Click here to see all of my links and resources!In this teaching from the Stewardship Series, we tackled prayer, but started from a scripture that isn’t really about for a reason:
“So on the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, ‘Jesus, master, have mercy on us.’ When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. And he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, ‘Were not 10 cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ And he said to him, ‘Rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well.’”
—Luke 17:11-19
The reason? Most of us have a prayer life. The question is whether it’s complete.
To Be Rich in Prayer
A rich prayer life isn’t just more prayer—it’s fuller prayer. Scripture calls us to practice and observe six different dimensions:
praise and adoration
gratitude and thanksgiving
repentance
intercession and corporate prayer
petitions and requests
ongoing conversation
This is how we “pray without ceasing.” Not only the formal, prostrate-before-the-Lord kind—though there’s obviously a place for that—the casual, minute-by-minute kind. The kind that happens while making food or driving to work or pausing before sending a hard email.
These six aren’t a checklist. They’re the full shape of a relationship. Think about the closest relationships in our lives—the ones that are actually rich. They aren’t built on a single kind of exchange. There’s gratitude, there’s honesty, there’s the hard conversation, there’s just being present with nothing urgent on the agenda. How much more should that be true of our relationship with the Father? What we’re really talking about when we’re talking about a rich prayer life is a rich fellowship with God.
Another Coin in the Wishing Well
Here’s the honest picture. Daily prayer among people who believe in God has dropped from 58% to 44% in under twenty years. Only 15% of American Christians have what the Barna Group calls a rich prayer life—consistent, interactive, bi-directional. Ninety-four percent of people who pray do so alone. The church, functionally, is prayerless in corporate settings. There’s no softer way to say it: the American church is experiencing a prayer recession.
The deeper problem isn’t just frequency, though. It’s the shape of what’s happening even among those who do pray. Most of us are operating entirely in dimension five—petitions and requests. We show up with our list, cover our concerns, leave hoping something moves. It’s the slot machine approach: put the request in, pull the lever, hope for a JACKPOT—or worse. It’s throwing a coin in the wishing well—a perfunctory, performative act with no real expectation of results; and no gratitude for the Well that springs forth those results.
The ten lepers make this uncomfortable. Jesus heals all ten. One returns to give thanks. One. The other nine got exactly what they asked for and kept moving—as if they expected it, as if something was owed. Most of us are the nine.
Nobody Showed Us the Full Picture
So how did we get here? The answer is simpler and more forgiving than we might expect: nobody modeled anything else.
What gets visible in most prayer settings—morning devotionals, group circles, Sunday intercession—is almost entirely the petition component. Requests, requests, requests. That’s what most of us grew up watching. That’s what we learned prayer to be. When the bulk of every prayer we’ve ever witnessed was “Lord, please fix this,” that’s the shape that gets formed in us. Not because we’re lazy or faithless, but because the fuller picture was never put in front of us.
This has a downstream consequence worth naming. One of the deepest wounds from a petition-only diet is the inability to hear. Jesus says in John 10:27 that his sheep “hear his voice.” For most of us, sitting in genuine silence before the Lord—not asking, not confessing, just listening—is a foreign posture. Hearing is a practiced skill. The gap isn’t spiritual failure. It’s an absence of modeling.
Make Room for More
The path forward starts with an honest diagnostic: are we actually covering the full range, or are we living in the request zone? The point isn’t guilt—it’s inventory. There’s more available to us than most of us are accessing.
The most counterintuitive step is this: schedule time where we don’t speak. Set the atmosphere with praise and thanksgiving, then let the Spirit lead the discussion from there. Fifteen minutes to start—and appetizer really, but enough to show us what we’ve been missing, and create a taste for more.
Prayer that moves in both directions changes the relationship. The peace that Philippians 4 promises isn’t just the outcome of presenting our requests—it’s the fruit of a fellowship that’s been given room to breathe.
The one leper who came back found something the other nine didn’t. The full encounter. The face-to-face. “Rise and go your way” spoken directly over him. That’s what’s available to all of us—when we learn to come back.
Want to learn more? I’ve got a good news, bad news, good news situation for you.
Good news: you can watch the full teaching on YouTube.
Bad news: my poor ol’ MacBook struggled mightily during the according, and that created some laggy parts in the video.
Good news: this is probably the most offensive of the laggy sections. I look like I’m about to fall asleep!
Also, you can me live on Clubhouse, every Tuesday at 7pm est. I look forward to seeing you! Click here to join my house: All Things Well on Clubhouse