Praying for Others!
We were up at 4:30 am to catch our flight to Las Vegas. As I stepped into the shower, Tom said, “Michael Carlisle died of a massive heart attack last night; Duane called just after midnight to tell me.”
Michael and Duane were Tom’s prayer partners for many years. They met at the altar on Saturday nights at 9 pm and prayed with him for the next day’s services. Even after Michael and his family moved to another church, he continued his prayers for Tom, me, and our family. It was common for us to wake up in the mornings and have a text message from Michael. I received these on June 2, 2022, just six days before he died:
“Mikel keighlee and t j now..🙏🙏🙏 .. 4:36 am…Michael”
“As I am praying for keighlee now..a scripture that I am using over her..that God per adventure will give them repentance to “know the truth”…11 Timothy 2:25……the Lord has given me a burden to pray for your three kids.”
Michael cultivated the ministry of intercession throughout his life. He never spelled Kaleigh’s name correctly, but God knew who he meant when he prayed. Anyone who had the good fortune of making it onto his prayer list often received “a word” he’d gotten in his prayer closet, and we were always encouraged to “put it on the back burner.”
Michael loved people by praying for them.
Isn’t God good to invite us to pray? What other god invites people to come to him, petitioning him for favor and blessing? Most other gods I’ve heard about have an arrogance that demands that people pay them homage if they dare to request anything from them. And those gods bother to glance in their direction only when their rituals and offerings are sufficient.
But not our God. He is the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, the Creator and Sustainer of everything, and yet He urges us to enter His throne room with boldness as we place our petitions before Him. (Hebrews 4:16)
And the God who is eager to hear our prayers is also eager to receive our prayers of intercession. In fact, intercessory prayer just might be God’s favorite kind of prayer. When we are praying for others, we are joining Jesus, who sits at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us day and night. (Romans 8:34)
Several years ago, God gave me and my prayer partner, Karen, a creative way to engage our people in the ministry of intercession. We birthed the Prayer Clinic. The Prayer Clinic functions in the church like minute clinics function at local drug stores. People who have needs bring their requests to the Prayer Clinic, where trained team members pray with them, then send them out with Scripture prayers so they can continue to pray on their own. At the Prayer Clinic, we anchor our prayers in the Bible because God watches over His Word to perform it. (We print Jeremiah 1:12 on every Scripture prayer card we use in the Prayer Clinic.) Then (because we have a really cool online Prayer Clinic Hub), we stay connected to the people who come to us for prayer until God answers their prayers. This connectedness enables us to build relationships with them as we grow our faith while waiting for God’s answers.
This powerful intercessory prayer ministry is the backbone of our church’s prayer ministry. Through the Prayer Clinic, we mobilize our people to pray. Because of the Prayer Clinic, we have a team of 30 prayer warriors who faithfully pray for others. Every Sunday, the group gathers to pray over our services and ministries and to meet with those in need of prayer. When God answers our prayers, we celebrate those answers, and the whole church sees that God does hear and answer us when we pray.
If you are interested in learning how you might start a Prayer Clinic at your church, go to www.prayerclinic.com to learn more. I’d love to help your people experience the excitement of this dynamic ministry.
I hope you have people like Michael Carlisle in your life. I will miss those texts he used to send in the wee hours of the morning, though Tom and I hope he now talks with Jesus face-to-face about our children. Today, I’m taking up the baton he left behind and choosing to love people enough to pray for them even more. I can’t think of anything better we can do for them.
Leighann McCoy founded the Prayer Clinic ministry and serves as prayer pastor at Thompson Station Church in Thompson Station, TN. She is the wife of Tom (senior pastor at TSC); daughter of Mike and Lunette (who live in Georgia); sister to Mitzi (Steve) and Amy (who both live in FL); mother of Mikel, Kaleigh (Jeff), and TJ; and NANA to Misty and River (Mikel). Oh yeah, she is also niece to Carolyn (Sid), Norman (Tammy), Christine (whose husband died of Covid-19).
