Prayer: Jesus' Example

I’ll be honest: one of the hardest things for me to do is to get up early. I hate getting up early in the morning! I would much rather stay up late and sleep in late. Another thing that is hard for me to do is spend significant time in prayer. Jesus, our perfect Lord and Example did both: “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1:35).
Often I don’t want to get up early or pray because I think, “I just have too much to do and I need my rest!” It’s easy to feel like we’re just too busy to pray. But Jesus, even though he was busy teaching and healing the people (see verses 34 and 39), still took time out to spend in prayer to his Father.
Other times, I think, “I’m just too tired to spend quality time in prayer.” Jesus was fully human and I know he got tired. I’m sure being with people all day long was exhausting to Jesus. He had spent the entire previous day ministering to the people, and it was a late night too— verse 32 says that even after the sun went down people were coming to him! Jesus was tired, to be sure. Yet after just a few hours of sleep, he got up and made time to pray.
I think the important point that we should take away from this anecdote from the life of Jesus Christ is that serious time spent in prayer is important. If Jesus, God’s eternal Son felt it was important enough to get up early when he was very busy and tired, then certainly we ought to place a high priority on prayer as well. Do we relegate prayer to a place of unimportance in our lives? Do we treat it as good, but unnecessary? Prayer, our communication with our Heavenly Father is not only profitable, but absolutely important. It is worth getting up early for.