Prayer impacts so know from the start that when you pray for others, it may cost them dearly.
When Pharaoh announced that every male child born to an Israelite should be destroyed, Jochebed’s prayers for her infant son, Moses, must have been heartbreaking. Yet she had no option but to commit the baby to the dangers of the river.
When God called Moses to take his people out of Egypt, Moses prayed to God on their behalf. Yet the lashes and burdens of Egypt increased. There seemed to be no sense in what Moses was achieving.
It took strong faith in what God was doing for Moses to continue to obey Him.
Jesus prayed for His disciples, “I pray for them…For they are yours.” (John 17:9) If you read what happened to all his disciples, you are not impressed with soft outcomes. At every crisis, God seems to do the unbearable and allow life to get worse.
Something about this appeals to my ironic sense of humour. When He told me to pray for my persecutors, was He telling me life would get worse for them? (Matthew 5:44)
Maybe He is telling me that if my own life seems to be bad at the moment and every turn just makes it worse, it is because someone is praying for me.
So when I pray for you I always ask that you will have the strength to bear the answer.
I may have to move aside when I let God loose on you because the impact may be far more than I bargained for. Please know that when I come before God for you, I come with trembling. It may cost us both dearly but we will agree through all eternity, we would not have missed it for anything.
Elizabeth Price