Who Receives the Blessing?

At a recent luncheon in our daughter's home, she adorned each 
persons' place with blessing cards.

This paragraph from a Bible Study Fellowship lesson on Acts and the Letters of the Apostles stopped me in my tracks.

"Who receives God's blessing through your prayers?  

Will you pray for God's power to work to save many through those who preach and teach His Word?

Will you pray for persecuted Christians to know God's presence and peace?

What if you prayed for Christians in ministry wherever daily news reports devastation and evil?

Enemies of the gospel hounded Paul from place to place. Paul prayed and asked for prayer along the way. We can only imagine the extent to which God worked out His will for Paul through believers' prayers.  Will the same be true about your prayers?"

I consider myself a prayer warrior.  Prayer is truly one of my favorite activities, whether privately, one on one or corporately. The Prayermate app I use currently had 25 categories. Conviction set in as I read this lesson though.  The majority of the categories are for individual's needs.  Marriage, healing, jobs, grief, addictions, pregancies, cancer patients, my grandchildren, my family, my friends, my connect group, my Bible study friends, my prayer group....my, my, my.

There is a category for each member of our church staff and their family, our praise band members, for people to grow in their faith, one for unbelievers, and a daily prayer prompt for world missions "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 9:38

Within moments of doing my BSF lesson a friend doing the same study emailed and shared these thoughts, related to praying more deeply for those in ministry.  The story is a result of a mission trip she was on where she was praying one on one with a missionary.

"Now, I have prayed for missionaries all my Baptist life, but her requests made me realize how “human” their needs really are.  We prayed for their kids to make good friends in a Spanish-speaking world, for them to make good choices, for the couples to have personal time for Bible study and to grow closer in their relationships to one another, for their personal health and safety, for them to find a good Bible-teaching church, and on and on.  I realized they were not superhuman spiritual cheerleaders, but real people who loved God with all their hearts and wanted to serve Him, yet still got tired and lonely and discouraged just like I do.  And instead of thinking less of them, hearing her words made me love them so much more!  I don’t know how much we helped their mission in two weeks, but I have shared with many people her requests on how to better pray for those in the field."

So, when we look at our prayer lists, who is receiving the blessing?  Let's be sure we are including those individuals and their families, who are sacrificing much to spread the gospel.