It is good to pray that God would save the ones we love. As Christians, we believe that God loves to save the lost and that it gives him special pleasure to do so in response to the prayers of his people. It is good to pray, but sometimes also difficult, especially when we have prayed the same prayer for years without seeing any apparent results. Rarely do we learn what it means to labor and wrestle in prayer until we have spent ages pleading for the soul of a loved one.
I think it is good to keep two factors in mind as we do this: When we pray for God to save a person, we are praying for something that is both impossible and simple. It is both impossible and simple, with no tension between the two.
We are praying for something that is impossible—impossible without the direct intervention of God. Left to themselves, unbelievers will continually choose to remain apart from God and continually drive themselves farther and farther from his mercy and grace. There is no one who is righteous and no one who seeks for God without the help of God (Romans 3:11). There is no point pleading that a person will turn to God apart from God, that some seed of goodness or spiritual longing will arise from within and propel him toward the Lord. Such a seed does not exist and, therefore, cannot take root.
Thus, we pray for something that is impossible unless God sees fit to make it possible, which is to say, unless God makes the first move and begins to draw that person to himself. This directs our prayers away from the individual and more toward God, less toward the ability or inability of the unbeliever and more toward the willingness and power of the Lord. We pray that the living God would stir a dead soul to life.
And even while we pray for what is impossible, we also pray for something that is simple. What I mean by that is that it is not hard for God to grant the gift of salvation. It is costly, to be certain! It cost the blood of Jesus Christ. But though it is costly, it is not hard. Salvation is not something God grants that is contrary to his nature or that he grants only with great reluctance. Our God saves! Salvation is who he is, how he acts, and what he does. It is what he loves to do and what most brings glory to his name. All of heaven echoes with the praises of men and angels who extol him for this very thing—for ransoming a great company of people to himself (Revelation 5:9).
Salvation is not something God grants that is contrary to his nature or that he grants only with great reluctance.
It is also no harder for God to save another person than it was for him to save you. Like the person you are praying for, you too were once dead. Perhaps you had some privileges or opportunities that the other person did not have. But there was nothing in you that was more alive, more earnest, or more inclined to the Lord. Dead is dead! And just as it did not strain God’s abilities to save you, it will not strain his abilities to save the one you are praying for. And this means you can pray with confidence that God has all he needs to reach into that person’s life with his saving grace.
All of this should cause you to pray with greater confidence in God’s power and purpose. You are praying for him to do what only he can do, for only he can bring life from death. But you are also praying that he would do what he does best, what he loves to do, and what does not strain his abilities in the least. You are praying for God to do for others what he has already proven he is capable of doing—to save another for the glory of his name.
