1 Easy Step to Achieve Your Goal of A Better Prayer Life
There is one woman in the Bible who understood the importance of one thing.
She understood the importance of proximity to Jesus. Her name was Mary of Bethany.
We see Mary only three times in Scripture, yet in every instance, she is at Jesus’ feet (see Luke 10:38–41; John 11; 12:1–3). Somehow, she discovered the one thing that moved Jesus the most, and regardless of how unpopular it was, she gave herself to it.
Mary never had a big ministry. She never wrote her own epistle. In fact, we don’t hear anything about her after her appearance in John 12. And only one statement—one line—she said is recorded in the Word of God: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32).
Amazingly, every time we see her in the biblical text, Jesus was defending her, praising her, and calling all of us to look at her and model ourselves after her. It seems to me that this woman saw Jesus for who He was before everyone else. She saw Him, she figured out what moved Him, and she learned it. She learned His love language, and she fully threw herself into playing the strings of His heart. That’s why He defended her and why He fought her battles for her. That’s why, to me, she is one of the most impactful persons in the Bible outside of Jesus.
Courage to Sit
It took courage to do what Mary did—to sit when her sister, Martha, was working. To sit when there was so much going on. To sit instead of “doing” for Jesus.
From the very first time we meet her in the Word, Mary was breaking through norms and expectations. She was a box breaker. She shredded protocols, systems, and expectations. She broke through into a place in Jesus that few have ever breached. She broke through busyness, distraction, and anxiety. As a matter of fact, every time we see Mary, she was breaking through something in God. More specifically, she was breaking through the swirl of activity around Jesus.
First and foremost, Mary had the courage to sit down, shut up, and cultivate a history with God, building intimacy with Jesus and His Word. She learned to wait on Him—at His feet.
Let’s look more closely at our introduction to this courageous woman and her sister:
[Jesus] entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38–42).
If there are four terms that characterize the current state of the Church and specifically her leaders, they would be distracted, much serving, worried, and troubled. Distraction is the rule of the day. There is so much distraction in the Church, distraction in our ministries, distraction in our workplaces, distraction in our homes. Busyness, anxiety, and demands are all around Jesus. They generate a swirl whereby everything is moving around Him, including us. And the problem this can create is—as close as we may be to Him—we never encounter Him.
Why?
Because we’re caught in the swirl.
We need a new breed of people, who like Mary, refuse to worship the god of busyness. They refuse to worship the god of distraction. These people are courageous in that they refuse to miss the moment, so they choose to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen.
“We need a new breed of people, who like Mary, refuse to worship the god of busyness.”
God wants to train us in this hour to learn how to take advantage of the moment. He wants to teach us that doing something is not what releases an eruption in the Church. It’s not necessarily what releases Heaven on Earth. Waiting before Jesus, sitting at His feet, listening to Him—these are the agents that draw the power and glory of God earthward!
You don’t want to miss the moment when the Son of God is in your house. If you don’t learn to discover the holy moments of His presence in your house, in your car, in your bedroom, in your prayer closet, or in your workplace, you will be caught in the swirl, eddying all around Jesus, and you’ll never encounter Him.
When we become so busy with the activity surrounding Jesus and do not build our lives and churches at His feet, the fruit will manifest in our comparing our situation, our position, our work, our job, our ministry to that of another, and this will lead to an accusation against Jesus. That’s what happened to Martha.
“Don’t You Care?”
The mistake many make when looking at Martha and Mary in Luke 10 is they try to reduce this story to Mary versus Martha, but there is so much more going on than that. It’s not Mary versus Martha. It’s Mary before Martha. You see, we need both. Honestly, I believe that every true Mary will become a true Martha. When you sit at His feet, you become filled with the dreams of His heart, and that puts you to work to manifest His dreams in the earth. But it’s absolutely critical to find yourself at His feet, prioritizing Him over the stuff and needs around Him.
There is a divine order. There is a good part. There is a first commandment. There are first works, and Jesus is establishing this truth in this story.
Why wasn’t Martha seeing it?
She was too busy, too worried, too troubled, too caught up in doing, and her eyes had fixed on what someone else wasn’t doing. While not seeing the priority or value that Jesus was highlighting, she was seeing something. She was seeing her sister, Mary, and noticing that Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet, not helping her at all.
You always know you’re a Martha first when all you see are Marys at His feet.
One of the biggest lessons Jesus is teaching here answers this question: Where do you find your primary reward? Will His words define you, or will what you do for Him define you?
If you make what you do for Him your primary reward, there are several things that will begin to happen in your life. You will start seeing comparison, envy, and accusation against Jesus arise within. You can see this clearly by Martha’s response to Jesus: “Don’t you care that my sister has left me to serve alone?” Martha was questioning Jesus’ empathy and fairness.
You know you are serving in a wrong spirit when you become aware of what other people are not doing. This kind of serving will ultimately lead to accusation against Jesus concerning His empathy and fairness.
I’ve watched hundreds of people over the last two decades make what they do for Jesus their primary reward, and it always ends up with this growing accusation that Jesus isn’t paying them enough based on how much they’ve worked for Him. Comparison creeps in and wholly contaminates their spiritual lives. They always feel that they aren’t seen or appreciated and valued, and this leads to frustration, jealousy, envy, and anger.
Conversely, the heart rooted in intimacy is unaware of itself and unaware of everybody else in its service for Jesus. Mary didn’t see Mary, and she didn’t see Martha. She was just lost in Jesus. And the works born of doing the first works first result in works that last for eternity.
Dialed In to Listen
Mary did the most revolutionary thing ever. She refused to get caught up in the swirl of distraction around Jesus. She was blind to everyone and everything else but Jesus. She dialed down. She sat down. She shut up. She looked up. She listened. And she let Jesus fight her battles for her.
I believe God is raising up a new breed of people in the Body of Christ who are going to define success and impact in a different way. They won’t define success in how big, how much, or how great the size of their influence is. Neither will they continue to believe the lie that says, “The busier you are, the more successful and impactful you are.” Instead, success to them will be measured by the size of their hearts and present-day intimacy with God and His Word. This new breed will break agreement with the gods of busyness, distraction, and anxiety, and will prioritize minutes, hours, weeks, months, years, and decades at Jesus’ feet with their Bibles open and their hearts dialed in to listen.
The most impactful point of this story is that Mary sat down and heard Jesus’ words. The greatest impact we can have is when we move with Him in His timing. This is learned through waiting. Mary “sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word” (Luke 10:39).
I believe we’ve lost the power of His Word in our mouths because we’ve lost the power of His Word in our ears. There is a direct connection between the priority you give to hearing Him speak and the authority of your speaking for Him.
For years, I cried out to the Lord that none of my words would fall to the ground just like the prophet Samuel (see 1 Sam. 3:19). I’ll never forget when the Lord told me, “Corey, how do you expect none of your words to fall to the ground when so many of My words fall to the ground of your heart?”
In that moment, I realized God honors the words of His servants to the same degree that His servants honor His words.
When our lives and ministries are built more around busyness and managing opportunities than sitting at His feet and hearing His words, the words we speak and sing—no matter how biblical they are—do not carry the same weight and authority to shift people, change circumstances, and impact nations. They can’t and don’t release Heaven here on Earth.
We desperately need words that have been received in the furnace of silence and solitude at His feet. His words always break out of the silence, and we must begin to prioritize hearing those words. Then, because we have sat at His feet and listened to Him, His words that we deliver to others will have power. Our spending time listening to Jesus’ words will restore power to those words as we deliver them. They will have life and impact on the hearers.
My greatest fear about the day when I stand before Jesus and He then applies fire to my life’s work is that I find out that what took me sixty years to build is consumed in six milliseconds. Think of that—sixty years in six milliseconds!
I want to invest the best of my strength, energy, and time at a place that Jesus esteems and calls the good part.
Why?
Because He said that part “will not be taken away” (Luke 10:42).
Not Taken Away
Mary simply invested the most valuable commodity—her time—into eternity. She took the window of opportunity and sowed her time into eternity, and it will last forever. She sowed into a place where moth and rust cannot destroy (see Matt. 6:19–21). She sowed into a place unseen by man, and it resulted in eternal treasure.
We’ve graduated thousands of ministers from our seminaries, but are these men and women being trained in the lost art of waiting on God? Where are the priests who burn before God in empty rooms and have discovered the beauty of God, the mind of God, the ways of God, and when they speak of Him, they don’t regurgitate something they read in a book but speak from the mount of divine vision?
The kingdom was stripped from King Saul and given to a “man after God’s own heart” when Saul was driven by the demands of the people and, out of fear of losing them, felt compelled to act and didn’t wait on God (1 Sam. 15; Acts 13:21–22).
There is nothing more subtly deceptive in the Christian experience than the slow removal of the one thing and of its being first place, first priority, in your life. Another subtle deception is that it’s not that big of a deal. The devil will let you do a lot, but if you want to put hell on notice, take your seat at Jesus’ feet and don’t let any amount of money, platform, opportunity, betrayal, hardship, or tribulation talk you out of that.
The Lord told me years ago, “Corey, if you go after one thing, you will get everything. But if you go after everything, you will get nothing.”
How do we come out of the whirlwind of activity, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, open doors, and opportunities, and build a life of hearing His words?
In the simplest terms, it means making a time and place sacred and consistent, where you meet with God and it’s just you, Him, and your Bible. This one decision will dramatically alter everything in your life, and the enemy understands this more than most believers do.
“How do we come out of the whirlwind of activity, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, open doors, and opportunities, and build a life of hearing His words? In the simplest terms, it means making a time and place sacred and consistent, where you meet with God and it’s just you, Him, and your Bible.”
A life at Jesus’ feet looks like sitting long enough until all the other voices, inside and out, are drowned out. As soon as you get serious about this, every distraction under the sun will surface in your mind and emotions. Fantasies, seductions, and lusts of being richer, more successful, or more connected will emerge. Fears, insecurities, and lies will manifest. Just stay at His feet.
As you sit before the flame of His Word and Spirit, the dross will rise. Pay no attention to it. Just stay there.
Your mind will wander every three minutes, and you will quickly come up with things to do, people to see, and errands to run. Just write them down and keep looking at Him.
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, texts, e-mails, and videos will scream for you to see them, respond to them, and engage with them, but you can go for five more minutes. Just put your phone down and stay a little longer.
Boredom will settle in, and you will feel so raw as your bored heart comes into a realization that God isn’t as beautiful as you thought, and it’s just raw you and raw Him. Don’t be afraid of the boredom because, on the other side of the boredom, is a realm of fascination and glory that you will never get over. Just keep slowly reading that Bible and whispering it aloud until you see Him and hear Him.
Do whatever you have to do. Rock back and forth, pace back and forth, until you hear. Sing until you hear. Sit in silence until you hear. Just stay five more minutes.
The task master within will begin to tell you to quit being lazy and do something more productive with your time, your gifts, and your abilities, but don’t listen to the task master. Just stay a little longer. His voice will leave. I promise you.
Some voices will remind you of what you’ve done, even last night. They will whisper that you’re not worthy and could never be forgiven. They are lies. Just stay five more minutes.
When shame makes you want to hide from Him, sit at His feet and declare over yourself: “By Your blood, I’m clean, I’m righteous, and I’m blameless in Your sight.” Just keep declaring that and receive.
Other voices will condemn you because you’re not doing enough in regard to prayer. They will say you need to be more radical and more disciplined. Just take a deep breath and receive the Father’s full pleasure right now. There is nothing more you need to do. You are freely and fully loved, right now.
There will be voices from without where people need you to fix their problems, pray with them, talk to them, counsel them. Just tell them, “Five more minutes.”
These are only a few of the distractions, worry, and anxiety that surround sitting at His feet and hearing His Word. I promise you that, if you make this the priority and stay a little longer, you will discover life like you never have experienced it before.
“One Thing is Needed”
In the Kingdom, there are first things, first works, and a first commandment. The Bible tells us that, if we do the first things first, it will affect everything else we do. There is one thing needed. There is a good part. There are first works. There is a seeking first. David chose the one thing in Psalm 27:4. Paul chose it in Philippians 3:13–14, and Jesus is calling you to choose it today.
When you first read “one thing is needed,” you can think to yourself, How can only one thing be needed? Many things are needed. There are many aspects of the Christian life—of our own lives, our families, our marriages, and our kids. What does it mean for one thing to be needed?
When asking the Lord about this, I felt like He told me, “Corey, you need to understand that there is one decision, there is a one thing, and if you do this one thing, it will set a trajectory for many other things to be aligned in your life. If, however, you don’t get that one thing right, it will take you in a completely different direction. You can have the whole world yet lose your soul.”
If Jesus, the Son of God, highlights one thing that is needed above everything else, why aren’t we hearing much about this or seeing it modeled? Our silence on this issue is setting us up for dramatic exposure in the coming days.
I’m convinced that the present-day church and its leadership are simply not equipped internally to handle what is coming externally—it’s fire! It’s the glory of God and the shaking of everything that can be shaken.
God is driving His people into deeper intimacy with Him and into deeper intimacy with one another. He’s going to release great presence and great pressure on the whole globe to deliver us from our own ingenuity, our own wisdom, our own abilities, and our own thoughts while driving us into greater humility, mission, and unity with the Holy Spirit. He’s going to release great presence and great pressure.
Why?
Because presence and pressure produce prayer. And in prayer at the feet of Jesus, listening to His words, is where He is going to develop the life of prayer anointed by the spirit of prayer.
We only unify with that which we submit to. We only unify with the Holy Spirit to the degree that we submit to the Holy Spirit.
“We only unify with that which we submit to. We only unify with the Holy Spirit to the degree that we submit to the Holy Spirit.”
Because we have falsely concluded that success is solely found in how big, how much, and how many versus the current size of our hearts and present-day intimacy with Jesus and each other, we aren’t prepared to navigate the coming dynamics.
We must draw close to God and each other to navigate these days because they won’t get any easier than today. As the Lord told the prophet Jeremiah, “If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses?” (Jer. 12:5).
In today’s language, how are we going to handle a ten on our treadmills when the two is wearing us out?
You Must Choose
Jesus said, “Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42).
So, what did Mary do?
Mary chose. She had a choice. Jesus did not make the choice for her. Neither will He make it for you but will honor the choice you make.
I believe God is offering one of the greatest choices to you in this hour. Can you—in the midst of all the allurements, voices, seductions, opportunities, and money—choose to sit at His feet with a Bible open and an engaged heart, listening to His voice?
It’s one thing to sit at His feet when you have no options, but what about when you live in a nation that is filled with options? Who can do it in the big cities? God is calling for a people out of Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco, New York City, Tokyo, London, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Nairobi, and every other city in the world who can begin to declare war on the seduction of busyness by dialing down and listening. He’s also calling people in little towns and communities from all the countries of the world to come out of boredom and to discover fascination with Him, our beautiful God.
Jesus made a profound statement in Luke 10. In essence, He said what this girl did—her refusing to get caught in the swirl around Him and choosing instead to look at Him and listen to Him—will live forever. Mary took her greatest commodity—time—and sowed it into a place where moth and rust cannot destroy. What she did will NEVER be taken away from her. Eternal treasures. Eternal investments. This is the stuff I’m going after. I want the stuff that will live forever. I want the stuff that will endure the fire of His gaze and be carried with me into eternity as gold, silver, and precious stones, don’t you?
I’ll never forget hearing a teaching from Leonard Ravenhill on 1 Corinthians 3. He spoke on how the eternal fire of God will be applied to our works here in the earth to see whether they were done for God or for ourselves. Here’s the portion of Scripture Ravenhill was preaching from:
Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire (1 Corinthians 3:12–15).
In this message, Ravenhill highlighted the difference between the gold, silver, and precious stones and the wood, hay, and straw. He stated that you find the gold, silver, and precious stones under the ground, hidden from the eyes of men, while you find the other three above the ground where everyone can see.2
We are going to be utterly shocked at the judgment seat when we find the stuff that everyone saw in this age isn’t as beautiful with the eyes of eternity, yet the stuff that was hidden from the eyes of men and known only to God will translate to gold, silver, and precious stones that we will carry with us into the age to come.
I want to be like Mary who did something that will never be taken away, something that will live forever; therefore, I am choosing to sit at Jesus’ feet, dial in, and listen to His words because it’s from this place my life will have its greatest impact, and it’s from here the lifestyle of prayer is developed.
