Can I pray for you in any way?
Send
any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
As for other matters, brothers and sisters, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil people, for not everyone has faith.
2 Thessalonians 3:1-2
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
I have had the privilege to be used by the Lord since 2007 to write messages from His holy Word and within the framework of every published devotion (nearly 3,700 of them), I have always included an offer to pray for my readers. You will find this at the very beginning and end of each writing.
Unfortunately, very few people have ever taken me up on the offer. You see, there’s always a multitude of people with matter that need prayer but for some reason, they are hesitant, if not downright resistant, to reach out and ask someone to pray over them.
Recently, I have started to post specific tweets regarding my willingness to pray for anyone in need. I even created a special email address for it but to date, there have been only four people who have reached out.
So what is the issue here? Why are we so reluctant to step outside of ourselves and ask for someone to intercede with the Lord on our behalf?
I’ve obviously given this a lot of thought and have come up with several reasons.
1. Pride.
Unfortunately, most people don’t want to admit they can’t do something because it projects weakness and sometimes even failure. We’re afraid to be seen as vulnerable and insufficient and so we will do everything we can to seem like we’re better than we really are. This refusal to be authentic and surrender our pride ultimately works against us as we turn our backs on people who could really make a difference and possibly eliminate our problem altogether.
This leads me to the second reason I believe people won’t ask for prayer when they should.
2. Satan.
The last thing our enemy wants is for someone to be lifted up to the Lord in prayer because he knows that when the Lord gets involved, his wicked hope ends.
If there’s a voice in your ear giving you any number of excuses to not ask someone to pray for you, ask yourself this:
Would the Lord ever try to convince you to not have someone come to Him on your behalf in an attempt to help you?
Don’t let Satan succeed in swaying you to reach out for prayer when you need it. He deserves no victory over you or your life.
3. Privacy concerns.
I think sometimes people don’t ask for prayer because they don’t want everyone to know their business. The institution of social media has made a mockery of privacy and every day it seems that people are leveraging it as a weapon against others.
This is why a Facebook or Twitter request for someone to write a comment with a prayer request is less than optimal in effectiveness. Some people may feel comfortable doing it but a majority of people will pass. This is why I have created a dedicated email address so people can write to me confidentially and know any conversation will be between us and the Lord.
4. Shame.
Along with pride, Satan uses shame against us. No one feels good about their sin and all of us have done things we wish we wouldn’t have done. We all live with regrets.
Satan would have us go through life continuing to deal with condemnation, often self inflicted. I can’t tell you how many people I have ministered to through my lifetime who were simply unable to forgive themselves for the things they had done. If this is where you are, the enemy has you right where he wants you.
This is where our relationship with the Lord is vital and beautiful. For all we need to do is repent of our sins and the Lord will forgive and forget. What has happened in the past is left there, in the past, and the Lord then helps us move forward into the future as a changed, pardoned person who is freed from the guilt of our transgressions and working to become a better person in Christ Jesus.
Friends, it’s okay to ask for prayer. It really is. The Apostle Paul, in writing to the newly minted Christians in Thessalonica, shows us how to do it. Look at his words here from the opening two verses of 2 Thessalonians, chapter 3:
As for other matters, brothers and sisters, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil people, for not everyone has faith.
Here we find Paul asking for intercession in two specific areas for himself and his fellow missionaries.
First, he asked for prayer over the Gospel work still being done.
Brothers and sisters, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you.
Paul and the others had moved on from Thessalonica, moving at the will of the Lord to go to new places and share the good news of salvation through Jesus. As they would go from place to place, the hope was that more churches would be planted as people chose to become Christians.
And so Paul asked his Thessalonian brothers and sisters to pray for success in this future Gospel work so the “message of the Lord” might “spread rapidly and be honored” just as it had with them.
The need for protection was the second petition we see Paul offer up.
And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil people, for not everyone has faith.
Just as Satan works hard to thwart people from asking for prayer, he also labors persistently to try and stop the spreading of the Gospel. Paul met resistance from “wicked and evil people” nearly everywhere he brought the good news of Jesus to. He regularly experienced persecution, suffered beatings and unlawful imprisonments, and received death threats because not everyone who heard his message had faith.
Paul knew that Satan wouldn’t stop in these attacks and so he asked for the Thessalonian Christians to continue praying for the Lord to bring a covering of safety on him and the other missionaries.
Friends, this message is a critical one and I encourage you to self examine yourself to see if there is any hindrance you feel toward asking for prayer. If one is identified, I would ask you to go to the Lord in prayer and ask Him to remove that barrier, professing your full faith and trust in Him. I would then feel free to ask a faithful, willing, prayer-providing believer to intercede for you because there is definite power in numbers. If you don’t believe it, consider these words from Jesus:
“I assure you: If two of you on earth agree about any matter that you pray for, it will be done for you by My Father in Heaven.” Matthew 18:19
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
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