The Prayer that Tops All Prayers…

The disciples saw it all. They witnessed every miracle. They heard every message. They beheld every deliverance. They observed every prayer.

For three and a half years, the disciples got a front row seat to Jesus’ life. They watched God the Son talking to God the Father through God the Spirit. The One through whom everything was made—the One through whom all the worlds were formed—communed with the Father in the very presence of the disciples. And they weren’t witnessing some religious activity performed by Jesus. No, prayer was His life, His inhale, His exhale.

Jesus didn’t have to stir Himself in any way to start a conversation with the Father. He simply moved from speaking words to those around Him to lifting His eyes to Heaven and talking to the Father.

Not only did the disciples see Jesus pray, they watched in awe as Jesus cast out demons with a word. They stared in disbelief as Jesus healed lepers, made the lame to walk, and caused the blind to see. They heard His masterful Sermon on the Mount and were often perplexed by His metaphors on the Kingdom of Heaven. They observed His effortless evangelism with the woman at the well. They looked on with great amazement as He brought the dead back to life. They even saw Lazarus come up out of the tomb after having been dead for four days!

Yes, the disciples were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and ministry, yet we don’t see one recorded time in Scripture where they petitioned Jesus, “Teach us to preach.” We don’t see one recorded time where they said, “Teach us to heal,” “Teach us to prophesy,” or “Teach us to do miracles.” After spending three and a half years with the Son of God, they requested, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1).

At the end of the day, what the disciples wanted was Jesus’ prayer life. They wanted what happened when He closed His eyes and spoke to the Father. They understood there was a way to pray, and they desperately wanted to be taught it. They had connected the dots and discovered that Jesus’ public life of ministry was the direct result of His private life of prayer.

Their request has made me reevaluate my call as a leader. It has provoked me to ask Jesus to teach me to pray. It has driven my pursuit of Him over the past twenty-five years of my life. It has also caused me to ask myself, if the greatest leader of all time produced this in the ones who saw Him the most—if the greatest leader of all time came down from Heaven to Earth to teach His disciples about prayer—what am I doing? Does anyone want my prayer life?

It’s time for some introspection for us all in the Body of Christ. With everything we are doing for the Kingdom, I am concerned we are not doing the one thing that will make all the difference, and that’s modeling and teaching Jesus’ life of prayer. The reason I am concerned is because prayer is the great exposer of reality. The twentieth-century revivalist Leonard Ravenhill rightfully said, “No man is greater than his prayer life.”1 We can fool people, we can wow people, but what happens when we close our eyes and open our mouths? That’s the litmus test of reality that cannot be manipulated or faked.

Oh, that we all would ask, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

This request has been lacking in the Church, but I believe God is stirring us as He is awakening us to the hour in which we live. I’m grateful for the messages that have told me I need to pray, but I believe we are in a new hour that requires mothers and fathers who have broken through the plastic encounter into something so real that, when they open their mouths, angels move, demons move, and hearts move!

“Oh, that we all would ask, ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’”

This generation is looking for those who will take them by the hand and introduce them to the realm of Heaven and teach them how to bring it down here on Earth. We need those who will teach us how to access resources and have them manifested in our lives, in our nations, and in our generations!

The disciples understood that every other ministry Jesus manifested was the direct result of His ministry to the Father in prayer. Jesus taught them on how to access Heaven and change Earth. We need more than just instructors who teach us principles of prayer. We need messengers to impart keys to ascending into Heaven and releasing it into the earth, changing real lives and real circumstances with Heaven’s resources.

Releasing Heaven on Earth

After I got saved in 1997 as I was just entering my twenties, I spent two years with two fifty-year-old women and one eighty-year-old woman. These women taught me how to pray. They taught me about early morning prayer, late night prayer, and “praying through.” They taught me not to wait on my favorite song to play before I started praying, but to take the Word of God, mingle it with communion with the Holy Spirit, and begin to declare God’s Word back to Him. All of these things marked me deeply, but even more deeply than that was experiencing what I felt and what I saw when they opened their mouths: I could feel God. I got to watch them bring Heaven down to Earth.

I am grateful for their training and for much of the training of the Body of Christ in the area of prayer, but the truth is we need more of it, and we need it to rise up from the pages of books and be fleshed out in real time by mothers and fathers who don’t just talk about it or preach about it, but they actually do it.

One of the greatest places this is going to happen is in our homes. I have a vision for a generation of mothers and fathers. I see their children rising in the morning and finding Mom and Dad in the living room with their Bibles open, notebooks open, pen in hand, and worship music on. I see their children looking at the faces of their parents, beholding the tears streaming down Mom’s and Dad’s faces as they pray to the Father in Heaven. I see those children grow with the understanding that prayer is not something done once a week at church—it’s a lifestyle. I see them understanding life is all about having an ongoing, intimate relationship with a real Man named Jesus. And then I see these children pursuing Him with the same consistent burning desire as their parents.

Parents, your kids will remember your tears when you talked to Jesus far more than your words to them about following Jesus.

This, my friend, is what will produce a new breed of believers, leaders, and missionaries. That kind of prayer and relationship with God will impact the Church and the Kingdom of God like no other activity we can do.

“Teach us to pray.” This is where we begin our journey toward closing the gap between where we are now in proximity and where Jesus wants to take us in intimacy. It’s also the school of prayer where we learn how to ascend into Heaven so that we can release Heaven on Earth. This journey will change us, purify us, and refine us, but it will also prepare us to be conduits of Heaven in the earth.

Three years ago, while pressing into Luke 11 and the disciples’ desire to be taught in prayer, I heard the Holy Spirit say to me, “Corey, I want you to join Me in teaching this generation in prayer. I want you to take the last twenty-five years of prayer and the messages they have produced, take a generation by the hand, and bring them to Me. I also want you to take the times you didn’t do it right and break shame off a generation so they can come boldly to the throne of grace.”

My book, Teach Us To Pray along with other resources and messages are my feeble attempts to give to Jesus what He longs for: His people to be a people of prayer and His house to be a house of prayer.

We’ve got to move from just being told to pray to giving a generation instruction on how to pray and how to pray when it’s hard—when they hit the walls of failure, of shame, and of boredom.

I believe that the spirit of prayer falls on the life of prayer, so I want to show you what a life of prayer looks like, finding out where and how it is developed and lived. The Holy Spirit loves to take bored, distracted people like us, bring us to the throne room, and teach us how to access Heaven. And through our mouths and our lives, He releases Heaven into the earth. Whether you’ve been walking with the Lord 5 minutes, 5 years, or 50 years, I believe that this book has the potential to release a radical shift of intimacy and authority in your prayer life.