3 Ways We Learn to Pray From Jesus

 The Prayer Teacher

When you want to learn something, you want to learn from the best. If you can learn from the master, the one who instigated and established the discipline, you want to understand all the better. Who knows the ins and outs of any skill better than the one who first established it? You and I have the great privilege of learning from the Master Pray-er, the One who instigated prayer from the beginning, and designed it so that it works as He means for it to work. He knows the intricacies and the potential roadblocks. He established prayer and pioneered prayer. He wants to be our Rabbi and to teach us everything He knows about prayer.

Not only does He know all about prayer, but He knows all about us. He knows every detail about each one of us. He knows how we learn, and what our bent is, and what it will take to teach any one of us exactly what we need to know to live the abundant life He promised. He knows what lies behind that has colored our perceptions of prayer and of Him, and He knows what lies ahead that will challenge our faith past its current boundaries. He is the perfect teacher. Fully versed in His subject and fully aware of His student.

He loves His subject matter. Have you ever had a teacher who just loved the material they were teaching? Jesus loves prayer. When He teaches you to pray, He will be teaching you His own heart.  His love for prayer will be infectious. He will creatively design modules for your learning that will engage you fully and will be designed with just your learning style and personality and experience in mind. He’ll be your private tutor, while also bringing you into prayer experiences in community of believers.

Learning Prayer

You have access to the perfect Teacher in Rabbi Jesus. What will it take to be the best student—disciple—you can be so that you can learn all that He wants to impart?

First, believe. Believe Him. Believe that He is available to you and loves you and longs for you to experience all of Him that you possibly can.  

Remember that He said, “Everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). He will continue to make the Father known. He will keep teaching you. He always has more to disclose to you and it delights Him to continue showing you more and more of the Father.

The more we know the Father, the more we love the Son. The more we love the Son, the more His presence in us is made real to us. This is the very core of a praying life—the flow of love between your heart and His.  

First, believe Him. Second, yield to Him. Let Him run the show. Trust that He knows how to accomplish in you and for you exactly what He has in mind, and that He has in mind only your good. Your advancement. Your peace.

You can only yield to one you trust. Otherwise, you have to be ready to take the reins yourself in case things go off course. You have to be watching for a wrong move. You have to be careful and protective of your own course in case someone tries to head you in the wrong direction. Can you fully yield to Him, knowing that Jesus loves you beyond reason, with an obsessive love that hovers over you and manages even the smallest moments of your life?

First, believe. Second, yield. Third, follow. The call to prayer is not a command, but an invitation. He is calling you to a journey. He is calling you to follow Him (Mark 1:17). The call is active and risky. The great surprise in a praying life is that you find your little life swept up into the great purposes of God. Prayer is not passive or sedentary. It will catch you up in the current of His activity, and you will never be the same. Risky becomes safe when it is in response to the leading of Jesus.

Jennifer Kennedy Dean is executive director of the Praying Life Foundation and a respected author and speaker. The author of numerous books, studies, and magazine articles specializing in prayer and spiritual formation, Jennifer has written Heart’s Cry, which has been named National Day of Prayer’s signature book. Her book Live aPraying Life® has been called a flagship work on prayer. Her latest book is Synced: Living Connected to the Heart of Jesus.

Find out more about Jennifer at www.prayinglife.org.