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

by Corey Russell

The wilderness is the furnace of transformation. It’s the context by which God causes all the dross, all the culture, and all its stuff to surface. We get delivered from the masks ...

It’s in the wilderness where voices are formed. If God has truly called you into ministry, He will prepare you in the wilderness. If He has called you to fol...

“not live by bread alone” but “by every word that proceeds out from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3).

It’s in the wilderness where God deconstructs everything you thought you knew about Him, and He begins to reintroduce you to Himself through the Spirit of Revelation. It’s here where the knowledge of God is imparted in us (see Isa. 40:21-23).

It’s in the wilderness where He takes the names of other lovers out of our hearts and mouths, and we come into the revelation that God is our Bridegroom. It’s here where the revelation of our sonship gets rooted and grounded in us. It’s here where His voice becomes the loudest, the strongest, and it drown...

It’s in the wilderness where Jesus backs you into a corner and lays hold of you and wrestles with you, changing your name and identity, and bringing you...

It’s in the wilderness where you become vulnerable to God, where you receive a revelation of your sma...

It’s in the wilderness where you have an Isaiah 6 encounter. You receive a revelation of Jesus that releases repentance in you, resulting in the religious systems and constraints being cast away from you. It’s here where you get delivered from a ...

Voices are formed in the wilderness. Voices never “graduate” from the wilderness. Voices become voices through silence and solitude, and it’s this quality of messenger and message that penetrates the noise of a chaotic culture in the world and in the Church. One of the reasons...

These voices don’t say, “I’ll pay my dues. I’ll do a little fasting. I’ll do a little praying as long as He anoints me and fulfills all my dreams.” No, these voices know it’s not about them. It’s all about their beautiful Lord and Savior.

It’s only with the comfort they have received that they will be able to comfort others in the coming days (see 2 Cor. 1:4).

These messengers don’t just have a message, but they are the message. Jesus, in Matthew 11:9, said that John the Baptist was “more than a prophet.” His very life made a bigger statement than the words he spoke.

This happens when the Word has become flesh in those voices, and they carry His heart with His Word. They are shepherds who have been formed and fashioned in a specific seminary: the seminary of His heart.

As He entwines our hearts with His, we are entrusted with the deep mysteries of God and are anointed to feed others on Him. The seminary of His heart is found in the place of prayer while we ...

In this seminary, we hunger to encounter the true...

Before God does anything through His messengers, He must first do it in His messengers. He must first bring us to the wilderness. It’s here where He starves out all of the other voices of identity, success, and greatness by continually declaring His love, beauty, and affection over us until we believe Him. The ones who rece...

It’s possible to say something and say nothing at the same time, and I believe we in the American Church have become professionals at it.

How can we say all the right things, sing all the right things, yet nothing of eternity be imparted to those who hear us?

I’m afraid that, after all of our Sunday services have ended and everyone has gone home, what most of us just experienced was more of a pep rally than an encounter with the living God.

We are in desperate need of leaders who have been forged in the fires of prayer, fasting, and the Word, and out of that p...

How can we once again see a recovery of apostolic messages that carry apostolic conviction, vision, and power coming out of apostolic men and women? What are those ancient paths Jeremiah 6:16 says tha...

we need men and women who have built their lives around gazing and beholding the burning God and are thereby set aflame.

We need leaders who pray more than talk. We need leaders who have learned the lost art of waiting on God and making ministry to Him their first ministry.

We need messengers who walk with a limp. We need men and women who, like Jacob, have wrestled with the Lord through difficult circumstances and have come through leaning on Him.

The Gospel of John tells us there were many things Jesus did that, “if they were written one by one,” then “even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (21:25). And the disciples experienced them all!

The disciples got to watch Jesus pray. As I said in the introduction, they got to watch God the Son talking to God the Father through God the Spirit. And the conversation of the Godhead didn’t smack of the awkwardness that the disciples’ own conversations with the Son of God did.

The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner (John 5:19).

From Jesus’ baptism to His death, He was praying. He prayed in joy, grief, sorrow, and suffering.

“I want to know God like you. I want to talk to God the way you talk to God!” I believe God wants to raise up spiritual fathers and mothers in this generation who embody prayer and can teach it to those around them.

But here’s the thing: We can only take people to where we’ve been or where we are currently.

You can’t introduce others to the realities of Heaven if you aren’t livin...

The first is found in what we call the Lord’s Prayer, and that

truth is prayer is about walking through the open door.

second truth is found in the parable that immediately follows...

prayer is also staying long enough for closed...

“When you pray,” which means you learn how to pray by praying. It also means He expects us to pray.

Prayer is on-the-job training, and you grow by doing it. Typically, we want to get all of the understanding about something before we start it. When it comes to prayer, I always tell people to start, and the Holy Spirit will begin to teach them as they pray.

Then show up and start reaching for God.

If you build it, He will come, but if you want to get it perfect before showing up, you will never pray.

Prayer starts with answering these questions: Who are you talking to? Where does He live? And what is He like?

“I want to introduce you to Someone. He’s the most beautiful, the most exhilarating, the most fascinating, the most glorious Person you will ever meet. I’ve come to reveal Him to you.

I want to introduce you to a Person, a place, and the Person’s name. It’s ‘Our Father in heaven, by the way.’”

Jesus takes us to the throne and connects us with Abba Father as the foundation to all prayer. The Father’s house is the house of prayer, and the revelation of the Father is the first and primary lesson in growing in prayer.

We must ask ourselves: ■What do I think of when I think of God? ■Who do I think I’m talking to when I pray? ■What’s God like? ■How does God feel?

Prayer doesn’t begin with anxiety over our separation but begins with a great exhale of “Thank You, Abba, that we are Your children and that we belong here with You.” We say, “Abba, we belong to You. Abba, we are Yours. You are our Father.”

He is not passive but is burning jealousy. He is a consuming fire (see Deut. 4:24).

He is the Ancient of Days, and His very throne is on fire with wheels of fire, and it has a river of fire streaming from it (see Dan. 7:9).

Jesus wanted us to know, when we pray, we are praying to our Father, and we must know who He is. We were made to worship Him—to gaze upon Him.

He wants to remove the scales from our eyes so that we may see Him in all His glorious splendor. What better way to do this than in prayer! In prayer, we can encounter Him in all His multifaceted greatness.

“Our Father in heaven,” He was connecting us to where our Father lives. He lifts our gaze to the throne room in Heaven.