We all have them, saved or not: family, friends, acquaintances, and the lost souls we meet every day. What moves you to prayer? And what moves God? When Jesus saw the crowds, “he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).
What we don’t know
We don’t really know whether people are saved or not, and there are questions we can’t answer. We don’t have to. “The Lord knoweth them that are his” (2 Timothy 2:19). Our part is not to judge where someone stands, but to love them and pray.
Love is the template
To begin, 1 Corinthians 13 is a template written directly for us. Without love, even prayer is noise: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal” (13:1). Love is how you keep praying for someone for years: it “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (13:7). And “charity never faileth” (13:8).
Ask in His name
For our prayers to work at all, we must follow the instructions of the Lord Jesus, the very One who wants us to ask:
John 14:12-14
He gave the conditions too: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7). Believe when you pray, and forgive: “when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any” (Mark 11:24-25).
What we should not do
Remember your own journey, and how you came to be known by the Savior and to know Him. “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived… But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared… he saved us” (Titus 3:3-5).
I remember there was a span of time when I was not ready, and I passed up opportunities God sent my way.
Don’t push. The timing is God’s: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him” (John 6:44). We plant and water; “God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6).
Don’t write them off. God didn’t give up on you. It is “the goodness of God” that “leadeth thee to repentance” (Romans 2:4). The prodigal’s father was watching the road: “when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran” (Luke 15:20).
Faith is the key
God wants them saved longer and more than we do. “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11). He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
Faith and believing support each other. In the Greek of the New Testament they are one word family: pistis, faith, and pisteuō, to believe. Faith is what God gives (“faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” Romans 10:17); believing is that faith put to work. And where it is weak, He helps it: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
So pray believing: “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24). And keep praying; Jesus taught “that men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1). When Jairus pleaded for his daughter and the news came that it was too late, Jesus told him, “Be not afraid, only believe” (Mark 5:36).
He may give you assurance
Sometimes, through prayer, God gives assurance before the answer comes. Hannah poured out her heart for a son, and before anything had changed, “her countenance was no more sad” (1 Samuel 1:18).
I felt God tell me to pray for my father. There was no way I believed that was possible, and I said “No.” … I looked up at the ceiling and said, “God, do You know something that I don’t?” … Forty years later, he was saved by the born-again experience. Now I have faith for hardcore impossibilities.
You are in good company
Abraham pleaded with God for Sodom, where his nephew Lot lived (Genesis 18:23-33). Job prayed for the very friends who had wronged him (Job 42:10). Paul wrote, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved” (Romans 10:1). And the promise still stands: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31).
If someone has been praying for you
Perhaps you are the loved one. Someone may have been praying for you for years. The name they pray in is the same name you can call on today: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).