November 6, 2022

Ephesians 1: 16 (NIV)

I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

Our love and compassion grow along with our faith when we come before God on behalf of others.*

In the movie, Once Upon a Crime, one of the characters is a handsome but sleazy fellow who lives off of rich old women. The plot of the movie involves the murder of his current benefactor. At the end, when the mystery has been solved, we find our parasite sitting on the deck of a yacht with his latest prey. The camera pans to a close-up of his face and for a second he seems to look slightly ashamed that the audience has caught him in the act. Then he shrugs and says in his defense, “It’s what I do.”

Paul might say that giving thanks for the saints at Ephesus, and remembering them in his prayers, is “what I do.” Like the character in the movie, Paul has chosen the behavior by which he will define himself. In all his letters, Paul professes that he prays for and/or thanks God for those to whom the letter is addressed. If Paul, with his somewhat erratic lifestyle, found time to pray daily for everyone that he claimed to pray for daily, then it must be a pretty important activity. He might have made excuses – after all, he traveled and preached, fled from angry mobs, spent time in prison and on desert islands – but for all his other heroics, Paul was a prayer warrior.

We all have someone in our lives who needs prayer. Like Paul, we should determine to make intercessory prayer a daily priority. I don’t know how Paul kept up with his “prayer list” but we should easily be able to maintain a list of those for whom we will pray daily. It would be awesome if praying for others became such an ingrained habit that we could proudly say, “It’s what I do.”

We are really doing our business when we are praying for our friends.*