JESUS PRAYED AFTER FEEDING THE 5000

What is on your prayer list?

I pray for my wife, my children and grandchildren, my aging mother. I talk to God about our church’s ministries and missions, our members and our ministers. I’m thankful for wonderful blessings. I ask the Lord to give me wisdom to make wise choices, to protect me from evil ideas. And of course, I pray about my aches and pains.

Let’s examine the prayers of Jesus. This should help us… He is our model for holy living, for accurate theology, and for correctly motivated praying! 

Immediately after He’d fed five thousand men and their families, Jesus sent His disciples away, and He, by Himself, “went away to the mountain to pray” (Mark 6:46).

I’m sure He was thankful. “Thank you, Father, for a multitude of hungry pilgrims… hungry for food, but more importantly, hungry for the Living God!”

I also suspect that He sought His Father’s guidance. “Holy, All-knowing Father, what’s next? Where am I needed? Where can My presence make the greatest impact? What do You want Me to do?”

But there was a more pressing issue at hand. It’s the very reason that Jesus went away alone. “When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, ‘This truly is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ Therefore, when Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself” (John 6:14-15).

Later, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). Maybe this was the essence of His prayer after feeding the multitude. “Father, these people have offered a crown! Must I go to the cross? “Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

“… think on these things” (Philippians 4:8, KJV).