In a small group setting, I once confessed the way I struggled emotionally with the time God called me to gather others to pray for the healing of a dying friend, and I did – yet he still died.
A well-meaning person in the group confidently, yet wrongly, told me that I had not prayed with enough faith, that if I had, my friend would be alive today.
Gut punch.
I tried to convince this person I had never prayed with more faith than I had for those final weeks of my friend’s life. I had truly believed God for a miracle. Truly.
I have vivid memories of the night we stepped into our friend’s hospital room, circled the bed, and watched with wonder as the Holy Spirit took over. Our languid, confused, near-death friend sat up in bed with supernatural strength and clarity, looking each one of us in the eye, speaking our names – and what was surely a blessing over each of us.
I have no doubt God saw us, heard us, and met us in that holy space. There was purpose in those earnest, fervent prayers. But it wasn’t earthly healing. God’s will was beyond our grasp, yet we all left that night of prayer closer to heaven than ever before.
While I have come to a place of peace about all of this, when I read our third Jesus Prayer, I’m taken right back to those days of praying for a miracle. Jesus prayed:
“Abba, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me. . . . Lazarus, come out!”
John 11:41–43
This third Jesus Prayer, The Lazarus Prayer, communicates much to us about the heart of Jesus, the ways of God, and the power of the Spirit. Jesus models for us a way of praying that moves us from praying to God to praying for God.1
The Context
Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, had become good friends of Jesus. Yet, when the sisters send word to Jesus that Lazarus is fatally ill, Jesus chooses to wait for days before traveling to him. We know He cares for this family. We know He can heal. So, why does He postpone going to his dying friend?
Because we have the gift of hindsight in Lazarus’ story, we know the delay had purpose. God wanted to do more than heal Lazarus. He wanted people to witness Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
But I think of Mary and Martha, who did not have the gift of foresight, and how they must have been confused and hurt by Jesus’ intentional delay. Caught up in their grief, they couldn’t see God’s greater purpose in the death of their brother – they didn’t know resurrection was coming.
This is the context for The Lazarus Prayer.
Jesus arrives to find the sisters distraught. The people He cares for are hurting, and He hurts with them (John 11:33,35,38). Mary and Martha approach Jesus tear-filled with emotion, honest with their questions. Full of compassion, He asks them to trust Him by removing the stone of Lazarus’ tomb – a request that makes no sense. Yet they choose to lay down doubt and believe in the love they have for Jesus and in the love He has for them. They obey, releasing four days of death-odors as the stone rolls aside (vv.38-39). That’s when…
“Jesus looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, thank you for hearing me. You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe you sent me.’ Then Jesus shouted, ‘Lazarus, come out!’”
John 11:41-43 NLT
Believing Jesus
Like these sisters, God’s lofty ways are often shrouded to us. Wrapped in mystery, His plans can’t always be discerned. It’s why we wonder about His healing of some but not others. It’s why we must work through our disappointment and confusion when our prayers don’t get answered as we thought they would.
Mary and Martha model for us faith-filled responses when God calls us to trust Him, especially when we don’t understand what He’s doing. Like them, we’re meant to lay aside what we think we know – and believe Jesus.
Case in point. What’s our response to this comment by Jesus when He describes how life for believers will work after He ascends to heaven?1
“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).”
Do we believe this to be true?
Does Jesus still raise people from the dead?
Do we believe that the Holy Spirit can work through us in the same ways?
If not, why not?
If so, why don’t we see more miracles, signs, and wonders?1
It’s imperative to wrestle with these questions if we’re to live like Christ, if we’re to live fully for Him. Believe it or not, His mortal life and death weren’t just punching our tickets to heaven. Jesus also descended to earth and died so that we might continue the work He began.
Let that soak in.
Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension create the path for us to do greater good in the world than He did. And, we will either live believing Him. Or we won’t. And it all begins with one question:
Do we believe what The-Way-The-Truth-The-Life says?
When we can say yes to that pivotal question, we next wrestle with the particular statement – can we do greater works than Jesus?
I’m sure we wiggle under the weight of such an uncomfortable thought, even getting defensive because we don’t see evidence of such supernatural workings, some arguing that such Holy Spirit operations were for then, not now. Many react with deeply rooted skepticism because of past abuses of such displays of power. Or, perhaps, it just seems so improbable that we cannot overcome the walls of doubt we’ve built.
However, Jesus said it. And because we believe what He says is truth, we lower our defenses and look to Him to show us what He meant.
First, we remember that, as a human, Jesus performed every miracle not by His own strength but by the power of the Spirit. And that is exactly what He’s pointing us to in John 14; we’ll be able to do what He did because we have the Holy Spirit. And we’ll be able to do more than Him because there are so many more of us.
Second, we have to step outside our personal environments and recognize that just because we haven’t seen such displays of Spirit power doesn’t mean they’re not happening. In fact, across the globe, the Holy Spirit works in supernatural ways consistently – in dreams and visions, in miraculous healings, in deliverances, in supernatural protections and provisions.2
So why don’t we see it here?
That. Is. The question. One that is answerable: most of us are asleep to the full power of the Spirit in and around us. It’s one reason why Paul exhorts us to WAKE UP (Ephesians 5:14).3
The Greatest Gift
The person in my small group wasn’t completely wrong – faith plays a big role in our lives of prayer. However, the idea that ‘if we have faith, we can move mountains’ isn’t just a hyperbole – it’s a metaphor of epic proportions to help us believe that with Christ and His Spirit in us, we can do even greater things than Him.
But faith isn’t, actually, the most important factor of our prayers – it’s love. Paul and John both spend an incredible amount of words and effort and time to expound all the ways love is the most important of all the spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 13:13). It’s greater than hope. And faith.
Love, Paul says, gives us, as God’s faithful ambassadors on earth, the heart and motive needed to do all that He desires. We can speak His words, but without love, they mean nothing – because when we speak them without love, they spew forth with the venom of self-centeredness, with the prickliness of pride or pain (1 Corinthians 13:1). We can have all the faith to move those mountains, but if we’re doing it without love, we’re doing it for the wrong reasons – and that makes us “nothing” (v.2).
Love, John says, defines God (1 John 4:16). Everything He has done for us has been out of His love for us (ie:John 3:16). Hence, we’re meant to love one another, and as we do so, “God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12). We can know the truth of such unity and love because we have His Spirit in us (v.13). And that’s how we can “know and rely on the love God has for us” (v.16).
Eugene Peterson says it like this, “We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God” (v.16 MSG, emphasis mine).
All of that is the setup. Here’s the strikeout pitch: “This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus” (v.17, emphases mine).
We are like Jesus.
We are not going to do greater things than Jesus because we know more or are somehow meant to muster up all we need for miracle-working in our own strength. No. We will do greater things than Jesus because of love. His Spirit in us is the proof. And He is the power.
My friends, God’s love is what we’re meant to root and establish ourselves in so that we’ll have Holy Spirit power, which will not only allow us to know this love that surpasses knowledge but fills us to the measure of all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17-19, emphasis mine).
These words are truth. We should probably memorize them. And say them until we believe them.
The Movement
When Jesus prays this Lazarus Prayer, He is surrounded by crowds. He intentionally prays aloud so the people can hear that God listens to our prayers. Jesus gives us His own witness to this fact, and it’s been etched for all time so that we can live like Him.
In addition, notice the movement of this prayer. Jesus begins speaking to the Father. Then He turns toward the tomb and shouts for Lazarus to walk out – speaking for the Father.
If we’re meant to model Jesus, to follow His lead in establishing our own lives of prayer, this Jesus Prayer challenges us toward the same movement. First, speak with the Father so that we can then speak for Him.
If we will live rooted in the 1 Corinthians 13 brand of perfect, godly love, we’ll more fully awaken to the presence of the Spirit, and our prayers will move mountains. Even when we might not be able to see which mountain gets moved, we can trust that by the Holy Spirit and the Father’s love, holy, eternal good is happening when we pray to Him and for Him.
Friends, this short prayer packs a punch and challenges us to the core of our faith lives. Will we trust that we are meant to do even greater things than Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit? Will we lay down doubt and hurt and every reason we can logically hold in order to give the Spirit space to heal, deliver, comfort, provide, protect? Will we take up the mantle of walking through this life rooted and established in love so that all that we say and do are sourced from God’s love?
Because when we do, we will watch God work miracles – earthly and eternal – in our midst.
Lord, teach us to pray.
Our Father in heaven, we look up and pray to You. We pour out our hearts, offering up our questions, every bit of confusion, our doubts, and the hurts – because we know You are love. You receive everything we lift to You and pour into us your grace and truth. Thank You for the love that roots us so that all strength and holy motivation flows from your love. Thank You for the love that teaches us that in this world we are like Jesus. And thank You for the faith that we have in Jesus – and in every word He speaks. We confess we have not fully embraced every truth that has come from His mouth. We ask that the Spirit, who lives in us, will continue doing His work of healing and wholeness within us so that we will more fully embrace every word of Jesus, including the truth that with the Spirit and together with other believers, we will do greater things than Jesus Himself. Encourage us, we pray, to keep calling out to You, to keep believing You even when we don’t understand your will or ways. And give us spiritual eyes to see beyond our circumstances and into the glory of life eternal – so that we might begin to grasp that our prayers have an impact well beyond the here and now. Father, we ask that You’d keep teaching us to pray so that we might grow in love and faith and boldness, learning to speak to You more freely to the point of speaking for You – for your glory and for the good of others. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
(inspired by Matthew 6:9; John 11:41-43; 1 John 4:16-17; Ephesians 3:17-19; John 14:6,12; 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24; Ephesians 1:18; Philippians 2:12–13)
Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.
- 1 – JD Walt on the Wake Up Call, 2/20/25
- 2 – There are many sites, podcasts, and videos that offer stories of the supernatural miracles happening around the world – even here in America. I’ve been in the presence of one prayer-warrior missionary, Carole Ward, who told story and after story of the way her prayers go hand in hand with hearing from God and leading her in the ways she could go. Quite literally – like the time God called her to go into the depths of a very dark Middle East country, a place no one was going because it was so overtaken with darkness. So she had to go alone. Every morning as she left her house near the border of this place she was to enter, she would ask God whether she should go by two wheels (bike) or four wheels (car) – because she knew that from day to day, the enemy would attack one or the other. And every day she got her answer. And every day she made it there and back safely – even as she’d bicycle past burning cars or drive past pieces of bicycles. This woman prays so constantly and with such holy expectancy that she eventually moved into the heart of that particular country and opened her home (24/7) as a house of prayer. All were welcome. And one night as she slept, the most evil leader came to her house to take her out because her prayers were bringing people to Jesus and turning the tide of his influence – only she was shielded by a wall of fire. He couldn’t get to her. And if that wasn’t enough, he changed course – he left behind the evil and became a strong follower of Jesus. [I so wish I had a recording of the talk I heard her give at New Room, but they Seedbed does have two videos of her talking about prayer on YouTube, but they don’t include her stories.] MY POINT – Carole is an example of what it looks like to live like Jesus, to live with the fullness of God in her, to live rooted in His love until faith takes on heavenly proportions, and as a result lives are being saved, nations are being won by Light and Goodness and Love. It’s happening!
- 3 – I’m referring to Ephesians 5:14. It’s really cool to read that call in its context – make note of phrases like find out what pleases the Lord. Friends, this is meant for the Church, which is us!!
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said:
‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’
Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:8-20, emphases mine). - Our Lenten Spotify playlist, Embrace Prayer, has a song by We the Kingdom called “Miracle Power.” We can belt it out because the tune or idea behind the lyrics move us. But — do we really believe in miracle power? If we don’t feel confident in the truth of miracle power, perhaps we keep singing that song, keep speaking the verses from this post, until we do believe it!!!
- Each Wednesday I upload a “Teacup” teaching video that carries on the topic here. You can find all the videos on my Facebook Author Page, Instagram, and YouTube.
- Many of you have already found me on Substack! Thank you so much! Congratulations to Clara B. for winning the new Bible and tabs for her Prayer Bible. While you’re on Substack, check out the ministry I’m blessed to be part of, the Devoted Collective.
AND…don’t forget if you’d rather listen to these weekly posts, you can now do so on Substack — it’s easy to see and use the audio bar across the top of each post. - In addition to my weekly posts, I’m also putting my monthly newsletter, The Abiding Life, on Substack. (If you’re already getting my newsletters to your email, that will continue. As will the weekly posts on my website — nothing changes. I’ve just added Substack, in addition). If you’d like to subscribe for future newsletters, you can do so here!
Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike. This Lent, we’ve put our focus on the rhythm of prayer.
- Let’s pull out our Prayer Bibles and turn to John 11:41-43 — highlight the passage and add your tab so that you can find it easily. Now we have THREE Jesus Prayers we can turn to and pray straight out of the Bible! !
This week let’s practice this Lazarus Prayer, looking to heaven to speak to the Father — believing He hears our prayers. Then feel the loud, bold, three-word prayer Jesus spoke for the Father, and let its power connect us more deeply to the Father. I do believe that the more we pray this prayer, the more likely we’ll pray to the Father with all the love of the Father — and then we will pray for the Father. - Something about this season opens people up a little more to hear God’s story and the work of Jesus. One way you can do that is by sharing this site and telling others your own stories of faith experiences. Maybe, just maybe, God will even give us opportunities to pray for people He puts in our paths. I’d love to hear about it when He does!
Featured Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash. “All the Bits and Pieces” photo by Aleksandra Sapozhnikova on Unsplash.
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Thanks for this, Shelley. I’ve been focusing on John 14:12 for about a year. This is a beautiful and valuable contribution to my journey toward living like Jesus lived. I sure appreciate you and your ministry.
Leslie, what a blessing you are to me 💜💜