There Is Always Someone To Pray For ⋆ A Delightful Glow

There is always someone to pray for.

Some days it’s your neighbor grieving her spouse.
Other days it’s your son moving across several states.
Your friend in the country above yours, sick with a stomach bug.
Prayers for teachers in classrooms.
Orphans who need homes and arms to hug them.
Refugees resettling in your neighboring city.
Politicians weighing decisions.
Rejoicing as you welcome a new grandbaby into the world.
A friend juggling a job change and a new budget to balance.
Another friend on the opposite coast whose business has hit speed bump after speed bump.
Ukrainians and Afghan citizens.
Soldiers and policemen.
Delivery drivers and healthcare workers.
Rescue for trafficked victims and relief for people in the cycle of poverty.
The downtrodden, undertrodden, overlooked, cast out.
The desolate, desperate, displaced.
Those labeled less-than or sneered at because of ethnicity, skin color, or society structure.
Gratefulness for another good day with your people.
The child who finds reading a challenge. The mama who was up all night last night.
The daughter who said goodbye to her mother much too soon.
The fellow comrade fighting hard against anxiety and depression.
A friend who finds himself picking up the scattered pieces of his marriage.
Friends picking through the scattered pieces of their cozy home after the hurricane.
Chronic pain and debilitating disease that brave friends bear day after day.
A hospital ward filled with children under the age of ten because of the aching devastation called cancer.
The friend faithfully walking beside her spouse as dementia preys on his mind.
An elderly neighbor losing their eyesight.
Yourself.

It isn’t hard to fill our prayer lists.

Fact is, it can feel overwhelming and heavy.
Compassion and concern carry the burden of heartrending pain.
Empathy and understanding bring the stinging embrace of ache and hurt.
To offer consideration and caring is to sit tenderly with someone else’s gaping wounds.

To be vulnerably honest, some days the question hangs, “Are my prayers, simple or profound, proffering change, affecting outcomes, creating a difference?”

Yet, what is there but to believe?
Life makes no sense without Jesus.

Perhaps, that is one of the deepest gifts of faith and prayer.

Praying anyway.
Praying always.
Praying in all things.

Praying when it doesn’t make sense.
Praying in His will.
Praying and praising even when the outcome isn’t my idea of “the right answer.”

Prayer is a miracle. A gift.
An unexplained phenomenon of faith.

Whisper prayers all through your days.
Pray fervently.
Pray the name of Jesus when you have no words.
Grasp hold to prayer when you’re walking wounded.
Pray the prayer Jesus gave us.

Prayer forms us. Prayer forms in us.

There’s no perfect formula or prescripted pattern.
Borrow prayers. Recite written prayers.
Pour out soul and tears.

For there is always, always someone to pray for.

Romans 8:23-27 tells us…..
“And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering.
We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
We were given this hope when we were saved.
(If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.”