What To Pray For

This is the 15th post in a series on Praying Effectively. We have talked about what effective prayers are and in the last related post we learned that abiding in Christ is the key to a consistent experience of effective prayers. 'Abiding' in Christ necessarily includes prayer, but this prayer is first devotional and personal. Without these times with God, endeavoring to pray effectively in other areas (for example, intercession for others) will doubtless become a duty without joy and increasingly difficult to sustain.
If you are just joining me, please see the end for a special note before continuing!


What To Pray For

1. Self
Some people believe that it is selfish to pray for oneself first when praying. Or that it is selfish to spend a lot of time praying for oneself during times of prayer. I have found that it is not only not selfish but important to pray for oneself, especially if one is to go on to spend a lot of time interceding for the lives of others. It is important to be built up, and to spend time edifying oneself to be equipped and strengthened to serve others. The value is in spending time praying for our spiritual needs and about those things that affect our eternal purposes, more than for shallow, temporal, and insignificant pursuits.

2. Others – believers and unbelievers
Praying for one another is the main way in which we can access the supply of the Spirit of God for the strength, help, deliverance, grace, peace, joy, enlightenment of others. Even the greatest servants such as the apostle Paul depended upon and requested the prayers of the churches. The more that is to be accomplished for God, the greater the need for prayer.
Prayer to God is the lifeline of the members of the church of Jesus Christ, individually and as a whole; for personal maturity and for service to others.
It is important to make supplications and intercessions for others in the household of faith, including prayers for the strengthening, establishment and protection of young converts. It is also necessary to pray for those yet outside the family of God, including unsaved family members and friends, even strangers, and governmental authority figures.

"Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."
1 Timothy 2:1-4

3. The global and eternal purposes of God
As we read the Scriptures and spend time abiding in Christ, the eternal purposes of God become more real to us. That is to say, the bigger picture comes into focus more clearly. We learn of God's purposes to conform men to Christ and to make us a holy nation unto Himself. In the letter to the Romans, Chapter 11 we learn of His plans to redeem ethnic Israel which has temporarily been allowed to remain in blindness during the present dispensation. We learn of the coming manifest kingdom of God, not only "in heaven", but right here on earth after Christ's return. These types of overarching divine purposes ought to have some place in our prayers as well. We should not only be informed by them in the spirit of the requests we make of God, but we should actually pray for such things as the maturity of the body of Christ to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, for the unity of the faith [see John 17:20-23; Eph 4:13]; for the peace of Jerusalem, for the salvation of Israel [see Psalm 122:6; Jer 50:20]; and for the coming kingdom and that God's will will be done on earth as it is done in heaven [see Matt 6:10].

Clearly, there are many, many prayer needs. We should be inclusive and intentional, but not rigid, and not dependent upon our own wisdom and strength to persist with these requests. The main thing is to be led by the Holy Spirit, to ask for His help, and to flow with His agenda for each prayer session. Yielding to the Spirit in prayer will be the focus of my next post in this series.



[This is the 15th post in a series on the subject of prayer. In the previous installment we looked at the foundational principle of abiding in Christ and briefly discussed what that means. 
These posts are interspersed among other blog topics so for the easy identification of related posts, look for the label 'praying effectively - series' in the sidebar. If you are just now joining in I recommend that you read the first post where I shared my reason for doing this series. I hope to share practical keys and insight into praying effectively, in bite-size blog posts which you can easily follow.]  Facebook
 Google+
 Twitter