Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, January 22nd.

Praying for others can be confusing and often difficult, but targeting real needs helps us center

our requests in the right direction. Stay with us to hear a pattern of powerful prayer.

If someone should ask you, how can I pray for you? What would you say?

Would you be able to give them a very clear answer? And say, I want you to pray for me in this area

or that area of my life? And sometimes we really don't know how to answer someone when they say,

how shall I pray for you? And yet all of us have needs for prayer and probably one of the

greatest assets of our life is to have somebody we know who loves us, somebody who's

concerned about us, who genuinely will call our name. Now, oftentimes we want to pray for

someone and we don't know what to pray for us. So oftentimes we will say, well, Lord, just

bless them and help them and meet their needs and so forth. And so it's so general that oftentimes

likewise, we just sort of forget to pray for them when we just move on unless we keep saying

the same thing over and over again. There are many patterns in the Bible, many prayers. But I want you to

turn, if you will, to Colossians chapter 1, because here is a prayer that I have oftentimes prayed for people,

many people over the years.

One thing I know about this prayer, every time I pray it, I'm right on target.

Secondly, I know that God, listen, that God is hearing what I'm requesting.

I know that every single thing I ask in this prayer is the will of God.

I do not have to ask Him, Lord, if it be thy will answer this prayer.

I know absolutely without any question that it is the will of God, and that God will indeed act in my behalf as I make these requests for someone else. And so when we come to this

prayer, I want us to read it with this in mind. This is a prayer that all of us need to pray for

ourselves. It is a powerful prayer that you and I can pray in behalf of someone else. Listen to what he

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