Praying for the Lost Sheep: Sheep Without a Shepherd

By Mikró Arnáki

How many people who are spiritually dead choose to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior? How can people who have sin inscribed on their hearts seek after God?

How can people who have proud hearts humble themselves to confess their sins and ask forgiveness? It is impossible for mankind, but all things are possible for God.

This treatise on prayer for the lost addresses their great plight, and how to offer fervently effective prayer with great confidence in the LORD God. He alone can change hard hearts and draw them inexorably to Jesus Christ. The key is praying through and claiming verses God has given regarding His changing of hearts.

Being born again is not by the will of the flesh nor the efforts of men. Only by the will of God can lost people become found. Christ said that sinful people do not seek for Him or choose Him, but He seeks them and chooses them. Discover the benefits of praying according to God’s will and claiming His promises. God uses the prayers of His loving and caring saints to work in the hearts of lost sheep.

Child of God, be challenged to radically change your prayer life. Within this work, additional books on prayer are recommended to enlarge your sphere of influence and broaden your understanding of God’s world. Be more in tune with God’s heart for lost souls as you pray for “all men”. Be assured that God hears the “fervent effectual prayers” of His “righteous” people. Be greatly encouraged.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781664299689

Mikró Arnáki

Mikró Arnáki is a retired design professional. He lives in the Midwest with his lovely wife of 42 years. Eight children and fourteen grandchildren give them great delight. He came to Christ at eight through the prayers of a distant relative and a book she sent him, Pictorial Pilgrim’s Progress. Any proceeds from the sale of this book will go to helping the homeless.

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Copyright © 2023 Mikró Arnáki.

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Scripture quotations marked (NASB) taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960,

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Scripture marked (NKJV) taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright ©

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Scripture marked (De Nyew Testament) taken from De Nyew Testament, Gullah New Testament, The Sea Island

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-9967-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-9968-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023908922

WestBow Press rev. date: 06/27/2023

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Praying for the

LOST SHEEP:

Sheep Without a Shepherd

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"Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed

and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd." Matthew 9:36 NASB

CONTENTS

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Prayer

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1     The Lost Sheep Who Jesus Told Us to Pray For

Chapter 2     If the Fields Are White for Harvest, Why Pray for Lost Souls?

Chapter 3     Pictures Painted in Scripture of Spiritually Dead Hearts

Chapter 4     How Dead is Dead?

Chapter 5     God Brings Dead People to Life

Chapter 6     God Gives Sinners a New Heart

Chapter 7     Another Way of Looking at God’s Work in the Heart

Chapter 8     What to Pray for Lost Sheep Without A Shepherd

Chapter 9     What Praying for the Lost Sheep Does in Your Heart

Chapter 10   Examples of Saints Who Prayed for the Lost

Chapter 11   The Importance of Love in Prayer for the Lost Sheep

Epilogue

Appendix A: Chinese Characters

Appendix B: Purgatory? An In Between Place?

Appendix C: Promises to Claim for Lost Children

Appendix D: The ROTAS Latin Word Square

Visual Aid Sources

PRAYER

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Dear Abba Father:

Thank You for hearing this prayer through Your dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

May this book be pleasing in Your sight and say only what You want it to say.

May our dear children, and anyone else that You want to touch, take Your words to heart and pray for all men.

Almighty Father, please forgive us for not praying to You every day and for only talking to You for a few short minutes when we do.

Help us to ask for Your mercy and grace in the hearts and lives of all men and women, all boys and girls.

Move us to pray for the people all around us, wherever we go, who are spiritually dead in their trespasses and sins, that You would give them new hearts and new spirits, cleansing them and making them alive in Christ Jesus with Your Holy Spirit.

Give us love also for our dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, that we would pray for the growth of their new hearts according to what is written in Your holy Word, that they would be free and know Your joy.

May we yield always to the gentle nudging of Your Holy Spirit to pray without ceasing for every single person and family that You bring to mind.

Let us always pray in faith, without doubting, believing all of Your good and faithful promises. You are such a good and awesome God.

Thank You for giving us the privilege of prayer, so that we can be involved in Your kingdom-building work, through Jesus Christ, Who is preparing a lovely place for His beautiful bride, the Church.

In the glorious name of Your beloved Son, Jesus, Who loves us,

Amen (may it always be so).

DEDICATION

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This book is written first and foremost to my children, my grandchildren and all of my descendants.

Dear children, your mother and I pray daily for each of you, that you might know God in a personal way through His Son, Jesus Christ. We pray this because we know from personal experience the deep and lasting joy, peace and freedom of living for Him alone, and we desire that same abundant life in Christ for each of you.

This book is written so that you will be reminded that this temporal world will pass away and will not last forever. But the souls of the men and women around you, the souls of boys and girls that you see daily, will last for eternity, either in eternal torment because they refused to repent and seek God, or in eternal glory with Christ because they clung fast to Him.

The aim of this book is that you would understand the truly desperate condition of man’s heart apart from God’s having mercy and regenerating him, causing him to be born again, without which Jesus said that no one could enter the kingdom of heaven. In reading this, may you also understand how to pray fervently and effectively for such a radical heart transformation to take place.

This book is not to the exclusion of all other prayer. The simple acrostic, ACTS, is a succinct outline for prayer, whether in our closets (Matthew 6:6), in groups of two or three (Matthew 18:20), or in corporate prayer in the church (Acts 1:14, 2:42). This book focuses on supplication for all men.

Adoration (Psalm 146:1-2, 147:1, 148:1, 149:1, 150:1-2)

Confession (Ezra 10:1, Psalm 32:5, Proverbs 28:13, Daniel 9:20)

Thanksgiving (Psalm 100:4, 50:14, 69:30, Phil. 4:6, Col. 4:2)

Supplication (Philippians 4:6, 1 Kings 8:28, Psalm 6:9, Eph. 6:18)

PREFACE

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Dear children, there were three things that God used to help me write this book. One, I have an interest in lost sheep as the Bible speaks of them. Two, I have a keen desire to understand how God works in the heart of the unsaved to bring them to salvation. Three, God through the years has had me involved in various capacities, helping others to pray.

First, regarding lost sheep, I have an early childhood memory of a stained glass window depicting the Good Shepherd leading His sheep to green pastures beside quiet waters. I so much wanted to be the little lamb that was pictured resting in His arms, close to His heart. I came to think of myself as Jesus’ little lamb or Mikró Arnáki (μικρό αρνάκι), my Greek pen name for this book. God, throughout my life, kept bringing up the matter of sheep who had gone astray (Isaiah 53:6) and sheep who were without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36). Through the imagery of sheep, God put a burden on my heart for lost souls. But He did it gradually.

At first I just had an interest in just sheep and lambs, buying books about them, slowing down as I passed sheep farms, even buying a lambskin. But then I started working as a valet, helping people at a health-care facility. I saw hurting people, struggling physically and emotionally. One day I parked a car for an elderly lady; it was full of stinking garbage. I was just barely able to fit her walker in the back seat with all the trash. Even though I was disgusted with the filthy waste, I was not repulsed by the woman, but rather found myself praying for her soul. Jesus suddenly opened my eyes to see the lost sheep all around me … lost sheep without a shepherd. My heart finally reached my fleshly mind; the blinders were removed to see people. Since then, I find myself praying for people everywhere I go, that God would mercifully work in their hearts to save them from His just wrath.

Second, what I am about to share with you has totally revolutionized the way that your mother and I see the world. Regarding God’s work in the heart of sinners, the Lord led me to the many Scriptures that detail His work in the heart. Sinners have hearts that are deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). But once they are born again in Christ they are new creatures and the old has passed away and everything is made new (2 Corinthians 5:17). They are no longer sinners, but saints. This does not mean that saints do not sin anymore, but they do not practice sin. Jesus said, A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things … (Matthew 12:35, NKJV) In that same verse He spoke of the evil man who brings forth evil things because of his evil heart. It is important to discern what verses in Scripture are speaking of the sinner and which of the saint. God designed the Christian’s new heart.

Third, very early on, God impressed upon me the importance of prayer, even as a young child. He performed a miracle for my younger sister in response to my first prayer as a new Christian. He had me serve as a prayer chairman for a Christian ministry, He had me prepare prayer calendars for local Crisis Pregnancy Centers, He also had your mother and I involved with a missions prayer group at church, He gave us books like No Easy Road¹, Operation World², Operation China³, and The Autobiography of George Müller⁴, which have greatly impacted us.

On one occasion, the Lord had me serve as the prayer chairman for a Frankie Schaffer Support Banquet. Our prayer team prayed that God would bring the people that He wanted to be there. The first round