How to pray for the struggles of others
How to intercede for others
I have had hundreds, if not thousands, of prayer requests spoken to me, handed to me in some written/typed form, or pop in to my awareness via social media.
So knowing how to intercede in prayer for others is something I am willing to bet you do just about every single day (or want to do every day).
The issue is…how exactly do we do that? And why should we?
The Lord’s Prayer tells us to pray “Give us today the food we need,” and implies that we should be seeking God’s provision for everything we need in our daily lives.
And the same is true of those who ask us to pray for them.
We should be going to God, on their behalf, to ask for God’s provision through whatever they happen to have going on in their life.
Remember, The Lord’s Prayer teaches us that prayer is about community as well as communion.
So, with that out of the way, we can now tackle the “how” part.
And I think we tend to overcomplicate this issue.
We put too much of a burden on “praying the right things” for that person…but sometimes we just need to pray and engage in relationship with God as usual. Just like we bring up friends and family when having our regular everyday conversations, we do the same when praying for others.
“God, Jimmy asked me to pray for his back pain the other day.”
Plain and simple.
Better yet, asking for God to provide just as God has provided for you is a great way of remaining grateful and thankful for how things are going in your life as well as asking for God to do the same in someone else’s life.
It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. God, ultimately, understands the heart of your prayers even when you struggle to communicate them.
My prayer for today
Our Father, help us to help one another. Put someone in my life today that needs my help or that needs my prayers. And thank you for what you have done in my life and will do in the lives of others. Amen.
Remember
You don’t always have to wait for permission to pray for someone else. Feel free to take the initiative where you can or seek out permission rather than wait for it.