John 8: 1,2
JESUS went unto the Mount of Olives and early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came unto Him; and He sat down, and taught them.
In the Gospels, it is often said that JESUS got up early in the morning to pray or stayed up all night in prayer. His place of prayer, His prayer mountain, was the Mount of Olives. He would pray in the quiet and then go and minister to the people, having derived His strength from the anointing of fellowship with His Father and power from the Holy Spirit.
We often miss the fact that the Mount of Olives was a frequent place for JESUS to immerse Himself in prayer; the temple was the place to preach and teach, heal and deliver. We often get that out of sequence; many go to the Church to pray and then go and minister. The Church has often been termed as, "a filling station" or the "oasis"; not so in the life of JESUS. It was in the quiet of the solitary place where He gained His strength, then, He went to the temple to teach.
Have we communed with the LORD before we venture out to care for the people, whether in Church or in the world? I believe that if JESUS needed this quiet to commune with His Father before He taught, that we need to do the same.
If JESUS went to the temple "early in the morning" then He was at the Mount of Olives even earlier. In the rhythm of our life, do we get up earlier so that we can pray? Mother Teresa of Calcutta had this rhythm in the life of the Monasteries that she founded. The work of the Sisters was very hard and then needed strength to minister to the lepers. They found their strength in the time of prayer, early in the morning.
ARISE, AND GO TO THE SOLITARY PLACE AND PRAY
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