Devotions

Our text highlights three things about the Saviour’s prayer life. We would do well to consider these carefully and to seek by God’s grace to pray as our Saviour prayed.

The Saviour spent time in prayer. He prayed “in the days of His flesh.” The Gospels record at least twenty-three occasions of prayer in our Lord’s life. “Prayers and supplications” were the practice of His life.

The Saviour shed tears in prayer. He prayed “with strong crying and tears.” Three times in the Gospels we read of the tears of the Saviour as the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus; He wept in the Garden of Gethsemane; He wept over the city of Jerusalem. There are times in the Christian life when we have to weep with those who weep and shed tears of sympathy and love. And there are times when, like Christ in Gethsemane, we must pray with a passion that can find relief only in strong cries and tears.

The Saviour secured triumph in prayer. Christ prayed to the Father “and was heard in that He feared.” The Father of Christ is our Father also. He promises to help us as He helped His Son (Hebrews 4:16).

When we take time to pray the way the Saviour prayed, God will answer our prayers. Satan will be defeated and our strength will be renewed, and above all our Saviour will be exalted. The Saviour made prayer a priority during His life here on earth and so must we, for as Hudson Taylor said, “God does nothing except in answer to prayer.”