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More than Just About You – Prayer Warrior

HomePraying for leadersMore than Just About You – Prayer Warrior

“If God answered all of your prayers, would the world look different or just your life?” ~ Dave Willis

I wouldn’t describe myself as a prayer warrior or as one having a distinct gift for prayer. Writing that out reads silly because as believers in Christ Jesus, we are all to pray, and pray continually at that. So for clarity, what I mean is that I am not the person who would automatically come to mind when you think of a prayer warrior. I have people like that in my life. Those people won’t just say, “Praying for you,” but will truly take the time to raise your name to heaven. Those people whose lifestyle is characterised by random calls to encourage you because even though you didn’t tell them you were going through something, the Holy Spirit gave them a word as they were praying for you. My life is scantily littered with instances such as these, and so I neatly tuck myself away from the ‘Prayer Warrior’ pigeonhole, happy to exist in other fields of gifting. But let me not fool you into believing a misrepresentative picture of myself, I do pray. My life is full of miraculous answers to prayer, both for myself and for those whom God trustingly burdens me with.

“Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” ~ Philippians 4:5-7 (ESV)

If you are like me, these verses of scripture are very dear to you. Ones you remind yourself of often, ones you use to encourage those you love when they are worried. Until recently I had never known verse 5 was in the Bible. Maybe I skimmed past it before, focused on the words that were familiar to me, or maybe I had just never seen them at all. Either way, this time around, these are the words that jumped out at me… “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.” What does reasonableness have to do with prayer? You may have heard it said before, that the Bible wasn’t written in chapters and verses. These references were added later to help us navigate scripture. For this reason, thoughts cannot be separated simply because a new verse begins, but rather, each thought is woven together, connected in its meaning. This being the case, the question remains… What does our reasonableness have to do with our prayer life, worry or the peace of God? 

As always, I will begin with defining the word reasonableness, which with the help of Google, is said to mean having sound judgement, being fair or sensible, or the quality of doing as much as is appropriate or fair. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to a standard of love which means that what is ‘reasonable’ for us is measured by this standard. What is appropriate and fair is determined by love and we arrive at what is sensible or appropriate by using this same yardstick of love. For this blog, I will substitute the word reasonableness with the word love. Our verse would then read this way:

“Let your “love” be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

The temptation to be anxious and to worry is one I think we all struggle with. Becoming a mom placed me in the precarious position to battle this temptation at a level I had never battled before. This leads me to believe that when we love others well, chances are we will be tempted to be anxious about their lives and worry about them. We’re invested, of course, we’ll worry! But whether we are anxious about something in our own lives or the life of a loved one, the Apostle Paul encourages us to take it all to the Lord in prayer. The connection here between love and prayer further leads me to believe that an assumption is made concerning the life of every believer. The assumption is that there is to be such an apparency of the love of Christ that essentially connects our prayer life with our effort to let everyone know this love.

We are encouraged to develop solid prayer lives that cultivate an intimate relationship between God and ourselves and exemplify a well-submitted life to Christ. In addition, I propose that a sign of maturity in this area is when our prayers, while still submitting every detail of our own lives to the Lord, bring the needs of others with just as much frequency and fervency. When we live a life that indeed lets our reasonableness be known to everyone, the standard of love will cause us to begin to pray for others just as much, if not, more than we pray for ourselves. Letting others experience our love breeds proximity; proximity breeds concern and concern must lead us to our knees before the Lord.

How can we actively practice praying for others? Well, other than praying about the things those close to us share, we can also pray in the following ways:

We can pray for the salvation of the lost

I have always had a list of names of loved ones whose salvation I bring before the Lord. I was recently watching a video of a church that I follow as my Vitamin E church and they were talking about how every first Tuesday of each month, they pray for the lost. This got me thinking. Jesus’ whole mission was so that the lost might be saved and as His disciples, this burden should also be our burden. Jesus told His disciples in Acts and is telling you and me today that He is sending us to pray and to minister that the eyes of the lost may be open, that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among us who are sanctified by faith that is in Him. So, pray for friends and family members you know need salvation, but also, pray for all lost and in need of the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

We can pray that it goes well with our loved ones

The Apostle John gives us a wonderful example of praying for our loved ones in 3 John 1:2 when he says, “Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.” I learned some years ago that the soul speaks to the mind, will and emotions of a person. Have you ever thought to pray for health in these areas for those you love? It’s easy to remember to pray for physical health but as the soul goes, so goes the body. Let’s remember to speak life into the mind, will and emotions of those we love, so that they may be strong, immovable and steadfast even when things in the natural seem not to be going well for them.

We can pray for the sick

One of the associate pastors at my church recently preached a sermon about the power we have because the Holy Spirit lives in us. Power even to pray for the sick and expect their healing. In this sermon he shared how he is not afraid to pray for the sick, wondering if they will be healed or not because it is not in his name that he prays. He prays in the name of Jesus; whether the healing comes or doesn’t come is not his business. I will admit this is one of the reasons I rarely pray for sick people. If they don’t get healed they will say, “Mmm but Louise prayed.” The second is that I am an introvert, never wanting to draw attention to myself. The truth is that it is not reasonable for me to know that there is healing power in the name of Jesus and to not pray for those I know are sick and in pain. Love doesn’t do that. Even when we have enjoyed a discount, we eagerly share the information with those we love. Why? Because it is a reasonable thing to do. So, let us let our reasonableness be known by everyone as we boldly lay hands and pray for the sick every chance we get.

We can pray for our leaders

Sometimes we assume that this instruction, given to us in first Timothy chapter two, only pertains to presidents and government officials. Yes, it does, but it also extends to anyone and everyone who is in a leadership position over you. Our husbands, our parents, our mentors, our bosses, our lecturers, our landlords, our grandparents and family elders. Let’s pray for them. Let’s pray that God continues to preserve their lives by giving them wisdom and good health. Let’s pray that His love will be shed abroad in their hearts so that they can lead with love.

We can pray for those we don’t know, as God lays them on our hearts

As submitted vessels, let’s not limit our prayer lives to just those who are near and dear to us. Let’s allow the Holy Spirit to use us by giving us dreams and visions even of strangers. God did this by speaking to Ananias about Paul, a man he had heard of but never met personally. So let’s be open to doing this. In this social media world, we follow so many people we don’t know personally, let’s be open to being led to pray for people such as these. It may even be a friend of a friend who you don’t have a personal relationship with. Whatever the case, let us stay willing vessels, open to praying even when there is absolutely no benefit to us.  

At the end of the day, our prayers, just like everything else in our lives, should be submitted under the hand and lordship of Christ to use as He wills for His purposes. Yes, we have needs. Yes, we have desires. Yes, we have concerns and worries that we need God to attend to and take care of for us. But if we are certain, assured beyond doubt, that He will take care of these things when we bring them before Him, then we should have no issue with being used as His vessels to pray for those who are either too weak or too blind to pray for themselves. I think more than anything, living a lifestyle such as this is what makes a prayer warrior. 

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