Prayers

Praying for Your Friends

by J.W. Phillips
06/09/25
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Praying for Your Friends

How important is praying for your friends?

When answering this question, there’s a verse in the book of Job that immediately comes to mind. “And the Lord restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends” (Job 42:10).

Praying for our friends offers great gain for our friends, yes. But we would be remiss to dismiss the truth there’s also great gain for us! Not only in this life, Watchman Nee said our prayer will also “be remembered in the future at the judgment seat of Christ for reward.”¹

The value the Lord places on prayer certainly should be shared in our fellowship group. It may well be true that the depth of our fellowship is more accurately measured by the frequency and fervency of our prayers for one another.

It is easy to talk—sharing feelings, giving advice, teaching, exhorting, comforting. But if that’s as far as it goes, then our part in this fellowship with others is incomplete.

The deeper commitment would have us praying not just a casual “God-bless-the-church” prayer, but what the Bible would call an intercessory prayer.

Intercessory prayer begins with an intense focusing on the needs of another person until our heart is strongly stirred. As we then visualize this person—seeing from God’s perspective both the troubling condition and the Lord’s generous provision—we will stand in the gap, calling on God to release for our friend the needed grace supply that will meet his or her need.

Since many of the Lord’s blessings are released through expectant prayer, it makes sense to say that true love will take up another person’s need, especially if he or she is too weak (spiritually) to secure the blessing.

Yet, how little this happens! Christians who say they love each other will amazingly omit the most loving and effective thing they could ever do—the prayer of intercession. To go to the right Person right away is simply too obvious and too important to ignore. And yet we have.

Addressing this inexplicable omission, the unknown author of The Kneeling Christian wrote these words:

“God wondered.” This is a very striking thought! The very boldness of the idea ought surely to arrest the attention of every earnest Christian man, woman, and child. A wondering God! Why, how staggered we might be if we knew the cause of God’s “wonder”!²

Well, here it is. He wondered, Isaiah 59:16 says, “that there was no intercessor.” How baffling it can be even to an omniscient mind that so many blessings should be forfeited, all because no one would be enough of a friend to go to the one Person who could turn it all around.

Paul Billheimer put this stunning neglect into proper perspective when he wrote:

No angel was ever invited to share the high privilege of prayer. No archangel was ever invited into the Throne Room of the universe—only redeemed humanity. And [yet] many of us are too busy watching television, following sports, hunting and fishing, bathing and boating, engaging in farming or business, moonlighting.³ 

And while it is true that none of the things listed is wrong, this abdication of intercessory prayer does put these other competing activities into a new light. Edinburgh professor, James S. Stewart, voted the greatest preacher of the twentieth century, emphasized the need for discipline in our prayer life by using as an example one of the great concert pianist of the day.

Paderewski use to say that if he stopped practicing on the piano one day he noticed the difference; if he stopped two days his family noticed the difference; if he stopped three days his friends noticed the difference, and if he stopped for a whole week the public noticed the difference. There’s no earthly chance of a vital devotional life unless we put real discipline into it.⁴

Significantly, it was James, the brother of our Lord, who wrote these words to “pray for one another” (James 5:16). This is the same James who became the titular head of the Jerusalem church, not because of his flesh-and-blood kinship with Jesus but because of his respected spirituality. James came to be known as “old camel knees,” a term of endearment describing the wear and tear on this pastor’s knees due to so many hours of prayer.

The example of James is also the example of Paul. In Colossians 1:9, Paul said, I “do not cease to pray for you.” In II Thessalonians 1:11, he said, “... we also pray always for you.” 

The critical question, though, is this: Is their example the example you’re following? Or would God wonder about you and perhaps be as perplexed today as he was in Isaiah’s day? 

Oswald Chambers spoke of prayers that are flippant and familiar coming from a heart that is hard and metallic.⁵

Religious words tripping over the tongue without any stirring in our spirit find their source in the rut of routine and not from a heart inflamed by the Spirit of God.

Notes:

1. Watchman Nee, The Prayer Ministry of the Church, (New York: Christian Fellowship Publishers, 1973), p.38.

2. Author unknown, The Kneeling Christian, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), p.13.

3. Paul Billheimer, Destined to Overcome, (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1982), p.70.

4. James S. Stewart, Walking with God, (Vancouver, Regent College Publishing, 2006), p.44.

5. Oswald Chambers, If You Will Ask, (Grand Rapids, MI., Our Daily Bread Publishing, 2020), p.74.