Praying For All People
Paul says to Timothy "I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people" (1 Timothy 2:1 NIV11)
All people! That’s quite a lot of people to pray for isn’t it?
The Five-Fingered Prayer
What works for me is to use the five-fingered prayer. Perhaps you've never of that. Let me show you.
Your thumb is the finger closest to you, so you begin by praying for those closest to you - family, friends, and then colleagues.
Your pointer represents those who teach and preach. Pray for your pastors, your leaders, who have such an important responsibility in leading God's people in the truth.
Your middle finger is for the 'tallest' in the land - president, political leaders, etc., those who have a lot of power.
Your fourth finger is the weakest, so here you pray for those in need - the sick, the struggling.
Your pinky is the smallest and the last, so here you humbly pray for your own needs - you're also part of 'all people', after all!
Do you have a prayer ministry at your church? Or a prayer meeting once a week maybe? Is God nudging you this week to get involved in that ministry, as one of the faithful pray-ers who prays with urgency?
How Our Church Prays for All People
Our church has a great prayer ministry. Any time somebody needs prayer, someone on our prayer team is assigned that prayer request, and they begin to pray daily for that need, and check in with the person who requested it, for updates.
The requests that come in are varied - there are all sorts of different needs in our community. We pray through them, because we are called to pray for ALL people here.
Then we have the names of some of those prayer needs - the ones which those requesting them asked to be made public - on our bulletin, so everyone in the church can take the list home and pray too, when they get to that fourth finger.
We don't need to know the details. But simply holding these names up before God and saying these people are part of my spiritual family, Lord, I lift them to You and pray for Your help with whatever they need. That's powerful!
Imagine, if everybody in each church prayed this way for their people! The world would be covered in prayer so quickly!
Make Time to Pray for Others
Some of you are saying I don't have time for this. But let me remind you of that quote from yesterday: "What too often comes last in a church's priorities should actually come first." We may not have the time to spend hours on our knees, but what about those little vacant moments in between the things you do?
I sometimes wonder to myself how much prayer I have neglected while watching another reel, another short, another video. The urgency Paul is talking about here is not for another bit of entertainment. It's for another prayer!
Let's get praying - for all people, all the time.
Prayer shouldn't only be reserved for leaders or the lost; God calls us to pray for all people, including ourselves. Try the five-fingered prayer today, working through each finger and each category of person as you go.