Teach Us to Pray: Prayer That Accesses Heaven and Changes Earth

by Corey Russell

As good as this may be, we cannot legislate love for Jesus in the heart. We have had more political and cultural power than those in the persecuted Church could fathom and yet our love grows cold.

We don’t need more ideas about what we should do, we need deeper intimacy with the one who holds wisdom and power and knowledge in His hand.

Corey calls us back to the things of first importance and the true solution to the powerlessness we feel in our own lives and the Church at large.

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.

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.

“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

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.

“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 somet...

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

“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.

but they actually do it.

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.

“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.

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.”

His people to be a people of prayer and His house to be a house of prayer.

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.

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 10:38-42; 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.

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.

It took courage to do what Mary did

To sit when there was so much going on. To sit instead of “doing” for Jesus.

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.

She learned to wait on Him—at His feet. Let’s look more closely at our introduction to this courageous woman and her sister:

as close as we may be to Him—we never encounter Him. Why? Because we’re caught in the swirl.

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!

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.

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.

She sat down. She shut up. She looked up. She listened. And she let Jesus fight her battles for her.

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 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).

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?”

God honors the words of His servants to the same degree that His servants honor His words.

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.

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).

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.

if you go after one thing, you will get everything. But if you go after everything, you will get nothing.”

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.

Just stay at His feet.

Just write them down and keep looking at 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.

don’t listen to the taskmaster. Just stay a little longer. His voice will leave. I promise you.

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.

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”