I will pray for you.

I will keep you in my prayers.

You are in my thoughts and prayers.

You are in my thoughts.

There is a spectrum of promises in the above statements from a very strong statement like “I will pray for you” to a much weaker declaration “you are in my thoughts.”

These statements have become clichés in our godless society and I have seen even secular people make them.  We have arrived at a point where such promises have lost their values because people may not follow through on these difficult to fulfill promises.

So we water them down.  We go from promising to dedicate time in prayer for someone to promising to think about someone.

I would like to warn Delight in Truth readers to guard your promises carefully, and not make the promise of prayer if you know you cannot keep it.  Prayer is not something to be taken lightly.  Prayer is antithetical to everything that makes up the carnal man, and that is why prayer is not easy.

When you promise to pray for someone, you promise to engage in a spiritual battle on their behalf, and it is a great thing when you follow through on it.  When you pray for someone you are interceding for them, and it literally means you are standing in the gap for them in prayer.  Paul confirms this in Ephesians 6:18 where he talks about  “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints…”

And when you do follow through on your promise to pray you must remember the all-powerful Intercessors you have on your side!

1. Jesus Himself our LORD and savior is the ultimate intercessor, and the best thing you can do is to lift up your subject to Jesus.  As a man you cannot be an effective advocate in prayer without Jesus.  I love how Isaiah presents Christ as the final intercessor to the Father: “He [the LORD] saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him.  Isaiah 59:16
2. The Holy Spirit is also your intercessor and ally in prayer and will sustain you as you pray for someone.  My favorite chapter in the Bible, Romans 8, provides amazing Scripture about the Holy Spirit helping us in prayer: “26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

Prayer is spiritual warfare and it is not easy, but when we have Jesus and the Holy Spirit as intercessors, we can become effective intercessors ourselves for the those who need us to pray for them.

We must take the promise of prayer for others very seriously and ground ourselves in the teaching of Scripture that Jesus and His Holy Spirit will intercede for our prayer subject!

image credit