May 2013

Never underestimate the power of your prayer!

Answers to Prayer!, Overcoming, Prayer /

Never underestimate the difference a prayer can make. “Never stop praying” is one of the shortest verses in the Bible and yet it conveys a remarkable and unmistakable truth. Prayer makes a difference! Even when it may seem like a brief formality or something one does simply out of habit, prayer is nonetheless important and does make a difference. I learned this in an unforgettably humorous way back when I was a youth pastor.

One practice of prayer since my early days as a believer in Christ has been to pause before embarking on any long journey and pray to God for His traveling mercies. Typically it is a spontaneous type of prayer asking for His presence and protection as I and those with me travel to our destination. It is as simple as sitting in our vehicle just before starting out and bowing for a few moments in prayer. And as a leader I have always been particularly cognizant of the necessity of doing this whenever I have had a van or bus load of people heading out on an outing together.

One winter I chartered a school bus to take the youth from our church located in the Twin Cities (Minnesota) up into the woods of Northern Wisconsin for a weekend retreat. The retreat center was a rustic one that was situated just off an isolated forest road in the middle of nowhere.

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Pray like Jesus for Family and Friends

2 Comments / Prayer /

“I pray for them. I am not praying for the world but for those you have given me, for they are yours.” John 17:9

Have you ever struggled to pray regularly for the people God has placed in your life? I know I have. Like many people, for years I used a prayer list of all my family and friends as a helpful place to begin. But even then I often had difficulty staying focused and praying meaningful, confident prayers for many of them. Invariably I would gravitate merely to a rote recitation of their names as I moved down the list. It was not however, until I discovered a biblical, tried and true way to effectively pray for them, that a new focus and faith began to energize my prayers.

There is one chapter in the Bible that is dedicated entirely to a verbatim prayer recited by Jesus. That chapter is John 17 and it is considered to be one of the great treasures in all of scripture because it preserves for posterity an entire prayer, prayed by the greatest pray-er who ever lived! Some have called it the His great High Priestly Prayer.

Apart from the first verse which says “After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed” everything that follows is in red letters. They are the words of Jesus as He prays to the Father for a very specific group of people: “for all those you have given me” (vs. 2, 6) and for “those who will believe in me through their message.” (vs. 20) In fact Jesus specifically narrows the field by saying “I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me.”

Who then is this select group for whom Jesus was praying?

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