Three lessons from Jesus about prayer
The only recorded request of Jesus’s disciples is connected to prayer, says Rich Villodas. They never say, “Jesus, teach us to preach,” or, “Teach us to cast out demons.”
Before we get to Jesus’s teachings on sex, money, worry, forgiveness and more, let’s take a quick breather, lest you start despairing over how difficult these commands are.
Everything in the Sermon on the Mount is not telling you to try harder, muster willpower, or live a perfect life. You can’t. I can’t.
What now? Tucked into the middle of the Sermon on the Mount is the secret to walking Jesus’s narrow path: prayer.
Prayer is both the entry point and the essential power that help us follow Jesus.
To live like him requires us to pray like him.
In other words, following Jesus is not just a matter of skill and grit; it is made possible through a life of being with God in prayer.
To follow Jesus and the way of his kingdom requires imitation.
To live like him presupposes communion with him – a communion flowing out of an approach to prayer that engages the heart, captivates the mind, and directs the will.
Jesus’s first disciples understood this.
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