To Encourage You

1 Thessalonians 5:25 “Brothers, pray for us.”

Do you make it a habit to ask people to pray for you?  The apostle Paul did.  Frequently in his letters, such as in 1 Thessalonians 5 above, he asked the believers to pray for him.  With these requests, Paul left an example that we should follow. If a spiritual giant like Paul, a person chosen uniquely by God to pen much of the New Testament, saw a need to ask others for prayer, surely, we have such a need as well.  You see, Paul wasn’t too proud to ask people to pray for him.  He asked other believers, many of whom no doubt became believers directly as a result of his ministry, to pray for him over and over again.

Do you do this?  If not, why not?  If you are involved in ministry of any kind, it will only succeed through the continual help of the Lord who has told us to pray about everything, and to pray for one another. However, if we never tell others what our needs are, if we never share our efforts to serve the Lord and the struggles we are facing as we do so, how can they pray? 

So, if you’ve not asked a friend to pray for you of late, maybe now’s a good time to do so.  It’s such a wonderful privilege to pray for one another and to be prayed for by others. As Paul urged the Corinthians, “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many” (2 Corinthians 1:11).  You see, the Christian life is a shared life. We serve together with our brothers and sisters, and one of the most important ways we share in that service is to pray for one another. May God help us, then, not only to pray for others, but to covet the prayers of others for ourselves.  But we must ask. We must share our needs for prayer with others, for as Paul shows us by his wonderful example, this is exactly what God has ordained.  

And by the way – please pray for me.