How can I pray for you?

An essential feature of biblical counselling is that we pray for those we counsel.

Not ‘pray about them in their absence’ but ‘pray with them in their presence’.

It reflects the conviction that in counselling there are always more than two people involved.

The third person is God. And God is not present passively – as a sort of silent observer – but dynamically as the active agent. For without the Spirit at work no spiritual progress takes place – however shrewd or skilled our ‘counselling’ may be.

So, we will, and we must, pray. But how and in what way? When we are praying in the hearing of another, what sort of prayer is appropriate? One example of an ‘overheard’ prayer is John 17.

There Jesus prays for his disciples. But he prays knowing that they would hear him; intending them not just to hear him but to record his prayer for us who were to come. There are plenty of lessons in this prayer, but here are three:

Pray for Christ to be glorified (John17.1-4)

That’s where Jesus starts and we should too. When praying with those who are struggling, it’s right to pray for those struggles to abate. But glory came to Christ not through him escaping suffering but through him enduring it. We shouldn’t be surprised therefore if the way God chooses to bring glory to himself is through our endurance of suffering, rather than through our relief. And we should pray that way. We should ask that if it is God’s will for struggles to continue, God would give strength to stand and in that perseverance glory might come to him.

Pray for protection (John 17.11)

Knowing that a spiritual war rages, Jesus prayed for his disciples to be protected from the evil one. We rightly say that the ‘heat’ in a person’s life doesn’t cause a person to sin, but simply reveals the sin that is already there. Yet that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to pray for relief! Jesus taught us to pray ‘lead us not into temptation’? So by all means pray for protection, ask that the evil one would be kept at bay.

For as we do so we will also be reminding those we counsel that there is a war on and none of us are non-combatants!

Pray for a sanctification that serves (John 17.16-19)

When Jesus prays for the sanctification of his disciples, it is service he has in mind. We sometimes treat sanctification as if it were a trophy to admire: ‘Just look at that Christlikeness’. But the sanctification in John 17 is for mission. ‘Sanctify them by the truth’, Jesus says. Then adds: ‘As you sent me into the world, I have sent them’. This is the sort of sanctification that means being ‘set apart’. It is a prayer for mission. We need to remember that counselling isn’t finished when a problem ends, it’s finished when a ministry begins. Salvation turns us outwards so that we move toward others in Christ-like service. Until that has happened, we haven’t really been saved, for we haven’t been set free from our sinful self-preoccupation.

A footnote

Don’t use prayer to ambush anyone. Don’t say in a prayer what you have been unwilling to say in counsel. Prayer shouldn’t be the postscript to our counselling but the climax. All our counsel should be leading to the moment when together we finally understand what it is we need to pray. In other words, good biblical counselling simply helps us to answer that most essential of all questions: how can I pray for you?