I have recently finished listening to Tyler Staton’s book on prayer – Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer. I listened to Tyler Staton preach on the topic of the Lord’s Prayer at a leadership retreat a few months ago. Both his passion for and his experience in prayer impressed me.1 You can listen to these same sermons on the Bridgetown Church’s website. I did not expect this in such a young pastor. In his book, I was further intrigued by his emphasis on the importance of daily set times of prayer. He pointed out that both Jesus and the early church practiced regular times of prayer each day.
Jesus and his prayer life
Over the years, I have noticed that the Gospels (and particularly Luke) often note that Jesus gave himself to prayer. At this baptism, before he begins a busy day of ministry, and before he chooses the 12 apostles, Jesus is praying.2 See Luke 3:21, 5:15-16, 6:12-13. After a full day of teaching and then feeding a massive crowd of 5000, he climbs a mountain to pray rather than getting some sleep (Mark 5:44-46). What we often miss is that the Transfiguration happened when Jesus took his 3 closest disciples on a prayer retreat (see Luke 9:28-29). In fact, this prayer retreat was only about a week after another prayer retreat with his disciples (Luke 9:18-20).
A couple of chapters later, Jesus is again praying, and this time, the disciples ask him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1). His example in prayer is so striking that the disciples want to learn to pray like that. By the time we get to Gethsemane, we are not surprised that Jesus insisted on praying until the very moment of his arrest (Luke 22:39-46).
Clearly, Jesus was a man of prayer. Major events in his life were framed by his times in prayer. He prepared for major decisions, important questions and the crowning crisis and triumph of his life on Golgotha through extended times of prayer. As Paul Miller observes, Jesus demonstrates his dependence on the Father in a remarkable way through his regular times of prayer.
When Jesus tells us to become like little children, he isn’t telling us to do anything he isn’t already doing. Jesus is, without question, the most dependent human being who ever lived. Because he can’t do life on his own, he prays. And he prays. And he prays. Luke tells us that Jesus “would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (5:16).
Paul E. Miller. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World, loc. 653.
Three times a day
In “Praying Like Monks”, Staton says that godly Jews would pray three times a day – in the morning, at noon and in the evening. The Psalmist references this pattern in Ps 55:17. This was Daniel’s practice, even in exile in Babylon (Dan. 6:10). Staton believes that Jesus observed a similar daily prayer rhythm, and that the early believers copied this practice. Tyler Staton points out that the book of Acts mentions times of prayers at certain times of the day. Look at these examples:
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