This post is part of a prayer challenge, 21 Days of Prayers For Your Friends. If you would like more information about the full challenge with daily email prayer guides, I invite you to find it here.
If you’re like most Christians, you probably have some friends who know Christ as their Savior, and others who don’t.
Let’s spend some time today praying the Scriptures for the salvation of friends who don’t know the Lord, and for the spiritual growth of friends who do.
Do you have a friend who doesn’t yet know your Jesus?
She hasn’t tasted and seen His goodness.
She’s never experienced fullness of joy in His presence.
She’s unaware of His comfort. Unconcerned about His wisdom. Unmoved by His love.
There’s nothing in the whole wide world that you want more for her than to bask, as you do, in a relationship with her loving Father.
Let’s lift this friend to the Lord, shall we? Praying the Scriptures on her behalf is the very best thing you can do for her.
Prayers For Your Friend’s Salvation
Pray that the Holy Spirit would convict her of her sin, and bring awareness of God’s righteousness and coming judgment apart from salvation. (John 16:8)
Pray that she wouldn’t ignore the truth. (Romans 1:18)
Ask God to rescue your friend from the kingdom of darkness and bring her to the kingdom of His Son. (Colossians 1:13)
Pray that God would open eyes that are blind to her sin and need for a Savior. (Acts 26:16-18)
Mourn with God that she is separate from Christ, excluded from the family of God, without hope and without God in the world. Then ask that in Christ Jesus those who are far away would be brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:12-13)
Pray that the truth would be united with faith in her heart. (Hebrews 4:2)
Ask God to lead her toward accepting His gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:23)
Recount back to God that He isn’t willing that any should perish; ask Him to lead your friend to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9, 1 Timothy 2:4)
Acknowledge that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. (John 14:6) Ask that your friend would confess her sins, claiming God’s promise of forgiveness and cleansing. (I John 1:9)
Pray that the gospel would be unveiled to her. Ask that God would defeat Satan, who has blinded her mind to keep her from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:3-4)
Now let’s pray for our friends who are believers, that they would grow in their faith and thrive spiritually.
Prayers for Your Friend’s Spiritual Growth
Ask the Lord to fill your friend with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God (Colossians 1:9-10).
Pray that she, speaking the truth in love, would grow up in every way into Christ who is the head of the Body, and that He would make the entire Body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:16-17).
Ask God to help your friend be on guard so that she is not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from her own steadfastness, but would grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:17-18).
Acknowledge to the Lord that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that your friend may be competent, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Ask Him to give her a love for His Word, and a desire to meditate on it all day long (Psalm 119:97).
Claim God’s promised blessing upon her life as she refuses to walk in the counsel of the wicked, to stand in the way of sinners, or to sit in the seat of scoffers. Pray that she would delight in His law; ask Him to help her meditate on it day and night so that she may be like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, with leaves that don’t wither. Ask that in all that she does, she will prosper and flourish (Psalm 1:1-3).
Praise our great God for His divine power which has granted to your friend all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called her to His own glory and excellence. Thank Him for granting to her His precious and very great promises, so that through them she may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. Ask that His grace would empower your friend to supplement her faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. Remind the Lord of His truth that if these qualities grow in her life, they keep her from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:3-8).
Pray that God would help her to count it all joy when she meets trials of various kinds, knowing that the testing of her faith produces steadfastness. Ask that the Lord would let your friend’s steadfastness have its full effect, that she may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:2-4).
Marvel over the truth that she has been crucified with Christ. Acknowledge to God that it is no longer she who lives, but Christ who lives in her. Ask that He would help her remember that the life she now lives in the flesh she lives by faith in the Son of God, who loved her and gave Himself for her. Pray that He would keep His grace ever before her, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (Galatians 2:20-21). Implore the Lord to keep your friend from trying to muster up spiritual growth on her own, but to hold her always in the grasp of grace.
Dear Heavenly Father, Your grace amazes me. I pray that neither I nor my friend would ever get over the wonder of it. Thank You that even as we grow our whole lives long, we can never outgrow Your grace. I pray that You transform us into Your image with ever-increasing glory, until the day when our growth is complete and we finally see You face-to-face. It’s in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, that I pray. Amen.
If you haven’t already done so, don’t forget to sign up here for the rest of the prayer challenge. It will be a source of blessing in your life (and your friend’s life) as you continue to pray the Scriptures over her.
Jodi E. says
I feel the heartbeat of every single word- beautifully stated prayers!😊
Jennifer Clarke says
Thanks for joining me in these prayers, Jodi. May God bless His living, powerful Word in our living and in our praying!