And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose up and went out, and departed into a desert place, and there prayed (Mark 1: 35).
We have a great deal to learn from our Lord Jesus concerning the pattern of His prayer life. His pattern was to rise a while before dawn to pray. We have no account of His exact prayer, but we can deduce a little here and a little there to give us a clue on what was the focus of His “a great while before dawn” prayer.
Hebrews 5:8 says, “Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.”
Philippians 2:6 points out, “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”
Let’s piece things up a little here as we build a picture. Our Lord Jesus had the form of God, but He did not struggle for equality with God. He emptied Himself continually, this was what He suffered, an intentional and consistent emptying of Himself. He emptied Himself continually that God might clothe upon Him. This He did in prayers with strong crying and tears. This we read in Hebrews chapter 5 verse 7: “Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear.” We see an exact opposite from what Adam and Eve did much earlier. Adam had a form of God for he was created in the image and likeness of God. But he and Eve, his wife chose to disobey and eat what God warned them not to partake of, that is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They saw the tree as good and desirable to make them wise. They chose to be apart from God, they want to be wise on their own terms, which was plain disobedience to God, and they ate what they were warned not to eat. They died as a result. But Jesus Christ our Lord who had the form of God, chose not equality with God as something to be grasped, He was obedient and humbled Himself unto death, even the death on the cross.
This gives us a clue to the focus, intent, and content of our Lord Jesus’ prayer. Our Lord Jesus, having a knowledge of the path of the first Adam and the wages of his sin, cried unto God who is able to save Him from death, and this He did a great while before dawn continually that God might clothe upon Him as He, our Lord Jesus, emptied Himself. That Christ emptied Himself (Philippians 2:6f) shows that He never wanted to be independent or anything apart from God in order to fulfil the purpose and counsel of His will.
One great lesson that we can learn from our Lord Jesus from His “great while before dawn” prayer was that He prized oneness with God with all that He is. His prayers with strong cries and tears were nothing but a cry after God. A cry to be and to remain one with God. His prayer was a prayer that God might clothe upon Him with His Spirit. We hear our Lord Jesus Himself speak in the gospel of Luke, chapter 4: 18-19 : “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” Our Lord Jesus did not treat this cry with levity or secondary to any other form of prayer. His godly fear, demonstrated in the intentional emptying of Himself, was heard, and God the Father clothe upon Him, with His Spirit and His power. The scripture declares in Acts 10:38, “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”
The “Lord’s Prayer,” which was the pattern of prayer which our Lord Jesus gave the disciples when they asked Him to teach them to pray, coupled with what we have learned from our Lord in the foregoing scriptures, gives us a clue of what the intent and content of our “great while before dawn” prayer should be.
Prayer fundamentally is worship and emptying of ourselves before God, to give place to His kingdom and the total dominion of His will in our lives. Scripture says in Philippians 2:13, “For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out His good purpose.” If God is working in us, we cannot be independent of Him. Our Lord Jesus emphasised this in the gospel of John 15:5: “I am the vine, and you are the branches. The one who remains in Me, and I in him, will bear much fruit. For apart from Me, you can do nothing.”
Oneness with God and with Christ is the ultimate and must be the essence of our “a great while before dawn prayer.” Our strong crying and prayer must be an affirmation of our desire to be made one with God, to be clothed upon with His Spirit and His divine nature and power. Our oneness with God must be highly prized, and this must come from our deep knowledge of God from the scriptures. When we are clothed upon by His Spirit, we will walk in and demonstrate such power that our Lord Jesus manifested, for He said that the works that He did and greater shall we do also because He returns to the Father to plead further on our behalf.
Contemporary believers are not to put other things before the true essence of prayer. From the beginning of creation, God made man in His image and likeness. This is not just a story of creation but the ultimate desire of God, to be one with man, the object of His love, “for God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son.” In Him we are to live, move, and have our being (Acts 17:28). Many are substituting the intimacy of “deep calls unto the deep” prayer with “command your morning” in their early morning cries. Every other thing should come second to us plunging ourselves into the very Source of our life and being. We should not relent in emptying ourselves and ensuring that nothing blocks our oneness with Christ in God, for our lives are hid with Christ in God.
We should not miss the opportunity for God to incubate upon us with His Spirit and His divine power, for it takes His power to live as children of God (John 1:12). As heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, we must receive our mantle and our manna daily. Furthermore, it is God’s eternal desire to make us unto Himself a nation of kings and priests. You cannot be a king or a priest without being anointed. It is taking from what is God’s and putting it on the king and the priest for effectual functioning. Just like our Lord Jesus said of the LORD Holy Spirit: “He will take of what is mine and declare it to you, John 16:14.” The LORD God also said in the book of Numbers, chapter 6 verse 27: “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” It is God’s desire to clothe upon us with His Spirit and with His name, this should be our greatest desire in prayer and in seeking after God. Then we can go about our day decreeing and declaring things, and they will be. This is not a one-off thing or a switch formula, as men are always looking for a switch formula. This must be our lifestyle, like that of our Lord Jesus and then we will know like Him with assurance, that the LORD God has anointed us, that is, clothed us upon, with His Spirit and power.
David in the Psalms declares in Psalms 42: 1: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.” and in Psalm 63: 1:”O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.” Such should be the fervour, the godly reverence and earnest dependence in our prayer to God. This is the essence of deep calling to the deep, and this should be the first thing in our day.
Job chapter 7 verses 17 and 18 has this to say: “What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him, visit him every morning, and test him every moment? We know from scripture that God visits us every morning to weigh the inclination of our hearts. Do we seek to be joined with Him or do we want our own thing? As the Psalmist says, “Early in the morning will I rise up and seek you”, it is the LORD that we should seek in our great while before dawn encounter with God. When we have God’s clothes upon us with His Spirit, His divine nature, and His power, we shall live our days victoriously, we live our days as true witnesses of Christ, and we live our days decreeing, and it is established.
Our Lord Jesus’s life offers us a living and vivid example of how we can live in power naturally when we maintain our oneness with God. As we proceed with our journey in 2026, may our outlook and hearts’ yearning be: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering being made conformable unto His death.” (Philippians 3 We must be made one with Him, that He might clothe upon us bless and empower us.
