Anchor My Faith

Assignment and Prayer

Scripture: Mark 3:13; Luke 6:12-13

We finally come to that place in our journey along the gospel path where Jesus chooses the twelve apostles, or as we commonly call the twelve disciples, but first Jesus needs some time with his Father and so, “In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). Of the gospel writers that mention this topic, only Luke mentions that Jesus prayed before choosing the apostles. Clearly this selection was important to him and he needed time with his Father before making that choice.

For Jesus to pray all night raises questions in my mind. Why did he spend all night praying and what would he say that would take all night? If Jesus was the Son of God, why would he have to pray at all? We must not forget that Jesus was also man and that he was sent by God the Father on assignment and now it is time to select those men that he will prepare to do work of sharing the gospel after he leaves. As a man, Jesus feels the burden to talking with his Father about the selection and the training process.

Thinking about Jesus being on assignment and his need for prayer reminds me of Ephesians 2:10, which we so conveniently skip over when we read the two verses previous to it. Paul says: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (ESV). Jesus was God’s workmanship created as a man through a virgin birth and given an assignment. As believers, each one of us is created by God through spiritual birth for the purpose of doing good works which he has assigned to us to do. How many of you are so burdened about this work assignment that you pray all night in order to understand it and know how to go about doing it? It appears to me that this is not a very important or a high priority for us in the western church today. Part of my assignment was to go to Asia to teach Bible and now to spend several years developing this web site and writing content for it. Both of these jobs include so much meaning and purpose that what the world has to offer fade into the shadows. But to do this work I find it necessary to spend many hours of prayer. As one becomes engaged in God’s assigned work, it becomes easy to spend time in prayer and from my experience I can easily understand Jesus feeling the need to get alone with his Father and pray all night.

“And when day came, he called his disciples” (Luke 6:13). In our context, disciples represent those who were following Jesus for the purpose of learning from him. They were closer to Jesus that those that made up the crowds that followed Jesus around. “[Jesus] called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him” (Mark 3:13). Jesus was now ready to make his choices from this group of disciples that have been with him. The ones he desired to make his apostles came to him as he called their names.

Prayer

Father, we are going to stop at this point in our journey along the gospel path and think about what Jesus is doing and the importance of prayer in the process. We, as your creation, need to stop and disengage a bit from the world and pray about your assignment given to us and how to do the work. Father, I wonder how many have even prayed about what the assignment might be let along pray about how to do the work.