Prayer & Worship
I tell people I will pray for them and then I completely forget. How do I actually carry someone in prayer rather than just saying it?
“Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you: but I will teach you the good and the right way:”
Samuel is standing down as Israel's leader after the nation rejected his guidance and demanded a king instead. He has every reason to withdraw and let them get on with it. Instead he tells them that to stop praying for them would itself be a sin against God. Intercession, in his mind, was not a favour extended to people who deserved it. It was an obligation he could not put down.
“For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;”
Paul is writing to a church in a town he had never visited, whose members he knew mostly by report through Epaphras. He tells them he has not stopped praying for them since the day he first heard of them, and then states exactly what he asks for. Prayer for others here is specific and sustained, aimed at their understanding and their staying power, not only at their circumstances.
A path forward
Pray the moment you are asked, out loud and briefly, right there in the conversation. It takes fifteen seconds and the promise is already kept.
Keep a list of five names in your phone and pray through it on the same day each week. Five is small enough to sustain and enough to matter.
Tell one person you have been praying for them and ask how the situation is now. It turns a promise into a relationship.
Closing verse
“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”
- James 5:16
Coming Soon
Want to ask your own question?
Revealed is building a feature that lets you ask anything and receive a Bible-rooted response drawn from both Testaments. Join the waitlist to be first to know when it launches.