Before Everything, He Prayed

First, Jesus Prayed

Before stepping into His public ministry—with all its demands, challenges, opportunities, and threats—Jesus spent an extended season alone in prayer.

Before He selected those twelve unique men to walk beside Him as disciples, He prayed through the night.

Before leaving the comfort of Capernaum to begin His stretch of village-to-village ministry, He prayed through the night.

Before stepping into the boat to deepen the disciples’ understanding of His power, authority, and priorities, He first withdrew to pray.

And before walking the final stretch from Gethsemane to Calvary—facing betrayal, arrest, trial, suffering, and death—He prayed again through the night.

Prayer Precedes Process

No small wonder, then, that before sending His disciples into the field—two by two, toward people of peace in miscellaneous villages, extending hope, bringing healing, and building relationships through which the Kingdom would advance—He first told them to pray.

“The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’”
— Luke 10:1–2

In the economy of God, within the work of Christ, supplication precedes strategy. Prayer precedes process. Conversation with the Father comes before any movement toward the mission.

It’s not that prayer ends when strategy begins—it’s that strategy must never begin without prayer being the prevailing priority.

Every movement worth making begins on our knees.