The Power in Praying for People
1/29/2026
By: Simon Howling
While on break from university, I would often return home to visit the small rural Baptist church that my dad pastored. One Sunday, at the end of the service, a couple I didn’t really know came up to me and asked how I was doing and what they could be praying for. Not wanting to be rude, I shared a few brief details and mentioned a couple of prayer requests, then walked away thinking nothing more of it.
“We’ll be praying for you” — a phrase I had used and heard countless times before. A polite Christian way of ending a conversation.
I then returned to university.
Three months later, while on break again, I went back to the same church. After the service, that same couple came straight up to me. “Simon, great to see you — how’s…?” They then proceeded to ask me about everything I had mentioned three months earlier. As they spoke, I was scrambling in my mind, trying to remember two things: who were these people and what prayer requests had I even shared?
Here was a couple who had spent three months praying for someone they barely knew, based on the briefest of details, and who were eager and excited to hear how God had been moving. A simple act of faithfulness and love that, even ten years later, continues to encourage and challenge me to do better in prayer.
As a church, we have just started studying Ephesians, and I was reminded of this interaction as I read what Paul says about prayer and thanksgiving in chapter one.
Countless sermons have been preached, hundreds if not thousands of books written, and whole organisations established to teach people how to pray. Yet prayer remains something many Christians struggle with. By “struggle,” I don’t mean that Christians don’t believe in prayer or understand its importance. Rather, I think we often misunderstand what it means to pray, and as a result we miss out on the joy and power of praying for people.
“For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (Ephesians 1:15–16).
Filled with love, joy, and encouragement for the believers in Ephesus, Paul’s response is continual prayer. Yet, as Tim Keller points out, “It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul’s prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances.” Instead, the focus of Paul’s prayers is fixed on people, on what God is doing in them and through them. The emphasis is not on their situation, but on their transformation.
This is not to say that bringing our needs, situations, and circumstances before God is unimportant or unnecessary. The opposite is true. Some Christians wrestle with the idea that God does not want to hear about their problems, but as D. L. Moody said, “Some people think God does not like to be troubled with our constant coming and asking, but in truth what is most troubling to God is when we don’t come to Him.”
So it is right that we come before God with our needs, but that is not the only way to pray, nor should it be the only way we pray.
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe” (Ephesians 1:17–19).
One of the most striking features of Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:15–23 is what he leaves out. Writing to a real church in a real city, Paul could easily have prayed for protection, provision, unity, or relief from pressure. Ephesus was spiritually hostile, socially complex, and morally confused. Yet Paul’s prayer is not shaped by circumstances, but by people.
This challenges how instinctively situational our prayers have become. We often pray when something is wrong, when someone is struggling, or when an outcome is uncertain. Our prayer lists are full of requests for change: change the diagnosis, change the job situation, change the conflict, change the future. As already noted, none of this is wrong but perhaps Paul shows us that it is incomplete.
Paul does not reduce the believers in Ephesus to their needs. He does not define them by what they lack or what threatens them. Instead, he sees them as people being transformed by God’s grace and power, and understands that what they need most is not a different situation, but a deeper knowledge of Jesus.
In this opening chapter, Paul seems less concerned with fixing problems and more concerned with forming disciples. His silence about circumstances is not indifference; it is confidence, confidence that if people grow in their knowledge and understanding of Jesus, they will be equipped to face whatever circumstances come. Paul understands that spiritual maturity flows from knowing God personally, not merely believing correct things about Him. This kind of prayer is powerful because it cooperates with God’s long-term work. It does not chase quick fixes, but lasting fruit.
Maybe the power of prayer is not found only in what changes around us, but in what is formed within us and within others. Paul shows us that prayer is not simply a way of asking God to intervene in situations, but a way of standing before Him on behalf of people — thanking Him for them, celebrating His work in them, and trusting Him to complete it.
Perhaps this is why that simple encounter from years ago still stays with me. Not because the prayers were dramatic or because there was a miracle involved, but because they were honest, faithful, personal, and rooted in love. And maybe, like Paul, we are invited to rediscover the quiet power of praying for people and to let God do His deepest work there.
Simon Howling is a missionary from the UK and serves as the Director and one of three coaches at our Futsal School. He arrived in Bolivia in 2019 with a heart to serve Jesus and impact the lives of children through soccer. Beyond the game, Simon is passionate about mentoring and discipling his players as if they were his own. He also serves as one of our pastors and elders at the church in Trinidad, faithfully guiding and loving others both on and off the field.