Daily Lesson for May 14, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 6 verses 12 through 16:

12 Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God.13And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles:14Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew,15and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, 16and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

Jesus lived a life of deep and frequent prayer. And at certain times he very intentionally withdrew to be alone with God.  “The Father and I are one,” he told his disciples. Jesus’ oneness with God was due to the deep well of spiritual energy he drew from in prayer. 

So it very much surprises us that with all His deep connection with God Jesus should come back from his mountain of prayer with Judas listed amongst the names of his newly-chosen apostles. And later in the story it will surprise us even more that Jesus will pray so deeply that the cup should pass and he be delivered from his suffering, yet it not happen. 

We learn something very important here about prayer. We pray to God for discernment and direction for our lives. We ask for wisdom in the way to go and the choices to be made. We ask for protection and deliverance from evil. Sometimes — most times — our prayers are answered. But sometimes our requests are not answered, at least not in the ways we would have liked or chosen. They were not even for Jesus. And in these times of seemingly unanswered prayer, we see the ultimate gift of prayer — the gift of the deeply abiding sense that come hell or high water God is with us and we are at one with God and no matter what happens God will give us the strength and courage to pass through.