Prayers for the Salvation of a Loved One

Praying for someone else’s salvation is a particular kind of hard. You cannot decide for them, you cannot argue them into it, and the more you push the further they tend to move. So you pray, often for years, with no way of telling whether anything is happening.

These are prayers for that. There is a prayer for a husband or wife, for a child, for a parent, for a brother or sister, and for a friend, along with a section for people who have been praying a very long time.

A Prayer for Someone You Love For a Husband or Wife For a Child For a Parent For a Brother or Sister For a Friend Praying Scripture Over Them When You Have Prayed for Years What Not to Do Bible Verses Questions

A Prayer for Someone You Love Who Does Not Believe

Lord God,
You know who I am praying for and You know them better than I do.
I am not asking You to force them. I am asking You to reach them.
Put people in their way who live something worth wanting. Let them run into You where they are not expecting it.
Soften whatever it was that hardened. If it was a Christian who did the damage, undo that too.
Give me patience that does not come out as pressure, and love that does not have conditions attached to it.
And keep me praying when nothing appears to be happening.
Amen.

A Prayer for an Unbelieving Husband or Wife

For a Husband Who Does Not Believe

Father,
I share a life with him and not this. It is the one room in the house I cannot bring him into, and I feel it most on Sundays.
Work on him where I cannot. Let him see something in me worth asking about, and let it be patience rather than sermons.
Keep me from making my faith a wedge between us.
Give me the grace to love him as he is now, and not only as the man I am praying he becomes.
Amen.

For a Wife Who Does Not Believe

Lord,
She is the person I know best and I cannot reach her on this.
Meet her somewhere I am not: through a friend, through a book, through a hard week, through anything.
Let my faith be a comfort to her rather than a criticism.
Do not let this become the argument we have. Let it become the thing she asks about.
Amen.

1 Peter 3 is the passage for a divided marriage, and it says something unexpected: that an unbelieving spouse may be won over without a word, by the way the believing one lives. That is a long, quiet strategy and it is the one Scripture recommends.

A Prayer for a Child’s Salvation

For a Child Who Has Walked Away

Lord,
I raised them in this and they have left it, and I have gone over every year of it looking for what I did wrong.
Take the guilt off me if it is not mine, and forgive me for the part that is.
Do not let go of them.
Meet them in whatever their life is now, without waiting for them to come back to how it used to be.
Bring them home. And in the meantime, keep me from making every phone call about this.
Amen.

For a Young Child

Father,
Let faith be something they choose rather than something they inherit.
Give them their own moment with You, one that is theirs and not mine.
Let our home make You seem worth knowing.
Amen.

For a Grown Son or Daughter

God,
They are their own person now and I have no authority here, only prayer.
So I use it. Reach them.
Give me the sense to stop saying the thing I keep saying, which is not working and is costing me the relationship.
Amen.

If there is more going on than distance from faith, there are prayers here too: for a son or daughter with addiction and for a child with anxiety.

A Prayer for a Parent’s Salvation

For a Mother or Father

Lord,
They raised me and now I am the one praying for them, which is a strange way round.
I cannot preach at my own parent and I am not going to try.
Reach them in a way that does not require them to admit I was right.
Let there be time.
Amen.

For a Parent Who Is Near the End

Merciful God,
There is not much time left and I am frightened about where this ends.
You have been working on them their whole life and I have only seen a fraction of it.
Meet them now. If it is a word in the night, or a memory, or something nobody else will ever know about, meet them.
Nothing is too late for You.
Amen.

The thief on the cross was saved in the last hour of his life, having done nothing but ask. That is not a technicality. It is in the Gospels precisely so that nobody would conclude they had run out of time.

A Prayer for a Brother or Sister

Lord,
We grew up in the same house and came out believing different things, and I do not fully understand how.
Do not let the difference make us strangers.
Reach them without me having to be the one who says it, because between siblings that never lands well.
Keep me from keeping score.
Amen.

A Prayer for a Friend

Father,
Thank You for them.
They are good to me and they want nothing to do with You, and I hold both of those at once.
Let me be a friend first and not a project manager.
When the moment comes to say something, make it obvious, and give me words that do not sound rehearsed.
Until then, keep me praying and keep me quiet.
Amen.

There is a fuller page of prayers for the people you love: prayers for a friend.

Praying Scripture Over Someone

When you have run out of your own words, which happens after a few years, praying a verse back to God gives you something to say that is not just the same sentence again.

Ezekiel 36:26, for a hard heart: Lord, give them a new heart and put a new spirit in them. Take out the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
2 Corinthians 4:4, when they cannot see it: Father, lift the blindness. Let the light of the gospel get through.
Luke 15, for someone far off: Lord, You go looking for the one that is missing. Go looking for them.
2 Peter 3:9, when you are losing hope: You are patient, not wanting anyone to perish. Be patient with them a while longer, and with me.
Matthew 9:38, when you are not the right person to speak: Send a worker into their life. It does not have to be me.

When You Have Prayed for Years

This is the part that is usually left out, so here it is directly. Praying for someone’s salvation over a long period is wearing in a specific way: you cannot see progress, you cannot measure it, and every family occasion is a reminder that nothing has changed.

Two things worth holding on to. The first is that you are not the one who saves anybody, which sounds obvious and is enormously freeing once it lands. Your job is to pray and to be worth knowing. The outcome was never yours to produce. The second is that Augustine’s mother prayed for him for around thirty years, and the tradition remembers her not because she succeeded but because she did not stop.

A Prayer for the Long Wait

Lord,
I have prayed this so many times that the words have gone flat.
I am still asking.
Keep me from bitterness, and from the quiet decision that this will never happen.
If there has been movement I cannot see, let that be enough to keep me going.
And if I do not live to see it, work on them anyway.
Amen.

What Not to Do

Most pages on this subject only tell you what to pray. This part matters as much, because the wrong approach costs you the relationship, and the relationship is the thing God is most likely to use.

Do not make every conversation about it. They know where you stand. Repeating it converts nobody and quietly ends the friendship.
Do not use fear as leverage. Frightening someone into a decision produces a frightened person, not a believer.
Do not treat them as a project. People can tell, and it is the fastest way to make faith look like recruitment.
Do not set God a deadline. Praying for a result by Christmas will only leave you angry in January.
Do not stop. The one thing you actually control is whether you keep asking.

Bible Verses for Praying for the Lost

2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

Ezekiel 36:26: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

1 Timothy 2:3-4: “This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

1 Peter 3:1: “They may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives.”

Luke 15:4: “Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”

Acts 16:31: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

James 5:16: “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

1 Timothy 2:4 is the one to pray when you are wondering whether God is even interested. You are not trying to talk Him into something. You are asking for something He already wants.

Questions People Ask

How do I pray for someone’s salvation?

Ask for three things rather than one: that God reaches them, that whatever hardened would soften, and that you would be patient rather than pushy. Praying for the person’s circumstances tends to work better than praying at their beliefs. The prayer at the top of this page is written that way.

Can my prayers save someone else?

No, and that is worth being clear about, because carrying the opposite belief is crushing. Salvation involves a person’s own response and you cannot make it for them. What prayer does is ask God to work in a life you have no access to. You are not the one who saves them, and their answer is not your report card.

How do I pray for an unbelieving husband or wife?

Pray for your own patience alongside their faith, because a divided marriage tends to fail on pressure rather than on argument. 1 Peter 3 suggests an unbelieving spouse is more often won by how the believing one lives than by anything said. There are prayers for a husband and for a wife above.

What do I pray for a child who has left the faith?

Pray that God does not let go, and pray about your own guilt separately, because most parents in this situation are carrying a great deal of it and it distorts everything else. Keep the relationship open above all: a child who has walked away from faith and also lost their parent has one less route back. There are prayers for a child above.

Is it too late to pray for someone who is dying?

No. The thief on the cross was saved in his final hours with nothing to offer but a request, and that account is in the Gospels specifically so nobody would assume they had run out of time. There is a prayer for a parent near the end above.

I have prayed for years and nothing has changed. Should I stop?

No, but it is worth changing what you are asking for. Pray for the specific obstacles rather than repeating the same general request, and pray for your own endurance as well, because that is the part most likely to give way. There is a section above on the long wait.

Should I tell them I am praying for them?

It depends on the person, and it is worth being honest that for some people it lands as judgement rather than love. If the relationship is warm, saying it plainly and once is usually welcome. If it is strained, pray quietly. There is a short list above of the approaches that tend to backfire.

More Prayers

Prayer for salvation · Prayers for a friend · Prayers for family · Prayers for forgiveness · Prayers for deliverance · Prayers for hope · Prayers for strength · Browse all prayers