Learn to Genuinely Pray for Others

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REFLECTION:

One way to receive answers to your own personal prayers is to spiritually invest in the lives of other people. This may be earnestly praying for the salvation of someone, or sharing love with others from time to time, in the form of gifting, preaching, etc. When you do this genuinely and sincerely, regardless of your own personal needs, God’s grace is activated to take care of your own needs. That’s a spiritual law.

I’ve shared this testimony over and over; let me repeat it here again to let you know what I understand by sowing in tears.

My father died in 1987 while I was just 10. He died of multiple complications of heart problem that troubled him almost all his life. We didn’t have money to take him to a good hospital for better treatment and didn’t know much about divine healing.

While growing up, I started having heart problems, very similar to what my father had suffered before his death.  It was so bad that I could only lay in the bed face up, and avoided doing things that would make me bend down in any way.

But around 1998, I started praying for divine healing after I read a few books and scriptures that convinced me God wants me healed.

One day in that 1998, I went to a church close by, knelt down and prayed for God to heal me. As I was praying, I heard a voice say to me, “Go to the nearby hospital and pray for sick people and you will be healed”

At first, that got me wondering. Here am I, needing healing and praying earnestly to be healed. How does going to pray for others who are sick affect my getting healed?

As I was thinking about that, I saw a couple of truths in my spirit:

1. God wants to heal me, but not just me alone; He also wants to heal everyone who is sick.
2. What you are desperately seeking solution for, there are hundreds of others needing solution in that area too.
3. Find a way to share solution with others and your own situation will be taken care of.

You do not need to have been totally healed to pray for others healing. You don’t need to have all the money you need to pray for God to visit other homes in need.

The Bible says:

Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything. – 2 Corinthians 6:10 (NLT)

That experience taught me practically what sowing in tears mean. And I have never forgotten that lesson.

“When you look for an opportunity to be an encouragement to others, even though you still got your own wounds, you find healing much faster than sitting and waiting for it to come.”

Sowing in tears may be sharing your testimony with others. It may be forwarding this page to someone. It may be visiting sick persons in the hospital and praying with them. It may be finding a homeless person or fatherless kid and blessing the person with a gift of a bible or clothes or whatever, from time to time. It may be going to encourage someone who is hurting somewhere.

More importantly, it may be genuinely spending time, hours, days, weeks, months, etc, to pray for the Salvation of specific people. As you do this, God not only visits those you pray for, but also blesses your life abundantly.

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WHAT TO DO

I encourage you to start from today to pray earnestly for others welfare and salvation. Go to God in humility and sincerely pray for persons in your neighborhood or community that need Jesus.

I’m not talking about some general prayers of, “LORD, save these people in this community.”

No.

I’m taking about making a list names of few persons on paper and pray for their genuine salvation. The Bible says:

I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.– Luke 15:7.

As you join to create joy in heaven by genuinely praying for the salvation of others, God moves into your life and destroys whatever is causing you pain and sorrow, whatever they are.

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SCRIPTURES FOR MEDITATION AND CONFESSION

Matthew 18:14– “Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”

2 Peter 3:9 – “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

1 Timothy 2:3-4 – “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

Acts 16:31 – “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with everyone in your household.”

Luke 11:5-10 – Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’

And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’

I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[a] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

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TESTIMONY CULLED FROM THE BOOK…

1. HEALING PRAYERS