The Way of the Way at Workಮಾದರಿ

The disciples are never recorded asking Jesus to teach them how to hit goals, manage a team, or even read Scripture. The only thing the gospels say the disciples asked Jesus to teach them was how to pray (see Luke 11:1), to which Jesus answered with the Lord’s Prayer, which also shows up in the Sermon on the Mount.

Commenting on this in the phenomenal book Lead With Prayer, pastor John Mark Comer says: “It seems that after watching their Lord ‘behind the scenes,’ [the disciples] had come to the conclusion that Jesus’ extraordinary outer life of power was the result of an even more extraordinary inner life of prayer.”

Is prayer as important to your work as it was to Jesus’s? I can’t say “yes” to that question most days. But by God’s grace, I’m growing in this area—doing my work much more intimately with God through prayer. Not just during my morning quiet times, but throughout the day.

Here are 3 triggers that prompt me to pray during my workday.

#1: My commute. For decades, Dave Hataj, Owner of Edgerton Gear in Wisconsin, has prayed the Lord’s Prayer on his drive to work, ending it like this: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done at Edgerton Gear as it is in heaven.” I love that and often pray the same way on my walk upstairs to my office.

#2: The sticky note on my refrigerator. This isn’t fancy. It just says PRAY. But now, when I am waiting for coffee to warm up in the microwave, I am much less likely to aimlessly wander through my phone and much more likely to intentionally wander into God's presence through prayer.

#3: An empty Zoom room. I’m 2-5 minutes early to most Zoom meetings. I used to spend this time checking my to-do list or (let’s be honest) browsing unimportant things. But now—most of the time—I use those minutes to pray for the meeting that’s about to begin.

Those are the triggers helping me do my work with God and not just for him. What’s working for you?

And if you’re not praying throughout your workday, try one of the triggers above. Because if we want to walk in the way of The Way at work, prayer isn’t optional. It was the center of Jesus’s life and work. May it be the center of ours, too.