This Could Be More: Praying Beyond the List

I have a new friend.

Her name is Siri, and she and I are getting along swimmingly. She remembers my grocery lists and my reminders.

(She doesn’t always understand me, but this is forgivable. For example, my phone’s packing list for my business trip read “Tupac” [as in, the late rapper?], and my Walmart list included tea for a whale [that would be my son] and a toilet? I also somehow sent a text to someone from church accidentally using God’s name in vain last week. But overall, Siri’s strengths outweigh her weaknesses.)

She and a little index card can have a pretty loud voice in my week. My index card carries my general to-do’s for my work hours. Some of the entries contain cryptic personal shorthand (“QEWIA” and “AOP”). My index card, as a rule, has more mileage than my day actually contains.

If you’ve visited this site before, it may come as no surprise that I occasionally find a loyalty to my task list (which is designed, in theory, to love people well) competing with my loyalty to, you know, people.

And there are parallels between Siri and my well-worn weekly index cards…to the ways I pray for people.

“Sit with Them”

I have a wonderful prayer app I use to keep track of things I’d like to pray for. And a number of my printables for this site are designed to help us pray specifically and meaningfully for the relationships in our lives.

But every now and then, I got the idea that prayer for other people should be more than just this.

It swelled to an “aha!” a few weeks ago, as I read the words of Ruth Barton.

I am…careful about how I use prayer lists. Now, as I sit quietly in God’s presence daily, I see who God brings to mind and heart. As they come into my awareness, I invite them into that place where God’s Spirit and my spirit are communing, and we sit together with that person. If I have a list or if there are people and concerns weighing on me, I bring those, too, and we sit together with them. I don’t feel burdened by the need to figure anything out or to say words that indicate that I somehow have a handle on the situation. It is enough to share the love, the rest and the care of God with them in this way. 

If words do come or if there is something that I want to ask for, I certainly feel free to say this to God, but there is no pressure to do so. Most times there is nothing for me to do or say except to hold the people and situations that are of concern to me in God’s presence and listen.*

I should acknowledge first that Ruth’s approach here flirts with a more mystical spirituality that some of you might find uncomfortable. But if you are able to set that aside, here is what I hear her doing: She loves people in prayer, and presents them to God’s presence in a way that I somehow imagine Jesus interceding for me.

I feel freed by this concept, in a lot of ways. First, it shifts my focus from getting my prayer “right” for this person, and allows the Holy Spirit to intercede for me and for them (Romans 8:26-27). And perhaps, too, I’ve felt often that I’ve held people before God…but did it count, I wondered, if I didn’t pray specific words and requests?

Like This Post Prayer!

Sometimes praying for others can feel like contributing to a social share: “‘Like’ this post to help us raise $500!” Or like I’m flipping through my reminders I loaded into Siri. Buy a new toilet brush. Pray for Sandra.

Sometimes I want to pray so I can be “that person” who people can trust to pray for them, who remembers them. Of course it’s good to establish goals for the kind of woman I want to be, what I want to do–and actually take steps to achieve that. But would you want to be the one I pray for so that I’m a better person?

Yeah. Me neither.

I want to be diligent both love and prayer, too; also good things. I wonder about how and what Jesus prayed on long, sleepless nights away. Surely he wasn’t just hammering through requests.

But I also wonder if I’m carting my Americanness into my prayers (I must accomplish!).

Take my conversations with my husband. Certainly there are business matters for us to discuss. But if all of our conversation is about that discipline matter with one of the kids, or a call from the bank, or a message someone asked me to pass on–I go away feeling like I had exactly that: a business transaction. When we don’t speak at the heart level of what’s really on our minds, if there’s not that flow of relationship between us, I don’t come away connected.

The Why…That Leads to the How

So why do we pray for others–especially to a God who already knows what we’re thinking, and knows what our mother-in-law or our sponsored child in South America needs way better than we do?

We pray, I think, to interact with God. To be the daughters and sons who ask. To know him. And we pray for others in order to love them; to stand in the gap for them, like Abram for Sodom, or Moses, or David, or Esther, or Ezekiel (in 22:30)…all prototypes for the ultimate Person who stood in the gap for us.

So I’m thinking of new verses to guide my prayer, like “Love must be sincere” (Romans 12:9). Or how I could speak in tongues in prayer or have faith that moves mountains…and gain nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

A side note: Years ago, a podcast by Francis Chan spoke of Psalm 27 being one of the best prayers we could pray for those we love (I think! If I am botching that, I apologize, Mr. Chan). His reasoning: Isn’t more of God often the best thing we could pray for people?

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple.

So perhaps my thought is to move people off an index card…and into my heart, where I will love them less like something I should purchase at Costco.

Like this post? You might like

• When God answers prayer* (*…then you regret asking)
• Spiritual Disciplines for Real Families—10 Practical Ways to Teach Prayer (FREE PRINTABLES!)
• 10 Prayer Tools and Printables for Families

*Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership.