Show notes
Is Praying For Others Important?1 Timothy 2:1 “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people.”Is it important to pray for others? I was taking a leadership course and one of the lessons was on Intercession. I am sure we have all been asked by people to pray for them and their situation. When you pray on someone else’s behalf, that is called intercession. You are praying for their needs. Every Christian is called to be an intercessor. We are called to not only pray to God for ourselves, but for our brothers and sisters in Christ as well. I don’t know if we always understand how important this is. Do we take this responsibility seriously, or do we say we will pray because that is what we are supposed to do, and then forget to actually do it? If we look back to the Bible, we have some examples of great intercessors. Moses was constantly interceding on behave of the Israelites while they were wandering in the dessert. They continually turned away from God and did all the things he asked them not to do. Exodus 32:3-32 talks about how the Israelites made the golden calf, and the Lord was angry with them. However, the Lord relented after Moses interceded. This is just one example out of many. We can also look back to Abraham. God wanted to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham pleads with God not to destroy Sodom. In Genesis 18:16-33 you can read the account where Abraham is bold enough to ask God to save these people. He does not just ask once, he comes back several times. Abraham first asks if God will save the city if there are 50 righteous people, then he comes back and asks what if there are 45, and so on, all the way down to 10 righteous people. Abraham did not live in this city. He would not be affected if it was destroyed. Yet, Abraham was a true intercessor for that city. There is a story in St. Faustina’s diary about how she prayed and interceded for her beloved country Poland. Saint Faustina was a nun in Poland. She received a vision that an angel was sent by God to chastise a certain city. She immediately began to pray for mercy, but no matter how much she prayed for mercy, she could not save the city. Then she saw the Holy Trinity and she felt the power of Jesus’ grace within her. At the same time she found herself praying these words she heard internally, “Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world; for the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us.” (Saint Faustina’s Diary, 475). As she continued saying this inspired prayer, the angel became helpless and could not carry out the deserved punishment (see 474).
In Ezekiel 22 the Lord talks about His Judgement on Jerusalem. In Ezekiel 22:30 The Lord says, “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their heads all they have done, declares the Lord.” The Lord is looking for people to intercede on the behalf of sinners. God sent his only son so that we would be saved and he doesn’t want any one of his children to perish. I think you can see by the examples above that the answer to the question I started with is yes, it is important to pray for others. How can you help? There are many ways that you can add intercessory prayer into your life. I will go over a few suggestions but these are just examples, you can find what works best for you. One way that I have started to make sure that I pray for those in need is that I pray immediately for someone when they ask for prayers. If I hear a request for prayers from a friend, or family member, or I read a request on social media, I pause and say a quick prayer right there before I forget. Another thing you could do is add this type of prayer to your daily tasks. For instance, when folding laundry you could pray for a different person for each piece of laundry you fold. You could do the same for washing dishes.
You could join a prayer line at church. A lot of churches have an email list of people that have agreed to be on this prayer line. When requests for prayers come into the church, someone emails them out to everyone on the list. Those people on the list say a prayer for those in need. When I usually get the email with the list of people that need prayers I try to take a minute and say a quick prayer for those intentions. However, you can do it any way you like. Another idea is to keep a list of people that are in need of prayers next to your bed and just read over it before going to sleep. If your church does not have something like this, you could volunteer to head it up. It does not take a lot of time, but does make a huge difference.
You could also pray for a specific cause daily as a form of intercessory prayer. Saint Therese of Lisieux, was the patron saint of missionaries even though she was very sick and couldn’t go on any missions. She prayed frequently for those that could go on missions. There were several saints, Saint Catherine of Sienna for one, that prayed daily for the souls of sinners. Others pray for families, for the church, for seminarians becoming priests, or for the violence in the world. There are so many things for which you can intercede. It does not have to be that you spend hours interceding for these things either. It could just be a quick prayer. Some of us wish that we could do more for others. We wish we could give more of our time, but we really can’t. We wish we could go out and volunteer more, but for one reason or another we can’t. We wish we could donate more money, but we can’t. This is something that any one of us can do and is just as important as the other things. My hope is that the next time someone asks you for prayers you will stop what you are doing and say a quick prayer for them. I also hope that you will begin to intercede with prayer for other things that you feel called to pray for. We need more people like Moses in the world today. People who can see the bad things that are going on in the world and can pray for those people and their salvation.Dear Heavenly Father I pray that you bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us intercede for others. If you have a special cause that you want us to intercede for we ask that you put that on her heart Lord and convict us. If we don't know how to intercede Lord I ask that you show us. Give us the strength and the courage to pray for people right then and there when they ask us to. Help us to not be embarrassed but to be confident when we pray with them or for them. Lord God we thank you for everything that you do for us. You are truly amazing and if you want us to intercede for someone or something please just let us know. Lord God we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, amen.