Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-Impact LeadersNäide

How to Intercede More Effectively

Suggestions for Better Intercession

1. Pray for others as you wish others would pray for you.

2. Focus your intercessory prayers more on the spiritual issues of eternal significance than the material, physical, and temporal needs of the other person.

3. Use scriptural prayers as appropriate. Below are two prayers that Paul prayed for his followers:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. (Colossians 1:9–12)

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9–11)