How to Pray Like Jesus: 4 Secrets That’ll Transform Your Prayer Life
Wouldn’t you have loved to hear Jesus preach?
The Scriptures say that all who heard Him were astonished by His teaching. What about His miracles? Don’t you wish you could have witnessed the feeding of the five thousand, the opening of blind eyes, the healing of paralytics, or the resurrection of Lazarus? And wouldn’t you have loved to listen to Jesus prophesy to the Samaritan woman or see His deliverance ministry?
It blows me away that the disciples never asked Jesus to teach them about any of these things. They never asked for a seminar on preaching, healing, or deliverance. Instead, they asked about prayer: “Teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). The very question is revelatory in nature. It meant they understood that Jesus’ public life was fueled by His private devotional life with the Father. They saw the priority He gave to intercession, and they connected the dots. “We want Your prayer life, because if we get Your prayer life we’ll receive everything that flows from it. If we get Your secret life, we’ll get Your public life.”
What did the disciples see when they watched Jesus retreat to secluded places and spend the night in prayer again and again? Scripture says He often withdrew into the wilderness (Luke 5:16), He arose before daylight (Mark 1:35), and He sent the multitudes away (Matthew 14:23)—all for the sake of prayer. Hebrews 5:7 declares that as a man Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear.” This was not just how He prayed at Gethsemane; it was how He prayed daily. And He was heard not because of His divinity, but because of His prayers and godly fear. In other words, Jesus was not operating as God to produce signs and wonders; He had to win His ministry breakthroughs in the place of intercession like any other man. I believe the hours He spent in the wilderness laboring in prayer secured the open heaven He walked under the next day. Jesus had to lean into God; He wrestled in inter- cession to see the kingdom manifest.
Prayer not only consumed Jesus’ private life but was at the heart of the message He proclaimed. In His first and last public sermons—the Sermon on the Mount and the Olivet Discourse— He spoke about prayer. Altogether there are 175 verses on prayer found in the Gospels. This was not a side issue for Him. He opened up the world of heaven to us and made it accessible. He introduced us to His Father and made Him our Father. He came and invited us into a life of prayer, dependence, fellowship, asking, and perseverance—a life rooted in the secret place and connected to the Father.
Today the Body of Christ is filled with training seminars and min- istry schools—and these are good and necessary. But where is the school that teaches us to pray? Where are the leaders whose lives cause those around them to cry out, “Teach us to pray?” If this is the primary question Jesus provoked within the disciples, we must ask ourselves whether others are stirred to prayer because of our lives. Will others see in us what the disciples saw in the life of Jesus? Leonard Ravenhill asks these very questions in his classic work on revival:
The most important thing a man can study is the prayer part of the Book. But where is this taught? Let us strip off the last bandage and declare that many of our presidents and teach- ers do not pray, shed no tears, know no travail. Can they teach what they do not know?2
We are going to examine the life of Jesus in the Gospels and look at the principles of intercession laid out in His teaching and ministry. As the great intercessor E. M. Bounds observed, “Jesus Christ teaches the importance of prayer by His urgency to His disciples to pray. But He shows us more than that. He shows how far prayer enters into the purposes of God.”
The Sermon on the Mount
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son. (Hebrews 1:1–2a)
From before the beginning of time, Jesus had been waiting to reveal Himself to men and women. When He finally came to earth, He was silent for thirty years while the message He carried burned within Him. Finally, after His baptism and forty days of fasting and prayer, He emerged from the wilderness and gathered a crowd to the hillside of Galilee. He was ready to speak.
Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:2–3)
The first word out of His mouth was “blessed.” Jesus came to teach us about happiness, about the way to live a fulfilled and successful life in heaven’s eyes. Immediately, however, He dethroned the standard definitions of happiness and success by declaring that we must be poor, mournful, hungry, and pure if we want to enter the kingdom. Altogether Jesus listed eight attitudes of the heart that we are called to develop in our lives, and then He highlighted the different ways we can practically develop these attitudes. Prayer is at the top of the list.
His opening statement on prayer is startling: “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites” (Matthew 6:5a). This is probably not how you or I would begin a sermon on prayer. The first thing He does is point to the Pharisees and say, “Do not be like them. Run in the opposite direction.” His intensity was fueled by a desire to ignite relationship, not religion, within the hearts of His disciples. The Pharisees were all about religion; they claimed to be seeking after God but failed to cultivate any of the heart attitudes Jesus listed as primary kingdom values. Their prayers actually hardened them, creating barriers of pride, self-righteousness, and performance. With this initial warning, Jesus sought to radically shift the culture of prayer generated by these religious leaders.
Next He specifically highlighted two tendencies we must violently uproot in order to connect with the Father. The first is the need to be seen and admired by men.
For they [hypocrites] love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. (Matthew 6:5b–6)
In other words, “Prayer is about talking to a Person, not being seen by the multitudes. It is a relationship, not a religious activity. It is an intimate place of communion, not a public place of performance.” We are so easily caught in the rat race, measuring and comparing ourselves with those around us and striving for their approval. The only antidote is to rest in the knowledge that our Father sees and hears us when we are hidden from everyone else.
We like to call this “living before the eyes of One.” This expression always reminds me of the story of a great concert pianist who once played before an audience of thousands. He received a standing ovation and afterward was asked what this meant to him. He replied that he only had eyes for a little old man standing near the back of the concert hall—his former teacher—and that his applause meant more than anything else. The antidote to seeking the praise of man lies in turning within and seeking God’s presence. Shutting the door rep- resents pushing out all distractions, disconnecting from the pressures of life and opinions of others, and quieting our soul before the Father. The secret place can refer to a physical space or a posture of the heart. Either way, in the secret place we turn our focus deep within, where God dwells, and we talk to Him. We can practice this anywhere—in a crowded room, an empty room, in the car, at the store, in the office. As we lock eyes with our Father who sees, we are cultivating a holy secret place we take with us everywhere.
Although Jesus warns us against following the example of the Pharisees, He does promise us we will be rewarded for our prayers. When it comes to rewards in the kingdom, we get what we want. If we are consumed with the opinions of man, if we desire praise and an impressive reputation more than anything, that is what we will get. Can you hear the warning in His voice as Jesus proclaims that the hypocrites already have their reward? “The multitudes think you are awesome. They believe you are godly and holy—that’s all you get. That’s your fifty cents. You could have had eternal riches, you could have had everything the Father has bestowed on Me, but you settled for a false and temporary reputation.”
However, when we set our hearts to live before the eyes of God in the secret place, He promises to put us on display before others and publicly attest to our faithfulness. I believe there are many rewards that will manifest in a believer’s life when they give themselves to praying in secret. Favor, anointing, financial provision—these are all things we can experience in this age. Greater than these, though, are the eternal rewards we will receive in the next age. Paul speaks of gold, silver, and precious stones (1 Corinthians 3:12–14), while Jesus promises power and authority to believers who overcome sin in the battleground of the heart (Revelation 2:25–27; 3:21). I think we will be shocked when we see God face to face and look upon the rewards He has for us.
The second tendency we must fight as we seek to grow in prayer is placing our confidence in language.
And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. (Matthew 6:7-8a)
At first glance this might seem like a warning against praying the same phrases repeatedly. However, at the core this verse is about relying on our own words to make something happen. It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if we have the right language, if we follow the protocol and say the right things, then God will respond. At the same time, how many of us want to sound spiritual when we pray in front of a room full of people? Prayers that are meant to sound impressive to those around us also fall into the category of vain repetitions. Jesus exposes both of these heart postures, reminding us that only one thing is accepted in the presence of God: the right heart. Our words won’t matter if our hearts are disconnected. It is important to note that repetition in and of itself is not evil. I have prayed Ephesians 1:17–19 thousands of times over the last decade, and I genuinely believe that each time I do God hears me and moves in power. Though I use the same words, they come from a genuine heart of sincerity.
For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. (Matthew 6:8b)
In other words, care less about what it looks and sounds like, and more about cultivating faith and hunger. This is the core tension of intercession: our Father knows what we need, but He still wants us to ask. Why? Because He wants a relationship. Through the dialogue of relationship, our hearts, minds, and wills are knit to His, and we grow in the confidence that we are speaking into the open ear of heaven.
These, then, are some of the principles of intercession found in the Sermon on the Mount:
Prayer is one of the most practical ways we can enter into a life of happiness and success in God’s eyes.
Prayer is not about what we say or who sees us; it is about locking eyes with the Father and entering His presence with the right heart.
God knows what we need, but He still wants to hear our voices. Prayer requires us to live in the tension of faith and desperation.
The Father actually rewards those who seek Him in prayer. We experience a measure of these rewards in this age, and we will experience them fully in the next.
