Make your prayers count! - Chapter 5
Our prayer life not only reveals to God how deeply we want Him to be involved in our lives and how deeply we want to be involved in what He is doing, but prayer also shows how interested we are in other people.
In all members of God’s Family, God wants to see a spontaneous and universal expression of outgoing concern for the welfare of others. That’s the only way to guarantee peace and harmony. It is the way of giving. Love for one’s neighbor is the very essence of God’s law.
Leviticus 19:18
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
One of the greatest gifts you can give to others, when you are close to God, is to pray for them. God loves it when people pray for each other. Certainly God will hear the prayers of an individual praying for his own needs. But the Bible leaves no doubt that God particularly enjoys hearing and answering the prayers of one person for the needs of another.
Hebrews 13:18
Pray for us, for our conscience is clear and we want to live honorably in everything we do.
The apostle Paul wouldn’t have petitioned the saints to “pray for us” if it didn’t make any difference whether they did.
If you want a specific request from God, have you ever thought to pray that the identical request be granted to someone else who needs it? In so doing, you get your mind off yourself and on the welfare of others. This is well pleasing to God.
Matthew 6:9-13
Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.
In Jesus’ sample prayer outline (commonly, though mistakenly, called the “Lord’s Prayer”) the words I, me or my do not appear once. All the way through the words used are we, us and our, demonstrating an unselfish concern.
Isaiah 59:15-16
Yes, truth is gone, and anyone who renounces evil is attacked. The Lord looked and was displeased to find there was no justice. He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed. So he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm, and his justice sustained him.
God wants to hear prayers of intercession. It was through the prayers of Abraham that Abimelech was forgiven.
Genesis 20:17-18
Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants, so they could have children. For the Lord had caused all the women to be infertile because of what happened with Abraham’s wife, Sarah.
Job’s friends were forgiven through Job’s prayers.
Job 42:9-10
So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite did as the Lord commanded them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer. When Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes. In fact, the Lord gave him twice as much as before!
John wrote about praying for one another to be forgiven.
1 John 5:16
If you see a fellow believer sinning in a way that does not lead to death, you should pray, and God
will give that person life. But there is a sin that leads to death, and I
am not saying you should pray for those who commit it.
The Bible records numerous instances of people praying for one another.
For whom have you interceded recently?
In Jesus’ early childhood, there was an elderly woman named Anna.
Luke 2:37
Then she lived as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the Temple but stayed there day and night, worshiping God with fasting and prayer.
You can be sure that most of that prayer and fasting was not to seek Anna’s own needs and desires.
There were probably many people in the area who, over the years, went to Anna when they had a problem, because God heard and answered her prayers and everyone knew it.
King Solomon recorded a vital principle in life that reflects on this subject.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A
person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand
back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided
cord is not easily broken.
You who are sick or afflicted, is someone praying with you for healing? The instruction from James is to pray for one another, that you may be healed.
James 5:16
Confess your sins to each
other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest
prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful
results.
It makes a difference!
Don’t lose heart
One of Jesus’ parables was given to show us we ought to be persistent in prayer, that we “always ought to pray and not lose heart”.
Luke 18:1-8
One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’”
Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. Even
he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will
surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and
night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?”
Have you ever “lost heart” because you, along with others, have been asked to pray for someone, for example, who is terminally ill, and the person dies anyway? Have you immediately assumed something was wrong with your prayers, with your exercise of faith?
Maybe there was. On the other hand, that may not always be so. Maybe your prayers were what they should be. Maybe you did not waver in faith. But maybe enough others did not pray effectively. Did you ever think of that?
In any case, do not lose heart. Keep at it. Try again.
Being able to pray effectively does not come overnight. It has to be worked at. But it is eternally worth the effort, for through prayer you get to know God. And, just as importantly, He gets to know you.