PRAYING FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T YET TRUST CHRIST

PRAYING FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T YET TRUST CHRIST 2 Corinthians 4:4, 5:14-21, 10:3-5 February 5, 2006 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction Something stirred me this past week—an inspiration of sorts—and I decided to do something for my message that I rarely do. I dug in my files and pulled an old sermon—one I preached about six years ago. [webmasters note: Click Here for sermon "How To Pray For Those Who Are Far From God"; May 28, 2000] It was in our Life Group meeting on Wednesday night—“The Kindest Thing You’ll Ever Do”—where we were discussing the topic of prayer as it relates to the ministry of evangelism. Charlotte was leading discussion and, as part of her presentation, she was using part of that teaching from six years ago. And I thought, “Hey, I like that! I think I ought to preach it again!” Actually, I sensed in the Spirit it was timely. So, newly revised, here it is again—a lesson from the Word on how to pray for people who are not yet Christians. Praying for lost people has always been a priority in the church, and in this church we’ve made it a habit to pray for those we have been privileged to know who have yet to trust Christ as Savior and Lord. Some Primary Assumptions As a backdrop to the staging of this material, I want to quickly review three biblical assumptions that are shaping the topic. First, it is the will of God that every person be reconciled with Him through a personal faith relationship with Christ. His highest will is that those who are kept from knowing, loving and serving Him would be brought back into a saved relationship with Him. The Bible puts it this way at 2 Peter 3:9 - “He is patient with you not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” Secondly, it is high agenda to do all we can to help promote the will of God and God’s kingdom purposes in our lives and in our world. Jesus framed this objective succinctly when He included it in the model prayer with which He taught His disciples to pray. …Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven… (Matthew 6:9) This is not only the prayer He prayed, but one He obviously wants us to pray as well. And thirdly, we should be mindful of the Great Commission that Jesus gave to the church as her goal and mission: …go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. . . (Mat. 28:19-20) As we pray, then, which we are instructed to do repeatedly in the Word, it seems reasonable that we should pray concerning the very things that are of high concern to God and to us. Hence, among other issues of intercession, we pray for people who are not yet believers in Christ to come to faith in Christ. The Quagmire But how do we pray for non-Christians to respond in faith to the gospel? We know that salvation comes through faith, and that it is the individual who must respond to the offer of the gospel. We also understand that God honors the choices of people as they exercise their free will. Ever since Jesus died for the sins of the world it has been true that those who trust in Him are saved, but those who choose not to remained condemned. (Mark 16:15-16) For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life…whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. John 3:16, 18 So, if it is up to the individual to choose Christ or not, and if God has determined to honor the free choice of individuals, how do we pray for them? Do we pray that God will act against His character and BREAK their will, making them religious robots who do whatever He programs them to do? There is, of course, much we don’t understand about the process of conviction of sin and a person coming to faith in Christ. But we can be certain of one thing—a person must believe in Christ and act on that faith in order to lay hold of salvation. And that requires an act of the will on their part—a free will choice and response to God’s offer So on the one hand it does not seem prudent to pray for God to strong-arm a person against that person’s will. Nor does it seem right to not pray for them to come to Christ. Again, I ask the question, how can we pray for those who don’t yet trust Christ? The answer is to pray for them in terms of the issues presented to us in the scriptures. The Bible gives us clues about the spiritual warfare involved in communicating the gospel and people appropriating it into their lives by faith. The answer to the question of how to pray for non-Christians to come to faith in Christ is to pray scripturally for them and the effect of the gospel in their lives. Let’s investigate at least three scriptural principles that will give us direction on how to pray for those we know who do not yet trust in Christ. Principle #1 – The Blindness of Unbelief Have you ever wondered why anyone would ever decline an offer of absolute forgiveness, eternal life and perfect spiritual health—an offer that was positively free and extended by God Himself? It’s ludicrous, isn’t it? Unbelievable that people would say no to such an offer! I mean, statistics show that 26% of a random sampling actually believe telemarketers who say they’ve won a fantastic prize, for crying out loud! Yet they reject salvation! It’s a spiritual matter. Where spiritual battles rage things just don’t make much sense. And nowhere is this truer than in the realm of eternal salvation. Satan has blinded the mind of those unbelievers, the Bible says. 2 Corinthians 4:4 teaches The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. You know, that passage alone will cause you to respect the deceptive prowess of the devil. He actually possesses the power to keep people from understanding how good the good news of Jesus Christ really is. He dupes people into disbelieving the offer of a loving God to them! This is also reflected in Ephesians 4:18. There the apostle Paul refers to the Gentiles, symbolic of all who have not accepted the gospel of Christ. Their condition is characterized by spiritual darkness. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Given this principle of spiritual blindness, as strong and sinister as it is, we are led to a specific target for our prayers. While we may not be comfortable praying for God to break people’s wills and force them to trust Him, we can pray that their spiritual blinders be lifted. The old adage is true, You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. One wise rancher added, You can’t make them drink, but you can put salt in their oats! We can’t muscle someone into believing, but we can engage in a little spiritual warfare behind their backs. We can storm heaven in their behalf, asking that the blinders from the evil one would be lifted off the eyes of their hearts just long enough that they could hear and understand the gospel. And then, in that moment when angels are wrestling against demons, lifting the blinder off your friend’s mind’s eye, maybe your friend will be able to see and believe the glorious gospel of Christ in that moment. Suppose I were stuck in a dark cave and hopeless that I’d ever get out, and you were on the outside. Imagine a very heavy rock positioned over the mouth of that cave. Now imagine yourself lifting that rock, using all your might. You can only get it up an couple of inches, but it is enough for me to see the daylight and know that there is a way out. And that would be all I’d need to give me hope and direction. That’s what happens when you pray for spiritual blinders to be lifted off your friends. Pray like that. When I pray for my unsaved friend I am not asking God to break his will or strong-arm him into robotic submission. When I pray like this I am asking the Lord to do what He clearly wills to do—to let light shine out of darkness (2 Corinthians 4:6). I can ask the Lord to unblind the eyes of his heart so he may understand the grace he is being offered in Christ. Then he will be truly free to make his decision for or against the Lord. Pray to lift blinders. Principle #2 – Strongholds Stand Against the Knowledge of God The Bible teaches another principle of spiritual warfare. Not only does Satan have the power in this world to blind the minds of people so they cannot see the glory of the gospel, he also creates systems of thought that can delude people. These belief systems, translated in the NIV as arguments and pretensions are carnal philosophies and the unholy wisdom of this world. The effect such ideas have on people who believe them and hold on to them is that these keep them from knowing God. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 - The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. The word for “strongholds” at the end of verse 4 is OCHUROMA, and it means “defense system”. It is like the moat around the castle, like the high fence with razor wire around a prison. The word refers to things that are intended by their designer to be impregnable. Satan sets up strongholds anywhere he can around the hearts and minds of men and women. He traps them into thinking certain ways—ways that are contrary to godly thinking—and real spiritual truth suddenly looks like hogwash to them. The theory of evolution is an example of a major stronghold of thought. Where this philosophy contradicts scripture’s plain teaching that God created everything, according to species, it is a demonically inspired concept. And people buy into it wholesale. It is even promoted from a theory to a fact in our culture, taught as fact in schools and whole categories of science are shaped by it. And when people believe they are less than the special creation of God as He says they are, being taught they are only cogs in the impersonal machinery of blind chance, God begins to blur to them. With no clear picture of His love and favor toward them, people, already estranged sinners, feel all the more distant from their Creator. He becomes superfluous, unreal, and unnecessary. Such powerful delusions are spiritual at root and persuasive. They are strongholds that stand against the knowledge of God. A homely example: if I could convince you (I mean really get you to believe) that eating and drinking dairy products was extremely bad for you, that it would actually kill you if you did so. Suppose I had an eerily powerful influence over you and had you utterly convinced it was true. You would not only stop ingesting dairy products, you would come to worry about those who did; you would be suspicious of dairy farmers, afraid of the milkman. And you’d become paranoid—if anyone offered you cheese you’d think they were trying to kill you. It would be a stronghold of thought. Ridiculous, you say? Consider some of the things that the prince of this world has pawned off on people. Salvation is a moral goal. You please God and earn His favor by how well you perform. When you earn enough brownie points to outweigh your evil actions, you get to go to heaven. It’s a very humanly attractive way of thinking. But spiritually deadly. God is just but not merciful. There is a God, He is holy and perfectly righteous, and He expects people to be the same. They are not. They disappoint Him and make Him very angry at them. He will judge and punish them, and they are doomed. God is merciful, but not just. There is a God, He is like a grandfather. He loves us, winks at our sin, and in His eternal patience He simply laughs it off when we rebel against Him. He’s like Santa Claus—He knows if you’ve been bad or good, but even when you’re bad, shrug, you get what you wanted anyway. We’re all going to see Jesus when we die! The Bible is only a man-made book. Real truth? No way! Hey, everyone has a holy book. Who says your Bible is better than the other guy’s Koran or Upanishads or Book of Mormon? Truth is relative, man, don’t you know anything? You’re so intolerant! God doesn’t care about me. Oh, sure, I believe in God—but he doesn’t believe in me! Look at all the hard luck I have! Nothing goes right for me—God just doesn’t care. I’ve tried church, I’ve tried prayer, and look at my life! I’ll just tough it out and hope I get lucky at the great judgment. God can’t be loving—not with so much suffering in the world. How can a loving, all-powerful God stand by and not do something about starving kids, earthquakes, AIDS? If there is a God, I don’t think I want to be His disciple. These are just a sampling of the prevailing ideas and systems of popular belief that keep people from knowing God. Real truth can’t get in because people’s minds are made up and to change their thinking would be such a tectonic shift. Have you ever tried discussing and arguing these issues with a hardened unbeliever? Unless you are truly gifted and brilliant, arguments are virtually useless in convincing them of the gospel. You might as well be talking to a wall—you ARE talking to a wall, a fortress, a stronghold! Here’s how you deal with it. You pray. Not for God to break their will, nor to force Himself on them, but pray for those strongholds of thought to crumble (to be demolished). You ask the Lord to tear down the walls of wrong thinking that keep them from knowing Him. Just like He brought down the walls of Jericho. Pray, and tear down their defense system in spiritual warfare. Once that stronghold weakens its grip on their mind, and they are actually able to hear and understand the glory of the gospel of Christ, they’ll be able to say, “Oh, now I get it!” Out of nowhere they begin to understand God’s love and grace toward them, and simultaneously see the foolish thinking patterns that had imprisoned them for what they really are – deception! I am suggesting that you can do more for your unbelieving friend or loved one imprisoned by the strongholds in one hour in your prayer closet than you can in ten years of arguing and reasoning. Stop striving to make him understand when he can’t understand, and start draining his moat. Pray to demolish his strongholds! If you keep arguing and “reasoning” with a stubborn unbeliever stuck in a false belief system, you’re not only using carnal, ineffective weapons (10:4), you’re playing right into the devil’s hands. Satan wants you to fuss and fume and to not witness with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). Intercede that God would intervene, to come and dismantle his false wisdom so he can begin to understand and have an opportunity to really hear and respond to the gospel. God can and will demolish demonic strongholds freeing your friend to understand. Ask Him to do it! Principle #3. The Gospel is to be delivered. I think we need to be reminded of a third biblical principle. And that is the simple, profound truth that God intends for us to deliver His offer of amnesty through Jesus be carried to the lost world. I’m afraid we sometimes miss the awesomeness of this calling. But the Bible is clear. His intent was that now, through the church the manifold wisdom of God should be made known… (Ephesians 3:10) Go and make disciples… (Matthew 28:19) You may be asking in your heart, if God is the one who lifts the blinders off the minds of unbelievers, and if God is the one who alone can tear down the strongholds of thought in their minds, why doesn’t He just do it? Why does He need us to ask Him to do it? After all, he knows better than we what people need in order to be able to understand the good news of Christ. Why doesn’t He just do it without our intercession? I don’t know. Probably for the same reason he created parenthood. He creates life. He could make and raise a child all by Himself, couldn’t He? In fact He could do it with millions of children simultaneously—and raise them all perfectly! But He decided he wanted YOU to raise your children. God could feed you with manna directly from heaven every day of your life, but He has chosen to let you work and earn the wage that puts food on your table. Answer me why He chose that way and I’ll answer you why he doesn’t save people without involving His people in the process. There is something wonderful and perfect about His ways that we are unable to fathom. And, by the way, that’s the way He wants that, too. Here is God’s plan for getting the gospel of His Son to the unbelievers of this world. 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 - if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. . .And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are, therefore, Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. This is an awesome concept—that God wants to use us imperfect people to communicate His message of hope and salvation! It is His power—the power of His Holy Spirit at work in and through us—but He has sovereignly decided that He will have us be an integral part of communicating the gospel to the lost of the world. There are two fascinating verses that close out the 15th chapter of John. There, just after He commands the disciples to love one another, to draw on His Word and remain in Him, after he warns them of the persecution to come, He says, When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me; but you also must testify… What does this principle tell us about how we should pray for those who have not yet trusted Christ? We should pray for two things. First, we should pray as Jesus asked His disciples to in Luke 10:2 – The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. We can and should pray that God would send laborers, witnesses to the unsaved. And, I would suggest, we should specifically pray for God to send other believers to our unsaved friends and loved ones who will be uniquely able to make the gospel known to them. This plan works. There are over 300 names on the cards in this harvest basket. We’ve been praying for many months for them, asking the Lord of the harvest to lift their blinders, tear down their strongholds and send laborers into their lives with the gospel. Thirty five individuals for whom we’ve prayed have trusted Christ in that short time. And finally, we should pray that we ourselves will be available to minister to those who have not yet trusted Christ as Savior and Lord. Please catch the import of that: as part of the answer to the question, How should I pray for those I know who don’t yet trust Christ? Part of the answer is to pray that you will be ready to share your testimony along with a clear and compelling presentation of the gospel. Ask God to do that for you. Colossians 4:2-6 – Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.   [Back to Top]