There’s no formula we can do to get a person to choose God, but we can follow steps proven by the Bible to help our friends reach that important decision. When we pray for a friend or a family member’s salvation, we must go to God with confidence knowing that He will answer our prayer. The Bible says, if we ask anything by faith, according to God’s will, He will hear us.
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”
1 John 5:14
We can ask confidently, knowing that God wants our friends to know Him. The following verse assures us that our request is approved by God. It’s His will that “all” people reach salvation.
In 1 Timothy 2:3-4 it says, “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”
There are specific requests we can ask in prayer. Here are some of them based on what scripture says:
Pray that God has mercy over your friend’s lives
We serve a God that has the power to do anything He pleases. The following verse says that God will extend his mercy to those he wishes.
“Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”
Romans 9:18
We must pray and beg God to have mercy over our friends’ lives and to soften their hearts. We can ask God to give them a heart of flesh not of stone, and that He may breathe new life into them.
As we read earlier, God wants all people to reach salvation, but it’s up to each person to decide if they follow him or not. If a person decides to follow their sinful nature, they put themselves outside the mercy of God, and that’s when many individuals fall into a cycle of sin. When we choose to practice sin, God compares us to vessels of His wrath, instead of vessels of His glory. (Romans 9:22-23)
We can ask the Holy Spirit to guide our prayer and reveal to us exactly what our friends need.
In Romans 8:26 it says, the “Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”
None of us deserve God’s mercy because we are all sinners, but we can trust that God is “rich in love,” (Psalm 145:8) so he will extend His mercy and grace to our friends just like He did to us.
Let’s pray that through God’s mercy our friends, family members, and neighbors will reach salvation.
Pray that they may have a new heart
“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Psalm 51:10
We must pray that God creates a pure heart in our friends and that their hearts may soften. Through the trials of life hearts can harden to avoid pain, but we must soften our hearts in order to accept the love of God.
When we pray this prayer, we are asking God to remove a “heart of stone” (Ezekiel 36:26) and replace it with a “heart of flesh.” In other words, we are praying for the transformation of their heart’s desires. That their desires may be to encounter God, incline to godly things, and practice holiness.
Once their hearts are softened, they may be able to stop practicing sin and accept God as their Lord.
Pray that they may see and hear with their spiritual eyes and ears
Many of our friends do not see something wrong with living a life without Jesus. Some may even feel comfortable with their lifestyle because they are not committing a ‘deadly’ sin.
In John 12:37, it says that many didn’t believe “even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence.” According to another verse, they didn’t believe because their eyes were spiritually blinded, their ears were dull, and their hearts were hardened.
“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes…”
John 12:40
We need to pray that our friends’ eyes and ears be opened so they may become conscious of their sin and receive salvation through our Savior Jesus Christ.
As Christians, we are able to see our own sin because of the mercy of God. Not because we are good people, but because we have conviction of the Holy Spirit.
Pray that your friend’s heart may understand, convert, and heal
In the same verse, John 12:40, it says that blindness will cause people to “nor understand with their hearts, nor turn,” but God says, “I would heal them.”
Our prayer should be that God removes all callouses in the heart of our friends. Callouses mean insensitivities to repent or listen to the Holy Spirit. It refers to sins like addiction, fornication, and every ‘little’ or ‘big’ sin against the word of God. Let’s also remember that callouses can build over time layer by layer, so we must pray prayer by prayer for our friends.
Let’s pray that God may give our friends a heart that understands His ways, turns to Him, and that they may heal in order so they can also experience the freedom of salvation and bring others to Him.
New hearts for the Kingdom
Let’s go over it one more time. Pray confidently that God may have mercy over our friends’ lives, that they may have a new heart, that they may hear and see spiritually so they may be convicted of their own sin, and that their hearts may understand, convert, and heal through the Gospel. This simple prayer, guided by scripture, can move God’s heart and transform the lives of our friends and family members who don’t know Jesus.