Luke 6:12-19: Trysting place.

These  were difficult days for Jesus. Look at verse 11. How did He respond? The twelfth verse tells us. How do we handle difficult days? We could say that Jesus prayed and obeyed.

Jesus was set on a lonely path,filled with angry opposition towards Him. Already the shadow of the cross was falling on His path (11). It wasn’t nice things they had in mind to do with Jesus. But the Father showed Him to build a team and who to pick. It seems to me that in the night He got light. The ‘day came’ in more ways than one (13). But even within the answer to prayer there were seeds of further difficulty (16). Yet in the purposes of God, Judas, more than any other disciple, was to help Jesus fulfill His destiny. Learn to thank God for ( as well as pray for) the difficult people in your world. They are not there by accident.

William Duma was an African evangelist, significantly used by God to bring many people to Jesus, and also he had a strong healing gift. The thing that most impressed me about his biography when I read it many years ago,lay in the fact that he had what he called his ‘trysting place’ – a lovers retreat. It was a lonely spot  high up in the mountains where he would go away to pray for days at a time. In fact, there came a season when the power began to wane in his ministry , and he was able to join the dots. He could see how he had become over busy and had been negligent of prayer.

I believe we see in Jesus that He received revelation/instructions in prayer (13-15), and power for ministry (19; see also 5:17).We neglect prayer to the detriment of our lives and the lives of many others. As ever, Jesus points the way. Let’s follow His example.

Prayer: Lord God, I want to walk in the closest possible fellowship with you. I know how weak I am. I can have good intentions, but I regularly fail to fulfill them. Please help me to be like Jesus and pray through.