Pay to Pray?

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. ~ James 5:16

If we knew how much power was in prayer, I think we'd pray a lot more and ask more people to pray for us, or at least consider how to get our prayers to be more effective. It led to the consideration: why we don’t pay people to pray for us?

As the world goes from bad to worse, we see weird prayer opportunities that are centuries old and some that are brand new. In Buddhism prayer wheels have mantras written up to a million times inside so that when spun they supposedly magnify the prayers of the spinner. In Hinduism and Oglala Lakota thought, cloth is supposedly imbued with prayer and then tied so the wind can carry the prayers to their destination. In many religions, like Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism, candles or incense play a major role in prayers rising. One of the reasons I started thinking about this was someone posted (as a joke) that they were using the vast reasoning power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to constantly pray for them just in case God was listening (or attending) to the thoughts of the AI.

Surely, we understand that wanting to magnify our prayers to be more powerful and effective is a great desire, not just for Christian, but this is one of the universal truths of the world. No one wants to waste their time in prayer. We had a dear sweet friend who passed from death to life about a year ago who seemed to have the gift of faith and having his prayers answered; I have lamented over the past year not asking him to pray more often for us, and especially not asking him his secret.

We have the knowledge that something can block our prayers. It’s common to say, “My prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling,” or “I don’t think God is listening.” Lamentations say our prayers cannot pass through the clouds because of our unrepentant sin (Lamentations 3:42–44). Peter says our prayers are hindered by how we’re mistreating our wives (1 Peter 3:7). That verse is obviously most importantly about husbands and wives, but it can be extrapolated to how we’re treating anyone, as Matthew 5:23–24 and Mark 11:25 affirm. Isaiah confirms the correlation of how we love others to how God hears (Isaiah 59:1–2), as does the Psalmist (Psalm 66:18).

We see prayers being offered with earnestness by Buddhists, Hindus, Lakota, Catholics, Muslims, and Jews, but James tells us “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions!” (James 4:3). Jesus told us, "When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be hard for their many words" (Matthew 6:7).

I was sort of shocked when I realized that no religion has an established, or even common, practice of paying people to pray. I told a group of men recently that if I could afford it, I’d pay them a lot of money to just pray for me every day. But then I realized if people were praying just because they were paid, then very quickly we’d lose the most important aspect of James 5:16, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

An old custom says that farmers would regularly pray, “Don’t listen to the prayer of the traveler!” because the traveler was praying for fair weather and dry roads. That’s not what a farmer needs or is praying for, they want wet fields and rainy days! The will of those praying was in direct opposition, and I believe that’s one of the major hindrances to paying people to pray for us. I’m praying for an older lady who is very near to entering hospice end-of-life care. The first time I met her I prayed out loud for a saving faith in Jesus, a heart fixed on heaven, joy in the journey, and for her to be content in future circumstances. When I said amen, she looked at me with disgust and said, “Don’t pray that!” I asked her what she would rather I pray, and she was honest that she wanted two things: to go home and that the nursing care system would not consume (her word was “steal”) all of her money. God has been slowly removing possessions and the weight of this world from her, please pray that God would grant her repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.

If we’re praying just for worldly gain and filthy lucre, we’re likely to fall into the trap that Paul describes for Titus, that people will, “teach for shameful gain what they ought not to teach” (Titus 1:11, compare Matthew 6:24). If I was praying for that woman out of obligation rather than love for her soul, it would be very tempting to pray only for what she wanted, rather than what God wants: her sanctification (John 17:17, 1 Thessalonians 4:3).

If we paid people to pray for us, we might find them soon praying that God would give us more problems so that we would pay for more prayers. That’s my view of the totally depraved human heart, and maybe I’m wrong, but I see it quickly degenerating into a desire for money rather than a sincere desire to pray. And that broken desire drops the “righteous” man right out of the equation, and then the prayer loses its power.

But we still need people to pray for us, as the Apostle Paul famously said, “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many” (2 Corinthians 1:11). John Calvin prefaced one of his books, “I now only beg of my readers, that, as they reap any advantage from the work, they would assist me with their prayers, that the Lord may carry forward what he has begun in me.” Spurgeon urged his hearers, “No man can do me a greater kindness than to pray for me.”

The church is built on a community of prayer, but our prayers by themselves are weak. Spurgeon confessed and I affirm, “I have never prayed a prayer yet with which I have felt content. From my first prayer till now I have need of grace to cover my shortcomings at the mercy-seat. No act of consecration, no act of self-sacrifice, no rapture of fellowship, no height of spirituality has been without its imperfections.” A quote attributed to George Washington (and Spurgeon, and various Puritans, that I could not corroborate) is phenomenal,

I have called on Thee for pardon and forgiveness of sins, but so coldly and carelessly, that my prayers are become my sin and stand in need of pardon.

If we have to be righteous for our prayers to have power, and it’s so easy to hinder our prayers, and our sins have made a separation between us and God, then not only should it be useless to pray, but it should also be useless to ask even the best of men to pray for us. We remember from J. C. Ryle, “The best of men are only men at their very best! Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, martyrs, fathers, reformers, puritans, all are sinners who need a Saviour! Holy useful, honorable in their place, but sinners after all.”

But we have two righteous men praying for us right now, men who will never falter, never fall, and never sleep. Of one it says that he was raised and is now at the right hand of God, and is indeed interceding for us (Romans 8:34)! Of the other it says he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:27). The men are God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, and their prayers are perfect in power and direction. When I pray for you, I may not know exactly what God is planning or how to pray exactly as I ought (Romans 8:26), but when the Holy Spirit prays for you, he knows exactly how to use your circumstances to transform you into the image of the Living Christ (Romans 8:28–29).

If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me! ~ Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Indeed, Jesus has opened the way to the Father to us perfectly as he says,

Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. ~ John 16:23–24

So we pray as righteous people, made righteous not by our perfection, but rather because we are far from perfect but made perfect by the Son of God who loved us and died for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is risen and reigning and because he lives, “he always lives to make intercession for [his saints]” (Hebrews 7:25)! You don’t have to pay him to pray for you, you don’t have to be righteous for him to pray for you, you don’t have to be faithful for him to pray for you. You have to draw near to him by faith, and he’ll receive you just as you are, so that he can transform you into the person he desires you to be. I hope you’re praying that he’ll do that for you!

And how about your prayer life, beloved? Is your prayer life so robust that someone would pay you to pray? If so, would you pray for me? Is your prayer life so anemic as to need God to forgive it? If so, please still pray for me! Either way, I’ll pray that God will reward you abundantly.

Prayer is priceless, and paying someone to pray for you would cheapen it to the point of being worthless. Because it’s so priceless and effective and wonderful, what a gift it is to pray for everyone in your life! The greatest gift you can give someone is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, it’s already paid for, pray now that it would be effective.

I must pray and I will pray. What else can I do? What better can I do? ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

P.S. Please pray for us!