Saturday June 10th, 2023
« Brothers and sisters, please pray for us »
Read: 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2 NLT
1 Finally, dear brothers and sisters, we ask you to pray for us.
Pray that the Lord’s message will spread rapidly and be honored wherever it goes, just as when it came to you.
2 Pray, too, that we will be rescued from wicked and evil people, for not everyone is a believer.
Understand:
Prayer is such a potent weapon that can do and undo things in people’s lives.
It is so powerful that even the person praying cannot comprehend the extent of its reach.
Those who walked with God in times past knew the importance of prayer, and this is what inspired Paul’s request in today’s memory verse.
Even though he was a prayer warrior himself, he asked the brethren to continually pray for him and his team.
Our Lord Jesus Christ also demonstrated the importance of prayer by often spending all night in prayer alone, encouraging His disciples also to be prayerful (Luke 18:1-8).
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed for grace to accomplish the will of His Father and also asked His disciples to join Him in prayer, rebuking them when they did not do so. Matthew 26:38 & 40 CEV says:
38 and he said to them, “I am so sad that I feel as if I am dying. Stay here and keep awake with me.” 40 He came back and found his disciples sleeping. So he said to Peter, “Can’t any of you stay awake with me for just one hour?
Paul also learnt from the Lord about the potency of corporate prayers, which is why he often craved prayers for himself and his team in his epistles.
He believed that they could do nothing without God, and that God would do nothing without prayer, based on His principle in Matthew 7:7.
On the surface, one would expect that pastors alone should pray for their flock, but in today’s Bible reading, we see an apostle giving the Church at Thessalonica a prayer request that the Lord would have His way in the ministry He committed to them.
He also asked the Church to pray for their deliverance from wicked men who did not believe in the gospel, trying their best to stop its spread.
The Church is facing a lot of obstacles today because we are not praying enough like the early Church did.
Peter would not have escaped King Herod’s sword if the early Church was not fervent in prayers. The Lord answered their prayers by sending an angel to rescue him.
Having witnessed the great impact of prayer, Apostle James wrote in James 5:16b,CW saying:
« The effective fervent prayer of a God loving person has great power and produce wonderful results. »
Beloved, we ought to continually pray for our leaders.
The temptations and battles facing Christian leaders are beyond what members of the Church can imagine.
We must therefore faithfully and consistently pray for our spiritual and secular leaders so that they may not make mistakes in governance, and so that we can live a peaceful and holy life in this world (1 Timothy 2:1-2).
Spiritual leaders need our prayers to administer their responsibilities correctly, and in order not to disappoint God and betray the trust reposed in them by the Church. Furthermore, they need our prayers to finish well and strong.
Are you praying for them?
Application: Make it an obligation to pray for the spiritual leaders God has set over you on a daily basis.
Author: Bishop Enoch. A. Adeboye.
Edited by Naomie
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