Published originally March, 2007
Isn’t it easier to pray for some than for others? Praying for the Lord to save our family members from their sins and a lost eternity is a fairly ‘natural’ thing for every Christian to do. Even without the transforming grace of God in our lives, we would want to see the very best come upon those we love and respect. We’d never want to see them at risk or in danger. So it’s no big surprise that we have certain ones we pray for constantly – the people we like or love.
And then there is another category we keep on our prayer lists. Those that are loved by people we love. They’re not our family members, but they belong to people we appreciate and respect. So we pray for ‘their’ loved ones. There’s yet another category of people that often find themselves on our prayer lists: neighbours, co-workers and the generic people in our community. We may not know their names, and perhaps we haven’t seen their faces, but with the broad stroke of our prayer brush, we include them in our prayers.
But all of those categories are pretty safe, unsurprising and non-shocking. But when have you last prayed for a person that would shock your friends if they knew you were praying for someone like that? Dig out your written prayer list as you read this, and go over the names. Are all the names on your list the type of people anyone would expect you to be praying for? Or do you have some shockers on your list?
Didn’t someone say long ago: “Love your enemies…pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you…” (Matthew 5:44) It sounds a bit unnatural, doesn’t it! That’s because it is unnatural. But the transforming grace of God in our lives and the indwelling Spirit of God operating unhindered in our lives will cause us to do unnatural things – like praying for those who are violently opposed to all that we love and cherish.
Did you pray for Saddam Hussein’s salvation before he went into eternity? How have you been praying for Bin Laden? That he’d be found? Or have you also prayed that the Spirit of God would convict him of his sin and lead him to repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ? Have you prayed that somehow the Gospel would reach his ears wherever he is hiding – whether it is through a Gospel paper, a website, an email, a Gospel DVD, a phone call or a smuggled Bible into his cave?
Do you know what Osama Bin Laden and Saul of Tarsus share in common? A violent hatred of Christianity and all it represents. Up until the Damascus Road experience, Saul of Tarsus lived for one thing: to wipe out Christianity on the planet. Destroy it. Obliterate it. Annihilate it. Lock up and execute every adherent to the Christian faith. His blood boiled in hatred towards Christianity, Christian churches and believers themselves until…. until what? Until God reached into his life and wonderfully saved him.
What a remarkable day it would be if a message like this spread around the globe as it did 1950 years ago:
“that he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” Galatians 1:23
And can you imagine if, from Afghanistan or Pakistan, we started receiving text messages from a cave that said:
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live But Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20
May the Spirit of God work in our lives to genuinely change the character of our prayer lists. Remember, God’s heart throbs in love just as strongly for those ‘not’ on our list as for those who are. “Lord, lift us out of the rut of just praying for those in our own little world.”