I Have Prayed For Thee

¹“And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.” (Luke 22:31-34). Sometimes it's hard for us to understand why, if God is all knowing and wants us to always choose the right, then why doesn't He just use His infinite knowledge to warn us every time we are going to make a mistake. But that presumes that we will trust God enough to give heed to His warning and that we will not be too scared or angry or oblivious when the time comes to remember the warning. Jesus told Peter a somewhat cryptic prophetic warning that Satan was coming after him. Peter basically said, let him try. Then Jesus got specific. He gave him an exact time frame and detailed the precise way in which Peter was going to betray Him. And Peter forewarned with this knowledge and with all of the will in the world still ended up denying Christ not once but three times, mere hours after he was told that he would do that very thing. How frustrating it must be for our Savior to give us detailed and specific warnings and we still can't seem to choose the right even with this extra knowledge! But Christ isn't going to give up that easily. Knowing the full context in which Peter would find himself making those three denials and the agony and heartbreak that would ensue after Peter fell into the very pit he had been warned not to walk into, Christ prayed for Peter that his faith would not fail. I suspect that many of us, after warning a child never to touch the stove because they might get burned and specifically don't touch it at three o’clock because that's when I'll be cooking and you will definitely get burned and then seeing the kid touch it right at three anyway, we might throw our hands up and say, you're on your own kid, I've done everything I can for you. But that's not how Jesus works. He never gives up on us. He will warn us as often and as detailed as He can, but when He knows that still won't work, then He is going to keep praying for us and hoping that our faith is going to carry us through. And that is just what we can do for each other. After we have been converted like Peter, then we too can pray for and strengthen our brothers and sisters that their faith will not fail them. It is really hard for us to join Jesus in prayer when someone we love ignores everything we try to do to keep them from pursuing a path of destruction and simply watch from a long way off and keep praying that they will eventually come to themselves and turn back, but sometimes prayer is all we have left. And who knows? It worked for Peter and it worked for us. It might just work for them too. I am so grateful that even when I am too proud or too stubborn or too stupid to give heed to Christ's warnings, He prays for me and for each one of us anyway, and I hope that when we are converted we will do the same for each other.