The church of my childhood boasted a tiny prayer chapel some twenty yards away from the sanctuary. It couldn’t hold more than a handful of people, and there was a rotation of regularly scheduled “intercessors” who occupied the chapel during all of the church’s services. It wasn’t a place children were permitted to go, but once I was allowed inside to accompany one of my Sunday school teachers to pray. There was a kneeling bench, circular and well padded. The room was dark and cool with recessed lighting and dark tiled flooring.

I remember kneeling on the bench.
I remember not knowing what to do next.

What were we supposed to be praying for? I kept a quiet watch between partially closed eyelids, pretending to move my lips occasionally. After what seemed an eternity (but was probably only about fifteen minutes), we left the chapel, and I wondered if I was supposed to feel differently. I guessed I felt a bit holier for a brief second or two.

Though I grew up in church, my exposure to intercession was limited. Eventually, it was sequestered to the safe area of “prayers for healing,” and mostly for people five or six degrees removed from the person requesting prayer. It wasn’t until I was an adult and entrenched in local church ministry myself that I realized our default prayers for health had more to do with our discomfort about praying for internal matters of the heart than it did concern for the endlessly long list of strangers who were battling the flu or strep throat. Corporate prayer makes us uncomfortable, so we fill up the silence with safe requests. Besides, what could be kinder and more pressing than praying for the health of others?

During our first couple of years in ministry, my young pastor-husband walked our church through the prayers of the apostle Paul, and I noticed for the first time how differently Paul prayed for others than anyone I’d witnessed. Praying for someone to recover from an illness was important, but praying for their eternal state was imperative. What lasts longer than someone’s disease is their eternity. I wondered if praying for them to be anchored to Christ in their suffering might actually be more important than praying for their suffering to be removed.

One of Paul’s prayers for believers has become my new default method for praying for others. Though I do pray for healing for those who are ill, the motivation behind my prayers has changed. Wellness is not the goal. Steadfast faith in Christ is. In Ephesians 3, Paul prays for the Ephesian church to grapple with the depth of Christ’s love for them:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:14-19)

Prayer for Certainty of Christ’s Sacrifice

Paul prays that the Ephesian believers would be strengthened through the Spirit so they’d be certain that Christ dwells in them. Sometimes our faith is so weak we wonder if we’re even saved. We give into sinful temptation or we neglect reading the Bible or praying to the extent that we wonder if God would even want such a lousy follower. Paul prayed that the Ephesian believers would have certainty that Jesus’ work at the cross was enough for them, that the Spirit would help them to believe with faith that Jesus lives in those who have repented and believed. Deep faith in Christ’s atoning work and God’s kept promises is something we all need, and I’ve found Paul’s prayer to be an insightful way of praying for someone even if they’ve not disclosed their personal requests.

Prayer for Certainty of Christ’s Love

Next, Paul prays that the Ephesian believers would be strong enough to comprehend the extent of Christ’s love for them. My husband once pointed out in a sermon from this passage that we need the help of the Holy Spirit just to believe that He loves us. And isn’t it true that as soon as life takes a hard turn, our first response is to question God’s love for us?

When we pray for a fellow believer to be rooted in Christ’s love, to know just how big and broad and immeasurable it is, we are praying that they’d believe they are fully loved by Him even when circumstances suggest otherwise. Circumstances change. Jesus never does. His love is too deep to understand but too large to ignore. When you pray for others, pray that they would be confident in the Lord’s love for them.

Recently I heard Paul’s words about Christ’s love tumble from my husband’s mouth as we prayed together with someone who was walking through an unimaginably difficult trial. What this hurting believer needed wasn’t a promise that “God’s got this” but a reminder anchored in Scripture that God loved her with a deep, wide, high, long kind of love—a love that guaranteed He would never leave her.

Prayer for Certainty of Christ’s Sufficiency

Paul squeezes in one last entreaty into this passage that barely fills a verse but sums up pretty much everything I want everyone to pray over me from now until I see Jesus face-to-face. He prays that the believers in Ephesus would know Christ’s love that they may be “filled with all the fullness of God” (3:19). As believers, we wear Jesus’ righteousness, we’re reconciled to God, and we’re indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Here’s the thing: we cannot be empty when we’re filled with the fullness of God. So when I pray Ephesians 3:19 for other believers, I plead with God to assure them that He alone is the source of their satisfaction. I pray that they would put down whatever they’re seeking for fulfillment or affirmation and turn to find it endlessly in Christ. He is enough for us. In Him we lack nothing. When sorrows press in, when pain captures our allegiance, when sin seems tantalizingly safe, Jesus is enough for us.

During the height of my years living with a painful, chronic disease, I did desire to be free from it. I thirsted for a night of sleep untainted by gripping pain. And yet, more than freedom from pain, I desired to be faithful with it. For what good was my relationship with Christ is He wasn’t enough to sustain me in illness? If I trusted Him with my eternity, I could trust Him with my life.

Paul’s prayer for certainty in Christ, His love, and His sufficiency is what I desire for others to pray for me. And tying my requests for others as much as possible to the truths of Scripture has changed the way I approach both corporate and intercessory prayer. Praying in ways that align with Scripture has resulted in a prayer list that bears many answered requests. Some seem like failed answers by worldly, health-focused standards. But we are casting our eyes farther than the reach of our diseases. Though I pray for wellness and healing for those I love who suffer, I now know that praying for their hearts to be certain of God’s love for them and His good purposes may pin them closer to His side than physical healing might do.

Paul closes his prayer by extolling the Lord’s great power and sovereignty. I think we can follow suit in our prayers for and with others. We can entrust them to God after praying for them, knowing that He can work more good than we even think to ask for. We can pray and relinquish fear or worry because God will be glorified in His people throughout all generations.

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph. 3:20-21)

Though I do pray for healing for those who are ill, the motivation behind my prayers has changed. Wellness is not the goal. Steadfast faith in Christ is. Share on X

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