—as their poem suggests. It’s our way of being in relationship with God, the three-in-one. We also pray because Jesus did, too. Jesus, as fully God and fully human, prayed often and in every circumstance.

From the onset of his ministry, Jesus wove prayer into everything he did and who he was. The gospel of Luke shares that at his baptism as he was praying, the heavens opened up and God called him beloved. When he was sent out into the desert for 40 days and nights, he spent much of that time fasting and praying. It helped provide the sustenance he needed for those long days.

After that, Jesus often retreated to places of solitude and mountaintop vistas to be in conversation with God—sometimes praying alone and sometimes with others. In Matthew chapters 5-7, he retreated to the mountains and the people followed him, asking more from him. It was there that he delivered one of his most famous teachings, The Sermon on the

Mount. At the heart of that sermon was the Lord’s Prayer as a model of prayer to cling to when other words fall short.

Even in Jesus’ last moments on earth and knowing all that was to come, he wove prayer into every moment. Praying with the disciples at the last supper and in the garden of Gethsemane, shortly before the crucifixion, he asked for God’s will to be done even if it cost him everything. Jesus modeled a life of prayer that wasn’t about specific postures in specific spaces, it was about an abiding relationship with God. He knew that being fully human meant that he couldn’t do everything by himself. He needed God’s help, and he loved too deeply not to pray.

So, why do we pray? Theologian Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book, An Altar in the World, talks about prayer as a way to sharpen one’s intentions rather than winning God’s attention. It’s about waking up to the presence of God in our lives. Jesus modeled this posture of prayer, of inviting God into every moment rather than setting aside moments for God. We, too, can learn from him, and pray as he prayed. We can feel the all-encompassing love and remember that God is never far away.

I invite you to ponder:

What does your prayer life look like? Feel like?

How do you invite God into your day-to-day life?

What is something that you have learned from Jesus about prayer?