Do you need new ideas for praying for your friends and family? Sometimes, it’s easy to pray the more obvious prayers for our loved ones: “Lord, please move in their financial situation,” or “Lord, I pray for healing in their body.” We can quickly find ourselves in a bit of a prayer rut!
At our church’s ladies meeting this past month, I asked each of our ladies to draw a name from a bowl. Each lady’s name was in that bowl. I asked them to look at the name they’d pulled and pray for that lady this week; really pray. Not just the obvious prayers, not half-hearted prayers, but pray that God works in them and through them, changes who they are to glorify Him.
If you desire a deeper prayer life and more meaningful prayers for your friends and family, consider adding more to your prayers.
Here’s the list I shared with our ladies…
Pray that:
- They understand God’s will
- They gain spiritual wisdom
- They live a life pleasing and honoring to God
- They do kind things for others
- They know God better
- They are given strength
- They endure in patience
- They stay full of joy
- They are thankful
- They remember how much God loves them
I’ve seen God move in many ways, in many lives, and I’m a firm believer in the power of prayer! He is able! Your prayers DO make a difference!
How do you pray for your loved ones? Have you ever felt that you were in a prayer rut or had fallen into complacency in your prayer life?
A beautiful list. I’m going to write it in my prayer journal. “The prayers of a righteous man availeth much.”
Very good post! I don’t know that I’ve ever “de-lurked” on your blog before but I wanted to let you know that I appreciate your blog. I’m an apostolic woman (wife, mom, etc 🙂 in KY and I love seeing someone let her “light shine” by encouraging Biblical womanhood. Really enjoy your blog! Thanks!
Oh, Melissa, I’m so glad you “de-lurked”… I can’t wait to get to know you better! Thanks for your sweet words!
I’ve used Andrew Case’s book “Prayers of an Excellent Wife” to help me pray more in depth for my husband. I just bought his book for praying for your kids. I have also found scripture to be so useful in my prayers. I often pull from what I am reading in the Bible that morning and pray for others using the scriptures to guide my prayers.
I’ve not heard of Case’s book, although I’ve read Stormie OMartian’s with similar titles. And yes — Scripture!!! Perhaps the most effective praying of all!
Thank you for the lovely post. I do have a key chain of scriptures that I use sometimes..
Praying the Word is as you say us the most effective way..
God bless..
I absolutely love this list! Beautiful thoughts! I think I’ll have to take the earlier commenter’s advice and write this in my prayer journal! I’ve been trying to really work on my prayer life during this first month of 2012 – it’s my most difficult spiritual discipline, by far! (Probably because I’m TOO MENTALLY BUSY and need to slow down!) I read a GREAT book called The Praying Life by Paul Miller, and it REALLY spoke to me…..such a great read! Thanks for the sweet post!