How do you pray for someone else? A guide to intercession

Praying for someone else is called intercession, and it is the most common kind of prayer in the New Testament letters. It does not require a formula, a list, or information the person has not given you. Naming the person and the situation in one honest sentence already counts.

What intercession actually means

Intercession is standing between: bringing someone else's situation to God when they cannot, will not, or simply asked you to. It appears everywhere in Scripture. Abraham argues with God over a whole city. Moses offers to be blotted out of God's book in place of the people who had just made a golden calf. Job, at the end of a book about his own suffering, prays for the friends who spent thirty-eight chapters giving him bad advice.

The instruction that opens the practice widest is in a letter to a young pastor:

I exhort therefore, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and givings of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high places, that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and reverence. (1 Timothy 2:1-2, read the chapter)

Note who is on the list. The "kings and all who are in high places" of that moment were the Roman authorities under whom the writer's own community was in trouble. The instruction does not filter for people who deserve it.

What Paul actually asked for

This is the part most people skip. We tend to pray for circumstances: the job, the test result, the visa, the reconciliation. When Paul writes down what he prays for other people, the requests look different.

that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, to the end that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strengthened to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth, and to know Christ’s love which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)

And to another church:

For this cause, we also, since the day we heard this, don’t cease praying and making requests for you, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, (Colossians 1:9)

Strength, knowledge, love, understanding. None of that means you should stop asking for the job or the test result — Jesus taught people to ask for daily bread, which is as concrete as it gets. It means the inside of a person is a legitimate thing to pray for, and it is available to pray for even when you know nothing about the outside.

Five things to ask when you do not know what to ask

Most of the time you know very little: a colleague said things are hard at home, a cousin has a diagnosis nobody has explained, a friend has gone quiet. These five work with almost no information.

When you have no words at all

Some situations flatten language. The letter to the Romans addresses that directly:

In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we don’t know how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which can’t be uttered. (Romans 8:26)

Practically: say the person's name, sit with it, and stop. A prayer that is only a name is still a prayer. If you would rather have words in front of you, borrow them — a prayer for a sick person, a prayer for protection, or the Lord's Prayer prayed with someone specific in mind.

Three things that go wrong

• Prayer requests that are really gossip. "Please pray for Anna, her husband has been drinking again" is information Anna may not have released. If you would not say it to her face, do not put it in a prayer chain. Pray without the details; God does not need the briefing.
• Praying only for people you like. Job's turning point in the narrative is attached to the opposite move: "Yahweh restored Job’s prosperity when he prayed for his friends." (Job 42:10) The friends in question had been awful to him.
• Substituting prayer for the practical thing. If you can drive them to the appointment, drive them to the appointment. James is blunt about faith that sends people away warmed but unfed.

Praying for someone you cannot stand

This is the version nobody looks forward to, and the New Testament is blunt about it: Jesus tells his hearers to pray for the people persecuting them, which is a category well beyond the difficult colleague. The book of Job attaches the same move to its own turning point — the friends Job prays for are the ones who spent the whole book telling him his children died because he deserved it.

Two things make it possible in practice. The first is to pray something you actually mean. "Bless them" through gritted teeth is not a prayer; "I do not want to think about this person, and I am handing them over" is. The second is to ask for something specific about them rather than about the conflict — their health, their family, their sleep. Most people find that praying by name for someone they resent does not fix the relationship, and does slowly change what they are able to say about the person out loud.

How long do you keep praying for someone?

There is no expiry date in the text, and there is a practical answer: as long as it stays a prayer rather than a routine you have stopped noticing. Names slide off a list when nothing changes for years. Two habits keep it honest — writing the request down with a date, so you can see what you actually asked, and occasionally asking the person how things stand rather than guessing.

The situations that go on longest — a chronic illness, an addiction, an estrangement — are also the ones where the person is most likely to feel forgotten by everyone else. Long intercession is unglamorous and it is most of what intercession is.

Do you tell the person?

There is no rule. Telling someone "I prayed for you today" is, for many people, the sentence that lands hardest in a bad week — it says you thought about them when you did not have to. But it is worth reading the room. Someone who does not share your faith may hear it as pressure. "I've been thinking about you all week" carries the same weight and asks nothing of them.

There is also a version that goes wrong: praying at someone. Announcing in front of a group that you will pray about a person's marriage, drinking or parenting turns intercession into a public statement about them. If the prayer would embarrass them to overhear, pray it privately.

A shape that survives a busy week

Five names, five days, one minute each. Monday to Friday, one person a day: say the name, say the situation in a sentence, ask one thing, stop. On Saturday, message one of the five and ask how it went. That habit is small enough to keep and specific enough to matter — and it is closer to what the New Testament describes than an hour of prayer once a month.

If you want somewhere to start, the prayers for other people already written on this site — for parents, for work, for travel — can be prayed in someone else's name. Read them, then keep going in your own words.