Praying for Others

“How can you and I repay the debt we owe the church unless we pray for others?  How is it that you were converted?  It was because somebody else prayed for you.  In tracing back my own conversion, I cannot fail to impute it to the prayers of my mother through the spirit of God.  I believe the Lord heard her earnest cries when I did not know that he soul was exercised about me.  You have been prayed for when you were asleep in your cradle as an infant.  Your mother’s liquid prayers fell hot upon your infant brow and gave you what was a true christening while you were still but little.  Perhaps you are a husband who owes his conversion to his wife’s prayers.  Perhaps it was the prayers of a sister or a Sunday School teacher.  If by others’ prayers you and I were brought to Christ, how can we repay the Christian kindness but by pleading for others?  He who has not a man to pray for him may write himself down a hopeless character.  Let no man of your acquaintance say that there is nobody to pray for him.  As you had somebody to pray for you, let poor souls of your acquaintance find you a person to plead for them.”

–C.H. Spurgeon, “The Power of Prayer in a Believer’s Life”