In Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Ivan endures all the horrors of a Soviet prison camp. One day he is praying with his eyes closed when a fellow prisoner notices him and says with ridicule, “Prayers won’t help you get out of here any faster.” Opening his eyes, Ivan answers, “I do not pray to get out of prison but to do the will of God.” Ivan understood the main point of prayer.
When we pray we don’t want to miss the point of prayer, because if we miss the point of prayer we really haven’t prayed. NLT 1 John 5:14 And we can be confident that he [God] will listen to us whenever we ask him for anything in line with his will. 15 And if we know he is listening when we make our requests, we can be sure that he will give us what we ask for. The point of prayer is to ask in line with God’s will. If we just ask for what we want, God doesn’t even hear us. So when we pray for people, ourselves or someone else, we meed to be sure we don’t miss the point. We need to be sure that we ask in line with God’s will.
What is God’s will for people? Why are we here on this earth? NLT Acts 17:26 From one man he [God] created all the nations throughout the whole earth. 27 His purpose in all of this was that the nations should seek after God and … find him. Why did God create the people of the nations of the world? So that people would seek after and find God. So that people would know God and have a relationship with God. That is the highest goal of life, that is the ultimate purpose for a human being. To find God and know Him that is the point of life.
So today we want to look at the topic “Releasing God’s Power To Others”, praying for other people. So often we pray for things for ourselves alone: money to pay off our bills, new job, new wheels, etc. That’s good and we’ll talk more about praying for God’s provision in a few Sundays. Yet, we need to keep our priorities in proper order. NLT Matthew 6:33 and he [God] will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern. If God is our primary concern and we live for Him, everything else will fall into line. So when we pray for people, our primary concern for them, the point of the prayer, must first of all be about their relationship with God. Their finding and growing in God is the most important thing.
To hear more about this topic, listen to my June 12, 2005 message entitled Releasing God’s Power To Others