What to Pray For

As we are preparing to take our leap of faith into full time itinerant evangelism I am being asked what can people pray for us for. As I thought of this question a list began to form in my head:





Safe Travels


Money


Meetings


Safety


Comfort


Peace


Joy


Happiness


Good Crowds


Excellent Services


Great Internet Cafes


Good Communication (you try riding with somebody from Illinois to Maine and not kill them)








and the list could go on.





But as I thought about each of these I noticed a common theme with them. They are all very selfish requests and requests about Me and Mindy. Although I do want these things I don't want them to get in the place of Jesus. If anything comes before Christ in my life then it's sin. I don't want to sin nor do I want people to sin while praying for me. So I guess I'm going to alter my prayer requests that we want. Here is the list:





1. Jesus


2. see # 1


3. see #2


4 see # 3





All I want people to pray for me is JESUS!! Jesus will provide the first list if I seek Him and if He doesn't then i don't want it anyway. I want Him and Him alone. It says in Matthew 6:33 that we're to seek God's Kingdom FIRST and then the rest of the stuff will be added. Now it seems to me that the focus of our life needs not to be on our Santa Claus prayer list, but rather we should be single minded and have one focus...JESUS. If we do that then God will take care of the rest, but if we focus on the other things then we are living for ourselves. We are living for the second part of the verse.

Solomon didn't pray for riches, wives and everything he had. He prayed for wisdom, and the filling of the Holy Spirit. Then God seeing that he was not being selfish gave him all of the riches and wives he had. He made him known through all the world. Obviously I am not wanting riches or wives (I would go nuts with more than one!). But I am wanting the wisdom of God FIRST!

So my request is not that you pray for list # 1, but rather that you pray for list TWO. List two may have trouble, toil, tribulation in it, but I don't care. I want to be stretched and grown in Jesus and how do you think I'll do that?? It's never an easy prayer to pray however we must if we are to grow.





May I pray, live, eat, breath, speak, sleep all for Jesus!!! Jesus must be the focal point of our lives!!!