More Than High Fives: 10 Prayers for the Local Church

Back in 2011, my wife Katie and I caught a Phillies series in San Diego with our infant daughter. One night stands out. We sat near a group of traveling Phillies fans, and almost immediately it felt like family. High-fives, shared cheers, and strangers hugging when the game ended. For a few hours, we belonged together.

There was encouragement and meaning in that moment of community. But it was shallow and short-lived. I don’t remember their names. I don’t know where they are now. For a moment, we were together, but only for a moment.

Community requires a bonding glue that is deeper than acts of encouragement that only happen when we’re in the room together. Too many churches operate like that crowd at Petco Park, gathering once a week with shared values but lacking the adhesive that sustains true connection. Highfives and hellos will only bring a community so far.

As we learn to lead a quiet life, as defined in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, we learn to live a life dependent on God and to live in communities that are dependent on God. Prayer needs to become not only a personal discipline but a communal bond that helps us live into the stillness Paul is calling us toward.

Prayer Is the Adhesive

I believe the glue that binds us together in a deeper, more meaningful community is the practice of intercessory prayer, prayer focused on each other. This is what keeps us from being a shallow community of Jesus followers who can high-five, gather weekly, and share some values. A community committed to praying for one another is how we fight for one another in trials, temptations, and uncertainty.

Paul understood this deeply. Writing to the Ephesian church from a Roman prison around AD 60-63, he encouraged this growing church community by calling for and modeling intercessory prayer. His aim was to confirm and equip a maturing church, and prayer frames his entire letter.

What Paul Prayed Matters

In Ephesians 1:15-23, Paul starts his letter by thanking God for their faith and love, but he doesn’t stop there. He prays that they would receive wisdom and revelation to know God better. He prays that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened to know the hope of their calling, the riches of God’s inheritance, and the incomparably great power available to believers. This is resurrection power, the same power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him above all authority.

Paul is praying that the encouragement they receive from the community won’t be shallow or situational, but rooted in a deeply invested reality. This is not a community that just high-fives and shares laughs. This is a community encouraged through prayer-formed empowerment.

In the middle of his letter, in Ephesians 3:14-21, Paul returns to prayer, this time from his knees. Paul prays that they would experience God as Father, have the power of the Holy Spirit to heal their inner beings, be rooted and established in love, and grasp how wide and long and high and deep Christ’s love is. These are specific petitions with huge impact, covering many areas of life without getting lost in minutiae.

At the letter’s end, Paul returns to the topic of prayer, calling them to pray in the Spirit on all occasions, to be alert and keep praying for all the Lord’s people, and to pray for him specifically that he would fearlessly proclaim the gospel. Prayer is to be Spirit-sensitive, ongoing, and directed toward specific people for specific reasons.

From start to finish, Paul’s letter is defined by intentional prayers that, when explored, have deep meaning for church communities and for the individuals invested in them.

Following Jesus’s Model

This theme of prayer in Ephesians, if you would explore the focuses in which Paul prays and encourages us to pray, very much echoes the prayer that Jesus Himself modeled, the Lord’s Prayer, as well as other prayers taught and modeled by Jesus. Jesus taught the communal Lord’s Prayer and in doing so taught us that even when we are praying by ourselves, we are praying in a way that is invested in the community we are part of. Jesus then prayed aloud in John 17, not for himself but for his disciples and all future believers. It is in that prayer, found in John 17, that Jesus prayed for protection, unity, sanctification, and mission. Those topics are found throughout Paul’s teachings on Prayer in Ephesians. Prayer is how Jesus intends the people of God to stay bonded.

Ten Prayers for Each Other

From these Ephesians passages, I want to offer ten prayers that Paul hints at, that we can pray for one another to keep each other encouraged:

1. We pray for each other in gratitude. Encouragement begins by naming what God is already doing in one another’s lives, not what is still lacking.
2. We pray unceasingly for each other. Encouragement is sustained through intentional remembering, not occasional spiritual check-ins.
3. We pray for wisdom so we all may follow Jesus better. Our lives and decisions should be shaped by God’s ways rather than the patterns of the world around us.
4. We pray for revelation so we may know God better. Our encouragement must be rooted in knowing Jesus more deeply, not merely knowing about God through personal experience.
5. We pray for open eyes to truly see our hope, inheritance, and power. Discouragement often comes from spiritual blindness, not from a lack of resources or promises.
6. We pray with weight and reverence for one another, kneeling before the Father. Encouragement deepens when we recognize the authority and power of God to whom we pray.
7. We pray for supernatural strength and healing for each other. The Christian life is not sustained by human effort but by resurrection power at work within us.
8. We pray that one another would know the fullness of God’s love. Being rooted and established in love, we grasp together how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
9. We pray in the Spirit, allowing God to redirect our prayers. Encouragement requires spiritual attentiveness, staying alert to how God may shape or redirect our prayers beyond what we initially see.
10. We pray for one another’s missional and evangelistic lives. The church is strengthened when God’s people are given courage and clarity to make Christ known, even in uncertain or resistant spaces.

These ten petitions mentioned throughout Ephesians, give us a holistic way of remembering to pray for those that we are doing life and community alongside.

The Deeper Bond

These ten prayers bring encouragement that lasts and resilience to faith that endures. We are not just a pep rally of Jesus fans high-fiving each other for a season. We are not offering polite prayers from a distance. We are deeply interlocked, life on life, praying for specific things, for specific people, for specific reasons.

When we pray for ourselves, we may experience something. When we pray for one another, God forms something in us together. This is the encouragement that lasts. This year, may we choose the deeper bond.