Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 269 · September 26
Prayed for Thee
“But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”
Friend,
Here is the honest complaint against today's verse: Jesus prayed, and it seems not to have worked. He tells Peter that He has prayed for him. Within hours Peter is sitting by a fire in the high priest's courtyard, denying to a servant girl and then to two other people that he has anything to do with Jesus. He keeps it up until the cock crows and "the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter."
So read the request itself. "Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." The "you" there is plural in the Greek, and the King James shows the difference: Satan has asked for all of them. Then the prayer narrows to one man: "But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Jesus asked that Peter's faith would not go out completely. The next words already allow for the fall: "and when thou art converted," which means when you have turned back, "strengthen thy brethren." Peter is given a job for afterwards before he has done the thing he will need to come back from. So the prayer was answered. Peter fell, yet his faith did not die, and John tells how the story ended, on a beach, with three questions from Jesus after three denials.
You will have your own courtyard someday. What this verse gives you there is a prayer made for you by Someone who is still praying it, because Hebrews says "he ever liveth to make intercession for them." So I will close with a prayer you can make your own.
Lord, hold my faith on the night I cannot hold it myself. I have made Peter's speech about prison and death, and I meant it, yet I have no idea what I would say to a stranger by a fire. Ask for me what You asked for him. Keep my faith burning while I am sifted. Then give me the work You gave him afterwards. I would rather be sent back to my brothers and sisters than be left alone with what I found out about myself. Amen.
Yours on the same road,
a fellow learner
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 269 is Through the Valley (Psalm 23:4).