Prayers to Love Others
This is the love you give rather than the love you receive, and it is the harder of the two to pray for honestly. Nobody arrives at this page because loving people is going well.
These are prayers for a heart that has gone cold, for people who are difficult, for family who are hard work, and for the particular Christian problem of being commanded to love someone you do not like.
A Prayer for a Loving Heart Someone You Find Difficult When Love Has Gone Cold Difficult Family Loving Your Enemies To Love Like Jesus Praying 1 Corinthians 13 Bible Verses Questions
A Prayer for a Loving Heart
Lord,
Give me a heart that is bigger than the one I have.
I am not asking for a feeling. I am asking to become someone who is patient when it costs something, kind when nobody notices, and slow to take offence when offence is available.
Take the part of me that keeps score.
Where I have gone cold, warm it. Where I have gone hard, break it up.
Let me love the people in front of me today rather than people in general, which is easier and worth less.
Amen.
A Short Prayer
Lord, let me love the way You love. Start with today.
A Prayer for Someone You Find Difficult
Father,
You know who this is. I do not need to explain them to You.
I am supposed to love them and at the moment I can manage civility on a good day.
Change what I can be honest about wanting changed, which is mostly them, and then change what actually needs changing, which is probably me.
Show me what is going on underneath their behaviour, because there is usually something.
Let me stop rehearsing conversations I am never going to have.
Bless them. I am saying it before I mean it, and I am trusting that the meaning follows.
Amen.
Praying for someone you resent is unpleasant for the first few weeks and it works anyway. It is difficult to keep despising a person you are consistently asking God to bless. That is most of the mechanism.
When Love Has Gone Cold
A Prayer When You Feel Nothing
Lord,
I used to feel something here and now there is very little.
I am still doing the actions and I am aware they are hollow.
I am not going to manufacture a feeling to impress You.
Give it back, if it is meant to come back. And in the meantime let the actions count for something even without it.
Amen.
A Prayer When You Are Worn Out by People
Father,
I have been available to everyone and I have nothing left to be generous with.
Refill me rather than only asking more of me.
Show me what is mine to carry and what I picked up because nobody else would.
Let me rest without guilt.
Amen.
Compassion fatigue is real and it is not a moral failure. If you are running on empty, the answer is usually rest and a smaller circle for a while, not more effort. Loving people is not sustainable on willpower.
A Prayer for Difficult Family
God,
These are the people I did not choose and cannot resign from.
Some of what is between us is old and neither of us can remember how it started.
Give me love that does not depend on them apologising first.
Keep me from becoming the version of myself I turn into at family gatherings.
And where a boundary is the loving thing rather than the unloving thing, give me the nerve to hold it kindly.
Amen.
Loving someone does not require unlimited access to you. Scripture asks for love, not for the absence of boundaries, and the two are regularly confused. If a relationship is causing real harm, love may look like distance held without malice.
Prayers for Loving Your Enemies
This is the command most Christians quietly skip. Jesus does not soften it: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
A Prayer for Someone Who Has Wronged You
Lord Jesus,
You said to pray for them and I have been avoiding it.
So: bless them. Deal with them justly, which I would rather You did visibly, and I am aware that is not my business.
Take the hold this has on me. I have given it more hours than it deserves.
Do not let what they did make me into something.
Amen.
Forgiveness is not the same as saying it did not matter, and it does not require restored trust or restored access. What it does is release the debt. Trust is rebuilt separately, over time, and sometimes it is not rebuilt at all.
There are fuller prayers here: prayers for forgiveness.
Prayers to Love Like Jesus
A Prayer to Love the Way He Did
Lord Jesus,
You loved people who were tedious, ungrateful and slow to understand, and You did it for three years without complaint on the record.
I would like some of that.
Let me notice the person nobody is talking to.
Let me be interruptible.
Give me the kind of love that does something rather than the kind that feels warm about the idea of it.
Amen.
A Prayer to See People as He Sees Them
Father,
I sort people quickly and I am usually wrong.
Let me see them the way You do: as someone’s child, as someone You died for, as a person having a day I know nothing about.
Slow me down before I decide.
Amen.
Praying 1 Corinthians 13
The passage read at every wedding is really a diagnostic. Praying it line by line, about yourself rather than at someone else, is uncomfortable and useful.
Lord,
Make me patient, because I am not.
Make me kind, especially when I am tired.
Take my envy, which I hide well.
Take the boasting and the quiet pride underneath it.
Let me stop dishonouring people in small ways I could defend if challenged.
Make me less easily angered.
And take my record of wrongs. I know exactly where I keep it.
Let me protect, trust, hope and persevere, in that order, today.
Amen.
Bible Verses About Loving Others
John 13:34: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
1 John 4:20: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”
Matthew 5:44: “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-5: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
Colossians 3:13: “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
1 Peter 4:8: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
1 John 3:18: “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
1 John 4:20 is the uncomfortable one. It rules out the arrangement most of us would prefer, where we love God warmly and find people tiring. Scripture treats the second as evidence about the first.
Questions People Ask
How do you pray to love one another?
Ask to become a person who loves rather than to feel loving, because the feeling is not the thing being commanded. Praying for patience, for a heart that does not keep score, and for the specific person you are struggling with is more useful than praying about love in general. The prayer at the top of this page is written that way.
How do I pray for someone I do not like?
Say the prayer before you mean it. Ask God to bless them, name what you actually feel rather than dressing it up, and keep doing it. It is hard to keep despising someone you are consistently asking God to bless, and that is most of how this works. There is a prayer for it above.
What does the Bible say about loving others?
That it is a command rather than a feeling, and that it is the test of everything else. Jesus makes it the new commandment in John 13:34, and 1 John 4:20 says plainly that anyone who claims to love God while hating a brother or sister is not telling the truth. It is also defined by action: “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
What do I do when I feel nothing?
Keep doing the actions and stop trying to manufacture the feeling. Love in Scripture is overwhelmingly something you do, and the feelings tend to follow behaviour rather than lead it. If the flatness has lasted a long time and covers everything rather than one relationship, that may be exhaustion or something worth talking to a doctor about, not a spiritual failure. There is a prayer above.
Do I have to love someone who is hurting me?
You are asked to love them. You are not asked to give them unlimited access to you. Those are two different things and confusing them keeps people in harm. Love can look like distance held without malice, and if someone is causing real damage, getting to safety comes first. Forgiveness releases a debt; it does not require restored trust.
How do I love like Jesus?
Notice the person nobody is talking to, stay interruptible, and let love take the form of doing something rather than feeling warmly. He loved people who were slow, ungrateful and difficult, in specific and practical ways. There are prayers above.
What is agape love?
Agape is the New Testament word for love that is chosen rather than felt: love directed at someone’s good regardless of whether they have earned it or you are enjoying them. It is the word used in 1 Corinthians 13 and in John 13:34. That is why the commands to love are possible commands. You can decide to act for someone’s good. You cannot decide to have a feeling.
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