Thot for Today: Pray like it was you

How many times have I prayed for someone along these lines?

 "God, bless So-and-so ... yawwwn ... excuse me,  and meet her needs. Amen. There, I've done my duty bearing her burden."

When I ask for prayer for something heavy on my heart, I'm certainly not thinking thirty seconds of McPrayer. I'm thinking of night-long seasons. How fair is that?

Buddy Blunkall once preached on Philippians 2:3-5: "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." His thought, which hit me between the eyes, was (pardon any inaccurate quoting), "Pray for the person as if it was yourself. As if you had just lost your job. As if someone dear to you had died. As if you were the one hurting."

Puts it into a whole new light, doesn't it? I would not be saying the suggested prayer above if my mom had died. I would be so deep in grief that I would be depending on Christ and the Holy Spirit, and the caring people around me to lift me up before God.

It is a great responsibility to intercede, yet a great privilege. To know that, when I'm in the right standing with God, He longs to hear from me, and I have access to His throne-room. And because of my prayers, He moves. That's humbling. Since it's true, why would I waste precious throne-room time mumbling the expected cliches and never saying Amen because I drifted off to sleep out of complete boredom?

Challenged,
Jenn