HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 15, 2026 – Prayer, as we know, is the most powerful force in the universe. Through prayer, we give God permission to unleash whatever remedy needs to be applied to whatever circumstance. The more heartfelt the prayer, the more effective the prayer, because God can work more powerfully through sincerity.

We know these things to be true. We know them to be true because we’ve lived them, are living them. We all, as bornagain believers, were once sincerely prayed for, even now as we sincerely pray for others.

And there’s the rub. Who are these “others” that we should be praying for?

If you listen to most pastors and preachers and ministers and priests, the answer would be “everyone”. We should be praying for everyone we know, even if we know them only by name. And not just everyone we know, but whole nations and entire peoples. We should be like the automatic weapons of prayer, the kind that are banned in most countries for their indiscriminate, unapologetic overkill. This, if you listen to most pastors and preachers and ministers and priests, is how we should be praying, purposely aiming wide so as to hit at least one target with our spiritual spray.

But is this how Jesus prayed? And is it how he taught us to pray?

In John’s gospel, Jesus prayed for us on his last night in his human body. His prayer set the gold standard for how we should pray. We already know from his earlier teachings on prayer that we’re to avoid using what he called “vain repetitions” (like, for instance, the formulaic Our Father or Hail Mary), which now sadly make up the lion’s share of so-called Christian prayers. We already know we’re to go into our “closet”, that is, our spiritual safe space, so that prayer is private conversation between us and God, or between us and fellow believers and God. We already know that God already knows what we’re going to ask him in prayer even before our words reach our lips (or our mind’s lips), because God knows everything, including what we’re going to think and do before we think and do it.

Prayer isn’t a performance, though sometimes it can be done among fellow believers. Neither is it a recitation of set phrases, because that’s not how you talk to your Father (or how your Father talks to you). We already know this because Jesus taught us and because we live it as bornagain believers.

But in the gold-standard prayer that he prayed on his final night in a human body, just before his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (which was another example of a gold-standard prayer), Jesus explicitly stated who we should and should not be praying for. Let’s start with the ones Jesus taught us not to pray for.

In brief, the world: We’re not to pray for the world. By “the world”, Jesus meant those who reject him because they reject Truth. People who don’t value Truth or have never searched for the Truth (and by “Truth” I mean God’s unchanging Truth, not the many “truths” that change daily according to agenda-driving propaganda and public opinion) are children of the devil and are content to remain so. In some cases, they may call themselves Christians, but when the proverbial push comes to shove, they’ll side with whomever or whatever allows them to continue to remain within the world’s systems, even if it means denying Jesus and the One who sent him. This is the world, and we’re not to pray for it. Those who’ve embraced the world have already chosen their god, and God respects their free-will choice. He doesn’t agree with their choice, but he respects their right to choose and so won’t intervene, even at the behest of his children.

If not for the world, then who are we to pray for?

Let’s let Jesus himself remind us:

I have manifested thy name [Father] unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word…. [F]or I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them…. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me…. I pray not that thou shouldst take then out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil…. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which should believe on me through their word.

So there you have it: we’re not pray for the world like indiscriminate automatic prayer weapons but to target only those who are God’s. And, just as importantly, we’re not to pray for God’s people to be taken out of the world, but to be protected while they’re in the world. These two prayer directives—to pray only for those who are God’s and to pray for their protection—should be our sole guide on who (and who not) to pray for.

I confess that as a newbornagain believer, and even into my more mature years, I prayed for everyone I thought needed prayers. That was a lot of people at times, and it was exhausting. And then God started to nudge me this and way and that in my prayers, sometimes outright advising me not to pray for a specific person. This startled me at first, because I thought (that is, I’d been taught by most pastors and preachers and ministers and priests) that I should pray for everyone who appears to need prayers or who asks for prayers.

And so, taking my cue from God, I started to go to God for his go-ahead before praying for someone. I still do, and I recommend that you do likewise. As Jesus taught us, we’re to pray for those who are God’s in this world and we’re to pray for their protection. We don’t pray for everyone who comes to mind or for everyone who asks for our prayers; we’re to pray only for those God gives us the go-ahead to pray for.

This directive isn’t meant to be spiritually miserly (Jesus certainly wasn’t spiritually miserly) or to curtail your prayer life. It’s a directive that comes from Jesus and therefore directly from God, and it’s recorded in scripture. There is no higher authority on who to pray for.

Ignore it at your peril.