If you were a church leader writing to another church leader, what would be your first item of business? For Paul writing to Timothy, priority one is prayer. In Acts 6, where the Apostles set aside those who would serve as the first deacons, the Apostles said their main job was prayer and the ministry of the word. Prayer is to be our priority as well. This verse is for us as well: I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for everyone (v1).

Paul piles up the language on prayer in verse 1: requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings. Are these different forms of prayer? Yes. He is telling us to bring all sorts of prayers to God for all sorts of people. Do you pray only when you are in trouble? Why not also when you are thankful? Do you pray for yourself and those you love? Why not others as well? There is much for us to learn about prayer.

But prayer is hard for us. We are doers and prayer is not the doing that we are used to. We are even influenced (perhaps subconsciously) by non-Christian ideas, which hinder our praying. We need to expose them as false so they do not affect us. Here is the first: Prayer does not do anything or Praying is doing nothing (Of course we would never say that, especially in church). When this false idea nags at us, we do not pray, as we ought.

The modern scientific mindset does not understand how prayer can work, and so we wonder if it really does (even when scientific studies show that patients who are prayed for get better faster and more often). There is more going on in heaven and earth than is contained in our minds. Once we accept that, we can be transformed, by the renewing of our minds so we can tell what the good, perfect and acceptable will of God is.

Prayer is doing something. It is obeying God who tells us to pray. It connects us to God who tells us to pray. It connects us to God who really does rule the universe and the affairs of men. When you pray, you will find the biggest change in you. Of all the things in your life that needs changing, the most important is you—you need changing. God wants your mind and heart to be expanded through prayer.

Another false secular attitude that hinders us from praying is this: It is up to me to make things go the way I want them. Another way to say this: It’s all on me or it’s up to me. The world tells us to be proactive and that is good. God is not telling us to sit, pray and wait for our clothes to come to us in the morning. But there is a difference in being industrious and faithful in labor and to think that everything really depends on you. There is a saying that we should work as if everything depended on us and pray as if everything depended on God. That is OK, as long as we don’t let the first part drown out the second part. We must pray as if everything depended on God and we are ultimately powerless to control our destiny, because it does and we are. All it takes is an illness that is beyond the simple cures of our body and our doctor, or a relationship strained and broken and we are driven to prayer to ask the King of the universe for mercy.

What are we to pray for? Verse 2 tells us to pray for those in authority so we might live peaceful lives, able to speak and live as Christians. Whether our leaders acknowledge their need for our prayers, we are to pray for them because God has told us to. Proverbs 21:1 says: the heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord and like rivers of water he turns them whatever way he wants. St. Paul wrote this letter knowing that governments can be the sworn enemy of the gospel. We don’t pray for them because we like them or we think they want or even deserve our prayers. We pray out of obedience to God so the gospel can go forth.

In verse 3 we read that God desires salvation to come to all people. Should we not pray for the salvation of our leaders (and of other leaders around the world)? What better way for Christians to live in peace and for the gospel to be free than to have leaders sympathetic to the gospel of Jesus! It is permissible to pray for peace through regime change, but maybe the change needed is not a different ruler, but a change of the heart of the person ruling.

If we spent as much time praying for leaders as we do complaining about them to others, would we not have a better effect? And this is true for our church leaders as well. Why complain, when you can pray?