December 3
December 3
What do you pray for the most?
Your prayers reveal what your heart truly values. What you want most in life, and the frequency you ask for it, exposes what you think about your meaning and purpose and what is important to you. Your prayers expose where you think life, peace, and satisfaction might be found. Your true hopes and dreams are embedded in your prayers. In prayer, God and idolatry often collide. Prayer can be a battle between what I desire for myself and what God wants for me. Prayer can be an occasion when surrender gives way to demand, when love for God gives way to what you would love to get from God. Because of this, prayer is a battleground of spiritual warfare.
By God’s grace we have the apostle Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian Christians, which serves as a model for our prayers:
For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Eph. 1:15–23)
After giving thanks for these loved ones, Paul expresses the deep desires of his heart for them. Paul asks that:
What are our true daily needs? We need to understand the mysteries of the gospel. We need the Spirit to break through our spiritual blindness. We need to live with hope and with eyes on eternity. We need to understand our power against sin. And we need to rest in our King’s reign over everything. May these things be the daily cries of our hearts as we pray.