“Jesus Was Too Busy to Pray Too”

A good New Year‘s Resolution is to spend more time praying and listening to God.  But we often say we have no time to do so!  Read Chris’s interesting thoughts on this.       

“Jesus Was Too Busy to Pray Too”

by Chris Vasecka

Read Luke 4:31-44

Are you busy? Don’t answer. I know the answer is yes. We are all busy. We have work, and kids, and baseball, and swimming, and church, and hobbies, and yard work, and, and, and… We certainly don’t have any space left for personal time with God. We couldn’t possibly start our morning in prayer and study. Oh, sure, out of guilt, we might throw a quick “just checking in” prayer. “Dear God, thanks for the day, watch over the kids, help me with this and that, love ya, gotta run.”

Look at these verses: Here was Jesus’ day: (This is just one example of the typical day for Jesus; the Bible is filled with other examples.)

· Luke 4:31, Jesus was traveling
· Luke 4:31, Jesus was preaching
· Luke 4:33, Jesus threw out a few evil spirits
· Luke 4:34, Jesus, for His reasons, tells the spirits to be quiet. (He is multitasking…)
· Luke 4:38, Jesus leaves to go heal Simon’s mother-in-law

· Luke 4:40, Don’t miss this one… The sun was setting, Jesus had just put in a full day. It was time to relax. But then it says that the people brought ALL who had various sicknesses, and He healed them all. He did not do a sweeping hand across the whole crowd, but took the time to lay hands on each one and heal them individually.

· Luke 4:41, More demons to deal with…
· Luke 4:42, Jesus tires to break away to a solitary place, but the people found him and tried to keep him from leaving.
· Luke 4:43, Jesus moves on to the next day to start all over.

Sounds like a busy day. Sounds like a demanding day. People needing him from all directions, pulling, asking, following. All the while he is trying to help, He has the evil spirits to deal with who are trying to sabotage his work. This was His life, day after day. But it was not the whole story. Look at these verses:

· Luke 4:42, Jesus went to a solitary place
· Luke 5:16, But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed
· Luke 6:12, …Jesus went to a mountain to pray, and spent the night praying to God.
· Luke 9:18, Jesus was praying in private.
· Luke 9:28, Jesus took Peter, James, and John to the mountain to pray.
· Luke 11:1, One day Jesus was praying in a certain place.

These are just a few examples from Luke; there are many, many more.  Believe me your life is not more demanding than Jesus’ was/is. Remember that also through this, there was the pending cross issue in the back of His mind. Jesus was too busy too, but He still took the time to have one on one time with God. I don’t know the author of this, and I am probably re-wording it, but listen to this:

…So busy, too much to do, better pray for three hours instead of the normal two…

Written by Chris Vasecka

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