Make
Decisions In Prayer
“It
was at this time He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole
night in prayer to God.” Luke 6:12
“But
if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and
without reproach, and it will be given to him.” James 1:5
In
life we have many forks in the road and big choices that we will have to
make. Sometimes those choices can be
hard and have far reaching consequences.
Many a time, though we have all probably made these decisions without
prayer or only a short prayer, to seek guidance of the Lord. Yet, Jesus set an example for us in how he
made decisions. We should seek to follow that in our lives. Even though Jesus was fully God, He was also
fully man and being in that form spent many a time in prayer before making any
big decisions. Let’s examine one case of
this from Luke chapter 6.
Jesus
has come to the point in His ministry that He needs to appoint apostles to train,
to later build His Church. At this point
opposition has been growing to His ministry that will climax with Jesus being
crucified and so this was not a decision to be taken lightly. He felt it was time to get the guidance of
the Father in the selection of the 12 Apostles and the future of the church. Are you coming up on some big decisions in
your life? Do you plan to seek wisdom
from God?
Prayer,
as it has been pointed out, was a big part in the decisions of Jesus. It was not just here, but has been seen
elsewhere in the life of Jesus. (Lk. 3;21; 5:16; 9:18, 28, 29; 11:1; 22:32,
40-46). In Jesus’ example here, we can
see some important things to add to our prayer time. Jesus withdrew to a desolate, lonely place to
pray. This was a place that He could
have uninterrupted communication with God.
In Matthew 6:6, Jesus teaches us to pray in secret and here we see that
is what Jesus did. We need a place of
prayer where we can go, that it is just us and the Father, where we are free
from distraction and we can just focus on the Lord. We all need to find that place we can pray.
Prayer
time is as long as it needs to be. For
Jesus this decision was not something to be made by a short prayer. Here he prayed all night long. As a young Christian I was amazed at people
who could pray that long. I was puzzled
about the scriptures that said to pray without ceasing (1Thes. 5:17). When you grow in Christ you will see, as I
have, more what this passage means. In relation to Christ’s example here, we
need to pray about our decisions as long as it takes to get the peace and
wisdom about the choices we need to make.
Wisdom
in making hard decisions will come when we ask for it. James the brother of Jesus taught, through
the Holy Spirit, that when we lack wisdom we need to ask God for it. God will give wisdom generously without holding
it back when we ask it in faith. Jesus
told us that with faith the size of a mustard seed we can move mountains (Lk
17:6). Why then don’t we seek that
wisdom when we make difficult decisions?
Even more important what about all decisions? We know that God’s wisdom is greater than
ours and yet often we don’t seek that great wisdom. Jesus was fully God and He still went to the
Father for wisdom.
It
is okay to admit to God if we don’t know how to pray. When we do ask Him to teach us how to pray
and look to scripture for the answers on how to pray. It is so important to pray. God wants us to talk to Him! He is our Father and He loves to hear from
His Children. Just like if we have good
earthly parents we seek advice from them, we need to seek it from our Heavenly
father. Don’t forget just how much He
loves you and will answer your prayers and sometimes we need to seek out that
wisdom and not do just do it in passing.
Like with any person we might need to go through the whole decision
process with Him. That does take time,
but doing so will strengthen your walk with God and your wisdom from the Father
will grow. Jesus Loves to hear from His
people!
All Scriptures are from The New American Standard Bible, copyright 1996 by the Lockman Foundation; La Habra, CA
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