Luke 5:16 (NIV) But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Do you pray every day and if you do, how many times a day do you pray? Unfortunately, a poll showed that only two percent of Christians are satisfied with their prayer life. That means that many are not praying regularly. When you don't pray regularly, the quality of your Christian life suffers. Because of our sinful nature, we are in desperate need of more of God in our lives. Without His daily help and intervention, we stumble and struggle to live upright lives. Staying in communion with God is absolutely essential if we are going to live strong, victorious lives as believers.

In the verse of scripture above, we learn that Jesus prayed often. The verse says that Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray. It doesn't mention all the other times when He was not totally alone that He prayed. Jesus prayed all the time. He had a running conversation with the Father. Keep in mind that He is God incarnate, the one who created the heavens and the earth and who is responsible for the fact that everyone of us is breathing at the moment. But because He willingly took on flesh, He needed to commune often with the Father. When Jesus was in His rightful place in heaven, He enjoyed perfect unity with the Father and the Spirit. Now that He was born into the world as a human being although still being God, He had to maintain that unity through prayer. It is sobering to think that the Son of God needed to pray. It's how He got through His life here on earth. When it was time to choose His disciples, He spent all night praying. When He would speak, He would only speak the words that the Father gave Him through prayer (John 8:28). When He would do anything, it was something that the Father had shown Him to do because He communed with Him in prayer (John 5:19). When He was facing the greatest trial of His life (death on the Cross), He travailed in prayer.

Jesus was walking in lock-step with the Father because He prayed all the time. If that's what Jesus needed to do to live according to the will of the Father, what do you think that says about our need to pray? I stated that most Christians are not satisfied with their prayer life. But that should be an easy fix. All we have to do to be satisfied with our prayer life is to pray often, just as Jesus did. We have a sure-fire way that Jesus made available to us to walk powerfully and victoriously through this life. It's called going through the veil into the very presence of God through prayer. We couldn't just do that before Jesus took care of our sin problem. Now the way has been opened to God's throne of grace. Let's take advantage of the greatest advantage that we have as believers, which is to have open access to meet and talk with our God. Don't sell yourself short and don't be dissatisfied with your prayer life. Do what Jesus did. Pray often!

Pastor Joey Vazquez