ALL NIGHT IN PRAYER
Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.
Luke 6:12
Did Jesus not seek the mountain to avoid a public display? If we pray to be seen by men, we shall have our reward, and a pitiful reward it will be. We shall have the admiration of shallow fools, and nothing more. If our object in prayer is to obtain blessings from God, we must present our prayers unspoiled by human observation. Get alone with your God if you would move His arm. If you fast, do not give the appearance to men that you are fasting. If you plead personally with God, tell none of it. Take care that this is a secret between God and your own soul; then shall your Father reward you openly. But if you parade about like a Pharisee, to sound your trumpet in the corner of the streets, you shall go where the Pharisee has gone, where hypocrites feel forever the wrath of God.
Jesus, therefore, to prevent interruption, to give Himself the opportunity of pouring out His whole soul, and to avoid ostentation, sought the mountain. What a grand oratory for the Son of God! What walls should have been so suitable? What room would have worthily housed so mighty an intercessor? The Son of God most fittingly entered God’s own glorious temple of nature when He would commune with heaven. Those giant hills and the long shadows cast by the moonlight were alone worthy to be His companions. No pomp of gorgeous ceremony can possibly have equaled the glory of nature’s midnight on the wild mountain’s side, where the stars, like the eyes of God, looked down upon the worshiper and the winds seemed as though they would bear the burden of His sighs and tears upon their willing wings.
Samson, in the temple of the Philistines, moving the giant pillars, is a mere dwarf compared with Jesus of Nazareth moving heaven and earth as He bows Himself alone in the great temple of Jehovah.
Father, I too would seek You in a private place. May I move Your hand today. Amen.
Exile! Amen.
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