In “other” Words: My Prayer List

“When there is lit­tle aware­ness of real need there is lit­tle real prayer.“
~ Don­ald S. Whitney ~

Spir­i­tual Dis­ci­plines For the Chris­t­ian Life

The above quote speaks to me of my basic humanity.

Do your kids give you the stan­dard, “Mom, I told you about it” response when they sud­denly announce that they have to go some­where, do some­thing or need money just when you have no cash in your pos­ses­sion and no time to visit the ATM on the way to wher­ever you are headed? Do you swear that you knew noth­ing about it, while they insist that they told you yes­ter­day, last week, last month or whenever?

When this hap­pens to us from time to time, I don’t know for sure if I just wasn’t lis­ten­ing when they informed me of the upcom­ing event, I for­got about it, or they for­got to tell me but truly believe they did.

In the long run, it doesn’t really mat­ter because things almost always work out fine.

So it is among believ­ers who care for one another. We won­der if our friends and fam­ily are pray­ing for us, send­ing inter­ces­sions for the par­tic­u­lar need we have at that time. But some­times we real­ize that we neglected to let them know that we are in need of prayer!

Of course, it is at times dif­fi­cult to ask for prayer.

Have you had the expe­ri­ence of a friend talk­ing to you about a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion about which it is clear from the tone and tenor of their voice they think you are fully informed? But you are hear­ing the infor­ma­tion for the first time — or so you believe. (If we let down our guard and dealt with each other the way we deal with our kids, we would hear our friends say the famil­iar “I told you …”)

I don’t know about you, but if it isn’t writ­ten down some­where on a list, I will not get it done. I am so busy and have so many respon­si­bil­i­ties that I con­stantly make “to do” lists for myself — and those lists include other folks’ prayer needs. If I don’t jot myself a note, I don’t remem­ber to pray for spe­cific peo­ple and their unique needs. Why? Because I am human and I forget.

And if my friends don’t inform me of their needs, in my instances, I don’t pray for those indi­vid­ual circumstances.

So the author is cor­rect when he says that where “there is lit­tle aware­ness of real need there is lit­tle real prayer.” I’m sorry to say that because I con­stantly run in so many dif­fer­ent direc­tions at such a fre­netic pace, “out of sight, out of mind” is all-too-frequently true. I don’t pray for what I don’t know about and that makes me a flawed human being because, were I as dili­gent and through as I desire to be, I would pray exten­sively for all friends, fam­ily, busi­ness asso­ciates, etc. each and every day, ask­ing not just for the needs about which I am aware, but also in a gen­er­al­ized fash­ion, list­ing each by name.

After think­ing about that quote and com­ing to this real­iza­tion, I resolve to work harder at hold­ing the folks in my life up in prayer on a reg­u­lar basis, rather than wait­ing to add their name or cir­cum­stance to my “to do” list.

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