“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8
What is your response to such a request? Most respond “I will” however what has been our next steps? Do we stop what we are doing and go to our Father or do we make a mental or even recorded note to pray later? Is our response different when asked face-to-face vice when the request is shared via email or by a 3rd party? Do we say we will pray for someone and never do because we forget or because we never intended to and were just being polite?
Surely God doesn’t stop whatever He is doing to grant our prayer requests.
He goes about doing whatever He desires (His will) with or without us. So, what does it matter if we pray? It matters because God wants us to pray. During prayer we connect with Him and He with us. It matters because when we pray, we can start to understand and connect to His plan. During prayer He can engage us in a way we may not have expected. For example, we know it is God’s desire that all mankind be saved. When we pray for the salvation of someone that we know, we are telling God that we have the same desire as He does; we are actually lining up with His will. When we pray and God sees that we want to be in His will, He may invite us to participate in whatever it is He has planned. As the Holy Spirit goes about revealing God to mankind, He could ask us to be the means by which our unsaved friend hears about Jesus. He may use us to be His earthly voice. When we pray and connect to God’s will, God brings us into partnership with Him.
Be aware that when we are approached with a prayer request Satan is nearby waiting to interfere and cause distraction and doubt? He does not want us to speak with God nor does he want others to see the impact of prayer. If he can stop us from praying, he will try. If he can get us to put it off until a later time, he will be pleased but he will not stop at that little victory. He will place busyness or some other distraction in our path to make us forget and thereby not pray later. When we are working in harmony with God, Satan is not happy and so he will try to stop, delay and prevent our prayer.
When we pray to God, we will have His full attention. He does not make a mental note to listen later; we have His attention then and there. He does not hold off listening to our prayers and so we should not delay offering them to Him. The next time we are asked “Pray for me”, let the next words out of our mouth be “I will” followed by words similar to “Heavenly Father I come before you …”