Readers of the Gospels will know that, for a variety of reasons, Jesus spent time on his own, praying. He sought solitude and divine communion after a hard night of ministry to mourn the death of his cousin, John the Baptist, to take refuge from the crowds coming to see him, to prepare for his ministry, and to prepare for his crucifixion. Mark tells us he often withdrew to 'lonely places' to pray, from which it is safe to conclude that private prayer was an important aspect of his life and ministry.
These passages show us some of the circumstances in which Jesus withdrew to pray, but the larger question is why he needed to pray at all. If he was God-made flesh, as Christians believe, why wasn't he always in perfect communion with his Father? Was something lacking in their connection? Was his divine nature incomplete?
Jesus is Our Perfect Example
It's easy to underestimate the sacrifice Jesus made to become one of us, which meant embracing frailty in full rather than in part. When He took on flesh, He took on the full spectrum of human vulnerability and even made Himself subject to temptation. He has literally walked the path, and He asks us to follow Him down. When seen through the eyes of revelation, this tremendous humility of God can leave us breathless. The Lord of All came to serve His creation, but to do that, He had to abandon His divine privileges willingly.
When Jesus was born, He wasn't pretending to have the mind of an infant while secretly daydreaming about computers and space travel. He wasn't conscious in the womb or aware of what was happening during his birth. He was born with all the vulnerabilities of a human baby and had zero access to omniscience or omnipotence.
If we accept that Jesus was an ordinary human child in His infancy, we must also accept that He grew into the knowledge of who He was and what He was called to do. The first indication that He'd received revelation knowledge about His divine nature is found in the second chapter of Luke when his parents left him behind in Jerusalem. After frantically searching the city, they found him in the temple courts, where Jesus was debating with the Jewish teachers. According to that account, the teachers were amazed by both His questions and His answers.
When his mother berated him, accusing him of treating them poorly, his response was telling:
"Why were you searching for me?" He asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" Luke 2:49.
Jesus understood that God was His Father and that He belonged in His house. If He was born an ordinary infant and grasped His divine nature by the age of twelve, He must have grown in wisdom and spiritual revelation through His relationship with the Holy Spirit between those two points in time until one day; He finally grasped that He was, in fact, the Great I Am. His knowledge was a matter of faith, not of factual certainty.
The Spirit Led Jesus
When Jesus entered His ministry as an adult, He was fully reliant on the Holy Spirit for guidance and divine power. He didn't have special extra powers in His pocket that modern-day believers don't have access to, but instead prophesied over and healed people by the inspiration and empowerment of the Spirit of God.
Consider the spiritual gifts that flowed during Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan women at the well in John 4. As the conversation unfolded, Jesus moved deeper and deeper into a flow of prophecy and gifts of knowledge, making several key statements.
First, He speaks of His own ministry and the "living water" He could give to the woman. When she asks if He is greater than the patriarch, Jacob, He tells her that whoever drinks the water He gives will never thirst again. He speaks of that water he gives becoming "a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
He then moves from prophecy into what could be described as a "word of knowledge," telling the woman about her personal situation and the number of her previous marriages. At this point, she contemplates what is happening and pronounces Him a prophet. The conversation has moved well beyond the practicalities of retrieving water from the physical well and, through Jesus' spiritual intuition, has moved on to much deeper matters.
Jesus moves into an even deeper level of prophecy, speaking of the future unfolding of the Kingdom of God, when "the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth" John 4:24.
On another occasion, in Luke 17, a crowd had gathered to hear Jesus' teaching, and "the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick." If the power of God was present on that occasion, the unavoidable implication is that there were times when this wasn't the case. Again, we see that Jesus operated in what looks very much like the gifts of the Spirit listed in 1 Corinthians 12. He was led by the Spirit and used the power of God to heal, prophesy, and perform miracles in the same way we are called to do.
If Jesus is our perfect example, it makes perfect sense that he walked the same path we are called to walk. He faced the same challenges and knew hunger, frailty, weariness and frustration. He was subject to temptation and must have known doubt. Certainly, in the Garden of Gethsemane, He wrestled with doing what the Father asked of Him but chose to yield His will.
We ought to be encouraged that despite His divine nature, Jesus needed to draw on prayer as a resource. He has shown us the way and calls us to follow. If we follow where He leads, and if we do as He asks, then all things become possible through Christ, who strengthens us.
