If you had the opportunity to sit down with the coach you considered to be the all-time greatest in your sport, what would you ask him or her to teach you? But say you only got to make ONE request. That would change everything, wouldn’t it?

My all-time favorite coach was John Wooden. There are a ton of things I would have liked to ask Coach Wooden, so, narrowing it down to just one question would have been extremely difficult. But, after thinking about it, I believe the one topic I would have chosen would have been team chemistry. How did he get all those different players to bond together for the common cause of winning another title? There are so many other things I could ask him, but, in team sports today, chemistry means just as much as X’s and O’s.

Jesus Christ had a team of disciples. They spent three years following the greatest life coach of all time. They could have asked Him anything, but, I find it interesting that His team asked Him how to pray. They didn’t ask Him to teach them how to speak in public, turn water into wine, or do any of the other amazing things that Jesus did. They asked Him to teach them to pray.

Obviously, there was power when Jesus prayed. When He prayed, things happened, and these disciples were firsthand witnesses to it all. So, that begs the question for us: If prayer was that important to those who followed Christ so closely, shouldn’t we be asking Him the same thing they did?

Think about this for a few minutes. What would that one thing be that you would ask your all-time favorite coach? Whatever it is, I’m sure it would help you grow as an athlete or coach yourself. Isn’t that the point, though? No matter what we ask, it would be to help us gain greater knowledge in an area of needed improvement. That could have been why the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. They knew that they could make great strides in this area by learning from the Master.

Do you need a more effective prayer life? Today, ask the Lord to teach you how to pray—to pray more fervently, more effectively, more specifically, more humbly, more expectantly, or simply just to pray like Christ.