Jesus Retreats to a Solitary Place to Pray

Take Every Passage to Prayer - Volume 2, The Gospels
^{Wednesday June 19, 2024}

Mark 1:35-38, Luke 4:42-43

Father, how many of us take the time to be alone with You? I mean really alone. The kind of alone where we go away to a cabin for a weekend to be alone with You. The kind of alone where we walk alone with You along a trail in a forest. The kind of alone that is not distracted by conversation, music, the Internet, television, or the telephone. Father, there is much room for improvement in my life in this area. Please teach me and guide me to spend quality time exclusively with You. I want to long to be alone with You, away from the noise of modern life. Please mold this into my character. Amen.

Father, after ministering to all of these people in Capernaum, Jesus wanted time alone with You. He went up on a nearby mountain. As much as He loved His disciples and the people in need around Him, He loved You so much more. He longed to be with You. He longed for fellowship and communion with You. His humanity longed to be refreshed and replenished by Your wisdom and Your strength. He wanted time alone with You.
Jesus was also a man in ministry. He wanted to pray for the effectiveness of His ministry. He wanted to pray for the lives He had just touched. He wanted to pray for His disciples. The text tells us that Jesus got up “very early” in the morning and left the house to find a place of solitude to pray.

What did He pray? The passages don’t tell us. However, we get a hint from John 17. It is likely that Jesus prayed something similar to the following:

1. Glorify Me so that I can glorify You. May people see that I am one with You and that I am from You. May people see You in who I am.
2. Protect me from temptation from the evil one that wars against My humanity. I want to remain faithful to the mission You have given Me.
3. Help me to glorify You everywhere I go and in everything I do.
4. Give Me the ability to touch lives for the gospel. Help me to heal their souls and their bodies.
5. Help Me to lead each person, whom I have freed from demon-possession or whom I have healed from disease to faith in You, the only true God.
6. Help Me to finish the work You have given Me to do. This includes the cross that I must carry and be crucified upon. Keep Me focused on My mission and help Me to never abandon it.
7. Help Me to teach these disciples Your truth, the truth that You have given Me.
8. Help Me to protect My disciples and to keep them safe, especially from persecution.
9. Help My disciples to be united and to not bicker and segment into factions. Please help them to be one just like You and I are one.
10. Keep each one of these disciples with Me. Help them to not turn away from the gospel.
11. Help Me to protect the disciples from the evil one.
12. Help Me to transform their souls, so that they become like Me.
13. Help Me to give the disciples a heart for the mission You have given Me, to bring salvation to people all over this region and throughout the world.
14. Help the people You bring into My path to believe in Me and to become one with Us. Help Me to show them Your love for them.
15. Bless My mother Mary, My father Joseph, and My four brothers and two sisters. I want them to have joy in their salvation that they have through their faith in Me.
16. Lead the guests at the Cana wedding to place their faith in Me.
17. Protect the temple in Jerusalem from those who I drove out of it.
18. Strengthen the faith of Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, and all who came to faith in Me in Sychar.
19. Strengthen the faith of the royal official in Capernaum and may His son, whom You helped Me to heal, come to faith in Me.
20. May the words that I taught at the synagogue in Nazareth resonate with the hearers this very hour, as they are awakened for their need for Me.
21. May that man at the synagogue in Nazareth whom I freed from demon possession walk in Your ways, rejoicing in fellowship with Us.
22. Help Peter’s dear mother-in-law to walk with Us.
23. May each person who I ministered to yesterday in Capernaum place their faith in Me as their Savior and may they be filled with the Holy Spirit.
24. Father, there are other lives in other places I want to touch. While I’m thankful for the work You had Me do in Capernaum, I’d like to go to other places. Please lead me.”

“Where’s Jesus?”

“I don’t know. He’s gone.”

“Why doesn’t he tell us what He is doing? Ugh. Let’s go look for Him. Where do You think He might go?”

Peter and the other disciples found Jesus up on a mountain and scolded Him:

“Did You know everyone is looking for you? Why would You disappear like this?” Jesus ignored their impertinent question.

Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” (NIV)

Amen.