Intercessory Prayer Isn’t About Knowing What to Ask

it's knowing Who to talk about

How many times have I hesitated to pray for you because I didn’t know what you needed? I don’t know what’s going on in your life. I don’t know your pain and your suffering. Intercede, they say, but how, when I don’t know what kind of prayer would even be right? Intercessory prayer can feel impossible if there is some kind of insight or accuracy I don’t have but need.

I’ve imagined praying that God would help you with your doctor’s appointment tomorrow, but I don’t even know if you have an appointment tomorrow. I’ve thought of prayer as guesswork, like intercession required some kind of insider knowledge that I didn’t have.

Intercession Is Not About Accuracy

But then I realized I had been thinking about prayer as though it required accuracy, as if God was waiting for me to correctly identify the problem before He could do anything for you. As if intercession meant diagnosing your life from a distance and then presenting the right request at the right moment to get the right results.

But prayer was never meant to work that way.

I don’t need to know the details of your day to ask God to make Himself known to you. I don’t need to know your exact struggle to ask Him to help you, to comfort you, to draw you nearer to Himself. I don’t need the facts because God already has them. And though I may not know what to pray for you, I don’t pray alone. “We do not know what to pray for as we should,” Paul writes, “but the Spirit himself intercedes for us.” When we pray for others without knowing what to ask, the Spirit doesn’t replace our prayers; He meets our prayers with His own intercession.

And so, if God never required my accuracy to begin with, then I am free to stop guessing and start trusting. And as I do know who He is, that’s all I need to know in order to pray.

When I started praying for you from that place, not trying to guess your needs, but just entrusting you to the care of a God who sees fully, my prayers stopped feeling tentative and started feeling restorative, meditative, and joyful. As I asked Him to reveal His presence to you, I became more aware of it myself.

What Intercession Does to the One Who Prays

That made me wonder if this is another significant part of why we are called to pray for one another. Not because we have insight into each other’s lives, but because intercession also reminds our hearts who God is and sets us up for hope, peace, and joy. It certainly trains our attention onto who He is and what He loves, rather than the ins and outs of this crazy life.

Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon on intercession, said: “If in the Bible there were no example of intercessory supplication… yet the very spirit of our holy religion would constrain us to plead for others. Dost thou go up into thy closet, and in the face and presence of God think of none but thyself?”

Spurgeon wasn’t saying we have to know everything about another person’s life in order to pray. He was saying that the life of Christ in us naturally turns outward. Intercession is not expertise; it’s bringing the truth of who God is into the lives of others.

Intercession is a gift, not just for the one being prayed for, but for the one praying. There is something refreshingly reshaping about it.

The Work of Binding Us Together

But wait, there’s more! We can sometimes forget how deeply connected we are to one another in Christ. But praying for others has a way of reminding us that their life is not separate from ours, and that their good matters to us. Their struggle is our struggle.

There aren’t a lot of practices that soften the heart the way intercession does. It does the holy work of binding us together, making it harder to keep our distance, harder to stay hardened, and harder to feel alone.

There is something about praying for others, even those you’ve never met, that makes their existence feel less abstract and more connected to yours. Prayer doesn’t just carry others to God; it weaves the one praying more deeply into the family of faith.

I’m praying for you already, but if there’s a particular burden you’d like me to carry with you in prayer, I would welcome it.

“No man liveth unto himself when once he has the love of Christ in him.”
- Spurgeon

A Prayer of Intercession

If you're wondering what this kind of praying might sound like, here’s an example of how I’ve prayed for you, not guessing your need, just trusting God's knowing.

Dear God, please help her to know she is not on her own. That she is not left alone to interpret the world by herself. Remind her that You are her Keeper, the One who watches over her going out and her coming in. That Your eyes are always on her: to steady her, to strengthen her, to shepherd her.

Help her to know You see her, surround her, and interpret every moment with perfect wisdom and unwavering love.

You don’t see like people see. You haven’t misunderstood her, overlooked her, or assumed the worst about her. You are not afraid for her. You are not unaware of what surrounds her or what is coming next.

Help her to remember that You know her frame, her future, her fears, her fragility, and her longing for safety.

Before a thought rises in her mind, You know it. Before anything happens, You see it. Before a whisper of fear forms on her tongue, You hear it.

Give her peace in knowing this is all true. She is fully known and fully held. Her future is fully seen. Help her to believe today that her predictions do not have the final word; Your love does.