My Time with God

Title: My Time with God

Date: 17.04.2023

By: Njuacha Hubert

Reading through Mather 14 you see that Jesus preached to more than 5000 people, fed them, and took personal charge to dismiss the crowd. So Jesus must have been exhausted at this point. Despite this, Jesus still went up to a mountainside to pray by Himself. What can we learn from this?

Jesus valued prayer. Prayer was a must-do for Him. It was something He did regularly. We see this in many other instances where He went by himself to pray( Mark 1:35, Luke 6:12, Luke 5:16, ). How many times we have been exhausted and just fallen asleep without praying? It is a classic excuse. But the truth is, we always make time for what is important to us. Usually, when we don’t know the importance of something, we don’t value it. When we see our prayer time as only a platform to beg God or ask for our needs, then it is easy to slack with prayer when things are going well for you. Prayer is like calling a friend or visiting a loved one. Imagine if you had a friend that whenever he or she calls you, you know there is a problem because he or she never calls you without needing something from you. If this behavior is consistent you probably no longer consider that person a friend. What a normal or genuine friend or loved one does is that they value you as a person before what you can offer. They value your presence. This is also likened to prayer. We ought to be glad to be in our Father’s presence. We ought to be excited to worship Him on a one-on-one basis. You can say funly “You want to check up on Jesus”. 

Notice also that Jesus prayed in secluded places, away from people. Your private prayer time is secret. It is between you and God. Jesus rejected prayers that are done to be seen or to impress. (Mathew 6:5-6). Even when you are praying loudly in your room to a level that disturbs your neighbor and also may be coupled with the time you are praying, I wonder if that is private or secret. I also wonder if that is love since you are disturbing others.

Prayer is more than our begging session with God. More than this, it is a visit to heaven. It’s a phone call with your father. Let’s build our understanding of prayer so that we can value it more.

Let’s thank God for the wonderful gift of prayer. Let’s pray for grace and mercy to grow our understanding and dedication to private prayer.