Have the H.E.A.R.T. to Pray for Non-Christians
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1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Romans 9:1–5
A man said to a friend, “I hear you dismissed your pastor. What was wrong?” The friend said, “Well, he kept telling us we’re all going to hell.”
The first man then asked, “What does the new pastor say?” The friend replied, “The new pastor says we’re going to hell, too.”
“So what’s the difference?” asked the first man. “Well,” said the friend, “the difference is that when the previous pastor said it, he sounded like he was glad about it; but when the new man says it, he sounds like it is breaking his heart.”
That is what Paul is saying in this passage. It is breaking his heart that he has to say harsh things to and about nonbelievers, especially those among his fellow Jews.1548
The passage illustrated by this is found in
The most pointed or forceful statement of these verses are Paul’s words in
that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the benefit of my brothers and sisters, my own flesh and blood.
No one should doubt Paul’s heart for seeing Non-believers come to a saving belief by faith in Jesus. Paul’s heart was broken over the condition of their lostness without the Messiah who just recently lived among them.
Illustration: In 1947 Robert Pierce worked for a religious non-profit organization called Youth for Christ. Its mission was to evangelize the world (Reach the World) with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
One his way to China, with only enough money to make it to Honolulu, he met a teacher. She quickly introduced him to an abandoned child named White Jade. The teacher, unable to care for the child herself, asked Pierce, “What are you going to do about her?” Pierce gave the teacher his last 5 dollars and agreed to send the same amount each month to help the woman care for the child.
After making it to China, seeing thousands make public commitments to Christ, seeing the widespread hunger, Pierce began to film all he could - showing pictures to churches here. In 1950 he began the relief organization known as World Vision.
At the beginning of his crusade, Pierce wrote the following on the flyleaf in his Bible:
“Let my HEART be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”
“Let my HEART be broken with the things that break the heart of God.”
A journalist writing about Pierce said, “Pierce cannot conceal his true emotions.”
A pastor who knew Pierce wrote that Pierce, “prayed more earnestly and importunely than anyone else have ever known. It was as though prayer burned within him…Bob Pierce functioned from a broken heart.”
The Apostle Paul and Bob Pierce both imitated the broken heart of Jesus, described by the author of Hebrews
During his earthly life, he offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.
Hebrews
We see an inference of that as he entered into the city of Jerusalem one last time, seeing the crowds he had compassion on them because they were helpless sheep without a shepherd.
The Apostle Paul and Bob Pierce both imitated the heart of Jesus as he entered into the city of Jerusalem one last time
as he entered into the city of Jerusalem one last time,
Matthew makes an important connection that you will not find in the other gospels. To be Christlike we are to emulate Jesus. As Bob Pierce wrote, we should be heartbroken just like Jesus, Paul and Bob. Matthews connection reveals to us where it begins
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.”
Matthew
We don’t have to wonder where the lost people are that need salvation - they are all around us. - Jesus says the harvest is plentiful
We don’t have to wonder how the lost people will find salvation - we tell them the gospel. - Jesus says in that scripture was clear about his death and resurrection and that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in His name.
We don’t have to wonder will the lost people receive salvation - Paul says in - the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. We tell them and many will receive it by faith.
What Matthew does is make the connection for us between the heart like Jesus’s and prayer.
Now I know the prayer Jesus tells us to pray is focused on the Lord of the harvest and the laborers of the harvest, but I believe we can make the inference that our first labor is to have the heart to pray.
We can pray from our hearts for the hearts of lost people.
We know that God has just sovereignly designed and ordained it that when we pray God works. The more I think about that the more convicting yet the more releasing it is.
It’s convicting because I need to pray more specifically and more often. It was just so ingrained in me by experience I guess that Prayer Meetings were about Aunt Bertha and Uncle Larry and all the ailments of the saints.
I have to constantly train my mind and ask God to train my heart to pray for lost people more than I do saved people.
Honestly most churches spend more time praying for saved people to stay out of heaven than they do praying for lost people to be saved from hell. Not that we shouldn’t by any means pray for those in the body of Christ. We are commanded to according to James, but our prayers should be just as much if not more for lost people.
God’s heart is not as broken over a sick saint as it is over a lost soul.
It’s releasing because when it comes to lost people becoming children of God, it does not depend on me. God has provided the means, the method and the message. All I have to do is pray and preach leaving the salvation part up to God.
The following is from “Praying Your Friends to Christ”
The following
Praying for the lost results in changed lives for eternity. Paul said that when a person is converted he is “delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the Kingdom of [God’s] beloved Son, in whom there is redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
We need to ask God to develop in us a heart to pray for lost people.
What the lost need is a new heart, a cleansed and regenerated life in Jesus Christ. Lost people need hearts that are born from above.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Therefore as you pray for the salvation of the lost, pray for unbelievers to have changed HEARTS. Use the HEARTS acrostic to help you remember how to pray.
HEARTS
HEARTS
Pray for Receptive Hearts
Pray for Receptive Hearts
Pray for Receptive Hearts
Pray for Receptive Hearts
,
“A sower went out to sow his seed. As he sowed, some seed fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds of the sky devoured it.
The seed along the path are those who have heard and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.
The parable is about the seed - the Word of God preached. (Luke is focused more on the message than the messenger)
Luke localizes the event in the heart (the image of the seed sown in the heart of human beings is familiar in Judaism)
The heart is first visited by God then the devil (symbolized by the birds) whose goal it is to prevent belief and salvation
The parable indicates that if a person hears the gospel, believes the gospel, and holds fast to the gospel there can be good ground producing good fruit.
So when we are not seeing people saved who hear the gospel, the main reasons are:
the condition of their heart
the work of the devil in the heart
We need to pray that God will prepare the heart so that the seed will take root.
Pray for their spiritual Eyes and Ears to be opened
Pray for their spiritual Eyes and Ears to be opened
The lost person is blinded by Satan.
2 Corinthians
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Only God is capable of lifting the veil.
1001 Illustrations that Connect Illustration 28: Troubled by Gospel Truth
Thomas Linacre was king’s physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII of England, founder of the Royal College of Physicians, and friend of the great Renaissance thinkers Erasmus and Sir Thomas More.
Late in his life, Linacre studied to be a priest and was given a copy of the Gospels to read for the first time. Linacre lived through the darkest of the church’s dark hours under the papacy of Alexander VI, the Borgia pope whose bribery, corruption, incest, and murder plumbed new depths in the annals of Christian shame.
Reading the Gospels for himself, Linacre was amazed and troubled. “Either these are not the Gospels,” he said, “or we are not Christians.”
—Os Guinness, The Call (Multnomah, 1998)
Paul was constantly reminded by the opposition after he preached that not everyone who hears his message of the gospel will actually perceive its truth and embrace it by faith.
When satan has people blinded to it, they can not see the attractiveness of the gospel. He works in all kinds of ways to keep people blinded to the truth and understanding it.
1001 Illustrations that Connect Illustration 28: Troubled by Gospel Truth
Thomas Linacre was king’s physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII of England, founder of the Royal College of Physicians, and friend of the great Renaissance thinkers Erasmus and Sir Thomas More.
Late in his life, Linacre studied to be a priest and was given a copy of the Gospels to read for the first time. Linacre lived through the darkest of the church’s dark hours under the papacy of Alexander VI, the Borgia pope whose bribery, corruption, incest, and murder plumbed new depths in the annals of Christian shame.
Reading the Gospels for himself, Linacre was amazed and troubled. “Either these are not the Gospels,” he said, “or we are not Christians.”
—Os Guinness, The Call (Multnomah, 1998)
How a person responds to the gospel is not about intellectual insight of humanity but rather a spiritual condition of the heart. Only God can illuminate the spiritual hearts and minds of lost people. Their spiritual blindness can be penetrated by the light of Christ. The individual must hear God speak. It begins with our prayers.
Pray for Them to Adopt God’s Attitude about Sin
Pray for Them to Adopt God’s Attitude about Sin
This will require that they admit they are sinners who face judgment and are in need of the righteousness of Jesus, which comes only through the Holy Spirit’s conviction upon their heart to convince them of this.
Which comes only through the Holy Spirit’s conviction upon their heart.
When he comes, he will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment:
The word “convict” can also be translated “expose” - The lost have to be exposed to their sinfulness, their hatred for the light, the uselessness of their own righteousness, and their unbelief.
Pray for Them to be Released to Believe
Pray for Them to be Released to Believe
in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.
God will grant repentance, then the lost individual will come to his or her senses and escape the trap . . . which includes the destruction of barriers and strongholds in the individual’s life.
The weapons we use to help set these people free from satan’s snare must be spiritual because the bondage is spiritual.
For although we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh, since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments
2 Corinthians 10
Praying specifically for a lost individual is warfare. Satan will go to any extent to keep a person lost and in his kingdom. We are involved in praying for and sharing with individuals who need to be rescued from the kingdom of darkness and transferred by God to the kingdom of His dear Son.
To wage war according to the flesh means we are attempting to carry out our ministries with mere human resources and no divine power.
Pray for Unbelievers to Experience a Transforming Life in Christ
Pray for Unbelievers to Experience a Transforming Life in Christ
His neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar said, “Isn’t this the one who used to sit begging?” Some said, “He’s the one.” Others were saying, “No, but he looks like him.”
He kept saying, “I’m the one.”
So they asked him, “Then how were your eyes opened?”
We can pray that God so changes them that many of their friends will not even recognize them.
We should pray for their continued transformation so they will know how to live for Jesus.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Paul is making it clear that in view of the wonderful salvation in Jesus he had been writing about earlier in the letter - believers must respond with wholehearted commitment.
We should pray that lost people will be converted and transformed or changed into the likeness of Christ, to show such.
1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Christian Life, Change In
Soon after a family moved into their new house, it began to show the effects of their slipshod lifestyle. The yard was littered with trash. The lawn withered for lack of care, and, even when replanted, died out again. To enter this house was to enter a shambles. It never was clean or in order.
Another family eventually bought the house and moved in. They painted the house, cleaned up the yard, and replanted the lawn. The results were completely different. What had happened? There was a dramatic improvement in the appearance of the house because there was a change in those who lived in that house.
In the same way, it is impossible that there not be a change in a person’s life once he or she becomes a Christian—because there is a perfect new resident within: the Holy Spirit.143
Doctrine is taught in the Bible so it may be lived out in the world.
We should pray that lost people will be converted and transformed or changed into the likeness of Christ, to show such.
That brings us back to the beginning and the prayer Jesus spoke of. When we begin to pray such a prayer we cannot stop short, so we must:
Pray for the Lord to Send believers to witness to lost persons
Pray for the Lord to Send believers to witness to lost persons
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.”
Prayer is the key to effective soul winning efforts. We cannot win lost souls in our own wisdom and strength. Therefore it is imperative that we call upon the Lord of the harvest to save the lost, send us into the fields, and empower us with bold speech to be His witnesses in this generation.
Let us then be about the task of winning souls as we labor on our knees in prayer!
Conclusion: Anyone want to share how they have seen God answer such prayers for lost people?
Anyone wish to pray for a friend or family member who is not a believer?