The Best Thing Possible For The Worst Person Possible

Here’s how I pray. I’m going to read it to you because I wrote it out. “Father in heaven, may the work of the Holy Spirit continue in me.” And I’m going to tell you why I pray that way in just a minute, okay. “May the work of the Holy Spirit first continue in my life. May the work of the Holy Spirit continue in me. And may the works of the flesh come to nothing.”

Now, and here’s the problem. I think a lot of us are hypocritical when we pray for other people. We pray for other people to have these radical changes. God change them. God correct them. God do something in them. And we don’t pray for ourselves. So when I begin to pray for people, people that were opposing me or people who didn’t like me, when I begin to pray for them, I realized I was praying more passionate prayers about them than I was for myself. And God stopped me in the middle one morning. He said, “Brady, won’t you pray that prayer that you’re praying for them; why don’t you pray it for yourself first?”

Remember the whole thing about taking the speck out of your own eyes so you can get the log jam out of your brother’s, kind of deal. First, pray for the condition of your own heart before you start praying for someone else’s heart to change. So I’d say, “Lord, let the work of the Holy Spirit that you’re doing in me, let it continue. Let the work of the Holy Spirit continue in my life first. And Lord, let the works of my flesh—hey, can we all confess in here? We all have flesh. Is that right? We’re all tempted really with the same things? We’re all tempted in our flesh. We want to act in our flesh. We want to say things that are fleshly instead of spiritual, right. We all have that temptation.

So I say to God, “God, let the works of my flesh come to nothing. Let them fall to the ground with nothing on them. But let the work of your Holy Spirit continue, Lord. And then I pray for them. And I say, “Lord, may the work of the Holy Spirit continue in them. Whatever you’re doing, Lord, I can’t see it. It’s unseen. I know you’re working in an invisible realm sometimes. I don’t see all the work that you’re doing. It’s not evident that you’re working in their lives, but I know you are. I know you’re there. I know you’re with them. I know you’re consuming them from the inside out the same way you do with me.” And listen, all of you don’t know the work that God is doing in my life. You don’t know it. You don’t see it, maybe, all the time. But I can tell you the Holy Spirit is working in me. So I suspect he’s working in all of us together.

And I say, “Lord, let the work of the Holy Spirit continue in them. And the let the works of their flesh come to nothing.” And this is how I end it. I say, “Now, Lord, may your blessings overtake them and your favor be poured out on them.” So pray for yourself. By the way, I pray that God’s blessings would over take me. God, I pray your favor would overtake me. But then I pray for them, the same way I pray for myself with the same intensity.