Some of the deepest expressions of love occur where no one else can see them—in the quiet place of prayer. We can give resources or money, make time, offer practical help, speak encouraging words, or use our influence on their behalf, but I believe one of the greatest expressions of love is to plead another person’s cause before God in prayer. There is something deeply selfless about asking God to help, strengthen, protect, heal, or prosper someone when the prayer may bring no immediate benefit to us—and perhaps even more so when we are still waiting for the very thing we are asking God to give them.

Intercession is spiritual generosity. It is giving someone our attention before God. Paul writes, “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men” (1 Timothy 2:1). James similarly instructs, “Pray one for another” (James 5:16). Christian love does not merely tell people, “You are always on my mind.” It should sometimes be able to say, truthfully, “I have been praying for you.”

Standing in the Gap

Throughout Scripture, people stand before God on behalf of others. Moses repeatedly interceded for Israel, even when the very people he prayed for had frustrated and rebelled against him. After the golden calf, when God's judgment threatened the nation, Moses pleaded for them before the Lord (Exodus 32:11–14). Samuel went so far as to tell Israel, “God forbid that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:23).

Then we see this perfectly in Jesus. Knowing that Peter was about to enter one of the greatest tests of his life, Jesus told him, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke 22:31–32). Peter was about to fail Jesus, yet Jesus was already praying for Peter.

Hebrews says of Christ that “he ever liveth to make intercession” for those who come to God through Him (Hebrews 7:25). We live in continual dependence upon the One who ‘ever liveth to make intercession’ for us. It should not be strange that His love in us teaches us to do the same for others.

Yesterday, I heard a story on Facebook from Christina Soname, on the page she shares with her husband, Mr and Mrs Sho, that stayed with me. In 2021, while trusting God for a child, a close friend offered to stand with her in prayer. They began meeting at a particular time every week and continued praying for many months—more than a year. Christina also had another close friend with whom she had been praying regularly for years about their families, husbands, and children. Then, in 2022, something beautiful happened: all three women discovered that they were pregnant within weeks of one another. They created a WhatsApp group, prayed together, checked on one another and shared the ordinary joys and experiences of pregnancy.

But the journey changed painfully. One of the women developed complications and lost her baby. Yet instead of withdrawing from the group or becoming bitter, she stayed and kept praying with the others. About two months later, the other friend, whose pregnancy was already considerably advanced, also developed complications and lost her baby. She had to go through the painful process of delivering a baby who had died. Christina later discovered that around the same time this woman was going through that experience, possibly the same day or shortly after, she still showed up for their scheduled prayer call and prayed with her. She deliberately withheld the news for a while because she did not want Christina, who was still pregnant, to become overwhelmed with fear. When circumstances eventually required her to tell Christina, she arranged for Christina's husband to be present, carefully broke the news, and then comforted her with prayers. Later, when Christina herself began experiencing complications towards delivery, these same women prayed intensely for her, stood with her and insisted in faith that she would have her baby. Eventually, Christina safely welcomed her son, and they celebrated with her.

What struck me most was what happened afterwards. Those two women, who had watched their friend receive what they themselves had lost, kept standing with her in prayer, refusing to let disappointment destroy their friendship or turn into envy. Christina shared that both women eventually became mothers of multiples. She compared the experience to Jesus feeding the five thousand: with thousands of people and only a few disciples distributing the food, not everyone could have received bread at the exact same moment. Someone received theirs while another was still waiting—but there was enough for everyone, with fragments left over afterwards (Matthew 14:19–20). The lesson was simple and powerful: another person’s bread arriving before yours does not mean God’s goodness towards you has been exhausted. Their testimony is not proof that yours must look identical, but it is certainly no reason to envy them. One way we protect our hearts while waiting is to learn to pray sincerely for those whose prayers seem answered before ours.

Intercession Confronts Envy

This is one of the beautiful things intercession does to the heart. Scripture says that love “envieth not” (1 Corinthians 13:4), and Paul tells us to “rejoice with them that do rejoice” (Romans 12:15). Yet rejoicing with someone can become difficult when their testimony resembles our unanswered prayer.

It is easy to celebrate someone's marriage when marriage is not something you deeply desire. It's harder when you have prayed for a spouse for years. It is easy to rejoice over another person's promotion when your own career is progressing. It may require greater spiritual maturity when you've been repeatedly overlooked. Someone announces a pregnancy while you are still waiting for a child. Someone gets the job you have been praying for. Someone buys a home while you are struggling with rent. Someone's ministry, business, or career begins to flourish while yours seems stationary. Intercession gives love direction in those moments.

Instead of letting comparison turn into envy, we can bring that person's blessing before God and genuinely thank Him for it. We can ask Him to preserve their marriage, bless their child, establish their career, protect their opportunity and increase the good He has begun in their life. That may not always be easy, but it does something within us.

It is difficult to continually nurture jealousy towards someone whose name you regularly bring before God with sincere goodwill. Prayer begins to train the heart to see their progress not as something taken from us, but as something for which love can give thanks. Their bread is not your bread. God's goodness to someone else is not evidence that He has exhausted His goodness towards you.

Christina’s friends’ actions communicated a resolve to me: “God, even if You will not give us children yet, then at least give our friend.” They had experienced their own losses, yet they kept showing up at the altar of prayer for Christina. That is a remarkable kind of love. It is one thing to pray for someone when their breakthrough does not touch an area of your own longing; it is another to sincerely contend for them while standing in the same place of waiting yourself.

Over the years, I have come to realise that we may never fully know what we make happen for others—whether on the altar of prayer or through the platform of generosity. This is one reason I believe it is wise to learn these things early. Scripture says, “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” (Lamentations 3:27). There is value in allowing God to train us early to pray for others, give as our resources permit and become contributors to other people's progress rather than waiting until we ourselves have attained everything we desire.

There is also spiritual victory and liberty in contending for another person in the very areas where we ourselves are still waiting. It does not buy or bribe our own breakthrough, nor is it a formula to compel God to answer us. It breaks the inward hold of comparison, envy, and self-preoccupation. In a sense, it lifts us spiritually above circumstances, because we no longer relate to that need only as someone waiting to receive, but also as someone capable of helping others receive.

Intercession Is Generosity Without Possession

We usually think of generosity as giving something we possess. But intercession is a different kind of generosity because we ask God to give another person what we may not be able to provide.

Peter may need strength that Paul cannot give him, but he can pray for it. A friend may be walking into an interview where you have no influence, but you can pray. Someone may be ill and beyond anything you can personally fix, but you can pray. A child may be far away, but prayer can go where you cannot.

Paul repeatedly demonstrated this kind of love. He told the believers in Ephesus that he ceased not “to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers” (Ephesians 1:16). To the Philippians he wrote, “Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy” (Philippians 1:4). There is a quiet benevolence in remembering someone's name when no one is watching and asking God to do them good.

We naturally pray for those we love—a spouse, a child, a friend, or a family member— because love expresses itself in consideration, compassion, and genuine care for their well-being. In the same way, we cannot claim to love our neighbours while remaining indifferent to their needs before God. Prayer is one way love carries people in the heart, even when we may have little we can do for them with our hands.

Pray for Your Enemies

Perhaps this is also why Jesus took intercession beyond friendship. He said, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). That is an extraordinary command because Jesus does not merely tell us not to retaliate. He asks us to actively pray for the people who have wronged us. Why? Because praying for an enemy confronts what hatred is trying to produce within us.

When someone hurts us, our natural impulse may be to embarrass them, defeat them, or somehow make them feel what they made us feel. Jesus leads the heart in another direction: bring them before God.

This does not mean pretending what they did was right. It does not mean returning to an unsafe relationship, abandoning necessary boundaries or preventing appropriate consequences. Prayer does not make evil good. But it refuses to let another person's evil determine what our own hearts become.

Immediately after commanding us to pray for our enemies, Jesus points to the Father, “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). In other words, this kind of benevolence reflects something of God's own character. To pray sincerely for someone who has hurt us is to say, “I will not allow what you did to train me to desire evil for you.”

We can ask God to bring them to repentance. We can ask Him to transform their heart, deliver them from whatever darkness governs their behaviour and bring them into truth. We can entrust justice to God while refusing to cultivate hatred ourselves.

Even Job's restoration contains an interesting picture of this principle. Scripture says, “The LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends” (Job 42:10). These were the same friends whose words had added considerably to his pain, yet God instructed Job to pray for them. Sometimes intercession is love refusing to become bitter.

Intercession Makes Another Person's Burden Our Concern

Paul writes, “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). We can help carry some burdens physically; others we carry in prayer. Some situations are beyond our ability to solve, provide money for, change the diagnosis, create the opportunity for, or physically stand beside the person. Yet we can still bring their name and need before God.

This is why saying, “I’m praying for you,” should mean something to us. It shouldn't be mere Christian vocabulary to end a difficult conversation. If we tell someone we will pray, we should try to pray. We may write the matter down, pray immediately, or intentionally return to it later. A promise of prayer should become prayer.

Sometimes intercession continues long after the person has stopped asking, as we keep entrusting them and their need to God. This is spiritual kindness.

Becoming People Who Pray for Others

Intercession ultimately moves us beyond a Christianity concerned only with our own needs. Our prayers naturally contain our families, responsibilities, needs, desires and battles, and there is nothing wrong with bringing these things to God. Jesus Himself taught us to ask for our daily bread. But mature prayer gradually develops room for other people's bread too.

Paul instructed believers to pray “with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit… for all saints” (Ephesians 6:18). Before God, there should be names besides ours. Friends, families, leaders, our organisations, our church, people or systems struggling quietly. People succeeding where we are still waiting. And even people who have hurt us.

Perhaps one of the deepest tests of Christian love is whether we can genuinely desire another person's good before God when we gain nothing from it. Intercession is compassion that enters the prayer closet. It is generosity in the secret place. It is consideration carried into God's presence.

And sometimes, one of the greatest ways we can love another person is to remember their name when we pray.