How to Pray for Hopeless People

Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED blog post, the only blog that promises to cure stage 4 boredom, the kind that’s so bad it tempts you to stab yourself with a rusty fork.

Before you send me a flaming email scolding me saying, “With God, there are no hopeless people, Frank!” and then questioning my salvation in a postscript, calm down.

In my book God’s Favorite Place on Earth, Lazarus tells his own story, and I underscore that he was a man who was beyond hopeless. Yet Jesus raised him from the dead and healed him at the same time.

When I refer to “hopeless people,” I mean hopeless according to our perspective and our experience.

Here are two examples:

Sharon has been diagnosed with a profound mental illness. Her parents have prayed for her for over 10 years, taking her to healing services, psychiatrists, psychologists, you name it.

The stress has taken its toll on their minds and bodies. Sharon has only improved for a few days here and there. But overall, her condition has deteriorated. She’s full blown psychotic and also abusive.

Jeff has an addiction he’s battled for eight years. He’s been in and out of rehab and overdosed five times. Today he’s no better than he was when his addiction began. His friends and family have prayed for him for years to no avail. They’ve also put feet to those prayers doing all they could to see him delivered, including organizing an intervention.

If you’re past the age of 21, you’ve no doubt met Sharon and Jeff. Maybe more than once.

You’ve prayed, fasted, counseled, coached, spent money on experts and expert facilities, maybe even laid hands on them and spoke in tongues as you cried out to God for them to be delivered.

Yet despite it all, the needle never moves.

Well, it may for a short time, which gives you hope. You think, “God is finally moving!” But then the needle recoils to the red zone again.

Nothing changes. In fact, it just gets worse.

The net result: You don’t know how to pray for Jeff or Sharon anymore. Your emotional bandwidth has evaporated. There are no words left to utter. You’ve run out of fuel. The tank is empty. You’re spiritually numb where they are concerned.

What do you do?

Well, I’ve created a simple prayer for hopeless people that I’ve been using for awhile.

We’ll use Sharon as our example. You, of course, will insert the name of the “hopeless” individual for whom you’re praying.

Here’s the prayer:

Father, I bring Sharon to you again. You know what she needs. And you are able to give her what she needs. I ask that you make Sharon ready and able to receive what she needs. Use all your resources in heaven and on earth to accomplish this.

With God, hopeless cases don’t exist. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t bother to write this post. But our experiences and observations often tell a different story.

On this score, check out the brand new interview on the Christ is All podcast. It’s the second one on THIS PAGE entitled, “Did God Bring This and Where is He?”

Until next Thursday,

fv

P.S. If someone wanted to change your life and zealously forced this blog post on you, you can appease them and subscribe here. It’s gratis and comes with a dozen Super Fire Hot Wings … the kind you can only eat after you sign a set of release forms. (No lemon suckers please. They won’t understand the humor.)