Tag: disciples of Jesus

I Kings 18: 42-43 ” So Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Mt. Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees. ‘Go and look towards the sea,’ he told his servant. And he went up and looked. ‘There is nothing there,’ he said. Seven times Elijah said, ‘Go back.’ “

This is a wonderful example of persistent prayer.  The kind of determined, tenacious, even stubborn prayer where we refuse to get out of the Lord’s face until He does something.  In Luke 18: 1-8, Jesus tells the parable about the widow looking for justice who wore the judge down with her persistence.  At the end of this story He instructs His disciples to have the same kind of unabashed audacity in prayer … to not give up.

John 19:40 ” Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.”

Both Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were members of the Jewish Council, but both were also secretly disciples of Jesus. Observance of the Law caused Joseph to boldly ask Pilate for the body, for it was Preparation Day, and the sun was quickly setting…they didn’t want the body of Jesus to remain on the cross during the Sabbath. So these two Teachers of the Law carefully prepared their Lord’s body according to custom, but pondering all the while what Jesus had said was to come.