Laudable Linkage

Posted on October 11, 2025 by Barbara Harper

I found several thought-provoking reads this week:

Why Looking Backwards Keeps You Safe, HT to Challies. “When I face a vexing theological question, I start with what I know for sure and use that to organize the field, eliminate options, and clarify the task. I move from the known to the unknown. In this case, two sound convictions guided my assessment of the ‘revival.'”

Your Father’s Care Is Round You There, HT to Challies. “Good hymns, old and new, have a way of exposing and strengthening our hearts across a seemingly infinite variety of situations. They present us with general truths, anchored in God’s Word, that penetrate into the darkest and most complicated crevices of our circumstances.”

Praying for the Impossible and the Simple. When we pray for God to save our lost loved ones, we’re praying for Him to do something only He can do, but something which He delights to do.

God Is Our Guide on Paths We Did not Choose. HT to Challies. “When I was fifteen, I made a promise to the Lord that I would obediently go wherever he led. Back then, I was sure he’d call me to an impoverished country to serve as a missionary. I was open to that. Instead, he has led me into a life marked by physical pain. It’s not exactly what I had in mind. . . . sometimes God guides us to places we could never have imagined for ourselves. His plans for us are good, but they are not always easy. Even so, I’ve learned that when God calls us to walk through a shadowed valley, he has promised to go with us. We can trust his guidance because he provides what we need to persevere through every valley.”

How Reading the Bible Every Day Changes Everything. “It did, indeed, take me fifteen months to finish, but I finished. I did something most Christians will never do. I read the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. In the process, I discovered something unexpected—the key to a dynamic Christian life. Little by little, as I read through my Bible, amazing things began to happen. Some of them were so subtle I didn’t notice them at first. Others took years to fully manifest, but they transformed my life.”

Truth in Small Bites Is Truth Nonetheless. “When life takes a turn, most of us tend to push Bible reading aside until our circumstances return to normal. If you’re not able to sit down at your kitchen table for a quiet hour of in-depth study, you don’t even crack open God’s Word. Somewhere along the way, you’ve told yourself that if you’re not able to feast, you shouldn’t eat at all, not realizing that a handful of almonds in the middle of the night is far better than allowing your soul to starve.”

We Still Need Gentlemen. “We all saw the pictures of men who stood by and watched while 23 year old Iryna Zarutska was stabbed to death on a bus. We saw those photos and wondered how we’ve come to this place in history, a time when men have lost their protective instinct. According to scripture, men were created to protect and treasure those more vulnerable than themselves. God calls men to be strong, to be heroes, to be courageous and caring. Sometimes when we turn on the news, we begin to realize that many men have lost their sense of purpose in favor of apathy or self-preservation.”

Watch Your Language, HT to Challies. “Nasty language is a black-magic wand. When you touch it to a person,place or thing, you perform an act of mild (and sometimes not so mild) denigration. When you use everyone’s favorite vulgar word to denote the sexual act, you reduce the act. You gut the spirit life out of it. With profanity, you denigrate what you feel is overvalued. You try to cut it down to size. … When you curse compulsively you produce a view of the world that’s smaller and meaner.”

Welcoming Others with Gospel Hospitality, HT to Challies. “When we hear the word ‘hospitality,’ we may think only of inviting people into our home. The thought of doing so may create a feeling of panic deep within us as we think about cleaning the house or fixing an elaborate meal. Hospitality can feel risky as we think about letting strangers and even friends in our homes and our lives. But gospel hospitality says nothing about a clean house or fancy meals. In fact, nothing about the gospel is fancy or flashy.”

Let Kids Read Dangerous Stories: 3 Thoughts on the Rise of Cozy Fiction, HT to Challies. “I’ve begun noticing a trend in popular fiction books over the past few years, and that’s the word ‘cozy’. Cozy romance, cozy mystery, cozy fantasy. We’re surrounded by books and stories of picture-perfect relationships, dreamy Hallmark settings, and adventures-that-aren’t-really adventurous.” I agree with this writer that these kinds of stories are okay, but not realistic. I like the G. K. Chesterton quote she shares: “Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”

How God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love,
not because He needs to receive but He delights to give.–C. S. Lewis

Ways to Pray for the Lost

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Barbara Harper

One of our former pastors who is now with the Lord used to encourage us to pray Scripturally rather than falling into “Christian cliches.”

One evening he especially challenged us regarding praying for people who don’t know the Lord. It’s not cliche to pray “Please save so-and-so.” Paul said of his countrymen, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1).

But, if you’re like me, praying the same way repeatedly can seem rote after a while. Petitions based on Scripture not only refresh our prayers but also give us confidence that we’re praying according to God’s will.

The discussion that night sparked a brief search which turned up a few verses of praying for the lost. Since then, I’ve added others as well as some passages that aren’t prayers in themselves but can be turned into prayer.

We don’t necessarily need to mention all these things every time we pray for our non-Christians friends and loved ones, but considering one or two of these at a time can help us pray more fervently and effectively.

We can pray that:

They hear or read God’s Word. Romans 10:17 tells us “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” There are so many ways now to encounter the gospel–in one’s own Bible, on apps, via audio, and so many more options.

Someone tells them of Jesus. In a sense, books, blogs, social media posts, tracts, etc, involve someone telling the hearers or readers about Him. I’ve heard testimonies of people who believed on the Lord alone in their rooms after reading the Bible. But for many, a personal example is needed.

When Jesus had compassion on a crowd “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” He told the disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:35-38). In Romans 10:14-15, Paul writes, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?”

We can also pray that those who share the gospel would be given the right words to make it clear. Paul prayed for words, boldness (Ephesians 6:18-20), an open door (Colossians 4:3), and clarity (Colossians 4:4).

God will draw our lost loved ones to Himself. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44).

The Holy Spirit will guide them into truth and remind them. Jesus said the Holy Spirit would guide us into all the truth (John 16:13), teach all things, and remind us of what Jesus said (John 14:26). Paul goes on to say, “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).

Their hearts will be “good ground.” In what we call the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, Jesus talks about various people’s hearts as ground that the seed of the Word is dropped into. The seed doesn’t take root and grow in some because it’s snatched away, in others because their heart is stony, in others because thorns choke it out. But the one with “good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it.”

Though we’re not specifically instructed to pray this way, I’ve prayed at times for hearts of lost loved ones to become good ground, for the stones to be removed, the bedrock underneath to be broken up, the thorns to be kept back, so that the seed of the Word can take root and bring forth fruit.

A line from a little-known stanza of the beloved hymn “Just As I Am” says, “Just as I am, Thy love unknown/ Has broken every barrier down.” I think God does that in some by bringing circumstances into their lives to soften them and by bringing them under the sound of the Word that they reject at first, but which gradually breaks down the stoniness. I think apologetics ministries are most helpful here in making way for the gospel.

They would be convicted of sin. Jesus said the Holy Spirit “will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment” (John 16:8). Though conviction feels awful, without it, people don’t know that there’s anything they need to be saved from. In one sense, as we mature in the Lord, we realize more fully how awful sin is and how offensive it is to God. But we need this initial realization of what sin is in order to realize we need God’s grace.

Their eyes would be opened and hearts turned from darkness to light. Paul said the mission God gave him was “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those sanctified by faith in Me” (Acts 26:18). Again, though this isn’t written in the form of a prayer, we can certainly pray these things for those on our hearts.

That they would not be deceived. In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus says that some people will fully expect to get into heaven, but will be told that He never knew them. One of my frequent prayers is that none of my loved ones would be deceived into thinking they are saved if they are not. I also pray they would not be deceived by those who twist Scripture to try to make it say something it doesn’t (2 Peter 3:16).

I’ve also prayed that people would realize that whatever they’re trusting in is not dependable and will not satisfy in the long run, or that whatever is keeping them from salvation is not worth it.

They would understand God’s love. God says He drew His people “with cords of kindness, with the bands of love” (Hosea 11:4). Paul prays for the Ephesians “to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:16-19). Once while reading this passage, the phrase “to know the love of Christ” jumped out at me. Paul goes on to say that this love surpasses knowledge–yet he prays we’ll comprehend. He’s praying for believers here: we can continually grow in our understanding of God’s love. But I think we can ask for Him to open the hearts of our unsaved loved ones to God’s love as well. God’s law convicted me of my sin and my need of forgiveness, but His love drew me and convinced me it was safe to come to Him and He would receive me.

I was astonished to realize that a familiar passage followed this one in Ephesians. After Paul prayed that the Ephesians would comprehend God’s love, he said, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21). We use these verses as encouragement for all kinds of things. But in context, praying for others to know God’s love and be filled with the fullness of God, we can trust He’s able to do more than we can ask or think.

What encouragement that our lost loved ones aren’t “impossible cases.” God is able to work through His word, His people, and His Holy Spirit to turn hearts to Himself.