\u201cRejoice always, pray continually.\u201d\u00a0 1 Thessalonians 5:16
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My white wicker desk has a glass overlay on top of it, under the overlay are pictures, scriptures and quotes that are near and dear to my heart. This morning, as I was getting ready to write today\u2019s devotional, a bright, pink block caught my eye. At the top of it I have handwritten, \u201cHOW TO PRAY FOR PEOPLE.\u201d I\u2019ve spent the month thanking God for the people He has given me, I thought it would be worth the time to share how I pray for them.
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The scripture I model my prayers after is Philippians 1:9-11 NIV:
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\u201cAnd this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ\u2014to the glory and praise of God.\u201d
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From these verses are four principles we can use to pray for people. First we can pray they grow in love, \u201cthis is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.\u201d Second, we can pray they make wise choices, \u201cso that you may be able to discern what is best.\u201d Then we pray that they will live with integrity, \u201cand may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.\u201d Lastly, we can pray they will become like Jesus, \u201cfilled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-to the glory and praise of God.\u201d That is my model for praying for people, I have no idea where I found it, or who penned it first. This block has been on my desk for many years, I try to use it often.
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I did learn one lesson from my dear Cody, sometimes it\u2019s best to pray it, than say it. I dropped Cody off at school one morning, as he was getting out of the car, I randomly said, \u201cMake good choices today.\u201d Well, he didn\u2019t, nothing major, but he got in a little trouble at school that day. He told me in the afternoon, I was never to tell him to make good choices again. I never did, but I always prayed that he would. In a recent Andy Stanley message in a series title, \u201cHow Not to be Your Own Worst Enemy,\u201d he made the point that other people can see areas in our lives where we\u2019re on the wrong path, but we can\u2019t see it. Not only can\u2019t we see it, but we don\u2019t want to hear what they have to say. When faced with situations like this, praying silently for the person, using the above model is the best option. We tend to discount the power of prayer because the results of it aren\u2019t always easily seen. God doesn\u2019t work on our timetable, but that doesn\u2019t mean He isn’t working. When we pray for people, we need to give Him time to work. Often times, we\u2019ll find, we\u2019re the one He changes, not them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today I\u2019m thankful for prayer. What are you thankful for?
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\u201cRejoice always, pray continually.\u201d\u00a0 1 Thessalonians 5:16 My white wicker desk has a glass overlay on top of it, under the overlay are pictures, scriptures and quotes that are near and dear to my heart. This morning, as I was getting ready to write today\u2019s devotional, a bright, pink block caught my eye. At the… Continue reading I\u2019M THANKFUL FOR PRAYER<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}