First Week: Family

This week spend some time every day praying with an extreme focus on yourself and your family. Pray for the people you live with and spend the majority of your time with. Pray for yourself, your spouse, your marriage, your future marriage, your children, your future children, your parents, brothers, sisters, etc. Pray for your home and all that live in it. Pray for God to move in your life and in the life of your entire family.

Weekly Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21

For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more that all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever!

Day 3: Prayer for Unbelievers

Paul started off by praying for them to be strengthened with power through the Spirit of God to prepare their hearts so that Christ may dwell in them through faith. That is an incredible prayer. Paul is praying for people to be saved. He is praying for God to make himself known to them.

It’s always interesting hearing all the “stuff” people pray for. We pray for small “stuff”, big “stuff” and sometimes really big “stuff” but what’s rare in the average American Christian’s life is praying for really powerful “stuff”. We don’t pray for the miraculous or the powerful or the supernatural. We don’t pray anymore on a day to day basis for people to be healed, or blind eyes to be opened or anything else we see in scripture. We don’t pray for miracles. I believe the greatest miracle in history is when a human being is raised to life in Christ. I think its supernatural when a person is lost, hopeless and empty and then finds true life in Christ and nothing is ever the same.

Paul prayed for people to put their faith in Christ. He prayed for God to make himself known to the hearts of men and women he was writing to. The coolest thing about this prayer is they did. In Acts, we read about the church of Ephesus. Luke recorded in Acts that there were riots in Ephesus because thousands and thousands of people put their faith in Christ. One of the big religions of the day  included idol worship and other forms of worship that involved metal work so the blacksmith business was a massive industry. But when the church at Ephesus started to explode with growth all the new Christians quit worshipping all the other gods which meant they didn’t need the metal work and metal idols anymore. This put the blacksmiths out of business so they rioted. It’s a really cool story. But back to the point. Paul prayed this powerful prayer for the people at Ephesus. He prayed that God would strengthen their hearts and minds and prepare them to put their faith in Christ. He prayed they would come to know Christ and that he would dwell with them. And God answered his prayer.

Today spend time in prayer for all the unbelievers in your family and close friends. Pray the same prayer Paul prayed for the people in Ephesus.

Pray that Christ dwells in their heart through faith. Pray that God makes himself known to those who are lost. Pray for God to be God in their lives. 

God answered Paul’s prayers and I know he will answer ours. Imagine what will happen if we all prayed earnestly for the lost to be found. Maybe we would turn our community upside down like Paul did in Ephesus.