I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.

What does the Lord want for us? What can we pray for with confidence that the Lord finds it to be an acceptable request? According to our verse for today, there are at least three items.

First, we may pray that someone’s soul gets along well. The Apostle John’s letter was written to a man named Gaius. Although John did not feel the need to pray for Gaius’ soul, since it was apparently getting along well already, we can see that it would be a legitimate request.

The soul or heart is the focal point of human existence, for everything we do flows from it (Proverbs 4:23). The soul of an individual person is getting along well when it is indwelt and directed by the Holy Spirit, as opposed to being directed by the sinful nature (Romans 8:9-10). One can legitimately pray, then, that the Lord would send the Holy Spirit to transform a person’s life by indwelling, filling, leading, and inspiring him.

Second, we may pray for the good health of someone’s body. In general, the Lord wants us to be healthy. Although there may be exceptional instances when the Lord allows sickness into our lives in order to fulfill some purpose of His—as was probably the case with the Apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)—our verse makes it plain that it is appropriate to pray for good health.

Finally, one may pray that everything goes well. The Lord not only wants us to be spiritually and physically well, He also wants everything we are involved with to go well according to His providence . There may be times when the Lord allows things into our lives that we would rather not have, but His general desire and purpose is for our success. In fact, a day is coming when everything will go well for us all the time.

When you add it all up, our verse for today gives permission to pray about every area of our lives. Pray boldly, friend.

By John Huisman, friend of Bible League International