How should you pray for other Christians? When I began, a few months ago, to pray through my phone contacts during my daily prayer walks, that question came up pretty quickly. On any given day, most of the people I pray for are not sick. They aren’t traveling, or in desperate need of a financial breakthrough. I can, and do, ask for prayer requests, but if other people are anything like me, what they ask for is not necessarily what they most need. There’s no guarantee, in fact, that they are even consciously aware of what they most need.
As I asked the Holy Spirit to show me how to pray for the people on my list, I found my attention during my quiet times being drawn more and more to the prayers recorded in Scripture. (Which, in hindsight, is really not surprising.) For example, in their letter to the Colossians, Paul and Timothy describe their prayer for that church:
We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:9-12).
Bearing fruit. Growing in knowledge. Power, endurance, patience, joyful thanksgiving. These are their prayer requests, all of them part of their larger prayer that the Colossians would “live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.”
Breaking this down a little further, “bearing fruit” in the Bible symbolizes several different things: children, for example (Genesis 1:28), or the character qualities that come from the Spirit of God (Galatians 5:2-23). But Paul and Timothy in this passage specifically say, “bearing fruit in every good work.” Their prayer, then, is that the faith of the Colossians will overflow into works of service done out of love for one another and for their neighbors. Living a life worthy of Christ, in other words, is not just for Sundays, or for my daily quiet times. Living a life worthy of Jesus means loving my brothers and sisters, and also my neighbors, and doing it with my actions as well as with my words. This is one of the prayers that Paul and Timothy pray for the believers in Colossae.
Power is something they pray for as well, specifically that the Colossians will have the power to patiently endure trouble. This is not a prayer that I see offered very frequently in our modern era. We pray instead only that we ourselves, along with the people we care about, would be delivered from every kind of hardship. And I don’t think it’s wrong to ask for that. Even Jesus asked that for himself in Gethsemane. But he also ended that prayer with, “Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).
Patiently enduring hardship because we trust that God is still in control is a pretty powerful testimony. Even more so when hardship comes in the form of persecution. When I look past whatever painful or frightening circumstances I’m facing and instead give “joyful thanks” to God for having made me a part of his kingdom, I testify that God’s kingdom is better than any earthly comforts, and that the inheritance I’m receiving through Christ outweighs any amount of hardship, or trouble, or persecution that I might face. And although Paul and Timothy don’t specifically say so, it seems to me that humility is a part of this equation as well. It’s only to the extent that I know that I am not worthy to be included in the “the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light” that I am truly thankful to have been included anyway.
In the fourth chapter of the same letter we see another prayer for the Colossians, this time from Epaphras (presumably the same Epaphras from whom, according to Colossians 1:7, they first heard the message about Christ). Paul and Timothy affirm that he is working hard for the believers in Colossae even when he is away from them, and they also report on his prayers:
Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured. (Colossians 4:12)
Again, this prayer is not for material needs, but for spiritual maturity and fruitfulness as the Colossians “stand firm in all the will of God.” And I think this pattern, which can be seen in other places in the New Testament as well, teaches us something important. The church, whether at Colossae or anywhere else, is not just a bunch of fellow travelers on our way to heaven; it’s a royal priesthood, established for the purpose of proclaiming the kingdom of God (1 Peter 2:9). It is also God’s holy temple (1 Corinthians 3:16). We are here for a reason; we’re the first fruits of God’s kingdom on earth.
Now, prayer for individual, material needs is not just acceptable; it’s actually commanded (Matthew 6:11, James 5:13-15). But what these prayers in Scripture demonstrate is what I would call strategic prayer. It’s prayer focused on advancing God’s kingdom through proclaiming the gospel and through bringing believers to full maturity in Christ. More than that, it’s prayer that God’s children will fulfill the purpose for which they were created. That they will live up to their identity.
As an aside, I will note that what I’m calling strategic prayer here has absolutely nothing to do with the practice of binding “territorial spirits” that some modern teachers advocate. Based on both my experience and my understanding of God’s word, this is not something we have been given to do. Prayer is certainly part of the panoply of spiritual warfare that Paul wrote to Ephesus about (Ephesians 6:18), but we should not jump in to warfare prayer without paying close attention to the plentiful examples the New Testament gives us. This present article, however, is about praying for other believers. Prayer warfare against demonic forces is a topic for another day.
There is another aspect of this prayer as well. Even before telling the Colossians how they were praying for them, Paul and Timothy wrote:
We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people – the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you (Colossians 1:3-6).
They weren’t just making strategic requests; Paul and Timothy also gave thanks to God strategically. Their hearts were focused on how they could, through their prayers, help the believers in Colossae become everything that God had created them to be, and thanking God when they saw it happen. Nor were their thanksgiving and their prayers just for the Colossians. To the church at Philippi Paul wrote:
I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:3-6).
Paul here is joyfully thanking God that the Philippian believers are living out their calling and their faith. And he follows up his thanksgiving with this request:
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:9-11).
He clearly states his end goals here; righteousness for the Philippians and glory to God. And this same pattern of prayer can be seen throughout the rest of the New Testament also.
As I’ve started to apply this pattern from Scripture to my own prayers, one of the first things I’ve discovered is that, even if I don’t know somebody very well, I can usually see something in them to give thanks for. It’s almost always possible to see how God is at work in the lives of the people around me, if only I think to look for it. And then, seeing what God is already doing, I know better how to pray for their continued growth to maturity in Christ. And if I misunderstand, if I don’t hear what the Holy Spirit is saying, if I’m simply wrong about what I think God is doing or what he wants to do, I know that he is able to properly interpret my desire that this person grow more fully into the son or daughter of God that they were created to be. Our Father is delighted when we join our wills and our desires with his in prayer, but every answer to prayer comes through his wisdom and his goodness. Prayer is incredibly powerful, but it’s also safe.
But not only can I see how God is at work if I just look for it, I’ve found that it’s actually gotten easier to see that since I started praying this way. I’m watching the people I pray for change over time, as the Holy Spirit works in their lives. That’s exciting! And again, in hindsight it’s not surprising. God was at work long before I started praying, but I usually didn’t see it because I wasn’t paying attention.
And I want to be clear that strategic prayer has not replaced praying for material needs, such as health, safety and finances, nor for specific areas of witness that I know the person has on their heart. I still pray for all those needs whenever I’m aware of them. But added to those requests I’m also praying, in very specific ways, that the people on my prayer list will grow fully into the sons and daughters of God that they were created to be. I’m praying for them exactly the same way I’d want the people who know me to pray for me, even while all of us are, as the Scripture says, “being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).