Using a prayer request to reveal someone else’s private matters is not Christlike. It’s demonic. What’s more alarming are the number of Christ-professing people who go along without saying anything. Doing so is taking part in an effort to isolate and destroy a person. The one making such a request is literally humiliating someone they’re claiming to care about under the guise of concern, which is not a fruit of the Spirit, but a common manipulative tactic of covert narcissism.
God’s Word tells us to be wise as serpents and discern what spirit is at play. People who ask for prayer while slandering a specific person, especially those who turn to public platforms, are not lovingly concerned. They’re either seeking validation and sympathy at the cost of someone else or they are preemptively controlling their image that is in the hands of someone else, and trying to twist the narrative before others can get to know that person or before that person can identify them as the problem. Either way, it’s inappropriate. True concern would not lead to this behavior. No one who does this is concerned about the person they are humiliating and isolating through gossip and slander.
What they are doing is outwardly claiming to care while covertly burning a bridge. They then rely on that pious reputation they’ve built to play victim when that person they’ve tried to destroy draws away from them for good. This means that those who go along with their deceptive game are not helping them with faith; they’re helping them weave their web.
We all fall short, but people who do this continually without conviction are not following Christ. They’re following the destroyer and they’re trying to include as many sheep as possible. There are many demons who know God’s Word and claim to know Christ. Their words may be pursuasive at times, but their tainted hearts will often pour out a polluted mixture of blessing and cursing.
Asking for prayer is one thing, but a Christlike request will be filled with the fruits of the Savior, not with the devil’s tools to steal, kill, and destroy.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. – John 10:10
Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. – Matthew 10:16
Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing covered. – Proverbs 11:13
Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets; therefore do not associate with a simple babbler. – Proverbs 20:19
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. – Proverbs 18:21
And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell… With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. – James 3:6,9-12
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. – Ephesians 5:11-12
