Exhortation Station

In my last post, I discussed the verse in Matthew wherein Yahshua exhorted His disciples to “keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation” (see post Watching and Praying.)  In this post, I’d like to share some related thoughts stemming from a verse a friend of mine shared with me a couple weeks ago.    Thought this was pretty neat…

Luke 6:12,13 — “It was at this time that He [Yahshua] went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to Elohim.  And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles…”

Did you catch that?  Yahshua prayed all night the night before choosing His twelve disciples.  Although we cannot say for certain what He was praying about, it seems very probable that a significant part of His prayer was about the choosing of the twelve.  Also, a few verses later, Yahshua gives the Sermon on the Mount.  Perhaps this was also a part of His prayer.  Isn’t it interesting that two important events — the choosing of the twelve and the giving of perhaps the greatest sermon in history — came just after an entire night of prayer to the Father? 

Let’s look at another verse.

Hebrews 5:7-10 — “In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. ⁸ Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. ⁹ And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, ¹⁰ being designated by Elohim as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Wow!  Yahshua, the perfect Son of Yahweh, filled with all wisdom, power, and authority, lifted up prayers to Elohim with loud crying and tears.  Don’t think that overcoming was “easy” for Yahshua.  In Luke 22:44, Yahshua was so distressed over His coming crucifixion that we read, “And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood…”  In Hebrews 4:15, we read that He was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”

I’d like to conclude with a simple thought:  If Yahshua Messiah — Savior — Lion of Judah — lifted up fervent prayers to the Father for help, strength, and guidance, how much more should we?

(All Bible passages NASB; Hebrew transl. and emphasis added.)