Jesus said He prayed for Peter. What do we learn from this encounter?

I have a memory of an elder at Thursday evening prayer meetings in Britain, some forty years ago. Wednesday is normal for prayer meetings in America, but in Britain, it tended to be Thursday. This elder prayed long prayers. He was not an educated man, but he read a lot. He often used the language of Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. His prayers were full of “thees” and “thous” and so on, and they were very structured, ordered, and thought out. They would last for fifteen minutes. The elder always prayed for me, the minister. I always felt helped, blessed, reassured, and comforted by the fact that this godly man, who was more than twice my age, would pray for me, but even more so, Jesus prays for us.

Jesus ever lives to intercede for us. Every day, He is bringing our needs, our trials, and our difficulties to the Father. He sees us in all of our frailty. Think about the power of Jesus’ prayers and the relationship He has with His heavenly Father—how could the Father say “no” to a prayer of the Lord Jesus? Jesus praying on behalf of Peter is a very comforting thing to me. He said to Peter, “Satan has desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail” (Luke 22:31–32).

What a blessing it is to wake up in the morning and know that Jesus has already prayed for us. As we face the trials of the day, yes, we solicit the prayers of our brothers, sisters, and close friends, but there’s something even more wonderful about the fact that Jesus, in His office as Great High Priest, continues to pray for us with great fervency and passion.