Our prayer lives are a measure of how well we are doing in other areas of our spiritual lives. For this reason alone, I encourage you to take time out of your busy day to pray. Your prayers should include praise and worship, confession of sins, and intercession for yourself and others.
As you pray, you become more aware of God's presence in your own life. As 1 Thessalonians 5:17 points out, we are to “pray continually.” This is great advice because if we have an ongoing conversation with God, we will always find ourselves seeking his presence. I like what Mother Teresa's business card said: “The fruit of silence is PRAYER. The fruit of prayer is FAITH. The fruit of faith is LOVE. The fruit of love is SERVICE. The fruit of service is PEACE.”
Through prayer, we are led to faith, love, service, and peace. Jim Cymbala, a pastor from Brooklyn, New York, would agree. He tells his story in the book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire. He relates that he came to a point at which unless God broke through, the ragtag Brooklyn Tabernacle he pastored was doomed to closure. Not only was his small church in trouble; he could not shake his winter cold that had dragged on for months. Finally, Cymbala's in-laws sent him to St. Petersburg, Florida, to get some much-needed rest for his congested lungs. One day, this young pastor was on a fishing boat with twenty tourists. He sat by himself and silently prayed, “Lord, I have no idea how to be a successful pastor. I haven't been trained. All I know is that Carol and I are working in the middle of New York City, with people dying on every side, overdosing from heroin, consumed by materialism, and all the rest. If the gospel is so powerful… .”
He couldn't finish because of his tears. It was then he sensed God speaking to him: If you and your wife will lead my people to pray and call upon my name, you will never lack for something fresh to preach. I will supply all the money that's needed, both for the church and for your family, and you will never have a building large enough to contain the crowds I will send in response.
When Pastor Cymbala got back to Brooklyn, he told his congregation, “If we call upon the Lord, he has promised in his Word to answer, to bring the unsaved to himself, to pour out his Spirit among us. If we don't call upon the Lord, he has promised nothing—nothing at all. It's as simple as that. No matter what I preach or what we claim to believe in our heads, the future will depend upon our times of prayer.”1
Today, Pastor Cymbala has been the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle for over twenty-five years. In that time, the congregation has grown from twenty members to more than six thousand. God has continued his work through this praying church.
Pastor Cymbala was right: ask nothing, get nothing. Jesus himself taught us, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matt. 7:7–8).
It's simple: if you don't ask, you don't get. We can enter into the heart of God only through prayer.
Pray before You Share
I cannot think of a single time, out of the thousands of times I have shared my faith, that I haven't prayed for the person beforehand. Even if it is a chance meeting, I silently pray for God's help.
Also, I have a list of unbelievers for whom I pray for daily. Some of these people have been on my prayer list for years; others, for only a short time. These people range from relatives to famous people God has put on my heart.
Kathie Grant understands the call to pray for unbelievers. She prays for twenty-five hundred unbelievers in a given week. Not long ago, she and her husband, Paul, were flying from Atlanta to Denver when she saw a senator who had been on her prayer list for seven years. He sat next to her, and she talked with him for three and a half hours. After a while, she asked, “Do you know what the gospel is?”
“No,” he said.
There he was, sixty-six years old, and he had never heard the gospel.
Kathie asked, “Would you humor me and look at some verses from the Bible?”
“Sure,” he said.
Kathie took him through the “Share Jesus Scriptures.” Later, she said, “As he read the Scriptures aloud, I could see the Holy Spirit working.”
He did not pray to receive Christ that day, but Kathie knows she was successful because she'd been obedient, not only to pray, but to share her faith. She says, “It was one of the highlights in my life.”
I too have watched the power of prayer make a difference in an unbeliever's life. A few years ago, I took a major government official in law enforcement, a man whom I will call Ted, out to play golf. The group consisted of myself, Ted, and one other Christian named Zane. On the fifteenth hole, I turned to Ted and said, “Do you go to church anywhere?”
He rattled off five churches across the country. I asked, “If you died, where would you go?”
He strode two steps toward me and growled, “Fay, you know exactly where I'm going.”
I wasn't about to back down, so I took two steps toward him. We were standing nose to nose, and I smiled and said, “Ted, I don't have a clue where you're going.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw my friend Zane literally bow and begin to pray. As he prayed, I could see Ted's heart melt. He said, “You're right, I don't know where I'm going either.”
And right there, on the fifteenth hole of the Plum Creek Golf Course, he gave his heart to Christ. I am convinced I saw the power of intercession melt the heart of one who was resistant to God.
It is wise to pray for unbelievers. It is also wise to use prayer as a way to prepare you for sharing your faith. How can prayer help you get ready? For starters, you can pray for:
• Opportunities
Evangelism is a sanctification process. God is asking us to go into a deeper relationship with him. When I enter into prayer for the lost, I am asking God to open my eyes and my heart to the miraculous. Every morning, during my quiet time, I ask him to give me the privilege of sharing Jesus with somebody whose heart is ready to hear the good news. That way, I spend my day on alert, constantly asking, “Lord, is this the one you have sent to me today?”
This process makes me more open and available to move in God's will.
• Love
First Corinthians 13:1 says, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
It is hard to share our faith when our love for others has grown cold. For this reason, it is important to ask God to give us his love for others, to help us see their brokenness and pain, and to hear their cries. This kind of prayer will help us capture God's heart for the lost. Then we will share Christ, not out of duty, but out of love. Love makes all the difference.
Ephesians 3:17–19 says, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
When we begin to love others and look at them through God's eyes, we will see a people in darkness. In our country alone, according to the FBI:
When we love others, the people trapped in the darkness are no longer statistics, but people Christ loves and died for. We know that their only hope is a born-again relationship with Jesus Christ. We pray they will find it.
• Others Will See Christ in You
Another constant prayer of our hearts should be that people will see Christ in us. We want God to use us as spiritual magnets to attract others to himself.
This will happen only when we are living in a prayer relationship with him. We will have the sparkle in our eyes that reveals the joy in our hearts. I pray that God will make your friends and family jealous enough of your joy to want it for themselves.
• Boldness
As the apostles did, we need to ask God for boldness. One day, after Christ's resurrection and ascension into heaven, the apostles were arrested for preaching the gospel in the temple. Before they were released from jail, they were threatened by the rulers of the synagogue. How did the apostles respond to those threats? They responded with prayer. They met in an upper room and prayed, “Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.” At the end of their prayer, “the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:29, 31). Their boldness came as an answer to prayer.
• Power
Pray that you know and recognize the power of God within you. Ephesians 1:18–19 says, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know…his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
We need to be strong in the Lord and in his power. After all, we have the same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead inside of us! We lack absolutely nothing. Through prayer, we can “be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” (Eph. 6:10).
How to Pray for the Lost
Does God answer our prayers for the lost? Ask Big Earl. He had spent twenty-six years of his life in prison and had another twenty years to go. Two inmates, Tony and Don, witnessed to him one night. Big Earl's reaction was immediate. He gave Don a punch in the mouth, knocking out two teeth. Don got up, spit out his teeth, and said, “You can hit me again if you want, but I will never stop praying for you.”
When Big Earl went into his cell that night, the Holy Spirit spoke to him, “Your sister has prayed for you for twenty-five years. It is now or never.”
Big Earl said the voice was so clear he looked under his bunk and behind his toilet, wondering if someone had hidden a speaker in his cell. But as God's Holy Spirit penetrated his heart, Big Earl fell on his bed, convicted of his sins. When Tony and Don walked past his cell the next morning, they saw this big, six-foot-four man stand up and literally wring tears out of his pillow. God had moved on the behalf of the prayers of Big Earl's sister.
Psalm 2:8 says, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.”
We pray for the salvation of others, not because we believe they are worthy of salvation, but because we believe in Christ's love, power, knowledge, and mercy. We pray because we know Christ desires all men to know him as Lord, just as he did us. We also pray to ask Jesus to send more workers into the field.
My prayer life was revolutionized after reading my friend Kathleen G. Grant's self-published book, The Key to His Kingdom: Praying in the Word of God. Kathie teaches the marvelous principle of praying God's will through his Word. She points to John 15:7, which says, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
She explains prayer is a conversation with God, hearing him first through his Word, then responding back to him through his Word. She says, “To forego prayer is really like trying to do God's will without the breath of the Holy Spirit to energize and to bring the fruit. Nothing done apart from the Spirit will accomplish anything.”
The following is a week's worth of Scriptures and prayers to help you pray for the lost. These prayers are from Kathie's book, The Key to His Kingdom: Praying in the Word of God.2
Directions: First, read the Scripture, then pray it back to God.
Kathie's book has many more Scriptures you can pray and rotate in your prayer journey, but these will help you get started. I also challenge you to pray over these and other meaningful Scriptures with your own prayers.
Prayer Lists
It may also help you to make a list of unbelievers for whom you can pray. And as Kathie says, “Dare to name anyone!” You may want to name friends, family, coworkers, politicians, government officials, movie and television personalities, doctors, nurses, secretaries, receptionists, sales clerks, hairdressers, neighbors, or in other words, anyone with whom you come in contact. If your list is very long, you may want to rotate it so you can cover everyone on your list in a week's time.
I have sat fascinated, studying Kathie Grant's personal prayer journal. Her journal lists the names of everyone from movie stars to bums on the street. I also found the date of when she started praying for the Berlin Wall to come down. But when I found my own name and the date she began to pray for me to become a Christian, I realized the awesomeness of her ministry. This was a giant reminder of the importance of intercession. Was the fact my name was in her prayer journal a coincidence? Let me put it this way: the more we pray, the more “coincidences” happen. In fact, God tells us in Philippians 4:6–7, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
I am so thankful that God answers prayers prayed on the behalf of unbelievers. I am living proof.