Week 32: August 3-9, 2025 - What Should We Pray For?
This week’s daily readings:
August 3-9, 2025
This week’s devotional:
What Should We Pray For?
by Sue Hersey
Scripture:
And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.
— Romans 8:26-27 (NLT)
Reflection:
I’ve believed in God my whole life, and I’m grateful for that precious gift of faith. As a child, however, I also believed in Santa Claus. I believed that Santa was able to monitor a child’s behavior and then, at Christmas, he would either reward the good children with gifts they loved or punish bad ones with coal in their stocking. How he accomplished all that now seems quite far-fetched, but as a young child, it was all just a magical part of the season!
Where I grew up, kids didn’t visit Santa in the traditional department store setting shown in movies. My town had a merry-go-round that was set up in the parking lot of a shopping center a few weeks before Christmas. As kids rode the “horses,” Santa would come around and ask each child what they wanted. It was something my older sister and I looked forward to each year.
One of those visits to Santa Claus on the merry-go-round really stands out in my memory. I think I was about 6 years old. I don’t remember what I asked Santa for, but I do remember what my sister told me afterward: she said she had told Santa that I wanted an Etch-a-Sketch for Christmas. The reason I remember the episode so well is that I was dumbfounded at her audacity. Of course, as the older sister, she had always been on the bossy side, but this time she had really gone too far! Whatever I had wished for that year, I know it wasn’t an Etch-a-Sketch. Where did she come off telling him what I wanted? That was certainly not for her to decide.
Years later, that whole scene made more sense when I finally found out Santa was a myth. My sister had already discovered that and had privileged information on what I was getting that year. As it turned out, I grew to love my Etch-a-Sketch as it satisfied my heart for drawing—something I’m sure my mother knew when she bought it for me. Funny how moms always seem to know what’s good for us!
Of course, God is the very best parent we could ever wish for. He knows full-well what’s best for us and wants us to want those things as well. That’s one of the many reasons he sends his Holy Spirit: to help us pray for those things God wants us to have. God has a passion for communication. He wants to encourage us to pray, and this is his way of making it easier for us! He knows his children are weak and, frankly, not as smart as he is when it comes to knowing what’s best for us. Enter the Holy Spirit who steps right in to pray in God’s own will on our behalf. We may not know what to pray for, but he certainly does!
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, we often wish to know your will for us and, therefore, what we should pray for. At times, we even imagine we do know what’s best for our lives. But how grateful we are to have an all-knowing, all-powerful, triune God:
A Father who knows us and loves us like no person on earth or in heaven and is capable of making the right things happen
A Son who came to earth to show us what’s good, to die for our own sins, and to give us the privilege of asking anything in his name, and
The Holy Spirit who “pleads for us believers,” knowing what’s best for us, and making our own words unnecessary!
Dear God, please give us your strength, your wisdom, and above all may your will be done, in Jesus’ name. Amen