May our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus, who we worship with the Father and Holy Spirit, kneed our impenitent hearts of stone into soft sands of His overflowing love. Amen.
To begin, let’s not forget that God is a Person who cares about us. In Christ Jesus we have a personal relationship with the Living God!
And by our intimate relationship with the God of Heaven, a spirit to Spirit relationship the Bible describes as most like that of a wife to her husband, we have the intimacy of the love of God and the ear of His loving heart.
Who, then, do we pray for? (and to whom do we pray?)
Can we begin any relationship without attention given to the intimacy of love between the one who asks and the person we would have answer?
IF you ignore the loving question of your loved one, how is it that you ask God and expect to receive an answer? His is an even more intimate relationship, not unlike that of husband and his wife.
Did I say, ‘His wife?’
Yes. Unless we are submitted to Jesus Christ as our Lord, He cannot be the Bridegroom of our hope. What a shame that He would say to you, betrothed christian, “I never knew you.”
Prayer is most personal with the Person of God!
If we pray privately, which I pray you do and will do so even more, the intimacy will give you more understanding of His will, alongside your dedicated devotion to the scripture of God’s written and living word. (I am too often guilty of a lack of intimacy in my prayer with God, a lack of time and commitment.)
Privately, (& trying to praise and thank the lover of my soul) I ask God my Lord for what I need, showing me what I need rather than what I want which is not in His will. I guess that I would say that I NEED God to sustain me in my prayer for my own heart-felt needs.
Corporately, that is in praying as part of our church or a prayer group, I find that prayers like my deepest prayers to God are sorely neglected by most of those asking ONLY for prayers for others, not confessing our own deepest hurts, needs, and desires for God’s love and the love of our Christian community.
We border on hypocrisy in our false, hopeful faces before our brothers and sisters in Christ.
If we only ask prayer for our family, friends, loved ones and others, while hiding the depths of our brokenness from those who would, along with God, sustain us in prayer; is our prayer request not disingenuous, an easier substitute for our own heart-felt needs for love and prayer?
Our God is a God of relationships – loving relationships. We dare not neglect His expected intimacy in our prayer relationships in which we would intercede for others by our own prayers.
I pray first for my wife, then for our three (grown) children. I try to do this more than daily. This has always been my first priority of prayer.
I try also to pray for my Christian family, as if they are nearer to me than my own biological family; for through Christ in eternity, they are also adopted alongside me into His body, through the Blood of His Holy Sacrifice of love for all of our sins.
Pray first for the person. Pray then for their need.
I try to bow my head and thank God in prayer before I eat or enter into some activity of the day. (I seek to do this both privately and publicly as witness.) This is not so much about the person, as it is for our immediate need. For example, my wife once insisted on praying for our safety most times we left home in the car. Our security and safety are needs, of course. Yet the soul of a loved one is certainly more important to God and to me than any thing I might ask for a trip across town.
Is it right that one who claims Jesus as “Lord,” should pray for help in winning in the world so that they might live comfortable in Christ?
Do you pray that you or someone in your family will ‘hit the Lottery’ and help answer your unanswered prayers? Do you pray for a blessing from God, nearer than the blessing God already sent for you to have and to hold?
We know the true answer in Christ.
Yet is not forgiveness and grace so necessary in dealing with the struggles and sins of our most beloved ones as they trustingly share the concerns of their own heart?
The false face of our prayer requests (sometimes)
Some of the sins of our lives and struggles of our flesh remain even more as anathema to ‘church’ prayers. Who will hear our cries to God, a crying out for help, love, forgiveness and grace; cries from some of our beloved Christian sisters and brothers?
Dare you even mention one of these at ‘church?’
Dare your brother or sister even mention: an abortion, adultery, a homosexual experience, pornography or any other such ‘christian’ taboo?
Dare any of our Christian youth even mention the passions and indiscretions which most commonly lead to the pregnancies the church must hide? For that matter, dare one divorced, widowed or unmarried for a time ask the help of a brother (sister) in prayer for the same?
Dare any ‘grace-faced christian’ even reveal these struggles and prayers to a pastor, let alone a dear friend of the church? Again, let us be careful not to judge too harshly.
You know why you put on the mask of hypocrisy.
Do you not suspect that those you love in Christ are not threatened by the judgment of your rejection?
How difficult it is for us to not judge (for even Jesus would not judge). I am guilty. May the Lord have mercy on me, for I endure the punishment of His curse. Yet I include loved ones guilty of each or these sins just mentioned and more in my prayers to God.
If God can forgive them (should they turn to His love), how can I not also pray for their repentance and return to God through the same Blood of Christ Jesus shed for me?
David committed adultery with a woman and murdered her husband! Yet when the man after God’s own heart finally repented, David prayed:
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment. – Psalm 51
How difficult it is for us to reprove in love – give a Christian sinner the help for which they have asked God in their own deepest prayer. How difficult to love AND forgive those most dear to us.
Yet by the Blood of Christ, God has covered even our sins of today (in addition to those long past).
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered. – Psalm 32:1
The revelation of God’s love for us is in Christ Jesus, who died on the Cross and IS risen! He hears our pray. Jesus hears our plea. He is revealed to us. We are freed by his blood.
Amazingly, by his blood, we are made His Priests and His intercessors!
Revelation 1:5 … and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Help us, God. Help us, beloved believer. We all need prayer. Allow us, as His Priests to intercede for those near and dear to our hearts and our souls.
Who is important in your life?
Are you praying for your VIP in humble humility to God and asking your loving brothers and sisters in Christ to stand by you in prayer for their needs?
Who is most import in God’s will?
- A husband to his wife &
- A wife to her husband.
- BOTH parents to every child.
- a loving father to all of his children, at home and by example in Christ,
- a nurturing mother to all of her children, at home and by example in Christ.
We all FAIL in some of these most important relationships God expects from us in His love, don’t we?
So why not ask God, with whom we have a personal relationship in prayer, to help us to do what is right in His will and not our own?
And why not ask our most intimate of friends, Christian brothers (sisters), who care for us in Christ deeply, to support us in prayer for these same relational needs for the VIP’s of our daily life? Sometimes the difficulty of these struggles of life are more appropriate for a small group of believers or even one life-minded brother (or sister) in the Lord, than for the prayer list of the entire church (often as fodder for speculation and gossip).
It seems the ‘perfect christians’ must go to some other church.
OR perhaps some we know just hide behind their masks of Christ’s perfection.
Let us, dearly beloved of Christ Jesus, love them as He has loved us.
Let us bow down before the Lord our God in great humility, with hearts overflowing in love and pouring forth forgiveness, through our prayers for for the family of Christ Jesus. Amen.
How may I pray for you, adding you to my personal prayer list?
Please comment. If you would like any of our readers to also pray for you, please share your personal prayer needs with us.
(IF you would rather have your request remain private, please begin your comment with the word, ‘Private,’ and I will not post it publicly.)
Pray also for me, that I might return to a purer committed faith in God to both hear and answer my ceaseless prayers for my most beloved.
Roger Harned, author and site administrator
Psalm 42
7 Truly no man can ransom another,
