"Lord, teach us to pray..."

In Luke’s account of Jesus’ teaching on “the Lord’s Prayer”, it all begins with a request from the disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray.” In this season, I’ve been gripped by this request and the reason is because of the context in which it’s asked.

In Luke 10, the disciples are sent out by Jesus to proclaim the message He had proclaimed and to do the things he did. When they return from their mission, the Scriptures tell us they do so rejoicing and joyfully reported, “Lord, even the demons obey us (or submit to us) when we use your name!”

Even after seeing demons submit to them, the disciples longed for more… but it wasn’t more miracles or more power; more preaching or more knowledge. They asked to be taught how to pray. They longed for more intimacy with the Father. I wonder if this was an early lesson from Jesus—that all the miracles, all the results, all the power and influence weren’t enough to satisfy their deepest longings. I wonder if they returned from their mission with amazing testimonies but with a nagging ache in their souls.

I wonder this because I’ve felt this. I feel this.

My performance (and the results of my performance) are an ever-moving target. There are plenty of days where I just feel like a total failure. But even on the other days, it’s there. No matter how great things seem to be going or how great other people tell me I’m doing… there’s this nagging longing. I think the Lord might be walking me through the same lesson he was teaching these disciples—that maybe, just maybe, I’m aiming at the wrong target.

“Blake, you’re aiming at the wrong target.”

What if we measured success by intimacy, not productivity? Maybe you’re like me and when you hear this, your rebuttal is a quick: “Productivity isn’t bad!” And you’d be absolutely correct. It’s just a bad master. It’s a bad standard. Because guess what? It’s never satisfied. At the end of a productive day, you know what I hear? “More. You need to do more.”

But think about this story with the disciples… What greater earthly results could they achieve than the denomic powers submitting to them and fleeing from them? Healing people from their sicknesses and diseases? Seeing sinners saved and sufferers restored? You can’t be much more productive than that… Have you ever gotten to the end of something you thought would satisfy you but were only left wanting. I imagine they looked at Jesus with this nagging ache within their souls and asked themselves: “What’s wrong with us? What does he have that we don’t? What does he prioritize that we don’t?”

Then—after they realize—they go to him. “Lord, teach us to pray.” It wasn’t his power or his preaching; it was his praying.

This is beautiful because, guess what? One day, these apostles would be powerless but they never had to be prayerless. They would be in prison. They would be in exile. They would be on death row. But they would never be without the presence. Because Jesus taught them to preach? to heal? No. Because Jesus taught them to pray.

Jesus was teaching them to long for and cling to that which could never be lost and would never fluctuate.

Some of us only feel like God is moving when the miraculous is happening. Jesus didn’t want them to find joy in the fluctuating results of ministry but in the neverending love of God. “Rejoice not because the demons submit to you but because your names are written in Heaven.”

Why do we struggle to actually believe this and walk this out? Because it’s hard. Prayer is resistance. It’s resistance to the flesh, to human strategies and systems, to the principalities and powers, to the devil and darkness itself.

It’s resistance to the flesh. Every time I go to pray, my flesh gets enraged. “Work harder. Do more. Stop sitting and praying. Go do something!” When I pray, I’m warring against the arrogance of my flesh. We can’t do this on our own. We can’t follow Jesus on our own. We can’t resist temptation on our own. We can’t minister to others in our own strength. We can’t love our spouses or stay faithful in our singleness on our own. We can’t parent our kids or love our friends well on our own. Prayer is resistance to the arrogant attempt of the self to do things on its own or try to satisfy itself.

It’s resistance to human strategies and systems. The less I pray, the more tempted I am to depend on other means than the Spirit. It’s the same from a strategic point of view. As we look across the landscape of Western Christianity, we’ve never seen churches bigger, more creative, or better resourced in the history of the world. Yet, we are in the greatest moment of spiritual decline in history. I think we’ve seen the best we can do with the systems and strategies of man. Maybe it’s time to go back to the Lord and ask that he teach us to pray. We’ve got innovation nailed down… but struggle to pray. Maybe it’s time for fewer whiteboards and more prayer closets (this hurts because I love whiteboards).

It’s resistance to the principalities and powers; to the devil and darkness. When you pray, it matters. EM Bounds once said, “Prayer is God’s business to which men can attend. Prayer is God’s necessary business, which men only can do and that men must do.” Prayer is God inviting us into His Work. It’s an invitation to the business of Heaven. It’s the means through which God is executing His will. This doesn’t mean our work doesn’t matter. It just means that prayer is what makes our work matter. Prayerless work is Godless work. The enemy wants more Godless work. More loud, busy, often pretty and creative work that doesn’t bear lasting fruit. But when we pray, we step into the spiritual realm and war with spiritual power and principalities—the things beneath and behind the things in the physical realm that are plaguing people and resisting the work of God. Prayer matters. It is the real work of ministry.

“Satan dreads nothing but prayer. His one concern is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, he mocks our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.” —Samuel Chadwick

This is why this season is primarily focused on establishing a culture of prayer and forging deep relationships that can sustain the work God has called us to. Kingdom City Church is driven by 5 pursuits and the first one is “the presence of Jesus” because that’s what we want to be at the center of who are and what we do.

In Revelation 2, Jesus rebukes the church at Ephesus not because they weren’t productive, impactful, or influential. He rebukes them because they forgot their first love and lost the presence of Jesus. It’s so easy to do—personally and corporately. To rejoice more in the demons submitting than you do in the presence of Jesus.

So I hope you’ll join us—join me—in humbly approaching Jesus in this season to beg: “Lord, teach us to pray.”