Prayer Points for Spiritual Growth in Jesus Christ
Grow in your relationship with Jesus with these prayer requests grounded in Scripture.
I was certain to include Jesus’ mighty name in the title of his post; He must be the foundation for any authentic spiritual growth to occur.
Apart from Jesus, the pursuit to grow spiritually is not only an exercise in futility – it’s downright dangerous.
An online search for spiritual growth clearly demonstrates this point. The top results on Google did their best to entice readers with hefty promises, including:
- To-do lists of activities to have a more effective spiritual walk.
- How to experience the power of God and divine favor in the heavenly places.
- Ways to obtain a spirit of wisdom.
- A promise for spiritual maturity in the spiritual realm by purchasing the unique, powerful tool created by the author of the article.
- How to invite divine intervention.
- Suggesting a person’s good work and attendance at a local church was sufficient for growth in a good Christian life.
Each article did its best to convince the reader they were providing him or her with the right direction for growth in their time of need.
There was one huge problem…
Not one of those articles mentioned the name of Jesus Christ.
Not one.
The enemy seeks to deceive people with a spiritual interest not founded on Jesus, the Son of God.
Satan is the mastermind behind all other pathways promising spiritual fulfillment apart from Christ.
This article is for you if you have a desire to:
- Know Jesus more and grow in your relationship with Him.
- Grow in your knowledge of God – and in who you are in relationship to Him as you read the Bible.
- Grow in God’s wisdom and discernment.
- Yield your desires to the will of God and have the fruit of the Spirit evidenced more in your life.
- Have the Word of Truth abide in you richly.
I have a desire for each of the above, and I have a feeling you do too, or you wouldn’t be reading this post.
The good news is that the Lord desires the same for you and me!
You never need to wonder if it’s in God’s will for you to have a closer relationship with Him.
NEVER.
Scripture is clear that the Lord desires that all people come to repentance and enjoy intimate fellowship with Him. (2 Pt. 3:9)
I never want to:
- Come to a place of complacency where I no longer have a desire to love and know God more.
- Have a prideful heart that thinks for even one second that there aren’t areas of my life that need to be refined.
- Put more emphasis on things I do rather than the condition of my heart.
We can guard against each one of the above as we cry out to God with the requests in this post.
Jesus prioritizes our heart over our performance.
The condition of our hearts need to be our priority over anything we do – this post reflects that truth.
When Christ Jesus was asked to identify the greatest command of them all he replied:
“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30 ESV)
The greatest command addresses the posture of our heart towards our holy, gracious God.
Mark 12:30 addresses four distinct components of who we are.
John MacArthur offers a profound commentary on this verse where he highlights each of the four parts of our being that Jesus mentioned in this verse: our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
“What does it mean to love the Lord your God with all your heart? The heart in the Hebrew understanding is the core of your identity, the source of all your thoughts, words, and actions. That’s why Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.”
It’s the core of your being. Love God with the deepest, purest, truest part of you, your deepest identity. Your soul has to do with your emotions. It was Jesus who said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful.” (Matthew 26:38) He was speaking of His soul as the seat of emotion. The mind may be best seen as the will, the power of intention, and the power of purpose. We sometimes say, “I made up my what? My mind to do this”. This is a kind of clarification of might, in the sense. And then Jesus adds strength, the reference to physical energy.
So the intellectual, emotional, volitional, and physical elements of personhood all combined to love the one true God. It is an intelligent love, it is an emotional love, it is a willing love and it is an act of love. It is in all-consuming love.”
Powerful prayer points for spiritual growth
We’re going to use Mark 12:30 as our launching pad for the prayers requests regarding our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Our heart
- Ask your heavenly Father to reveal any idols in your life so you can confess and repent from them, freeing you to love God with all your heart and worship Him alone. (Ex. 20:3)
- Ask the Lord to create a clean heart and to renew a right spirit in you. (Psalm 51:10)
- Ask the Lord to give you an undivided heart. (Ps. 86:11)
- Ask the Lord to help you apply Psalm 119:11, “I have stored up your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”
- Pray that you would be able to trust in the Lord with your whole heart, lean not on your own understanding, and acknowledge Him in all your ways. (Prov. 3:5-6)
- Pray that the love of God would be your utmost priority with a fresh passion to worship Him alone. (Ex. 20:3)
- Allow you to comprehend the breadth, length, depth, and height of God’s love for you. (Eph. 3:18)
Our soul
- Be certain your soul belongs to the Lord, and the indwelling Holy Spirit resides in you. (2 Cor. 5:17) If you have never prayed and surrendered your life to Jesus, I plead with you to lean into the drawing of His Holy Spirit and declare Him the Lord of your life today!
- If you aren’t absolutely certain that your soul is secure in the Lord, there’s a post I’ve written explaining what repentance is and why it’s necessary. A prayer is included in this post that walks you through the process of surrendering your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and it’s called Prayers for Repentance and Forgiveness of Sins.
Our mind
- Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to open your mind to understand the Word of God. (1 Cor. 2:10-16)
- Ask the Lord for His wisdom. (James 1:5)
- As you read the Bible, ask the Holy Spirit to allow it to renew your mind. (Rom. 12:2)
- Ask the Lord to reveal any strongholds that you may have erected in your thoughts and belief systems that are not in alignment with God’s Word. (2 Cor. 10:5)
- Ask the Lord to help you to set your mind on things above and not on things on earth. (Colossians 3:2)
- Pray for the knowledge of our Lord to increase as you study God’s Word – as well as your understanding of who you are in relationship to Him.
Our strength
- Pray for strength not to conform to the pattern of this world as you turn away from selfish desires and yield to the Holy Spirit. (Romans 12:2)
- Ask the Lord to give you His strength as you go about your tasks with a perspective that you’re ultimately serving God – not man. (Col. 3:23)
- Ask the Lord to help you think upon things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, anything that is excellent and noteworthy of praise as Philippians 4:8 instructs.
- As you serve the Lord, you can pray and ask Him to enable you to offer your daily tasks to Him as an act of worship. (Rom. 12:1)
The above requests are certainly not comprehensive – there are so many more we could include under each of the four sections. I encourage you to continue to add to these requests as the Holy Spirit leads.
Additional Bible verses to pray over yourself
Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
That’s a promise. You will seek me and FIND ME when you seek me with ALL YOUR HEART.”
God desires to reveal Himself to you and me.
Psalm 63:1, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
While The Bible is clear that God alone can transform our hearts and minds, we do play a role in the sanctification process. R.C Sproul provides insight to this subject:
“We’re saved by grace alone and justified by faith alone, but having been saved, we don’t just wait around to die. Christianity is about spiritual growth as well, and that involves effort – the hard work of sanctification. We manifestly don’t work for our regeneration or our justification. Both acts are monergistic, accomplished by God alone. Only the Holy Spirit can change our hearts. Only the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness of the Son of God secured by His perfect obedience to the Father, can secure our right standing before God.
Sanctification, however, includes our efforts. We say it is synergistic because both God and we are doing something. Yet, we aren’t equal partners. God wills and works in us according to His good pleasure so that we progress in holiness. (Phil. 2:12-13). But as God works in us, we work as well, pursuing him in prayer, relying on the means of grace and the preached Word.”
While we play a role in:
- Striving to live a life of prayer and praise
- Pursue the knowledge of Christ through Bible study
- Choosing to turn away from gratifying the lusts of our flesh, obey God, and yield to the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in step with Him. (Gal. 5)
God alone does the work in and through us, and it is all to the glory of God.
Perfect segway to my final point…
Spiritual pride
Pride has no place when it comes to growing closer to Jesus.
That may be putting it too mildly.
Spiritual pride is detestable to the Lord.
Our transformation occurs intrinsically, not externally, and it’s always a result of the Lord working in us – not us at work refining ourselves!
It’s the grace of God that saves us AND sanctifies us – we cannot take one ounce of “credit.”
Even the love we have for God is a gift from Him; we cannot give ourselves a heart that’s in love with the Lord!
If you have a sense of spiritual superiority rising within you, I urge you, I implore you, confess and repent from that sin now! Don’t wait! Do not ignore that prompting or leave this page in cyberspace without first doing business with the Lord!
Scripture is extremely clear regarding spiritual pride.
Make no mistake – God will deal with the spiritually proud, and it’s never a pretty sight.
Remember the harsh words of Jesus to the spiritually proud Pharisees?
Daniel 4:37 tells us, “Those who walk in pride He is able to humble.”
I don’t know about you, but that verse causes me to tremble in my boots…
You and I don’t want to experience the chastisement of the Lord due to the sin of pride!
I frequently ask the Lord to give me a keen sensitivity to this sin in my life, and I urge you to do the same. We want to be able to recognize this sin as early as possible to confess and repent from it.
Prayer for growth and depth with our Savior, Jesus Christ
Dear Lord, we humble ourselves and come to you in recognition that you alone are holy, sovereign, and worthy of our praise. Almighty God, forgive us for the idols we have chased after and exalted in our lives. We’re so thankful that it’s always in your perfect will that a child of God has a heart fully devoted to you, so we ask that you would give each one of us a desire to love you with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Give us the grace to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, as described in Ephesians 4:1. Help us to grow in the knowledge of your Word, allowing it to be a lamp to our feet and a light unto our paths as we strive to live our lives for your glory knowing every good thing we have, are or do is all from you. It is in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen