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The Prayer Life of Jesus – Abba, Father

The Prayer Life of Jesus – Abba, Father

The Prayer Life of Jesus – Abba, Father.

“Tremendous power is released through the passionate, heartfelt prayer of a righteous man!” (James 5:16).

The Lord Jesus always was and still continues to be the ultimate prayer warrior. He prayed to the Father even before He was born (Hebrews 10:5-7), and He kept praying until the moment of His ascension (Luke 24:50-53). But He didn’t stop praying when His work on earth was done, for He continues to intercede for us at the right hand of the Father as we read this! (Hebrews 7:25). His ministry was largely a prayer ministry in the sense of prayer being the foundation for everything He did. He prayed for saints and sinners, privately and publicly, with His face to the ground and His head up facing the heavens. He prayed in grief and He prayed in gratitude, while exhausted and while full of energy. Jesus prayed with His dying breath and He prayed after He rose from the dead. He prayed before major decisions and during dramatic miracles. He prayed spontaneously and He prayed in words prepared thousands of years before Him. He prayed short, one-sentence prayers (John 12:28), and He prayed in at least one long prayer that seemed to encompass just about everything (John 17). Jesus developed a lifestyle of prayer that was common to observant Jews, but nonetheless uncommon in its intimacy with the Father.

Jewish Lifestyle. Being born and raised in an observant and orthodox Jewish household, Jesus was immersed from Day One on earth in prayer, in the centrality of prayer to one’s life and faith. Observant Jews practiced formal prayers frequently during the day, and spontaneous prayers throughout each day. They would pray the Sh’ma twice a day, the primary statement of faith for all biblical Jews, starting with its first line, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might…” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Then there’s the Amidah, a series of 18 sacred benedictions that each Jewish father would recite at home twice a day, or perhaps each rabbi in the local synagogue. The Psalms were memorized and on the lips of all believing Jews, as were other classic prayers from the Hebrew Bible, most notably Aaron’s Priestly Blessing in Numbers 6:24-26, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.”  But by no means were the Jews content with all those formal prayers each day. The rabbis taught each Jew to offer up sincere blessings for just about everything in the course of each day, as many as a hundred blessings, giving God praise and thanks for every common blessing enjoyed. There were blessings for practically every conceivable grace and event, from successfully going to the bathroom, to waking up each morning, to the blessing of being able to retire at the end of the day. These formal prayers and the more informal blessings developed a habit of prayer in each earnest Jewish believer, and made sure that God was seen as the main reference point all day for everyone in the faith. The Jewish prayers were constant reminders of God’s grace and goodness, and made sure that each Jewish home and synagogue were cultures of prayer. Jesus was shaped and directed and nurtured in this Jewish prayer life, and since He was a faithful Jew, prayer was certainly second nature to Him throughout His time on earth.

Inner Dialogue. Few mysteries in the faith are less likely to be understood than the union between the Father and the Son. Their level of intimate, eternal communion is well beyond our grasp. “The Father is in me, and I am in the Father.” (John 17:21). The prayer life of Jesus has everything to do with their intimacy. Somehow, the Father and the Son were inside each other in Spirit. So when Jesus prayed to the Father, He was spiritually looking inward to the Father’s presence. Jesus was speaking to the Father in a secret place within Himself where the Father dwelled. The prayer life of Christ was an inner dialogue between Father and Son, a private conversation of two divine Beings who love each other. Jesus said that He would not even take a step without the direction from the Father, He wouldn’t say a word without the Father’s approval. Jesus placed Himself completely at His Father’s disposal, such was the level of trust between the Father and the Son. Certainly, Jesus was the perfect example of one who “prayed without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:16-17). Jesus’ prayer was conscious and deliberate, and it was also subconscious and intuitive. Jesus walked prayerfully every second of every day, out of devotion to the Father. There is nothing in the universe that is as tightly knit together as the Father and Son, so it makes sense that their love for each other is the energy source for all the love in the world. Without their trinitarian love for each other, there would be no love. Human love would not exist were it not for their divine love for each other. If we were to explore the biblical relationship between God the Father and God the Son, we would have to include:

Major Events

  1. Jesus calls the Father “Abba,” an affectionate term of respect, honor and intimate familiarity (Mark 14:36);
  2. The Son would rather do the Father’s will than His own (Mark 14:36);
  3. The Father gave His blessing over the Son at His baptism, saying “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy.” (Luke 3:22);
  4. The Father basically repeated His blessing over Jesus at His Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5);
  5. In speaking of His death, the Son asked the Father. “Put your glory on display and bring glory to Your name.” The Father responded by speaking audibly out of heaven and saying that He has and He will. (John 12:28).
  6. After praying to the Father, Jesus shares these truths about the Father and Himself. “My Father has entrusted everything to me. No one truly knows the Son except the Father, and no one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” (Matthew 11:27).

John 5

  1. The Son is limited to doing whatever He sees the Father doing, and whatever the Father does, the Son does. (5:19);
  2. The Father dearly loves the Son and shows Him everything He is doing. The Father is totally transparent to the Son. (5:20);
  3. Just as the Father gives life to those He raises from the dead, so the Son gives life to anyone He wants. (5:21);
  4. The Father is not the judge. He has given full authority to the Son to judge (5:22);
  5. Anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent Him (5:23);
  6. The Father has life in Himself, and He has granted that same life-giving power to His Son (5:26);
  7. The Son can do nothing on His own as judge. He judges as the Father tells Him (5:30);
  8. The Son has come in the Father’s Name (5:43).

John 14

  1. The Father will love those who love the Son, and they both will make a home within them all (14:23);
  2. The words of the Son are not His own. His words are the Father’s words (14:24);
  3. The Son humbly nods to the Father as the greater of the two (14:28);
  4. The Son will do whatever the Father requires of Him, so that the world will know that the Son loves the Father. (14:31);
  5. The Son is the only way to the Father (14:6);
  6. When you know the Son, you know the Father. When you see the Son, you have seen the Father (14:7);

John 15

  1. The Son is the True Vine, and the Father is the Gardener who prunes the branches. (15:1);
  2. The Father is glorified when the disciples bear much fruit. (15:8);
  3. The Son has loved the disciples the way that the Father has loved the Son. (15:9);
  4. The Son has obeyed the Father’s commands and remains in His love. (15:10);
  5. Everything the Son has heard from the Father has been told to the disciples by the Son. (15:15);
  6. Whoever hates the Son hates the Father (15:23);
  7. The Son sends the Spirit from the Father (15:26).

John 17

  1. When the Son gets glorified, He gives the glory back to the Father (17:1);
  2. The Father is the only true God, and the Son is the One whom He sent to the earth (17:3);
  3. The Son brought glory to the Father on earth by completing the work He was sent to do (17:4);
  4. The Father and the Son shared glory before the world began (17:4);
  5. All who belong to the Son also belong to the Father (17:10);
  6. The Son protected the disciples by the power the Father gave Him (17:10);
  7. Just as the Father sent the Son into the world, the Son is sending the disciples into the  world (17:18);
  8. The Father and the Son are essentially One… The Father in the Son, the Son in the Father (17:21);
  9. The Father loves the disciples as much as He loves the Son (17:23);
  10. The Father loved the Son before the foundation of the world, before the beginning of time (17:24);
  11. Only the Son truly knows the Father (17:25);
  12. The Father’s love for the Son will be in the disciples (17:26).

Epistles

  1. The Son is the visible image of the invisible Father (Colossians 1:15);
  2. The Father is satisfied to have all His fullness dwelling in the Son (Colossians 1:19);
  3. The Son radiates the Father’s glory and expresses the Father’s essential character (Hebrews 1:3).
  4. Our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3);
  5. The Son is Lord to the glory of the Father (Philippians 2:11).

God the Father and God the Son, eternally united in their Spirit of communion, all three partners in the divine dance of love. Their relationship was the heartbeat of the prayer life of Jesus.