Friendship is work, and praying for friends is a vital part of that commitment. The older I get, the more convinced I become that intentionality is the only way to sustain these bonds. When you are younger, you have natural and regular points of personal connection with the same group of people. You see them every day at school, play beside them on the field, or sit next to them at lunch. These are friends by association or, more cynically, friends of convenience.
As you transition into adulthood, those effortless connections often fade. You become more established in your career and acquire more responsibilities, which inevitably tightens your schedule. As a result, friends require more deliberate effort to maintain. You no longer have the luxury of proximity to keep the relationship alive without conscious thought.
Ultimately, every relationship has a cost. You must constantly weigh the value of a connection against the investment of time, resources, and energy required to help it grow. Because life gets busier, praying for friends and showing up for them becomes a purposeful choice rather than a byproduct of a shared environment.
I suppose, then, it’s a bit natural that real friendships get smaller in number the older you get. Natural, but still a bit sad. Perhaps that’s one of the many reasons why moving into the empty nest phase of life is so difficult – it’s because parents center their lives around their children, and with the children moving out and moving on, they find a lack of shared interests and a lack of other relationships.
Friendship is work. It is costly. You have to work at it. And to that end, there is one, simple question you can always ask a friend:
How would you like me to pray?
Notice that this isn’t a statement like, “I’ll pray for you.” Nothing wrong with that, certainly, except for the fact that a statement like this often becomes an empty promise. We intend to pray, we think about praying, we mean to pray, but we often don’t really pray. Not so with this question.
This question is not just a statement; it’s a commitment. It’s not just a blanket statement, but the specificity behind it indicates a firm conviction. What’s more, it’s a question that actually invites a greater level of disclosure, which is one of the other issues with a statement like, “I’ll pray for you.”
When we say, “I’ll pray for you,” it can often also become a way of exiting the conversation. When someone is sharing details that are too intimate or too uncomfortable or too painful, we can extricate ourselves pretty neatly with a statement like that. But in asking, “How would you like me to pray?” we are actually pressing in. We are inviting more disclosure. More knowledge. More intimacy. We are choosing to step closer rather than step away, and this is what a true friend does. A true friend presses in.
And when we press in as friends, we might actually be surprised at the answer to that question. Though we might have assumed we know now our friend feels, what they desire, or what they’re really worried about, we are still just assuming those things. This question is an opportunity to really know.
Is there someone in your life in pain this week? Someone in need? Someone you are intending to pray for? Then why not take the opportunity to take a step closer? Ask them the question, and then make good on the commitment. Don’t just pray generally. Pray specifically as a friend should do.
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This article originally appeared on thinke.org and is reposted here by permission.