Prayers of Petition and Prayers of Intercession

Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving. (Colossians 4:2 CSB)

I remember when I first joined our church. My husband was hired on and I was suddenly thrust into a church community that had expectations of me. Even during his interviewing process, I was already being contacted to serve in different capacities, and I was overwhelmed to say the least. 

One of our first Sundays at the church, we had a prayer night where we prayed for our church as well as the churches in the community. It was such a beautiful concept and I was excited, but also terrified! 

I remember telling my husband, “I am so scared to pray in front of all of these strangers. They’re going to expect it and I’ve never prayed out loud before.” I remember him saying, “You don’t have to, Mel, but you’ll never get comfortable praying out loud until you actually do it.”

That night, I didn’t find the courage to pray out loud, but I have grown since then! It’s incredibly awkward at first, but I tell this story to let you know, you aren’t alone. The only way to grow in comfort with praying, is to keep doing it; both silently and out loud. 

Now, with a super smooth transition (not!) I want to say that DeeDee has done a LOVELY job talking about prayer, and I’m going to chime in with the two types of prayer that we can easily incorporate with our own prayer times, and why they’re important!

PETITION

Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7 CSB)

This was one of the first scripture passages that I memorized, and as you can see, it’s really fitting for petition! (It even says it in the verse!) This begs the question: What is petition?

Well, I’m so glad you asked! Petition is when we make requests to God for ourselves.

There are some things that we have to keep in mind when we pray petitions though, the first being in this scripture, “petition with thanksgiving.”

This reminds me of the story of the ten lepers, mentioned in Luke chapter 17. If you don’t know this story, basically ten lepers ask Jesus to heal them and he does! You would think all ten would come back and thank him, right? WRONG! Only one does! Oh my word, I couldn’t imagine. Part of me gets it, like, they’re probably just so excited they forgot. But the rest of me is like “Jesus healed you!! Go praise Him!! You literally asked Him to do it, and He did!”

To the one former leper that came back and praised Him, Jesus said “Your faith has saved you.” We want to be that guy, right?

But, what happens when God doesn’t grant us our every wish? This is when we remember that God is our maker, not our genie. We have to keep in mind that God hears us and truly cares about us/our needs.

And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him. (1 John 5:15 CSB)

We can bring things to God persistently, praying daily for the things we want or need, just like Hannah prayed and prayed for a baby in 1 Samuel. Even if it takes a long time, it doesn’t change that God is listening and will provide His will in His time.

Sometimes, it’s disappointing, but we can find peace knowing that God isn’t ignoring our prayers out of spite, but instead because He loves us, and what’s only the best for us, if we align to His will.

INTERCESSION

So what happens when we pray for other people’s needs and not our own? It’s called intercession! And this is my favorite type of prayer!

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided his clothes and cast lots. (Luke 23:34 CSB)

Our goal as genuine disciples is to be more and more like Christ, right? In this moment, Christ is praying for others even amid literal death.

Not only is Christ praying for others here, He also intercedes for us when we pray to God, taking our prayers and making them perfect for God’s ears! Without Him, we’d never be able to talk properly to God. Isn’t Jesus so cool???

Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. (Romans 8:34 CSB)

He talks to God on our behalf. He recognizes our sin, and doesn’t condemn us, but instead He willingly died for us, and speaks to our Maker for us. We will never be worthy of God, our sinful nature ensures that, but Jesus died and rose again so that we can be worthy through Him.

Let’s keep this in mind as we feel hurt, or forgotten. Those negative emotions that other people tend to bring out in us, let’s remember that being like Jesus is our goal, and we can work towards that goal by praying for others.

So, how can we pray intercessory prayers? We can start simply by praying for our family and friends. We all know someone that we wish would accept Christ as their Savior, but they haven’t yet. Lift them up to God! Pray persistently for Him to soften their hearts and show them the peace and love they are missing.

We can pray for our pastors and church, our community, state, country, world! As we start a new year, our pastors and our churches need our prayer to grow and follow Biblical teaching. To turn away from the world and walk the narrow path. This year also happens to be an election year, so prayer towards our country's leaders is another thing to add to your list. There are so many people and things to pray for, and we have been gifted the ability to lift these people to God!

We can create a habit of praying for others by recognizing their needs, and writing them down. We can set aside five, ten, twenty minutes a day to lift them up to God. It doesn’t have to be intimidating. We should also remember that when we tell someone that we will pray for them, we need to do it! Whether it’s right there with them, or later on our own, we can’t promise prayer and then forget.

Referring back to the top of the post, practice praying out loud. Whether it’s before you eat, with your friends, or all alone, practice. These resources on what to pray are a great place to start, but we have to feel comfortable going to God with others hearing, and remembering that our prayers are for Him to hear, not them.

I pray that each of you readers become so comfortable with prayer, that your spiritual life gets turned upside down. There’s no other way to communicate with God, so make it a priority!