prayer for 'not yet'

believers

We all have a duty to pray for the advance of God's kingdom. In the Lord's prayer it puts it like this: "Your Kingdom come".

In his letter to Timothy Paul says:

"I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone.... This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. " (1 Timothy 2:1, 3-4)

The Bible encourages us to pray for non believers:

to be attracted to Jesus (John 6:44)
to develop a single minded interest to find out about Jesus (Acts 17:11)
to have the interest in discovering Jesus fuelled by the good example of other Christians (Acts 2:47)

But we have a role in all of this too... to pray for ourselves!

The Bible encourages us to pray for ourselves that we should:

be a helpful example of what it means to be a follower of Jesus (Matthew 5:16)
be wise and creative in what we do and say, encouraging positive curiousity about Jesus (Colossians 4:5,6)
be ready to explain what it means to be a follower of Jesus (1 Peter 3:15)

A useful aide memoire

There's a useful aide memoire produced by Agapé which helps to remind us to do this. It's in the form of a book-mark and is called "5 in Focus". The above prayers are printed on the bookmark and there's space for us to write down the names of 5 individuals whom we know and for whom we are praying. You can download a copy here, it needs to be printed 'double sided' (or 'duplex' for the techies!).