How To Pray Like Jesus in the Self Denial

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

Jesus’ dearest friends asked Him when they were tucked away in a secluded place from the pressing crowds. Up to this moment, they had witnessed miracle after miracle as Jesus got down in the dirt with people healing their sicknesses, casting evil spirits out of the demonized, feeding five thousand hungry people until they were satisfied with only five loaves of bread and two fish, and even rebuking harsh weather with just the word of His mouth. The disciples stood in amazement, hearts pounding out of their chests, as they watched the wind and the waves actually obey Him.

These men studied His every move. Soaked in His every word. Felt the magnetic draw of His presence.

The disciples recognized that Jesus’ every decision and miracle working power poured forth from one source; His communion with His Father through the Spirit in prayer.

So they asked Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” (see Luke 11)

Friend, Jesus desires us to grasp this truth.

He desires us to pray like Him.

As the world continues to run full speed after darkness, there is a remnant, God’s elect, who cry out to Him day and night with fasting and intercession.

Jesus is calling forth those who are found stagnant in religion out of their lukewarmness and into a sacrificial life cloaked in prayer.

He is saying ,”Wake up! Come out of your lukewarmness. I counsel you to buy gold from Me that has been refined in the fire, white garments to clothe your nakedness, and eye salve that you may have single eyes only for Me. (see Revelation 3:14-21) I am calling you to a life of prayer. Come, take My hand, and I will teach you how to pray.”

What would it look like if every believer said yes to His call to learn from Him, and not only learn from Him, but to put it into action by walking the way that He walked? What would the world look like if we truly cloaked ourselves with the mantle a life centered in sacrificial prayer?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how to pray like Jesus in the delay. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, you can do so here.

In this post I want to highlight another aspect of the beautiful prayer life of Jesus.

JESUS SOUGHT SOLITUDE IN PRAYER

When He was on the earth, Jesus consistently drew away to a place of solitude so that He could spend uninterrupted time with His Father.

“Coming out, He went to the Mount of Olives, as He was accustomed, and His disciples followed Him. When He came to the place, He said to them, ‘Pray that you may not enter into temptation’.”

Luke 22:39-40

In this portion of scripture, Jesus knew the time for His death was at hand, so He drew away to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray as was His habit. He knew that He needed to be strengthened for what He was about to endure for us.

I find it interesting that Gethsemane means “Oil press”. Scholars believe that this garden that Jesus frequented was more than likely an enclosed olive orchard. Olive orchard’s usually had a press for crushing oil from the olives on the site. Jesus, in that moment, was being crushed.

His soul was in anguish.

Hebrews 5:7 describes how Jesus prayed that night.

“who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear,”

Hebrews 5:7

The greek translation of the word vehement used here is έντονος, meaning “showing strong feeling; forceful, passionate, or intense.”

I believe Jesus was known to pray with loud cries, with passion, and tears. He is our passionate High Priest who has and always will be interceding for us.

All He wanted to do as the night grew darker was to draw away with His Father in prayer, so He went to the Garden of Gethsemane, the garden of crushing, and cried out to His Abba with loud cries and tears. Oil is made from the crushing.

I wanted to highlight that Jesus was accustomed to drawing away in solitude to pray to pray all night.

We see this in Luke 6:12

“Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.”

Luke 6:12

By the drawing of the Holy Spirit, He retreated to the seclusion of the mountain to pray all night, ignoring his’ flesh’s cry for sleep. He did this before critical events, such as in this passage, He returned from that mountain ready to choose His disciples. 

Think about it, when Jesus walked the earth, although being fully God, He walked it as a man (see Philippians 2:6-7, Acts 10:38, John 1:14).

So that meant that He felt every ounce of physical exhaustion, hunger, and discomfort we humans feel.

He poured Himself out daily for the people that followed and pressed in around Him. I can picture Him crouching down in the dust, flies and gnats around the sweat of His brow as He healed a child’s crippled leg, or placing His fingers in the ears of a deaf woman healing her completely with a tender smile on His face as her eyes light up at the realization that she could hear for the first time.

Pouring Himself out; teaching, serving, feeding, and loving.

This leaving Him drained physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Picture it with me.

The sun has set, dispersing the crowds to return to their homes, or make camp nearby. The women in Jesus’ circle begin preparing food for Him and His disciples, but Jesus has other plans.

Instead of retreating to His bed to sleep, Jesus, His body aching with exhaustion, goes out to the mountain to pray all night as was His custom.

This brings me to the next lesson that we can take from Jesus’ prayer life; self denial.

JESUS DENIED HIS FLESH

To follow Christ is to walk as He walked.

“But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in Him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.” 1 John 2:5-6

If we say that we love Jesus then according to 1 John, the true test is this; the test of knowing Him. Does your life mirror His? Do your daily choices, innermost thoughts, words spoken, and actions look like Him? Are you a student of the word of God and do follow what His word says? Do you look like Jesus?

Jesus is our ultimate example.

You may be thinking, “Wait a minute. Jesus is perfect and I am not. I sin, how can I ever reach that level of perfection? It’s not possible” Listen, I get it. I mess up every day and I am by no means perfect like our Savior, honestly no one is, but if it wasn’t possible to walk like Jesus, God would not have commanded it.

Jesus Himself said in John 5:30, “I can do nothing on My own. I judge as God tells Me. Therefore, My judgment is just, because I carry out the will of the One who sent Me, not My own will.”

So, to answer this question, let’s look at a couple verses back in 1 John 2: 1-2,

“My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”

Jesus is our advocate. His blood is enough. He is not only our Advocate, Jesus is also the goal. Jesus is the prize. Jesus is the image that we should always strive to mirror. We cannot so this in our strength, but only by the power of His cross, His spilt blood, and our total submission to the guidance of the indwelling Holy Spirit. We cannot be made into the image of Jesus without the Holy Spirit. It takes continually saying no to your flesh, and YES to Him. We are to take up our cross daily. It’s just not a one time experience.

The life of a Christian is a life of self denial. Let’s take a look at what Jesus said in Matthew 16:24-25.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

Matthew 16:24-25

This goes against everything that society is screaming at us today. The kingdom of God will always be counter cultural. Where the world says, “Choose whatever brings you pleasure and feel happy.” Jesus says, “Deny yourself and take up your cross.” Where the world says, “Forge your own path, follow your own truth, you can be your own god!” Jesus says, “I AM the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me.” (John 14:6)

I find it so humbling to know that Jesus chose to pray all night in seclusion rather than listen to the cries of His flesh begging Him to sleep. When I read that portion of scripture, that detail electrified my mind. I had to ask myself, would I ever be able to pull an all nighter in prayer? The Holy Spirit has woken me several times in the early morning to pray, and I have, sadly to say, ignored His tugging more than I want to admit in order to stay in my comfortable bed. Jesus is calling you and I out of our comfort! There is a place of intimacy that He has for us, when we answer that call to retreat with Him in our secret place. He will show us His heart in such a way that He only reserves for His closest friends.

“There’s a private place reserved for the devoted lovers of YAHWEH, where they sit near him and receive the revelation-secrets of his promises.” Psalm 25:14

I don’t know about you, but I long for that kind of intimacy with Jesus. Where I flow in His Spirit every minute of every day. Where He is my last thought before I drift off to sleep and my first when I awake. Friend, think of this. Next time Holy Spirit nudges you awake at 2 o’ clock in the morning, He may just be wanting to spend time with you, because He is that in love with you. May we answer that drawing from Him. He is our Bridegroom and He calls us friend.

Have you ever pulled an all-nighter in prayer to God? Maybe we need start off by sacrificing our late night Netflix binging in order to get up an hour or two earlier to spend time in deep, uninterrupted fellowship with Him.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the Garden of crushing. Jesus, His heart experiencing an agony that no other human has ever experienced, needed the companionship of His closest friends. In Matthew 26:40-41, Jesus comes back after telling them to watch and pray with Him.

Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, ‘What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.’ “

Matthew 26:40-41

The word “flesh” that Jesus used in the Greek is sarx, which refers in the physical sense as the substance of the human body. In an ethical and spiritual sense, sarx is the lower nature of a person, the “transportation” of sinful lusts.

The way Jesus lived while He was on the earth, cloaked in human flesh is our ultimate example of how we should live. Jesus did everything in the Spirit and only did what His Father told Him to do. Galatians 5:16-26 explains in depth what walking in the Spirit brings and what the works of the flesh are. I encourage you to study this portion of scripture with an malleable heart.

The flesh is our growth inhibitor. If we want true intimacy with Jesus, we must deny ourselves. The only way we will have the strength to do this is to walk in the Spirit. He is our Helper after all, Jesus said so Himself (see John 14:26)

The flesh and the Spirit are at constant war with one another. We cannot muscle through this battle on will power alone. If we try to win this war on our own strength, we will lose every time.

We can accomplish walking in the Spirit by feasting on His word rather than on worldly things, abiding in Jesus (see John 15:4-11), recognizing that His strength is perfected in our weakness (see 2 Corinthians 12:10), and walking in total submission to Holy Spirit’s guidance (see Ephesians 5:18).

May we always answer His call to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him, which will result in a life full of the riches and depths of His glory that go beyond our wildest dreams.

I would love to hear from you! Have you ever pulled an all nighter in prayer to God or been awoken at an early hour to pray in your prayer closet? If so, let me know in the comments!