Skip to main content

How Do You Pray for Someone Who Is Suffering from a Prolonged Illness?

The list is not exhaustive, but it is a good biblical start toward this kind of prayer.

1. Pray that God would extend his merciful hand and bring about complete healing in their body.

2. Pray that the doctors and nurses who are treating them would be instruments of God and filled with much wisdom.

3. Pray that they would not equate a lack of health with a lack of God’s love for them (Romans 8:31–39).

4. Pray that their uncertain circumstances would not diminish the reality of their most certain future (Romans 8:35).

5. Pray that their illness would cause further reliance on God and not less (2 Corinthians 1:8–9).

6. Pray that the brevity of their earthly bodies would not detract from the fullness of life within them (2 Corinthians 4:7–12).

7. Pray that their illness would become a platform of witness for the glory of God (2 Corinthians 4:13–15).

8. Pray that their visible circumstances would not take their eyes off of their invisible hope (2 Corinthians 4:16–5:5).

9. Pray that they would be encouraged to live their lives to please God, whether by life or by death (2 Corinthians 5:6–10).

10. Pray that God would grant them the patience for both treatment and recovery.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Generation of Mark 13:30

At the beginning of Mark chapter thirteen Jesus is leaving the temple area and one of his disciples points out the grandure of the temple buildings. Jesus' remark to that disciple concerns the fact that these buildings will one day be torn down. The disciples question Him further as to the times of these events, and so begins an extended teaching from Jesus on the end times.As Jesus' remarks are drawing to a close, He makes this comment in Mark 13:30: "Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place." (NASB) So the reader is left to wonder the meaning of this statement. Either our understanding of generation is wrong, or we are understanding what Jesus meant by "these things" wrong. I think there are at least two solutions. The word for generation (genea: Greek) could mean, as some side column reference Bibles note, "the human race". This is possible, since the events have not all happened and the human race...

Children, Forgive Your Parents

Originally written on August 7, 2005 I remember the first time my father spoke to me as an adult. I was thirty. I had always looked up to my dad because he has many characteristics that are larger than life. Our relationship had always been that of a father and child. It did not change as I became a teenager and as I entered adulthood this unchanging relationship was the cause of much strain. So I was caught off guard as my dad began to speak to me over lunch one day at Chik-fil-a. As he spoke to me he began to confess the things that he had done wrong in raising my brother and me. It was a remarkable moment. Mainly because I noticed very few of his mistakes. He always worked to provide for us, loved my mother with all his heart, gave us plenty of hugs and kisses, and told us that he loved us everyday. So why would he admit to making mistakes in raising his children? After all, he had done a pretty exceptional job. The truth of the matter is that no matter how good we do as parents and...

By This Time You Ought To Be Teachers

June 1, 2006 Sin has a way of crippling us and it is not as obvious as we might think. Sin is subtle and comes to us in the most gentle of ways. When the writer of Hebrews attempts to encourage the church to remain diligent to the faith he does it by writing a letter filled with warnings. One of those warnings has to do with the connection between disobedience and unbelief (3:18-19). Disobedience is equated with unbelief in these two verses, because Israel did not enter the land of rest by disobeying God, rather they failed to believe that God would keep His word to them. Disobedience is the fruit of failing to hear God’s word. At first this does not seem to apply to us at all. We hear God’s word all week long. Or do we? When sin settles into our hearts it begins to harden our senses (3:13). We do not hear God’s word like we used to and preaching, as well as Bible lessons, begin to sound more like traffic noise from the freeway than words spoken to us from God. The writer of Hebrews re...