LEADERSHIP BLOG #15: “leaders on their knees.”
“Work, work from early till late. In fact, I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” –Martin Luther
We are all busy people. Between school, family, sports, theater, friends, Facebook, church, work, chores, volunteering, sleep, food, and more Facebook, we are all living 30-hour days.
Who has the time to stop and pray?
In the above quote by Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, he states that he had so much to do that he planned on spending longer than usual in prayer. It’s a commonly known fact that when we have more to do than we have hours in the day, it’s the ‘non-essentials’ that get cut. And all too often, prayer is classified as a non-essential. I think we can all agree that in theory, this is not the ideal. We should be acting like Martin Luther and cutting out anything but prayer when we are busy. Yet we (including myself) do not act this way in real life.
Jesus is the ultimate example of praying when he had too much to do.
The Bible tells us that he would often go off by himself, away from the crowds, just to pray and spend time with his Father. People were clamoring for his attention – wanting him to heal them, to forgive them, to teach them, to save them. Yet even with all this need and attention, Jesus never lost focus of what was truly important: his relationship with his Father. This has always been interesting to me. Jesus was one with the Father, and yet even he wanted some alone time with Him. J. Oswald Sanders in his book Spiritual Leadership observes that “Surely if anyone could have sustained life without prayer, it would be the very Son of God Himself. If prayer is silly or unnecessary, Jesus would not have wasted his time at it.”
If as leaders we want to influence people for the kingdom of God, then we must be on our knees, praying to the One who has power over those whom we want to influence. We may be busy – leaders usually are busier than anyone else – yet trying to lead people without prayer is like running in place. We’ll sweat a whole lot but we won’t get anywhere.
Let us follow the example of prayer that Christ has laid out for us, and watch what happens!
