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One of my dear friends and colleagues—and a great pastor—wrote this to me recently:

“If Jesus (in His physical body) had one hour to visit any of our churches—one hour to do any type of ministry—I don’t think He’d preach a sermon. I don’t think He’d do the tasks of ministry. I don’t think He’d heal everyone. I don’t think He’d try to meet everyone’s needs. If He had just one hour, I think He’d simply pray. Walk around the church and pray. And yet, how easy it is for that to be the thing pastors so quickly neglect.”

—Jonathan Burgin, Pastor, The Summit Church, Conway

Who knows exactly what Christ would do, but I have a feeling Jonathan is right on point.

Why?

When Jesus visited His Father’s house in Jerusalem, He saw what was going on and cleansed the Temple. His rationale was this:

“Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’”
**Mark 11:17**

Everything about the Temple demonstrated how sinful people could be cleansed and purified so they could enter the presence of God and commune with Him. And that is the essence of prayer—communing with God in His presence.

It was a house devoted, foundationally and beautifully, to prayer.

But the current caretakers of the Temple were perverting its purpose and hindering people from coming into God’s presence.

EACH DAY

Now observe Jesus in His everyday life and ministry.

Throughout His years of earthly ministry, prayer was woven into everything He did. Again and again in the Gospel accounts, we see Jesus praying, withdrawing to pray, teaching about prayer, and seeking His Father.

Jesus knew that communing with the Father was essential.

Direction was received.
Clarity was given.
Power was displayed as He helped, healed, and taught.

At several points in the Gospel of John, Jesus makes it clear that He did nothing on His own initiative. He spoke what He heard from His Father and did what He saw His Father doing.

How did He live in such perfect fellowship with the Father?

Prayer.

In this way, God’s kingdom came and His will was done on earth as it was in heaven.

Prayer was not all He did.

But it was foundational to all He did.

If Jesus spent an hour at our churches, perhaps He would spend the final few minutes addressing us—giving His evaluation and instruction, just as He did with the seven churches in Revelation 2–3.

Those exhortations take only a few minutes to read.

They are precise and to the point.

Beautiful in encouragement.
Corrective in instruction.
Coming straight from the throne of heaven.

Straight from communion with the Father.

But more than anything, if He came to our churches, I believe Jonathan is right.

I believe He would bring His Father into the equation.

And that happens through prayer.

We plan.

We preach.

We teach.

We organize.

We counsel.

We lead.

We serve.

And all of those things matter.

But have we prayed?

When will we learn?

Copyright © 2026 by Bill Elliff @ billelliff.org. No part of this article may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from Lifeword.org