If you’re like most people who pray, you talk to God not only on your own behalf but also on behalf of those you love—family, friends, fellow church members, coworkers, etc. You may go beyond that, of course, and pray also for people in need around you. Maybe for your city, state and national leaders too. Such prayers—and the answers they often invite—can be rewarding not only for those you are praying for but also for you, as you see God work and watch your faith grow.

But it should not end there. At least not if you’re a follower of Jesus. He said,

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:43-45, NIV).

“Pray for those who persecute you.” For many of Jesus’ listeners, that would have meant the worst people they knew. Foreigners. Collaborators. Crooked politicians. Scammers. Ungodly people.

The details of your list might be different from those who first heard Jesus’ words, but the challenge is the same: He says to pray for the worst people you know. That probably has both local and global implications. For example, you may have a neighbor who gets on your last nerve, so to speak; have you prayed for that person? Someone at work may be out to get you fired or reassigned; have you prayed for him or her? What about those who seem as if they are stepping on you on their way to “the top?” Or people who try to take advantage of you? Or those who offend you by their language, lifestyle or politics? Does that seem too hard? If so, then those are exactly the people Jesus had in mind when He said to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” 

It is also important to remember that Jesus paired love and prayer. Praying against someone is quite different than praying for someone. Praying for someone is far more of a stretch, because it requires us to lay down our anger and willingness to wound the other person in favor of a kinder, more empathetic posture. Praying for someone will probably compel you to try to understand, at least a little bit, where they’re coming from and what their needs might be. Praying for someone—if you’re sincere—will mean seeking their good and not just their agreement with or resemblance to you.

Notice also that Jesus said that praying for those who persecute you would have positive results specifically for those who were doing the praying: “that you may be children of your Father in heaven,” who shows kindness and generosity to all of His children, both the well-behaved and the wayward. When you pray for the worst people you know, you resemble your Father more and more, moment by moment, prayer by prayer.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7)

The month of October has been designated Pastor Appreciation month. Some people think that all pastors do is preach sermons, but they do so much more.

They are called to cast vision so their congregants can understand where they are going. They are also called to equip the people for the work of ministry; they are counselors, and worship and community leaders. Their work is always motivated by the belief that lives can be changed through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Pastors are equipped for service by the Lord. But just because their reward comes from the Lord, it does not mean pastors never feel unappreciated. Pastors are human and the pressures of life can weigh heavily upon them. Recently, I heard a message from a pastor who said that his greatest fear was failure. He said he did not want to fail his people in his preaching or counseling or in his ability to help effect growth both spiritually and numerically within the church body.

During his preaching, he told us that God is not the one who had given him a spirit of fear. What God gave him was enough power to overcome the obstacles and feelings of insecurity. Could it be that prayer was what helped him to emerge from that place of darkness? Prayer is a powerful way to show our pastors how much we appreciate them. Prayer done in secret could help do wonders for a pastor who has a very public life.

There are some practical ways to show appreciation as well. You can send your pastor an encouraging note of thanks for the acts of kindness that has been shown to your family. You can thank them for the time they spend comforting family during the illness or death of loved ones. Many pastors like to read and a good book or a gift card for a book or a meal out is another way to show appreciation. Recently, someone told me that a great way to show appreciation is through giving a retreat weekend or even a day at a retreat center. These are refreshing times that pastors need. You don’t have to wait for a particular month; you can show your appreciation at any time. Sometimes just saying “thank you” is enough.

We are praying for all pastors to excel and bring God glory. I know that he appreciates them and so do we. When they live a fearless life, they will not fail.

God bless you!

Prayer can change your life. It is the way to life itself. When I say this of prayer I do not mean any mere mumbling of words. I do not mean formal affirmations, either, although some formal prayers are touched with the glory of God. What I mean is a deep, fundamental, powerful relationship of the individual to God, whereby his whole mind and heart become changed and he receives power from God within himself.

I have seen such prayer change the lives of so very many. I met a man in Toronto at a gathering of advertising and sales people to whom I had been asked to speak. He confided to me, “I have found two things in life that made everything different for me. The first—and it was the greatest single experience I ever had—was finding Jesus Christ and committing my life to him. And the second thing was that I learned to pray. These two things,” he declared, “revolutionized my life.” And he added, “What a pity that so many human beings never find Christ and never learn to pray! They miss the greatest things in this life.”

This is what Jesus has been saying to us through the years, and really astute people make this discovery. Christ can change your life. Prayer can change your life. Some people think you only come to such a change in one certain way. Nothing could be more false.

READ MORE: PRAYER TIPS FROM NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

Consider that springtime comes in more ways than one. If it were standardized, if you saw the same thing wherever you looked, spring would not have the glory it does have. After the meeting in Toronto to which I have just referred, I drove from there to Buffalo through the fruit orchards of Ontario. I had never before been through that region in the springtime. The orchards were ablaze with color, white and pink. The blossoms stretched as far as you could see from the shores of Lake Erie back inland. The whole atmosphere was full of a subtle fragrance. Springtime in Ontario is clear and fresh and cold. Springtime in some areas is soft and balmy. It is not everywhere the same. And Christ comes like springtime in different ways to different human hearts.

Sometimes he comes through the feelings, sometimes through the mind, sometimes he comes through theology, sometimes he comes through scientific reasoning, sometimes he comes through poetry. Sometimes he comes in simple ways, sometimes in complicated ways. As the human heart is conditioned, so does he come. But however he comes, associated with him there comes prayer.

One way in which prayer can change your life is by teaching you to think creatively. The way you think spells the difference between living life well and living it poorly. Prayer is an activity that sharpens the mind and thereby brings the believer into harmony with the great Mind. Now the mind, by which we remember and perceive and understand and dream and think—this is the divine within us. Through mind and soul, an individual has contact with God. Prayer is the con- tact of the soul with God through the mental process whereby the individual conquers his own weaknesses and enters into life abundant.

True prayer requires discipline, it requires pain, it requires the agony to think. But when you do think prayerfully with Jesus as your guide, you break free from the defeats which have encompassed you. I do not believe there is any problem, any defeat, any difficulty that cannot be overcome through prayer.

I have a friend who runs a big bakery business, which he built up from nothing. He was himself the company’s first baker, as a matter of fact, and he claims he can still make better bread and cakes than most of the present bakers. And one day he described to me a significant experience he had some years ago. He was faced with an extremely worrisome problem. He would pace the floor half the day trying to figure out a solution. He lay awake at night brooding over it.

Then, one day as he sat in his office feeling completely baffled, he chanced to glance at his mother’s picture hanging on the wall. “My mother,” he told me, “was a Kansas woman reared on the farm where I was born. She had never had much schooling. But in the hard, good life she and my father lived together she had learned many things in the school of experience. And she used to say to us children, ‘When you have a problem and you’ve worked as hard as you can at it, given it all you’ve got, and still you haven’t solved it, the thing to do is just walk away from it and think about God. But don’t talk to God about the problem. Talk to him about himself. Tell him how much you love him. Talk to Jesus and thank him for all he has done for you. Tell him you want to be his faithful follower. Have fellowship with God and with Jesus.’”

How wise that woman was—maybe wiser than she knew! For when you concentrate on a problem unduly long and do not get the answer, you tense up, your thinking freezes and neither insights nor ideas come through. You must then let it be awhile, to break the strain. An irreligious person might ad- vise you to put the problem aside and play a game of golf and then go back at it. That is not a bad idea, either.

But there is a vast difference between playing a game of golf or going fishing and talking to Jesus. Because Jesus lifts you way up, so that when you go back to the problem you have grown and the problem shrinks. Then prayerfully you can break it open and find the right answer to it.

So my friend in his perplexity looked at the picture of his mother, departed long since but still living and still speaking to him in thought. And he decided to leave the problem for a while. He took out his Bible and read some passages his mother had marked in this same book. He thought about Jesus and he rededicated himself, acknowledging that he felt he had not been growing as he ought, that he’d been less than himself. Then after a time he turned back to the problem. Did he get an answer immediately? No. But now he felt calm about it. He was confident he would somehow be able to handle it. And presently—later that same day, as I recall it—he did find a satisfactory solution. So prayer is a mental process.

Oftentimes a person will complain, “I’ve prayed and prayed and I didn’t get what I wanted.” You didn’t, eh? Well, who said you were supposed to get what you wanted? Prayer isn’t a device to get you what you want. Prayer is a means of bringing you to the point where you will accept what God wants. If you’re using it just for getting what you want, you’re engaging in an improper and degraded use of it.

The Lord does want good things for us all, and if with all your heart you pray for something that is wholesome and constructive, you are very likely to receive it. But sometimes the thing that you pray for is something you shouldn’t have. We are like children. We want what we want when we want it. This infantilism is in most of us. But to be a Christian means to be a mature person. You learn to say, “This is what I’d like to have, Lord, if you think it’s all right for me. But if you don’t, then give me what you want me to have or show me what you want me to do.”

I met a lady who said to me, “I have been to your church twice and heard two of your sermons.” She sounded so enthusiastic that I thought she was going to tell me those sermons had done her a lot of good. But she didn’t. “I also heard your wife make a speech out at the church I belong to,” she said. “And that is what I really remember.” “Well, that is not surprising to me,” I said. “I often get most of my good ideas from my wife.” That’s teamwork, you know. If you have a spouse with whom you pray and work and walk the pathway of life, and she and you try to serve the Lord together, you don’t know where one begins and the other leaves off. Well, at any rate, this woman explained that she had been struggling in prayer for something she wanted and God wasn’t answering her prayers. And Mrs. Peale in that speech remarked that there are three ways God answers: Yes; Wait awhile; No.

“And when she said that,” the woman told me, “I knew I had my answer. It was No. But I hadn’t wanted to take a No answer.” “Maybe that No answer is going to lead you to some great experience,” I said. “And when you love God enough so that you trust him, you say, ‘All right, Lord, I accept that and I look to you for further guidance.’ Then some bright day you realize, ‘If God had not said No, this wonderful thing I now have would not have come to me.’” The attitude that really leads to life in all its fullness is that of a child walking with God, loving him, trusting him, seeking to serve him. Prayer with this attitude can change your life wonderfully.

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