What to Do When You've Been Praying for the Same Person for Years

Callum McKenzie grew up in Scotland knowing exactly what

a changed life looked like. His dad had been a violent He was a

criminal, a drinker, a man who made the house unsafe. Then,

when Callum was six years old, someone gave his father a copy

of the Gospel of John. He read it in one night. By the next

morning, he was a different person. The swearing stopped,

the drinking stopped, and Callum said later, you could see it

through a six-year-old's eyes. His mom came to faith a week

after Callum grew up in the middle of all that. He saw what

God could do to a person, and he wanted nothing to do with it. By

the time he left home, he had decided God could keep his

religion to himself. He spent the next 22 years trying

everything else. Relationships, careers, travel, alcohol, drugs.

He wasn't running toward anything in particular. He was

just running. His family kept praying for him through all of

it. His parents, as well as his Christian friends, they prayed

for 22 years without a single visible sign that anything was

changing. We'll come back to what finally happened. But

first...

Welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm Bart Leger.

Catherine and I know something about this kind of praying.

After our oldest son graduated from high school, he strayed

from God and began drinking. After a few years, we prayed for

him consistently, asking God to do whatever it took to get his

attention and bring him back. There were stretches where

nothing looked different, but we kept praying. Eventually, our

son repented and turned back to God. Today, he's a deacon in our

church and a worship leader. Believe me, I know the waiting's

hard, and God is still working in it. There is a particular

kind of weariness that comes from praying for the same person

for years. It's different from other kinds of spiritual

exhaustion. You've prayed the same prayer. So many times,

you've lost count. You've watched someone you love make

choices that break your heart, but you kept loving them anyway

and sat across a holiday table, smiling through something that

hurt. And somewhere in all of it, the question starts to press in.

Is anyone listening? It can be tiring, and it doesn't get

talked about much in church, though, does it? Here's what

Peter says in 1 Peter 3, 1 and 2.

Now, I know Peter's writing to wives with unbelieving husbands,

But the principle, I believe, extends beyond that. The person

you love may refuse to obey the good news. They may be unmoved

by conversations about faith, and they may change the subject,

roll their eyes, or go years without a visible response. And

Peter's counsel is not to push harder or to say more. Don't

preach at them. It's about living faithfully and then

trusting God with the outcome. And I know that's harder than it

sounds, because living faithfully in front of someone

who isn't responding requires you to keep doing something that

feels like it isn't working. It means staying gentle when you're

frustrated and praying the same prayer again, morning after

morning, when nothing's changed. And here's what I want you to

remember. Your job is not to fix them. It never was. You can't

argue someone into the kingdom, and you can't love them there by

sheer force of will. What you can do is keep the door open and

trust that the same God who pursued you is still pursuing

them. Because I know He is, even when you can't see it. Calum's

family prayed for 22 years without a single visible sign

that anything was happening. 22 years. And the whole time, God

was working behind the scenes. The prayers weren't bouncing off

the ceiling. I know it felt like that at times. They were landing

somewhere. They just weren't producing visible results on the

timeline Calum's family could see. And that's often how it

works. God moves in places we can't see, we can't observe, on

timelines we didn't choose. Just because God seems silent doesn't

mean He's not listening. Now, let's get back to Calum. One day,

at the end of himself, Calum prayed a desperate prayer of his

own. He didn't come back to faith at a church service or

after a long conversation with someone. He came back all alone,

having run out of everything else to try. And God met him

there. Calum said this afterward, And I don't want you to miss it.

He said, For 22 years, my Christian friends and family

prayed for me without seeing a single sign that God was doing

anything in my life. But God was working behind the scenes and He

honored those prayers. He wanted people to know that. If you've

been praying for years for someone you love and have seen

nothing, it doesn't mean that nothing's happening. That's what

Catherine and I held on to during those years of praying

for our son. We couldn't see what God was doing. We just knew

He was the same God who had pursued us and we trusted Him to

pursue our son the same way. And He did. Here's today's challenge.

If you've been praying for someone for a long time, pray

for them again today by name, specifically. And when you

finish, release them. Don't carry the weight of their

outcome as if it's your responsibility because it isn't.

Tell God what you want. Trust Him with what He's doing that

you can't see yet. That's what trusting in prayer looks like.

Lord, we bring you the names of the people we've been praying

for the longest, the ones whose choices maybe breaks our hearts,

the ones who seem far away and unmoved. We know that you see

them and you're not finished with them. Please give us the

grace to keep praying without losing hope and to trust that

you are working in places we can't see. In Jesus' name, Amen.

If you'd like to support this podcast and help keep these

devotions coming every week, you can give at

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or a monthly contribution makes a real difference. And I want to

thank you for And thanks for joining me on Daily Devotions

for Busy Lives. Remember, the silence doesn't mean God's not

listening or God's not working. God is still working. So keep

praying. Come back next time for more encouragement to help you

live grounded in God's truth. Until then, God bless and have a

great day.