”After the crowds dispersed, Jesus went up into the hills to pray. And as night fell he was there praying alone.“
Matthew 14:23 TPT
Do you ever think about the solitude of Jesus? He was constantly surrounded by people, yet His relationship with the Father was very personal, and all throughout the Gospels we see that He finds a way to get away alone to pray. This verse comes right after Jesus multiplied the five fishes and two loaves of bread and fed the multitudes. And before he fed the thousands of people who were gathered and healed all of the sick there, he’d just found out that his cousin, the prophet John the Baptist had been beheaded by King Herod. So Jesus was in a time of personal grief yet he pushed off his own needs in order to heal the sick and multiply food to feed everyone and minister to their needs. And when the crowds dispersed - when the work for the day was done, Jesus got away on his own to pray. Jesus’s personal prayer time with the Father was His source of strength. And this is true for us too -- each one of us is only as strong as our personal relationship with the Lord. Because it’s in that time - the one-on-one time -- not the corporate time at church, not the small group time in study and discussion. It’s in the one-on-one time, the alone time in prayer with the Lord that we can pour out our hearts to Him, we can hear directly from Him, and we can be strengthened and refreshed to take on whatever is next.
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