“In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.”
– Luke 6:12
If you follow this podcast you know, just in previous episode, in Luke 5, we saw how Jesus withdrew to a desolate place to pray, and Luke 6:12 shows Jesus doing it again, “He went out to the mountain to pray,” but this verse says, “and all night he continued in prayer to God.” All night.
Luke 6:12 Emphasizes once more the importance of Prayer
I share about this psalm in a new book I have coming out called Don’t Hold Back, and in that book I share about some time I spent in South Korea over the last couple of years where I was so convicted learning about the story of the church in South Korea, about how basically South Korea, or the Korean Peninsula, went from less than 1% Christian in 1900 to over 10 million Christians a century later by the turn of the 21st century, just 100 years from less than 1% Christian to 10 million Christians. Just imagine that happening over the next 100 years somewhere in the world today that’s less than 1% Christian. Imagine Afghanistan 100 years from now having 10 million followers of Jesus. That’s astounding.
And you read about the story of the church in South Korea and you know and you learn it was built on prayer, people rising, gathering together to pray every morning, early, for hours at a time, and getting together on Friday nights to pray all night long, and I was so convicted.
This was just a few years ago when I came back from this particular trip in South Korea, and I realized I’d never prayed all night to God. I’d never been a part of an all night prayer gathering with other people or all night in prayer alone to God, and I told our church family, “This needs to change in my own life, and for us as a church family we need to do this,” and so we gathered together and prayed all night from 8:00 to about 6:00 in the morning, and it was awesome and we’ve continued doing that.
Luke 6:12 Urges us to make Prayer our Top Priority
Not all night every time. Sometimes all night, sometimes late into the night, but there’s something that happens in communion with God after three, four, five hours of seeking Him together that doesn’t happen after five or 10 minutes, or an hour or two even, and I just want to encourage you in light of that, in light of Luke 6:12, to prioritize praying for hours to God, getting together with others or doing this alone, but I want to encourage you specifically to figure out a way to spend all night in prayer sometime soon and see what God does as you either get alone or get together with others and just seek Him all night.
Oh God, we praise you for the privilege of prayer once again. This thought that right now we are speaking to you and you are listening to us, the King of the cosmos, Creator of the universe, Lord over all, Savior of our lives. You’ve invited us into communion with you and so we say yes, we want to experience the fullness of communion with you and we want to experience what Jesus experienced in Luke 6:12, all night long in prayer.
God, we praise you for what you’ve done on the Korean Peninsula through your people praying, how you’ve shown your power to save and build your church through prayer. And God, we want to see your power in our lives, in our families, in our churches.
Praying for the Khas People
We want to see your power among the nations, among the people groups of the world, like the Khas of Bhutan. Show your power God, we pray for the spread of the gospel to the Khas people of Bhutan up in the Himalayas where there’s no known followers of Jesus. Change that, God, we pray. Use our prayers to bring about that kind of change. Hear us and show your salvation, sin workers.
God, teach us to pray like this. We’ve got so many things to pray for. All night doesn’t even come close to exhausting all the ways that we can commune with you in prayer, all the requests in our own lives and families and churches and for our country, for the nation.
So God, we pray that you would help us to pray like this, like Jesus did in Luke 6:12, and I pray specifically that you would show every single person listening right now the reward that’s found in all night prayer to you, and we pray this according to your word in Luke 6:12. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
