“Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.” 
Luke 5:16

An old gospel song says, “If you’re too busy to pray, brother, you’re too busy.” Most Christians would say amen to that, I think, because we know how important prayer is. But unfortunately, a lot of our prayers never get spoken at all, or we pray in such a way as to try and manipulate God rather than seek and obey His will and His kingdom agenda for us and the world. Therefore, we don’t see prayer’s power or results in our lives. 

“If you’re too busy to pray, brother, you’re too busy.”

But if our understanding of Scripture is correct, prayer is foundational both to the individual Christian life and to the life and ministry of the church. You know what a foundation does. It solidifies the whole building and gives it something sturdy to sit on. All else builds on the foundation. It’s no wonder, then, that Satan works overtime to keep us off our knees, keeping us busy and distracted so we lose our regular in-depth communication with the Father. 

But there was one Person whom Satan could not get anywhere with when it came to trying to disrupt His prayer life. You’ll find in the Additional Scripture that this Person was Jesus Christ. The Savior is our perfect model for a life of prayer. He began and ended His public ministry in prayer. We see Him on one of the busiest days of His life in Mark 1, getting up way before daylight to pray. Luke said He did this often. It was Jesus’ habit to pray. In the Garden of Gethsemane, of course, He prayed with an agony of prayer we will never know. 

No wonder the disciples looked at Jesus’ prayer life and asked Him to teach them to pray. Ask Peter what he thought of Jesus’ prayer life, and he will tell you it kept him from wiping out completely (see Luke 22:31-32). 

If Jesus needed to pray, what does that say about you and me?

And lest you say, “Well, that’s Peter for you,” let me remind you that the only reason we don’t crash and burn is because Jesus is interceding for us today (John 17:20; Hebrews 7:25). The application is pretty obvious. If Jesus needed to pray, what does that say about you and me? We all need to improve our prayer lives. It serves as the foundation for all we are and become in Christ.

Check out more from Dr. Tony Evans @tonyevans.org