Yet Jesus himself frequently withdrew to the wilderness and prayed.

during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,

And the child kept growing and becoming strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he was revealed to Israel.

When John’s messengers had gone, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one shouting in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make his paths straight.

The next morning Jesus departed and went to a deserted place. Yet the crowds were seeking him, and they came to him and tried to keep him from leaving them.

For Jesus had started commanding the evil spirit to come out of the man. (For it had seized him many times, so he would be bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard. But he would break the restraints and be driven by the demon into deserted places.)

“Which one of you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go look for the one that is lost until he finds it?

Now the day began to draw to a close, so the twelve came and said to Jesus, “Send the crowd away, so they can go into the surrounding villages and countryside and find lodging and food, because we are in an isolated place.”