Pray for Each Other

Peter DeHaan

3 months ago

Insights About Praying For One Another

James writes that we are to confess our sins to one another and pray for each other so that we may be healed (James 5:16). Though the context of this instruction is for healing, we’re not wrong to extend this idea of praying for one another to a broader sense.

Involve Others

Some people are very private about their needs. They too often suffer in silence when they could tap others to intercede on their behalf. (See “A Friend in Need.”)

Though it’s not wrong to keep some challenges to ourselves, it’s wise to share more significant prayer requests with others. The key is discernment.

The other extreme is to share everything. Each time you meet them, they reel off a list of items they want you to pray for. It’s too long to remember, sometimes even for them.

Once, I asked the person to repeat their requests so I could write them down. They couldn’t and gave me a different list.

When we ask people to pray for us, we must avoid both extremes. We are right to involve them in our life so they can be part of our spiritual journey. Yet we would be wrong to dump everything on them every chance we get.

This brings us to the next item.

Do Your Part

When we ask others to pray for us, it’s important that we have first prayed for the need ourselves. The intent of James’s instruction to pray for each other isn’t to only have others praying for us. It’s to have them join us in our prayers.

We must also do our part to be positioned to receive answers. Too often, I’ve had people request prayer when they haven’t done their part.

For example, they have a financial need, but they aren’t changing their spending habits or being good stewards of the money they already have.

Or they struggle with an addiction and want God to take it away, but they make no effort to position themselves for victory. Instead, they persist in the same lifestyle or habits that hold them captive.

Once I had a college honor student ask me to pray that she would complete her capstone paper for her degree. For four years she’d taken harder classes and done additional assignments as part of her honors studies.

All that remained was to write a 20-page paper. She planned to do it during spring break.

I agreed to pray for her and did so every day, multiple times throughout the day. A week later I eagerly asked how it went, fully expecting a glowing report. Instead, she merely said, “Oh, I decided not to do it.”

I was miffed. I’d spent more time praying for her than she had put forth in effort. She didn’t even try. Sadly, this has happened to me multiple times.

For prayer to be effective, we need to do whatever we can to bring about the results we want. We do our part and trust God with the rest.

Seek Others

The charge to pray for one another isn’t just an instruction for other people to pray for us. It’s also a directive for us to pray for them.

The command goes both ways. We pray for them; they pray for us. This requires balance. If things fall out of balance, we’re best to error on the side of praying for others, instead of expecting them to pray for us.

This means asking people how we can pray for them.

But when we offer to pray for someone, we better follow through. Which is worse, to say we’ll pray and then not or to not offer and then pray anyway. (See Jesus’s parable of the two sons in Matthew 21:28-31.)