What do you pray for?

For our Daily Walk Bible reading I started on Romans yesterday morning and Paul's prayer in 1:9-12 stood out to me in a way I had never thought of before.

While I don't know exactly what Paul said during his "day and night" prayers (1:9, NLT). Nor do I exactly know what their "needs" consisted of it does seem clear from this and other prayers Paul wrote (see Eph. 1:15-23 and Phil. 1:3-11 as examples) that his prayers are somewhat different from the things I might say or hear today. 

Specifically, Paul focuses on the spiritual needs that he sees as opposed to only the physical needs.

I wonder ...

What would happen if I spent more time praying for the spiritual growth and wisdom of my fellow believers and the Church rather then just focusing on the never-ending litany of health-related prayer requests?

Now certainly, God cares for our physical bodies as clearly seen by Jesus' words in Matthew 6:25-34 when he tells his disciples, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.” And certainly we see that Jesus had compassion on those who longed for healing as was most obvious in his willing healing of the leper in Mark 1:41. Our God is a God who sovereignly knows and cares about our lives, whatever might be going on, and he wants us to bring those requests to him (see also Mt. 7:7-12; Lk. 11:1-13 and 18:1-17).

With that said though I wonder…

Should we pray for more than just our health issues and the obvious things in the physical realm? Shouldn't we be as concerned with what happens in the spiritual realm?

Paul's prayers challenged me to reconsider how much of a focus I put on the physical needs and to, instead, also consider how I can pray for the spiritual needs. So that, for example, “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Eph. 1:17, NIV).

How about you? What do you primarily focus on in your prayers?