Read: Luke 6:12-16
When you have a really big decision that you need to make, like one that you’ll potentially be feeling the results of for years, what is your process in making that decision?
Do you have a process, or do you just go off of gut instinct? Are you a little wiser than that and take some time in making the decision; gathering counsel from trusted advisors like friends, family, or your elders?
Do you go to the Scriptures and seek counsel from the Word of God?
Do you pray for wisdom and clarity in the decision?
In that process, how much weight and time do you give to prayer? Does that process reflect an independence, of the decision making resting mainly on your shoulders and your wisdom, or dies it reflect a dependence on God?
We are wholly dependent on God. Everything we have is on loan from Him. He has supplied our life, He continually gives us breath, He has numbered our days, and He provides us with our daily bread and water. He upholds the universe by the word of His power, and if He would ever stop doing that we would all cease to exist (Heb. 1:3).
As Christians we know and would heartily affirm these truths. This is like Theology 101. Of course we are wholly dependent on God, and this dependence includes our ability to make wise and right decisions.
However, though we may mentally affirm this truth, how often does our life reflect not a dependence on God but an independence from Him? This goes beyond decision making, to every aspect of our life, but how often does our decision making look more like how an atheist makes his decisions rather than how Christ made His decisions?
In Luke 6:12 Jesus is on the cusp of a major decision that would not only affect and shape the next three years of His life and ministry, but which would also affect His Church for the next two thousand plus years. Out of His many followers and disciples, Jesus was determining which twelve He would call to be His apostles.
Eleven of them would become the foundation of His Church and one of them would betray Him according to the eternal plan of God. While in His divine nature as the eternal Son of God He knew who these twelve men would be from before time began, but in His incarnation He willingly submitted the exercise of his divine attributes to the prerogative of the Father.
And so, in light of this massive decision in which He needed to choose the exact right men to be His closest disciples and the ones to whom He would entrust His Bride, the Church, what was Jesus’ decision-making process? He prayed to God all night. He sought the Father for wisdom and clarity.
In this, Jesus gives the perfect example of what dependence on the Father looks like, and we see this example throughout His earthly ministry. He would often spend the night or wake up early to go out and pray (Mark 1:35). Now, this passage and the others that describe Jesus going out and praying are are not prescriptive: the passage is describing Jesus’ actions and not giving us a command on what we’re to do.
Luke is not giving us a command to pray all night before a big decision. However, Jesus is our example whom we are to strive to imitate (1 Cor. 11:1). Does our prayer life and decision making process reflect Christ’s?
Again, how much time do we spend in prayer before making that big decision? If Jesus Himself needed to pray all night before this decision, how much more prayer do you think we need to have our minds rightly attuned to the will of God before making a major decision?
Remember also that Jesus was saturated in the Scriptures such that He frequently recited it from memory (Matt. 4:1-11). That too shows dependence on God and His Word. We need the Word of God conforming our minds to know His will, and we need to seek the Father’s wisdom through prayer.
May we, following our Savior, depend upon the Father all the more through prayer.
