Praying For Each Other

“…pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” 

(James 5:16, nlt)

There are many things about prayer that are still a mystery to me.

But it doesn’t matter. I do it anyway.

I enumerated some of the reasons why here and here.

I believe that without the power of prayer, Katherine never would have left the ICU. I would not have been able to get up off the floor in her room. Jay would not have been able to function on a few hours of sleep per night. On and on and on.

We were fueled by the intercessory prayers of people around the world. There was a force-field of grace surrounding us. We swam in it during those long, desperate months of touch-and-go.

Those prayers were faithful and consistent. They still are. I hear from people all the time who say, “We still pray for Katherine daily.”

I wish I had that kind of selfless devotion and consistency. But I’ve come to understand that we’ve all been given different gifts. And we are not all called to specialize in the same ones. In I Corinthians 12, the apostle Paul refers to “different types of service” and “different types of working.” Using the analogy of the parts of the body, he makes the point that we can’t all be eyes or arms. Someone has to do the walking and the talking and the hearing.

When someone asks me to pray for them, I do it then and there. And I might stick a post-it up somewhere to remind me in the days ahead. But because I have ADD and am, shall we say, scattered, consistency and perseverance are challenges. I forget things. At this point, I forget almost everything…car keys, sunglasses, wallet, children’s names, best friend's names, how old I am, where I’m going, what I’m supposed to be doing, my mind…

That is why I’m asking for your help. I used to berate myself for my lack of constancy in intercession for others. Although, with extra effort, I am getting better at it, I’ve realized that intercession may not be my particular gift. I believe that we should all pray as “unceasingly” as possible…almost like breathing. A continuous conversation and communion. But there are those among us who have been given a special gift for prayer.

I know that many of your hearts have been moved by the stories that others have shared with me. When I’m having a hard time, I try to think about what some of the other earthquake survivors might be going through that day, and send up a prayer for them. I hope that some of you, too, have been remembering them in your prayers. Perhaps more consistently than I.

So this is what I’d like to do: I’d like to have a place where people could share their prayer requests with all of us. And anyone who feels moved to do so could pray for them.

There was no easy way to set this up, because comments cannot be left on Blogger Pages. (Long story, but that is why there was a pre-dated January entry, when I didn’t start blogging here ‘til May.) The little prayer icon on the right (picture of Medieval lady praying) should open to a Blogger post where comments may be posted. We can use the comment forms as prayer request cards. Feel free to respond to each other.

I can’t tell you how much it meant to us during the worst times to know that people all over the world were praying for us. I hope that this will enable some of you to experience that as well.

I welcome your suggestions, comments, ideas, etc. on how we can make this work.

Now somebody click on the praying lady and give us something to pray about!