Today’s Prayer to Passage visits us from the book ‘Choose Your Own Autobiography’ by Neil Patrick Harris.

My prayer today is, “Dear God, What are daily actions I can take to return my appreciation for the countless ways in which the world is so great? How can I Pray it Forward?”

Following my prayer, I concentrated on the closed book in my hands and opened the book to reveal God’s answer.

“Magic teaches you an important thing: you love to be in on secrets. Not gossipy secrets; actual secrets, secrets of information, of mechanics, of science. No profession is more explicitly about secrecy than magic.”
—NEIL PATRICK HARRIS

In so many ways, especially when I describe it to others, my prayer life is magical. The response I often receive goes something like, “You definitely have guardian angels around you.” When I pray for others, I have no idea what sort of difference I am making. Yet being an intercessor has come up in recent years. I was coached by a Spiritual Gifts interpreter seven years ago. I brought my list of gifts to the meeting, printed out like an SAT score sheet I had received in the mail, presented to the interpreter as though I was anticipating what collegiate and career life awaited me.

My Spiritual Gifts coach told me that my Spiritual Gifts were Faith and Prophecy, and that this could really only point in one direction: Prayer. And not “Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub” prayer. I was recommended to blend the Spiritual Gift of Intercessory Prayer into my life of faith and prophecy. Intercession is praying on the behalf of others. It made sense. Of course, if all of this magical God stuff is happening when I pray, why wouldn’t I apply that divination to helping people?

I don’t know how magic works and I don’t know how prayer works. But I do know this: Prayer works. I have been incorporating intercessory prayer into my life since that fated meeting with my Spiritual Gifts coach in 2008. It has been a little mysterious. For example, if I have a prophetic dream about something disastrous about to take place, and I pray that God stops it from happening, I wonder if it was real or just a silly dream. Was it stopped or was it never going to be actualized in the first place?

My coach referred to this as “the blessed curse”; intercessors will spend their lives wondering what if? As much as I would like to see the results of my intentions in prayers to God for others, I need to bring that gift of faith onto the scene and trust that I am doing very good things. This is one small action I can take every day to show the world that I am highly appreciative of being here and of all that has been given to me. I have been doing a lot of intercessory prayer lately. That prophecy thing kicks in, I have faith that I can do something about it, and choose prayer. That is all three of my Spiritual Gifts being utilized in harmony.

When it comes to praying it forward, I have been given a notable gift and opportunity. I don’t discount this, even though I send a prayer out into the universe as simply as posting a Tweet to the Twitterverse. I think God knows me so well that of course I needed a gift that would be easy to carry out. Not that I’m lazy; I mean, think about the possible end results. This is something I can handle and I am very present to the fact that I am not handling it on my own. I pray and God takes over; an awesome partnership, a miraculous feat.