Praying for Others

Prayer for others is as positive and important a duty as prayer for ourselves. Indeed, we cannot rightly pray for ourselves unless we include others in our prayers. Even if we weie disposed to think chiefly or only of our personal interests, we must have a thought of what others can do for us and be to us, in order to our safety and welfare.

“None of us liveth to himself” alone; and, situated as we are in this world as it is, we are sure to be helped or harmed by others, apart from our own choice or power. If we would have God minister to or protect us, we must rely on his influence over others, and his guidance of them in their sphere, to secure to us that which we desire for ourselves. Unless God can control others, he is powerless in our behalf;

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hence prayer for ourselves is incomplete except as it is prayer for others also.

A tourist, in climbing an Alpine summit, finds himself tied by a strong rope to his trusty guide, and to three of his fellowtourists. As they skirt a perilous precipice, and he seeks God’s protection along that dizzy height, he cannot pray confidently, “Lord, hold up my goings in a safe path, that sy footsteps slip not, but as to my guide and companions, they must look out for themselves. Each of us is responsible for himself alone.” The only proper prayer in such a case is, “Lord, hold up our goings in a safe path, that our footsteps slip not. Guide our guide, and keep all of us steady; for if one of us slips all of us may perish.” Nor is this Swiss mountainclimbing the only thing in which we stand or fall with our fellow-travelers.

Prayer for ourselves includes prayer for others, when we are sick and trust ourselves to a physician. If we ask God’s

help, we must ask it for our doctor also. 82

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If we pray for protection on an ocean; voyage, our prayer should be for the captain and engineer of our steamer as well as for ourselves, in order that God may give us safety. If we would ask to be kept from harm on a trolley car, we must expect God to give skill and fidelity to the motorman. Our protection in life and property pivots on the alertness and efficiency of the policeman, the night watchman, and the fireman, in their sphere, and when we would plead with God to keep us by day and by night we ought to take them into the scope of our prayers. Prayer for our daily bread involves the idea of prayer for the cook or baker, who might give us poison in our food.

In every sphere of life we are linked with others, and dependent on others for life and comfort. And it were useless for us to pray for God to help us, unless we include in our prayers the thought of God’s oversight of others, and of his working for our good in and through them.

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This is putting prayer for others on the lowest plane of mere selfish interest; but when we think of others in an unselfish way, we have need to realize that all that we wish and will and do in behalf of those dearest to us must fail of compassing our loving purposes for their highest welfare, unless God works in the direction of our holiest longings for them. Nothing that we can do for others is sure of a good result without God’s blessing.

Nor does God leave any person wholly to himself for a personal decision on matters of the highest importance, or of the lowest, apart from the force of influences and circumstances outside of himself. If, therefore, we would do the best in our power for our dear ones, we must seek the help of Him who can do more than all others in bringing potent influences for good to bear on them, and in averting from them potent influences for evil.

Although it is true that “each one of us shall give account of himself to God,” and Praying for Otbers

shall be compelled to meet the responsibility of his own decisions in every emergency of life, it is not for any one of us to say that he has been prompted to his final decisions by his uninfluenced personality, as if he stood all alone in the world. Nor can any one of us say that he is in no degree responsible for the influence he has exerted, or has refused to exert, over the lives of those he had the opportunity of shaping.

We are linked with others in the Alpine climbing of moral heights, as of material ones, so that our slipping or standing causes others to fall or to stand; and, if we put out a hand of help, or refuse to do it, when our fellow is in peril, we are responsible for his course as well as for our own. This truth carries with it a corresponding measure of duty. The command to us, “Bear ye one another’s burdens,” is set over against the declaration that “each man shall bear his own burden.” Just why we are responsible for Prayer

others, while they are responsible for themselves, we cannot understand or explain; but we know that it is so, and we must bear ourselves accordingly.

If we would have a child of ours preserved from temptation to evil, or preserved while in it, we ought to be ready to ask a friend, who was .near that child while we were ata distance, to have a watchful eye over him, or to speak a timely word to him. Our consciousness of the child’s freedom of choice would never hinder our seeking from another good offices in his behalf. And why should we think that God is unable or unwilling to exert as positive influence over one dear to us as any human companion?

As in the case of a child, so in the case of any one in whom we have a personal interest. God is always near one whom we love. God is always ready to hear prayer for one for whom we pray. God has made the prayer of faith a potent agency in the

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ences of the universe work together for good to one with whom we are linked by visible and invisible ties, we owe it to that loved one, to ourselves, and to God, to pray in faith for his protection and guidance and control.

Bible teachings are in accord with the lessons of reason and experience as to our responsibility for others, and as to our duty of including others in our prayers. Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other Old Testament worthies, prayed for others, and were heard in that for which they prayed. Jesus honored the prayer of faith in behalf of those who as yet showed no sign of personal faith in their choice. When a sad-hearted father brought a demon-possessed son to Jesus with the prayer, “If thou canst do anything, have compassion on us [on me and my child], and help us,” Jesus answered with the words, “If thou canst! All things are possible [in another’s behalf] to him that believeth.” The father Prayer

believed, and the child was made whole. Jesus did not say, “If that child wants help, let him ask for it in faith,’ but he said, as it were, “If thou canst have faith in his behalf, there is hope for him, for all things are possible to him that believeth in another’s behalf.”

This was in a matter of demoniacal possession, but why should we doubt that it will be the same in the matter of spiritual choices? “Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins are forgiven, or to say, Arise, and walk?” Jesus evidently believed in the power of intercessory prayer, and he was not staggered by the difficulty of explaining how God could give wholeness to a man in answer to another’s prayer without interfering with that other’s freedom of choice.

When Jesus saw that his disciple Peter was in special danger of falling away from his service, he did not refrain from intercessory prayer because he knew that Peter was finally responsible for his own action Praying for @Otbers

in the moral crisis, but he prayed earnestly and in faith for Peter’s upholding. “Simon, Simon,” said Jesus, “behold Satan asked to have you [or obtained you by asking], that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not: and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, stablish thy brethren.”

When the Roman soldiers were crucifying Jesus, his intercessory prayer for them with his dying breath was, “Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do.” Jesus evidently had no reluctance to intercessory prayer because of his fear that God could not grant any spiritual blessing to a sinner who did not himself ask for it. The first word in the prayer taught by Jesus to his disciples is “our,” as showing that we are to pray with and for others, and not for ourselves alone.

As we love God we ought to love all whom God loves, and our prayers ought to be as earnest and as constant and as far reaching as our love. When the Jews were Prayer

about to be carried away into Babylon, the message of the Lord to them was, “Seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.” In the same spirit Jesus said to his disciples, “Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you: that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven.”

In emphasis of this Christian duty of praying for others, in the spirit of Jesus, and in truest God-likeness, the Apostle Paul writes earnestly, “I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men.” Unless we pray for others, we are lacking in that spirit in which alone we can pray hopefully for ourselves, and we are living in neglect of a prime duty to God’s dear ones who need and deserve our prayers,

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