It All Starts With A Prayer Life

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“How’s your prayer life?”

As a student at the University of Texas at Austin, a FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) missionary asked me those four words every single time we hung out. My answer never changed, because I never prioritized my prayer life: “Same old, same old.” No matter how many times I skirted around his question, though, he never tired of asking it.

“How’s your prayer life?”

Those same four words haunted me upon graduation. Whenever I would collapse into bed after a long day’s work — “How’s your prayer life?” Whenever I would wake up and busy myself with idle tasks like searching the web or checking on my fantasy baseball team — “How’s your prayer life?”

It wasn’t until I finally confronted that question and dedicated myself to a consistent prayer life that everything changed for me. My time spent in prayer each day ignited me with love for the Lord, completely renewed my zeal for the faith and fed my conviction that the faith needed to be shared. In the months and years that followed, I completely changed the course of my life. I ultimately became a FOCUS missionary myself and served college students at the University of Colorado in Boulder. 

“How’s your prayer life?”

Blank stares.

The next week. “How’s your prayer life?”

Same thing.

The next week. “How’s your prayer life?”

Nada.

The next week. “How’s your prayer life?”

I let the question hang in the air.

I had been walking with these three young men in discipleship for just over a year. Apart from being friends and hanging out, we would also meet each week just off CU’s campus in a more formal way and discuss the faith, pray for one another and encourage one another to go deeper with the Lord. 

These three guys were in the same place spiritually, a place I was all too familiar with. They knew the faith was good for them and wanted more of it, but when it came to sharing it with others, they were not interested. The idea of a prayer life felt like a nice option rather than a crucial lifeline. So, during our discipleship meetings, I zeroed in on the one thing I knew could push someone outside of themself: developing a consistent prayer life.

“Anyone? Anything new this week?” 

By this time, I had asked about their prayer lives for the 14,000th time, and I was growing nervous that I sounded like a broken record.

Their blank stares told me everything.

“Guys, what’s getting in the way? Shoot me straight.”

A beautiful conversation unfolded over the next hour about their doubts, the priorities in their hearts and the difficulty of prayer. It felt like I was talking to younger versions of myself.

The next week. “How’s your prayer life?”

Another rich conversation opened up about their various attempts to pray throughout the week. They still weren’t praying every day, but it was progress! Finally!

Over the following months, I witnessed something profound happen in each of these young men. As they slowly (very slowly) began developing a consistent prayer life, their confidence in the faith grew. Their doubts lost a grip on them. Their desire (and ability) to share the faith blossomed. In fact, they eventually began walking with other young men in discipleship — doing exactly what I had been doing with them.

In his second letter to Timothy, St. Paul writes, “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2:1-2). Put another way, build disciples who build disciples.

This is the goal of evangelization. The goal is not to simply reach the person we’re investing in, but to reach through them to the person(s) they will invest in — for the faith to exponentially spread.

When we evangelize, the goal is not merely for the person(s) in front of us to fall in love with the Lord — though that certainly has to be part of the goal. The goal is for that person to lead their family and friends to the Lord, and then for those family and friends to lead their families and friends to the Lord, and on and on.

FOCUS uses the term “spiritual multiplication” to describe this process. I’ve also heard it called “making disciple-makers.” The Gospel writer, Matthew, uses the phrase “make disciples of all nations.” However you want to chop it up, this is just “good evangelization” at the end of the day.

Good evangelization leads to good evangelization.

What I’ve found, both in my life and in my work with youth and young adults, is that the #1 indicator for whether or not this process will happen is whether someone has a consistent prayer life.

A prayer life is the benchmark that can project someone transitioning from being interested in the faith to being empowered in the faith.

A prayer life is the one metric that can reasonably predict if someone will go and evangelize others.

A prayer life is the truest indicator that the Gospel will penetrate through someone and expand out to others.

Therefore, if we want to evangelize well, the prayer lives of the people we minister to should be among our utmost concerns. We can teach people strong catechesis, equip them with a firm foundation in Scripture and help them understand Theology of the Body. But if we don’t help people develop a prayer life, then we’re choking the growth of the Gospel.

The old proverb goes something like this: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” 

Teach a man to pray, and you feed the world.

Paragraph 2558 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes our relationship with Jesus as our prayer. Our prayer is our relationship with Jesus! It only makes sense that if we’re genuinely trying to lead someone into a relationship with Jesus, then we must be leading them into prayer.

Now, does this mean that someone who doesn’t pray can’t evangelize? By no means. The Holy Spirit can use anything and anyone to reach a soul. 

But someone who doesn’t pray has a lot less incentive to evangelize. After all, if they’re not nourishing their own relationship with Jesus, why would they try to bring someone else into a relationship with Jesus?

Prayer. It’s the ultimate disciple-maker and spiritual multiplier.

“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” 

Go, therefore, and help people build a consistent prayer life.