“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Luke 6:27-28

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. 

Matthew 5:43-45

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;  therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Matthew 9:37-38 – see also Luke 10:2

Prayer is, for many Christians, too much of a mystery. Of course, part of the problem is that we don’t consult God’s word sufficiently when we face questions about prayer (and many other subjects). Probably the most common question about prayer is, “Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?” This article (and the one to follow it) won’t answer that question, but it will identify prayers that will be answered when we pray them regularly. They are the prayers that Jesus specifically commanded us to pray.

Most of what the Bible teaches about prayer has to do with how and why to pray. There are few places where Jesus commands us specifically what to pray for. We all know that we are supposed to pray “in God’s will.” There is one way to be pretty sure you are praying in God’s will; it is to pray in accord with God’s word. To a large degree, we determine what we believe will be praying in God’s will by inference. We learn of a general principle of God’s will and apply it to the topic we are praying about. There is nothing wrong with that, but it does rely on the accuracy of our interpretation and application of those principles. We may, and I believe, that we sometimes do either misinterpret or misapply those principles and are therefore not praying in God’s will in this instance. Should we not use this approach to praying “in God’s will?” I believe we should if that is the best tool we have at our disposal at the time. As we grow in Christ and the knowledge of his word, discerning his will in our prayers will become easier.

Wouldn’t it be preferable for Jesus to tell us straight up what to pray for? Then we wouldn’t miss it. He has done just that in a few cases. That is what I want to write about in this article and the next.

Pray for those who abuse or persecute you

Actually, this command only takes us part of the way in our quest to pray perfectly. Jesus commands us to pray for our abusers and persecutors. We get the drift of Jesus’ intent when we load up with the admonitions in Luke 6:27-28. Jesus says to love, do good, bless, and pray. I think he refers to the same people in each of these statements: enemies, those who hate you, curse you, and those who abuse you. When Jesus says to love, do good, bless, and pray, I think he makes it plain as to the content of our prayers for our persecutors. We are to pray a blessing on them, to pray for them to experience God’s love and goodness. This has not been a habit in my prayer life—something I have to correct.

One of the reasons we in the West have not learned and practiced this aspect of prayer is that we have had few abusers or persecutors for at least a couple of hundred years. For most of American history, being a Christian put you in a favorable place in society. That has changed in the past couple of decades or so. We are now in the minority and are at odds with the primary worldview. Now we have to learn to pray this prayer for our persecutors and abusers. Of course, the most important prayer for them is that they will come to the knowledge of the truth and submit to the kingship of Jesus and become his child. Then we will be in the same kingdom with the same king and the wall that separates us will be destroyed as we become one in Christ.

Pray for laborers in the harvest

The lack of this prayer in our personal prayer liturgy reveals the lack of mission in the American church. If the church as a whole was on the mission Jesus commissioned us to, we would recognize the immense need for laborers and would more readily pray for laborers. The mission is to make disciples of all nations…baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus taught us to do. To make disciples of all nations, including the United States, requires an immense workforce actively engaged in the mission.

We are in a spiritual war. In Ephesians 6:10-20, Paul identifies the armor that is ours for the spiritual war in which we are engaged. How are we to engage the enemy with all of this armor? Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. This is our primary engagement with the enemy, in prayer.

We must have God’s view of reality. We have been told multiple times that the church in the West is done for. We are declining. We are irrelevant. The people of the West aren’t interested in God or the church. Look at the declining numbers.

But what did Jesus say? “The harvest is plentiful.” According to Jesus, the problem isn’t that there is no harvest, but that there are too few laborers to bring in the harvest. It is a shame that we, the church, have the largest labor force in the world. But, most of us don’t show up for work as laborers in the harvest. We don’t seem to understand that we are all called to obey the Great Commission to make disciples who will make disciples, etc.

There is a movement among some folks whom God has awakened to their participation in the harvest to set their alarms on their smartphones for 10:02 AM. 10:02 is derived from Luke 10:2, the address of the command to pray for laborers. When the alarm goes off, each of these disciple-making practitioners stops for a moment and prays for laborers for the harvest. It’s actually hilarious to be in a meeting with these folks at 10:02 AM because all over the room, alarms go off, people laugh a bit, and then pray for laborers.

In my region, some of us have been praying this prayer daily for about five years. It is thrilling to watch God answer those prayers, and local believers are trained to be disciple-makers and enter the labor market of the Spirit. God has also sent laborers to our region from other parts of the world to engage in the mission with us. People are coming to Jesus and being baptized and becoming disciple-makers themselves. This simple prayer Jesus commanded us to pray is, I believe, a significant reason we are seeing the beginnings of what I trust will become a full-blown disciple-making movement that will sweep our region. Many believers in other parts of the country are praying and obeying the same commands, so I must believe that the entire country will see disciple-making movements that will sweep the country region by region in multiple streams of disciple-making.

Pray what Jesus commanded

My point is that these are prayers that Jesus specifically commanded us to pray, but we largely overlook them to our own detriment. Make them the priority and watch God answer the prayers he commanded us all to pray.