Tony Khalil
Midland SDA Church
March 15, 2014
Jon Paulien, in his devotional book, The Gospel from Patmos, tells a story of a ship that is wrecked during a storm, and only two men survived. They were able to swim to a small desert like island. The two survivors, not knowing what else to do, agreed that they had no other recourse but to pray to God. They decided to make a contest of it. To find out whose prayer was more powerful, they agreed to divide the territory between them and stay on opposite sides of the island.
The first thing they prayed for was food. The next morning the first man saw a fruit bearing tree on his side of the island, and he was able to eat its fruit. The other man’s parcel of land remained barren. After a week the first man was lonely and prayed for a wife. The next day another ship sank just off shore, and the only survivor was a woman who swam to his side of the island. But on the other side of the island things remained the same.
The first man prayed for a house, clothes, and more food. Like magic, he received all of them. However, the second man still had nothing. Finally, the first man prayed for a ship, so that he and his wife could leave the island. In the morning he found a ship docked at his side of the island.
The first man boarded the ship with his wife and decided to leave the second man on the island. He considered the other man unworthy to receive God’s blessings, since none of his prayers had received any answer. As the ship was about to leave, the first man heard a voice from heaven booming, “Why are you leaving your companion on the island?”
“My blessings are mine alone, since I was the one who prayed for them,” the first man answered. “His prayers were all unanswered, so he does not deserve anything.”
“You are mistaken!” the voice rebuked him. “He had only one prayer, which I answered. If not for that, you would not have received any of my blessings.”
“Tell me,” the first man asked the voice, “what did he pray for that I should owe him anything?”
“He prayed that all of your prayers would be answered”
This story, though obviously fictional, makes a point about the focus of our prayers. One man is praying to God about his life circumstances and needs while the other is petitioning God on behalf of his fellow man, one praying and the other interceding. Both men had the basics right, God is in charge and we should cast our cares upon Him, but the second man seemed to have a deeper or broader understanding that went beyond the basic to something higher. Both men were believers in God, but only one had allowed Him to transform his life.
Christians use the term intercessory prayer to describe the act of praying for one another. To intercede is to intervene in behalf of another, so in the context of prayer, intercession involves bringing the needs of another to our God and asking Him to honor our prayer as if it came from the individual in need. This certainly seems like an admirable thing to do but is it scriptural? For after all, if taken to an extreme , as some have, it could lead one to believe that a deceased loved one can be prayed from his deserved punishment to heavenly bliss.
I remember, after my father had passed away, a well-meaning relative of the same religious persuasion, paid money to have people pray for my father, with the intention of shortening his time in purgatory. As thoughtful as a gift this was, and as well intentioned as this man was toward my father, I find no scriptural support of any benefit of praying for the deceased. However, we can find much biblical backing for interceding in behalf of the living. Today were are going to explore together what the word of God has to say about praying for each other and six reasons we might want to consider making this type of prayer a personal practice.
One question I like to ask to help evaluate the importance of a particular spiritual topic is “Did Jesus talk about it?” Not to suggest that if Jesus did not address a particular topic that it has no relevance. I realize that not everything Jesus said or taught has been recorded in the scriptures, and I also recognize that during his earthly ministry he was addressing issues that were most relevant to his contemporary audience, but we can be certain, if Jesus spent time talking about something, it was important.
So, did Jesus promote the concept of praying for others? Let’s begin by taking a look at our scripture reading, Luke 22: 31, 32. This is in the context of the last supper and Jesus is predicting Peter’s future betrayal. It reads…
31 And the Lord said,[a] “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.”
Which leaves a stronger impression, when someone tells you to do something, or when you witness them doing it? In modern advertising, companies place a high value on celebrity endorsements. We see athletes, popular musicians, and film stars hocking everything from shampoo to Ford trucks. Most of the time they have some sort of endorsement deal and are simply saying what they are paid to say, and may have never used the products they are persuading us to use. Sometimes, however we may witness one of these individuals using a particular brand of product regardless of any advertising deal. Which is more authentic? Which would make you think that perhaps the product is something good? Of course, we take their claims more seriously if we see evidence that they believe enough in what they are advertising to actually use it themselves. The same holds true here in Luke. Jesus is not simply telling his followers, to pray for each other, No, he is their example when he says to Peter “I have prayed for you” Jesus believed in intercessory prayer.
If you would, turn with me to a second example of this in John 17. This is my favorite one. The entirety of John chapter 17 is a prayer that Jesus is praying, and of the 26 verses in John 17, twenty of them are Jesus praying for others. I wish we could read the chapter in its entirety now, time will not permit, but I encourage you to read it all on your own this afternoon. I’ll skip through some highlights. Speaking first of His disciples, starting in verse 9 He says…
9 “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours.
Skipping down to verse 14 we read…
14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.
Then starting in verse 20 Jesus turns his focus from his immediate disciples to us, those that will follow Him by the words and works of His disciples. He prays…
20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will[e] believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.
Can you imagine that! Jesus praying for you! Jesus praying for me! How can fail!
Aright, with that foundation let’s begin to look at the six reasons we might want to make this type of prayer our own. I like to start simple. I hope that’s okay with you. The first reason is along the same line we have already been discussing. #1 Christ has asked us to. Obvious? Yes. But is it a valid reason? Most certainly. Can you give a follower of Christ a more compelling reason to do something? I don’t think so. Turn in your Bible with me to Matthew 5: 44, 45. We are reading here part of what is known as the Sermon on the Mount, the same sermon in which he gives us the beatitudes. We read…
44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,[h] 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
Here we are not only commanded to pray for others, but to pray for our persecutors. In our humanity, this is something we would never do, were it not for His Spirit working in us. I dare say this directive sounds just as out of place and foreign today as it did when Jesus spoke it on that mountain. What possible benefit can come from praying for our enemies? Do we want them to become more successful at abusing us? I think were missing the point if were looking at it in terms of how a prayer for an enemy might impact their behavior towards us. I believe it’s the other way around. Our prayer for an enemy will have the power to change our thoughts toward them. By sincerely praying for someone it has the power to soften our hearts toward them, giving us a taste of the mind of Christ.
A few weeks back in the early teen Sabbath school class we considered the concept that Jesus loves all of us the same. We’re taught from a young age that Jesus loves us and it becomes somewhat easy to believe, but perhaps subconsciously we entertain the concept that he loves us more than those who reject Him. We rarely consider that he loves and longs to be spend time with our enemy’s. When we lift up our enemy in prayer it helps us to see them as one of God’s children, a lost sheep that he is looking for, and we will recognize we have the privilege of working with God to reclaim them. Therefor He asks us to pray for them. Is it only our enemies he wants us to pray for? Of course not, He knows we will not withhold our prayers from those we love and by his endorsement of praying for our enemies, we know it is his desire that we also remember those we consider friends and acquaintances.
Reason number 2 for interceding on behalf of others: It promotes growth in our spiritual life. At the end of Second Peter 3 in verse 18 we are told to…
18 …grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
One cannot pray for another human being repeatedly without deepening their own relationship to the creator God. Why is this? It is because, the more concern and love we have for someone else and the more we plead with God over their needs, the more like Christ we become. And what is spiritual growth if it is not becoming more like Christ. You see Christ cared about others. His entire earthly ministry dealt with meeting the needs of people including praying for them. 1 John 2:9,10 tells us…
9 He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. 10 He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him.
He who loves his brother abides in the light. Christ tells us that He is the light. When we pray for our brother, it is an act of love toward him and according to this scripture, it indicates we abide in Christ. I can think of no better environment for growing spiritually than abiding in Christ. Each time we open up our heart to the needs and cares of someone else we will find ourselves closer and closer to God. We cannot ask God to strengthen our neighbor without being strengthened ourselves, nor can we ask him to open their eyes to His great mercy without our view of Him coming into clearer focus. I can’t explain it, it’s just one of God’s natural laws. When we intercede for someone else, our spiritual experience is heightened.
The 3rd reason to lift others in prayer is that it combats selfishness. I don’t imagine any of you have a problem with selfishness, but I do, and it gives me great hope to know that I can gain ground against this dangerous sin by praying for those in need. Prayer can easily become an exercise in self-absorption. The things that come to our minds, and into our prayers are often our own needs, cares or concerns. We pray for help in dealing with a temptation, or we ask for safety and protection on a trip, or we pray for God’s leading in a decision we have to make. Although none of these things are bad or wrong, for we are implored us to cast our cares upon him, they are all self-focused.
I would challenge you to name one individual who did something great for the cause of Christ, whose focus was directed inward. I know of none. When we recall the early Adventist pioneers and missionaries that took the good news to unreached corners of the globe do we find a selfish spirit? When we think of the Christian reformers of the Dark Ages that strove to restore the truth about God to a misled people, those whose convictions brought them condemnation, do we see a hint of egocentricity in their witness? The answer to these questions without hesitation is No!
I remember reading a brief story in one of the books written by the prayer warier Roger Morneau. He was in the hospital. Not as a visitor, but as a very sick patient. He had pretty severe issues with his heart for years before his eventual death, but in this particular story, he was lying on a hospital gurney with a failing heart praying for another patient that he could tell was in need of God’s healing power. That story made me think, were I in that situation, would I even notice others around me in pain? Would my prayer be for God to preserve my life, or would I be interceding in behalf of those around me?
Interceding for others forces us to take the focus off of ourselves and turn our minds towards the concerns of someone else. Jesus of course was our perfect example of this, as he always put the needs of others before his own. If you will, turn now with me to Romans 15 and we’ll read together what Paul advised regarding self-sacrifice. Starting in verse 1…
We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. 2 Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. 3 For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” 4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
I realize Paul is not speaking here specifically of prayer but it has a clear application there. He is saying with Christ as our example, we are to focus our concern on others rather than ourselves. It is through interceding in behalf of a brother or sister that our own cares become less significant.
Reason number 4, It works. It yields results. God answers our prayers. True, he may not always answer a prayer in the way we think it should be answered, for we are not omniscient as God is, “having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding; perceiving all things.” We see only what is visible to us, but God sees all things and in his wisdom answers our prayers according to his unfailing love for us.
Think back over your prayer life, think of the things that you have asked of God in the past. I imagine we have all petitioned God for something where we gave him our request, and how He should answer it. You know we can be detailed and specific sometime. We say God I need a job so I can provide for my family, please give me this job I applied for at such and such a place, or Lord my husband doesn’t see how important thus and such is to me, please open his eyes so he can see things my way. We present the request, and we must not think God is capable of coming up with the right answer, so we figure we’ll help him out a bit and tell him how He should answer.
I remember when I was younger. I would pray to God and bring him my petition. Then afterward I would think of all the ways he could grant my request according to how I asked it, but not how I had meant it. I would then have to have a follow up prayer to clear thing up and make sure he would not find a loophole in my original prayer, where he could answer it without the result I had intended. Somewhere along the way I said to myself, “wait a minute, God is not looking for ambiguities and vagueness in my prayers so He can play tricks on me.” Jesus taught in Luke 11…
11 If a son asks for bread[d] from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 13 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
It is important for us to remember that we’re the ones that need help, not the other way around. Bring your request to God and he will answer it according to his complete understanding of all things and according to his will.
In recent years there has been a fair amount of emphasis within Christianity, placed on making our requests with the add-on phrase “according to your will” and I have no problem with that. When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, in the now famous Lord’s Prayer He even used the phrase “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” I often add that little phrase to my own prayers, but I believe when it comes to praying for healing to preserve the life of someone, we can pray boldly to God without the “according to your will” clarifier, because we can know without a shadow of doubt, that it is not God’s will that anyone should suffer and die. He created us to live forever in communion with Him, it is the enemy that wants us dead. That is not to suggest that the enemy doesn’t sometimes get his way, or that God can’t use the circumstances surrounding the death of a faithful servant to reach the hearts of the lost. He will reach the lost by whatever means He can, but when we lift a brother or sister up in prayer before the Great Physician of the Universe we should have no doubt that healing is within His will.
God is there, waiting and wanting to help us, or those for whom we would pray for. He wants us to rely upon and put our faith and trust completely in Him. That is why we read in Jeremiah 33: 1-3 …
Moreover the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time, while he was still shut up in the court of the prison, saying, 2 “Thus says the Lord who made it, the Lord who formed it to establish it (the Lord is His name): 3 ‘Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’
The 5th motivation for praying for others is it provides more excuses to praise God. Do we really need more excuses to praise God? You wouldn’t think so, but we must, because we don’t praise Him anywhere near enough. How many of you slept underneath some newspapers on a park bench last night? Praise God! Which of you had to walk miles to get to church this morning because you have no other means of getting here? Praise be to God! Who among you has trouble remembering when you had your last hot meal? If anyone raises their hand on that one, take note, for we can be the avenue that God can use to keep his promise sent through his servant in Philippians 4: 19
19 And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
Praise God we are not hungry! Praise God when we can help someone who is! The reasons to give Him praise are endless yet is there a more heartfelt praise than that which comes in response to an answered prayer?
One of the things I like to add after I petition God in behalf of someone else, is a statement something like this… “Lord I ask this in the name of Jesus, that you may be glorified as others witness what you have done. I’m not suggesting that there is any magical phrase that we must utter for God to hear and honor our prayer, I just want to makes sure that when my prayer is answered, those involved recognize by what power the answer came, and give Glory to God. Because, not everyone I pray for would naturally see their good fortune as a result of God intervening in their life.
How many of you bow your head and whisper a short prayer when you hear the siren of an ambulance? This is a little practice that we picked up somewhere along the way and have passed on to our son. It is more than likely that whomever that ambulance is going for could use a prayer, amen?
The 6th and final reason we might want to consider lifting our neighbors in prayer is because it will aid in our understanding of Christ as our intercessor. Among the scriptures speaking of Christ as our intercessor we find Hebrews 7: 25 which reads…
25 Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.
It says He lives to make intercession for His people. We will never know just what that feels like, however as we pour out our heart in prayer for another human being, we can begin to get a taste, a glimpse, a little better understanding of how Jesus must feel when he intercedes on our behalf. Through the act of caring about our fellow man enough to lift him and his cares up daily before the thrown of grace, we become a little more like our savior. And the more we pray for someone, the softer our hearts will become toward them. We will begin to love them as Jesus does, thus fulfilling the second greatest commandment, to love our neighbor as our self.
Over the course of my life there have been times that I have prayed for someone with regularity. I remember praying consistently for my grandfather, who was the kindest, gentlest, most loving atheist you would ever meet. I don’t know how that prayer was answered but I wrote him a letter before he died, telling him that I wanted to see him in the earth made new, and asking him to accept Jesus. It was just my awkward attempt of trying to do something while not really knowing what to do. I don’t know if my letter touched his heart, but I do know that God heard my prayers and did everything he could short of taking away my grandpas free will.
Wouldn’t it be tragic to find out that someone you know was on the fence in making a decision for Christ, and they went to their grave having never made that commitment, and you failed to pray for them, knowing now that your prayer could have made the difference? Oh, how many times have we missed opportunities to lift others up in prayer?
Recently, for many months now, I have been praying daily for my friend and brother Reid. My prayer has been for his healing. At the time I started praying for him, he was the only person I was aware of within my circle of friends and acquaintances who was dealing with cancer. Presently, when we kneel down in the evening after our family worship and lift our brother Reid up in prayer, we can’t stop there, because one-by-one we have been made aware of and added to our prayer six more of Gods children who are battling cancer. I don’t know why so many people we know have been stricken by this disease recently, but the least we can do is pray for them?
Let me ask you something. If you had the power to heal people of their infirmities, you wouldn’t be selective with it, would you? No, you would use that ability liberally, healing everyone you could. Does God have the power to heal? If we truly believe that he does, and I do, wouldn’t we ask him for that healing?
How many people in your circle are suffering illness? How many are suffering the pain of a broken relationship? How many are living without a saving knowledge of Jesus? Are they on your prayer list? If you had the power to eliminate their suffering and pain you would do it. I know, you don’t have that power, so why not take their case to the only one who does. By a show of hands, who will commit with me today to add just one precious soul to their prayer list, just one, it’s not too hard. I’m not talking about just praying for them once but rather lifting them up before the throne daily. Amen. Don’t be surprised when that one becomes two, three, or four. Can we bow our heads?