The Silent Jesus

Learning from Our Lord's Life of Prayer

Mike Wallbridge

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781666701326, 9781666701333
• eBook ISBN: 9781666701340
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Although it is never made explicit in the text, when we read the Gospels as story, we can picture a Jesus who, for most of the time, walked through life in unhurried peace and calmness. So unrushed was he that two people in need of his healing died because he would not allow himself to be dictated to by circumstances. God received greater glory through Jesus, later raising both Lazarus and Jairus's daughter from the dead. But in a busy world full of need, poverty, and sickness, Jesus walked through first-century Israel with apparent ease. He desires us to live in the same way.But how do we do that in a demanding and stressful, modern world? How did Jesus manage it? Much of the answer lies in Jesus's personal prayer life and his relationship to the Father. In these pages, join the author in his long quest to follow Jesus into that most intimate of relationships to experience something of the "unforced rhythms of grace" (Matt 11: 28-30, MSG) and the deep love of the Father.

Chapter 1—Jesus’ Prayer Life

Sprinkled throughout the Synoptic Gospels are six verses that point to perhaps four instances of Jesus’ personal times of prayer. Given these verses don’t appear to say anything profound or new, they are easy to overlook, although Luke obviously felt the solitary prayer times were important enough to mention on three occasions.

Some months back, Eugene Peterson, my former professor, came to mind for no apparent reason, and I tried to remember his favorite Bible verse. Why? I didn’t know. I did know it concerned Jesus walking into the hills to pray. I read through the Gospels and discovered the verses listed below, which said much the same thing in various ways. The exercise didn’t help me remember Eugene’s favorite, possibly a verse from Mark, but the six verses stuck with me in the following days and weeks—until, one day, God opened them up to me and revealed a key, a way into the book I believed he wanted me to write. The verses, in chronological order, are:

1. Mark 1:35: Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Luke 4:42: At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The two Scriptures probably refer to the same event. Note that “wilderness” or “desert” replace “solitary place” in many translations.
2. Luke 5:16: But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Again, “wilderness” and “desert” are used in many translations.
3. Luke 6:12: One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. This was the night before Jesus chose the twelve disciples.
4. Matthew 14:23: After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone. Mark 6:46: After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray. Both passages probably refer to the same event after the feeding of the five thousand.

These verses, taken together, suggest a regular pattern of withdrawing to a place of solitude to pray; the word “often” appears in many translations of Luke 5:16. No surprise there. Jesus liked to pray. But these verses hold a gem of truth that points to a life following Jesus radically different from and simpler than most Christians in the Western evangelical world live today.

One significant aspect of these texts is the time Jesus spent in prayer. Although Luke 6:12 is the only instance where all-night prayer is mentioned, Jesus may have prayed through the night at other times. And even if he didn’t, his times of prayer, requiring walking up into the desert or hills, were never a matter of the minutes by which we may measure our quiet times but of hours. Even so, it is unlikely he talked with God the whole time. Can you imagine Jesus doing that? Whether silent or spoken aloud, verbal prayer is often our limited view of what prayer is. I suggest that the time Jesus spent talking with God would probably have been brief. Remember when Jesus spoke on long prayers? He said, “When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”1

God may have spoken to Jesus at times, though, again, I can’t imagine the Father chattering on at length. Apart from an occasional nap, I think it probable that for much of these times of prayer, Jesus simply communed with God in periods of attentive silence.

Peterson wrote: “Jesus’ nights of prayer suggest a ‘being there’ with God in silence and solitude,”2 recognizing that, in the hours Jesus spent with God, verbal prayer was likely to give way to silent listening and keeping company with God.

I discovered something of the silence Jesus experienced in the small seaside town in Wales, where I began my new life as a Christian. A long beach stretched to a hill at the north end of the town, and given my love of mountains, I soon explored the cliffs that rose from the sea. With a little scrambling, I discovered a ledge I christened the “prayer rock,” a comfortable shelf of slate hidden from the town and beach. There, I could gaze out at the sea with nothing to disturb my vision but for an occasional passing dolphin or seal. Regularly, I sat for an hour or more, my eyes stilled by the water, my mind filled with God in a loving silence.

Going back to the verses, as an illustration, I would like to delve a little deeper into Luke 6:12, where Jesus spent the night praying to God before choosing the disciples. Of the six verses, it is the only one suggesting a purpose for the time of prayer. Selecting the twelve would have been uppermost in Jesus’ mind. We can only hazard a guess at what Jesus asked the Father. But I’m comfortable accepting that Jesus asked for the discernment the next day to choose the right men in accordance with God’s will. And I’m equally comfortable with the idea that Jesus didn’t need to ask anything of the Father. Either way, little needed to be said, and the importance of the night lay in the silent communion that nurtured the intimacy between Father and Son. Such closeness would ultimately lead to what my spiritual director calls “sanctified intuition”—the discernment, the “knowing” that Jesus would have had when he encountered each of the Twelve.

Mother Teresa was once asked, “When you pray, what do you say to God?”

Mother Teresa replied, “I don’t say anything. I listen.”

“Well, okay,” the interviewer said, perplexed. “When God speaks to you, then, what does he say?”

“He doesn’t say anything. He listens. And if you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it to you.”

If you don’t understand that, then you are not alone—neither did I once—but by the end of the book, I hope you will. The story is, I believe, a priceless example of the silent communion Jesus enjoyed with the Father.

1. Matthew 6:7–8.

2. Eugene Peterson, unpublished letter to the author, October 15, 1999.

Chapter 2—The Nature of Silence

So what is this silence, this silent prayer that Jesus supposedly practiced in his times with the Father?

First, it does not necessarily refer to absolute silence. Instead, it describes a time when we (as I submit Jesus did) choose to be silent and surrender ourselves to God in an attentive, loving gaze, receiving his love in return. We allow him to have sovereignty over our time together—something we rarely do in church or our quiet times. And in that silence, what we experience, whether or not he speaks directly to us, is God’s prerogative. For instance, my wife, Livia, and I once led a small group in silent prayer. God gave a friend, practicing it for the first time, a picture of herself walking by a river hand in hand with Jesus, leading her to tears of healing.

Second, for those who practice silent prayer, past and present, silence is the typical experience. Over the years, as I have spent an hour each morning sitting with God, I have apparently received nothing that I can recall but silence: no word, no pictures, no extraordinary sense of God’s presence. Despite that, a day doesn’t feel right if it hasn’t begun with that hou...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1—Jesus’ Prayer Life
• Chapter 2—The Nature of Silence
• Chapter 3—A Biblical and Historical Context
• Chapter 4—Relationship with God
• Chapter 5—The Context of Prayer
• Chapter 6—Ministry
• Chapter 7—Practicing Silence
• Chapter 8—The Fruits of Silent Prayer
• Chapter 9—Another Way
• Chapter 10—My Story
• Conclusion
• Bibliography