And continued all night in prayer to God
Special protracted prayer
If any man of woman born might bare lived without prayer it was surely the Lord Jesus.
In some parts of prayer He could take no share, e.g., confession of sin. Then again, He had no need for self-examination each night, and no need to pray to be protected from sin each morning. Yet never was there a man more abundant in prayer.
1. Notice the place which Christ selected for prayer. The solitude of a mountain. Why?
(1) To prevent interruption.
(2) That He might be able to pray aloud.
(3) To avoid ostentation.
2. The time selected. The silent hours of night. To some of us, the night might be most inappropriate and unsuitable; if so, we must by no means select it, but must follow our Lord in the spirit rather than in the letter.
3. Again, our Lord sets us a good example in the matter of extraordinary seasons of devotion in the protracted character of His prayer. He continued all night in prayer. I do not think that we are bound to pray long as a general rule. Force is its standard rather than length. When the whole soul groans itself out in half a dozen sentences there may be more real devotion in them than in hours of mere wire drawing and word spinning. True prayer is the soul’s mounting up to God, and if it can ride upon a cherub or the wings of the wind so much the better, yet in extraordinary seasons, when the soul is thoroughly wrought up to an eminent intensity of devotion, it is well to continue it for a protracted season. We know not that our Lord was vocally praying all the time, He may have paused to contemplate; He may have surveyed the whole compass of the field over which His prayer should extend, meditating upon the character of His God recapitulating the precious promises, remembering the wants of His people, and thus arming Himself with arguments with which to return to wrestle and prevail. How very few of us have ever spent a whole night in prayer, and yet what boons we might have had for such asking!
4. Jesus has further instructed us in the art of special devotion by the manner of His prayer. Notice, he continued all night in prayer to God--to God. How much of our prayer is not prayer to God at all! That gunner will do no service to the army who takes no aim, but is content so long as he does but fire; that vessel makes an unremunerative voyage which is not steered for a port, but is satisfied to sail hither and thither. We must direct our prayers to God, and maintain soul-fellowship with Him, or our devotion will become a nullity, a name for a thing which is not.
5. Once more, we may learn from Jesus our Lord the occasion for special devotion. At the time when our Master continued all night in prayer He had been upbraided by the Pharisees. He fulfilled the resolve of the man after God’s own heart. “Let the proud be ashamed; for they dealt perversely with me without a cause: but I will meditate in Thy precepts.” So David did, and so did David’s Lord. The best answer to the slanders of the ungodly is to be more constant in communion with God: (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Christ an example to us in the choice of seasons for prayer
I. OUR LORD WAS WONT TO PRAY WHEN ENGAGED, OR ABOUT TO ENGAGE IN ANY RELIGIOUS ORDINANCE (Luke 3:21). The ordinances of grace must be sanctified to us by prayer, or we shall derive no benefit from them.
II. OUR LORD PRAYED WHEN ABOUT TO ENGAGE IN MORE THAN USUALLY IMPORTANT AND SERIOUS BUSINESS. AS here before the ordination of the apostles.
III. ANOTHER SEASON FOR PRAYER IS A SEASON OF EXCEEDING ENJOYMENT OR HONOUR (Luke 9:28-29). Strange as it may sound, yet, it is true, that they who receive most of the Lord’s grace and goodness stand the most m need of the Lord’s grace and goodness; they need grace to use abundant grace and goodness well. Pride of heart is often called into exercise by it; or, if not pride of heart, an undue love of that mercy--giving up the sou! to the enjoyment of it.
IV. ANOTHER SEASON FOR SPECIAL PRAYER IS WHEN WE SEE OUR FRIENDS IN PECULIAR DANGER OR SORROW (Luke 22:32; John 17:1-26.). How can there be Christian love if the sorrows and wants of those we love do not excite prayer in us?
V. ONE SEASON MORE I MENTION AS PECULIARLY A SEASON OF SUPPLICATION--WHEN TROUBLE IS ON US OR EXPECTED TO COME Luke 22:44). Severe affliction is the season, of all others, for prayer. (Charles Bradley, M. A.)
Private devotion
Some, from the nature of their employments, or from mental constitution, or habit, do not find that they can often continue, or profitably continue, long at devotion at once; such may supply this, in a good measure, by frequency. Most clearly, however, sufficient time ought to be taken to get the mind fully engaged. When Christ, after labouring the whole day that was past, and having also to labour as soon as day dawned again, spent the whole night in prayer, it is a shame for any of His professing followers, however busy a life they may load, not to make a point of reserving from the cares of the day, or it may be, from the slumbers of the night, as much time as is necessary for morning and evening devotions. Mark, Christians, how the airy trifler gives the night-watch to devour the foolish romance; and how the pale student toils over the midnight lamp; and how, for the sake of this world’s gain, some rise early and sit up late, and even work whole nights; and how the votaries of dissipating pleasure often spend the whole, or almost the whole, night in its pursuits; and then, though you will by no means think yourselves called on literally to spend whole nights in prayer, yet you will be ashamed and confounded when you think that a moderate tarrying before the throne of grace should ever have been unnecessarily neglected by you, or felt as a burden; and you will desire to give more of your time and of your heart to seasons of communion with your God. (James Foote, M. A.)
Jesus praying all night
On more than one occasion in the life of our Lord, it is recorded that He continued all night in prayer to God. What need was there that He should sacrifice rest and sleep in this way? He knew that His Father always heard His prayer. He gave us as the model for our prayer a form which can easily be repeated in half a minute. Was His Father unwilling to hear Him? Or was it because He could not bring His mind to the proper prayer-point, and so had to pray for hours, in order to learn how to pray for one moment with real faith? It could not be for either of these reasons. We may suppose then that our Saviour spent that long time in prayer as a delightful employment to Himself. He loved to commune with our God and His God. To Him it was better than meat to do the will of Him that sent Him. So, doubtless, it was more soothing and refreshing than sleep for Him to talk to His Father. Jesus praying and the Father listening; that was a harmony more entrancing than the songs of angels. But no; it was not for enjoyment alone that Jesus prayed all night. His prayers were poured into the deep heart of God as easily as the water pours over the rock into the chasm below. His heart unfolded to His Father as gently as a flower is kissed open by the breeze of a summer-dawn. But Christ had a definite purpose in the night-long prayer. (National Baptist)
A night of prayer
I. THE TEXT SHOULD CONVINCE US OF THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
II. THE TEXT SHOULD IMPRESS US WITH THE NECESSITY FOR PRAYER.
III. THE TEXT SHOULD INSTRUCT US AS TO THE MANNER OF PRAYER.
1. Christians should have their seasons of secret prayer and of retirement from the world.
2. Christians should have special seasons set apart for prayer in view of special work. (D. MacEwen, D. D.)
Prayer a preliminary to important steps in life
We should give ourselves to special prayer when we are about to make any important changes in life:
1. Leaving home.
2. Entering on a business or profession.
(1) That the temptations which cluster about our secular callings may not defile and degrade us.
(2) That our secular blessings may be made in the highest sense a blessing to us.
3. Marriage. (B. Wilkinson, F. G. S.)
A night of solitary prayer
I. THE NIGHT OF NEEDFUL REST SHORTENED FOR PRAYER.
II. THE SOLITUDE SOUGHT FOR SPIRITUAL PREPARATION. The crisis at which our Lord had arrived--
1. Originated the Christian ministry.
2. Began the Christian Church.
3. Involved the selection of His own betrayer.
4. Was a preparation for the full exposition of His doctrines.
Sermon on the plain.
III. THE CONDUCT OF OUR GRACIOUS LORD COUNSELS US TO.
1. Lonely prayer.
2. Preparatory prayer.
3. Self-denying prayer.
4. Leisurely prayer--“All the night.”
5. Lingering prayer--“He continued.”
6. Blissful prayer--All night with God. (W. H. Jellie.)
Here is the great secret of much that we see in the active life of Jesus.
1. Secret prayer.
2. Long prayer. Prayer calms and strengthens the soul. After prayer a man descends upon his work rather than rises strainingly towards it. (J. Parker, D. D.)
JESUS PRAYING.
He sought the mountain and the loneliest height,
For He would meet His Father all alone,
And there, with many a tsar and many a groan,
He strove in prayer throughout the long, long night.
Why need He pray, who held by filial right,
O’er all the world alike of thought and sense,
The fulness of His Sire’s omnipotence?
Why crave in prayer what was His own by might?
Vain is the question--Christ was man in need,
And being man, His duty was to pray.
The Son of God confess’d the human need,
And doubtless ask’d a blessing every day,
Nor ceases yet for sinful man to plead,
Nor will, till heaven and earth shall pass away.
(Hartley Coleridge.)
All night in prayer
There are three classes of minds which are in danger of making too long prayers.
1. One is the loose, unconcentrative, who cumber thoughts with many words, and make vain, i.e., empty, repetitions of the same idea.
2. Another consists of those who, mistaking the nature of importunity, think that the more they say, the more they shall get--not seeing that in so doing they are virtually making their prayers a purchase-price, which they present in payment of what they ask--and forgetting, or not considering, the true character of prayer--that it is only the opening channel in a man’s mind, through which God may pour out into that mind His preordained and ready gifts.
3. And the third are they who, with a superstitious feeling, think that God will be angry if their prayers do not go to a certain extent, and so, in their intercourse with God, they stretch their prayers to a degree either inconsistent with their other duties, or incompatible with their own health. They do not know that oftentimes the very best prayer we ever pray, is not to pray, but to cast ourselves simply on the love of God. The general rule is, pray according to the condition of your heart. Do not let the prayer strain the thoughts, but let the thoughts determine and regulate the prayer. Pray as you feel drawn in prayer--or, in other words, as the Spirit of God in you leads and dictates. Nevertheless, the holler a man is, and the nearer heaven--the more, and the more continuously that man will be able to commune with God. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
All night in prayer
The Rev. John Welch, of Ayr, was accustomed to retire many nights to his church and spend the whole night in prayer--praying with an audible and sometimes with a loud voice. His wife, fearing he would catch cold, went one night to his closet where he had been long at prayer, and heard him say, “Lord, wilt Thou not grant me Scotland? “ and, after a pause, “Enough, Lord, enough.” Once he got such nearness to the Lord in prayer that he exclaimed, “Hold Thy hand, Lord; remember Thy servant is a clay vessel, and can hold no more.”