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There People For Whom You Should Not Pray - Short.
Please bear with me for 8 minutes. I will now read several scriptures, and then quickly summarize all.
Notice what God told the Prophet Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 7:16.
Therefore pray not you for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer
for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear you.
The context here was that the people of the Kingdom of Judah went into idolatry and took up various pagan customs.
Jeremiah 11:14.
Therefore pray not you for this people, neither lift up a cry or prayer
for them: for I will not hear them in the time that they cry unto me for
their trouble.
God repeated this instruction in chapter 11. After describing the people’s involvement with various pagan practices.
Jeremiah 14:11.
Then said the LORD unto me, Pray not for this people for their good.
God continued to spell out the sins of the people. The people were not
about to repent and to change, and to once again obey God and all of His
laws. They thought that by claiming "we are called by Your name"
, they would be assured of God’s help in times of need. And so God
instructed Jeremiah a third time to not pray for them.
The principle involved here is: it is useless to pray for people who are knowingly breaking some of God’s laws. That uselessness is not limited to people who have committed the un-forgivable sin. This is, not praying for an entire kingdom.
John 17:9.
I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which You have
given Me; for they are Yours.
John 17:20.
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe
on Me through their word;
Jesus Christ Himself prayed for members of God’s Church. And then Jesus Christ made a very specific point of saying that He did not pray for people outside of God’s Church; He did not pray for the world.
2 Samuel 12:22.
And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said,
Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?
So how, or why do we pray for people in the world?
For such worldly people we pray wishful prayers. We pray in hope, not
in faith. While we cannot pray in faith, we can certainly pray in hope!
We can hope that God will have mercy on the sick relative of a church
member, or that God will help that worldly person with other problems.
That’s the way David prayed for Bathsheba’s first child, conceived
in adultery. David didn’t have faith that God would spare the child’s
life. But David hoped God would have mercy and heal the child. As David
said:
And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?
That is exactly the way we should pray for healing for adults who are in the world: who can tell whether God will be gracious and heal this person? Notice that David did not appeal to any promise of God to heal. David didn’t appeal to Exodus 15:26, ("I am the God that heals you"). No, David was fasting and praying with a wishful and hopeful attitude. The point being, there are some people and siduations where god says don't pray for, or interceed for, intercessory prayer, these people.y
Likewise, when we the church turn someone over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, we should not proceed in entercessory prayer for the person that we turned over to Satan for the distruction of the flesh. Yet, if they repent we should accept them back into the church. To continue to pray for that person without repentance would be enabling them. Our prayes for that person would in effect be a lack of faith. Don't pray for those people. That is the very essence of church discipline. Praise ye the name of the Lord.