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How often do you ask people to pray for you? How often do you pray for other people?
For a long time, the majority, if not all, of my prayers were for me. Sure, I’d pray for someone if they asked me to (and if I remembered that they asked me to), but outside of that I was pretty selfish during my prayer time.
I read somewhere that prayer time should be 20% for yourself, and 80% for others. 20%?!?! How am I supposed to grow closer to God if most of my prayer is for others? That doesn’t make sense – I have a lot of things that I need to work on, and I need God’s help to do it. I need to know God’s path for me, and so I need to talk to God about me, right??
Wrong.
If everyone does what I was doing (and sometimes still do), then for the most part, everyone’s just praying for themselves and not caring a whole lot about the people around them. However, if everyone is praying for everyone else, we not only show more care for others, but we also get prayed for the same amount of time.
For example, if I prayed only for myself for 10 minutes, then I get 10 minutes. But if I spend 2 minutes for myself and 8 minutes for 8 other people (1 minute each), and those 8 people do the same (I get one minute from each of them), then I still get 10 minutes of prayer time going for me.
Math, right?
But who do I pray for? What do I pray for them? I’ve done some generic prayers for people, which is nice and all, but does God really know what we want if we keep our prayers vague (the answer to that question is yes, of course – He’s God). The better question is, do we really know what we want if we keep our prayers vague? And do we know if God answers our prayers if we’re not asking for anything specific?
In this Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 7:31-37), Jesus heals a deaf man with a speech impediment. It doesn’t say that the man was asking to be healed. But Jesus did it because others asked Him.
I’ve gotten better at praying more for others, whether they ask me to or not. And I’ve gotten better at asking others to pray for me.
We don’t walk this journey alone. And we’re not supposed to. If there is something you need prayers for, ask your friends, family, and this community, to pray for you. And if you’re comfortable enough, let them know exactly what you need prayers for.
At the time of writing this, I ask for prayers for the youth and young adult ministry here at our parish. Specifically, for people to join our teams and help grow the ministry so that it may thrive and connect the young people more to God and this community.
