A common Christian belief holds that people must pray for themselves — with penitence and confession — for God to answer their prayers. Many leaders and parents hold to this view, and as a result, they neglect to intercede for their own children who have lost their way and are wandering in the wilderness of this world. To some extent, this may apply to certain individuals whom God is patiently waiting to come to Him in repentance. But what about the person who does not know God at all? It is for this reason that this article sheds light on the vital importance of believers praying on behalf of lost souls.
The Ministry Of Reconciliation
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
2 Corinthians 5:18-19 (NIV)
When God assigned Jonah the ministry of reconciliation, He would certainly have expected him to pray earnestly for the salvation of the people of Nineveh. In the same way, God has entrusted us with this same ministry of reconciliation, and He expects us to intercede for perishing souls. He longs to see His own heart reflected in ours.
Why then do we fail in this ministry? Had we truly fulfilled our responsibility, many more would have come to God through Jesus Christ. The relatively small number of followers of Jesus in the world today stands as a sobering reflection of that failure. We neglect to pray for perishing souls, holding to the belief that unless a person repents and prays for themselves, they cannot be saved. But consider this — if they do not know God, to whom will they pray, and what will they even ask for? Without the knowledge of God, they are drawn to pray to the influences of this world, which only lead them further toward worldly pursuits and further away from God.
God has purposed that every soul on this earth should find their way to Him. Yet we remain satisfied with the small numbers gathered in our churches, and at times we scatter people rather than drawing them into the family of God. Despite the countless denominations that exist within the body of Christ, even when their numbers are combined, the fullness of God’s vision for the salvation of all mankind remains far from fulfilled.
God’s vision of saving all of mankind cannot be contained within structures called cathedrals or churches. For this reason, God sent His Son — the Way — to draw every person on this earth to Himself. There can be no limitations on following in the footsteps of Jesus; yet the religion created by man places limitations that hinder people from truly following in His footsteps, causing them instead to merely revolve around the teachings of Jesus for their entire lives.
God Teaches All People Personally
God calls us to begin the ministry of reconciliation within our own homes. Yet instead of reconciling our children with their heavenly Father, we lead them to follow our religious practices, mistakenly believing that this constitutes a true spiritual life.
Raising our children to read the Bible, pray morning and evening, and attend church services does not always lead them to a genuine knowledge of God. Some children perform these practices merely to appear obedient in front of their parents, while obeying neither their parents nor God in their hearts. If we assume that these outward practices mean our children truly know God — and that they are therefore capable of praying for themselves with sincere confession — we will be disappointed because they do not know God. They are swept along with the crowd of this world, among those who even deny the very existence of God.
All your children will be taught by the LORD,
and great will be their peace.
Isaiah 54:13 (NIV)
God is not prejudiced; He imparts knowledge and wisdom about Himself and His Kingdom equally to all people who live on this earth. Why, then, do people lack the knowledge of God? It is because people fail to obey and are therefore unable to grasp the teachings of God—delivered through the prophets in ancient times and through His Son in the present day. Obedience comes only when we listen to the voice of God, yet we prevent our own children and others in this world from hearing that voice by replacing it with the traditions and rituals of religion.
When a child is bound by strict religious rules at home, he longs for freedom the moment he steps out into the world—whether for higher studies or work. Given that freedom, he abandons the rigid routines of reading the Bible or praying morning and evening, drifting far from God as he indulges in his own desires and the attractions of the world.
On the other hand, if a child is not forcibly subjected to religious activities but instead quietly watches his parents read the Bible every day and pray earnestly to God in every circumstance, something stirs within him. When he finds himself alone, without the moral support of his parents, he is drawn to do what he once observed them doing. Gradually, he learns to lean on his heavenly Father, and as time goes by, he develops a deep and lasting bond with God.
The book of Habakkuk brings out this truth very clearly and when there is scope for receiving the knowledge of God wherever we are or in whatever positions we have been kept by God.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
Habakkuk 2:14 (NIV)
Whisper Names To God
As brought out earlier, we hold a mistaken notion of waiting for people to call on God on their own. At the same time, believers look for opportunities to share the love of God with others, unaware that they can do so at any time. They look to festive seasons such as Christmas to spread God’s love through celebrations and carol singing, and during this time, they enter the homes of non-believers alongside fellow believers. People of other faiths, however, consider this merely one of the many rituals of Christianity, just as they have their own rituals to observe.
Another approach believers tend to take is watching for moments of vulnerability in people of other faiths—times of sickness or hardship—and entering their homes to pray for them, assuring them that Jesus will heal them or resolve their problems. This is often done without discerning the will of God, who may be allowing these trials in their lives to accomplish a greater purpose. When such actions are not aligned with the will of God, people largely do not receive the answers they were promised, and this drives them further away from God rather than drawing them closer to Him. Yet, believers continue to pray loudly, lifting their names before God and seeking physical healing and solutions to their worldly problems.
Instead of this practice, the Bible teaches us to deny our own desires and acknowledge our inadequacy in prayer, for we truly do not know what to pray or how to pray—not only for ourselves but especially for others. When we confess that we are unable to pray because we cannot discern the will of the Father, the Spirit of God intercedes on our behalf with a full understanding of God’s will, knowing precisely what to pray and how to pray. These prayers are not loud prayers but whispers that rise from our hearts, carried by the passion of God who longs to liberate all people from their bondages. For the god of this age has blinded the eyes of many, preventing them from seeing the light of the Gospel. Yet the god of this age cannot blind the eyes of the Spirit of God, for the Holy Spirit knows that the sins of all who live on this earth were forgiven two thousand years ago.
With this clarity, the Holy Spirit takes their names one by one, bringing vision to their spiritual eyes so that they too may see themselves as the forgiven children of God. Once people of other faiths grasp this matchless truth, they will stop compromising the love of God with their blind beliefs and instead embrace it with all their strength.
God is not pleased with the prayers of the unrighteous; rather, He expects His children to pray on their behalf so that He may listen and draw them near. As He did for the friends of Job, God expects us to pray for our enemies alongside the Holy Spirit so that He may draw them into His fold.
We are called to allow the Holy Spirit within us to whisper every name so that each person may embrace the love of God and lack nothing as they journey toward eternity. We must stop praying loudly for the physical healing of people and instead allow the Spirit of God to whisper the names that God hears, opening their eyes to see what He has already done in their lives. God is not going to do anything new in our lives because He has already done everything necessary for us to come to Him and receive forgiveness of sin, freely available to all people. While the Spirit of God is willing to whisper their names, who are we to insist that people must pray on their own? The following verse sheds light on what God can do in the lives of people and how we tend to interpret it for our own convenience.
for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
Romans 10:13-14 (NIV)
Two thousand years ago, through the love of the Father and the grace of Jesus, God had already forgiven the sins of all mankind. This is the foundational truth of the Gospel. However, drawing from the latter part of this verse, many attempt to preach the Gospel by persuading others to receive baptism and confess their sins in order to be absolved of them—thereby concealing this very truth.
In the early Church, the approach to preaching carried a different significance. The men of God lived righteous lives among the Gentiles, and it was through the witness of their lives that they drew others toward God. Their manner of living was, itself, a proclamation of the truth.
Over time, however, the concept of preaching has shifted. Today, it often focuses on exposing people’s vulnerabilities and calling them to God to be delivered from those areas of weakness — once again concealing the truth that they have already been brought out of those very areas through what God accomplished two thousand years ago.
For this reason, the Holy Spirit is now willing to open the eyes of people to see the light of this undeniable truth. This happens when we allow the Holy Spirit — who resides within our hearts as we come to know our forgiveness of sin — to whisper their names, so that Father God opens their eyes to see and recognize what He has already done in their lives. Instead, if we wait for people to pray on their own and simply preach the Gospel to them, they will not hear it or understand the truth because the god of this age has blinded their eyes to it. Therefore, let us first set aside the expectation that everyone will come to pray on their own and instead allow the Spirit of God to whisper their names. When we do, we will witness a paradigm shift in the lives of people of other faiths and in the lives of wayward children in the way they approach the Living God.
The Jordan Valley 
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