Simon the Cyrene bore the cross when Christ could not carry it himself (Matt 27:32).

³²As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross.

In the same way, Christians are to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2),

²Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

for “by this shall they know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)

³⁵By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Loving God is the greatest commandment, while loving others is the second (Matt 22:36–39),

³⁶“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

“for without love, it profits you nothing” (1 Cor 13:3).

³If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Burden Bearing Prayer

Love is the motivation and the means for burden bearing prayer. When a friend is so crushed by their emotional burden, bearing it with them can literally get them back on their feet like Simon did for Christ. It is a stabilizer tool which gives the person the necessary space to go through a healing method like the Emotion Paper. A burden bearing prayer is a more advanced version of the intercessory prayer, “God, please draw out the pain from <Person>’s heart.” (See the Intercessory and Personal Prayer article for an extended discussion on the theology of and practice of intercessory prayers.)

A burden bearing prayer adds, “give it to me, and take it to the cross.” Then you open up your heart to feel the person’s pain and grieve with them, and pray out loud on their behalf the words they cannot articulate, until you both calm down and no longer feel pain.

Why it works

The first reason why burden bearing prayer works is that it shows love to the person. Your willingness to bear their pain instead of them is a picture of what Christ did for us on the cross. “Greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

¹³Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Love comforts and heals for “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8).

⁸Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

The second reason is more immediate: when a person is in great anguish, they are not thinking straight, nor are they able to receive comfort from others. Job was in this state for an extended time (Job 2:13)

¹³And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

as his friends accused him rather than comforted him. He ended up having to intercede for his friends lest God punish them for not speaking “of Me what is right as My servant Job has” (Job 42:7).

⁷After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.

Burden bearing prayer is not for convicting someone of sin (though it may be warranted to do so later), but rather taking on someone else’s crushing burden and interceding it out for them when they cannot do it themself.

The final reason is the theological basis for intercession, a combination of the first two reasons. Comfort, like any gift from God, depends not only on the willingness and ability of the One who gives it (which is limitless), but also the willingness and ability of the one who receives it. God is not a tyrant who forces his gifts on humanity, but grants them out of his love and character. If a person cannot do what God requires for salvation, then it requires a mediator to take their place to do what they cannot. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son (John 3:16)

¹⁶“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

as a mediator (1 Tim 2:5)

⁵For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus

for sinners. To bear one another’s burdens is intercede for them like Christ interceded for us, and when you are being like Christ and doing what Christ did, is it any wonder that God will grant your burden bearing prayer out of his love and character?

Why it doesn’t always work

The theology of intercession also explains why burden bearing prayers don’t always work: it depends on the willingness and ability of the intercessor to intercede. If the intercessor is not willing to feel and be overwhelmed by the person’s pain, then the person’s relief depends on their own ability rather than the intercessor’s.

And even if you are willing to feel a person’s pain, you may not know how. It takes a higher level of spiritual maturity to feel someone else’s pain, and then persist in prayer until it comes out. This level of spiritual maturity usually comes only through suffering. Intercessors are a type of spokesperson, a type of prophet. Jesus is our model intercessor (Heb 4:15).

¹⁵For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Some people have the gift of intercession and naturally absorb other people’s feelings, even when they don’t want to. If they do not give those feelings to Jesus, then they become overwhelmed themselves. Others don’t feel anything at all, let alone the feelings of others. Their hearts need to be healed before they can intercede for another.

If you sense that the person is keeping their emotions and not letting them go, then you can lead them through a Memory Unblocker prayer to release the emotions. Even if they refuse to pray that prayer, you can still intercede emotions out of them, but it is harder. Thus, burden bearing prayer may be used as a form of pre-evangelism to prepare hearts hardened by pain for the gospel.

Conclusion

Burden bearing is an advanced form of intercession where you take on the emotional burden of another and intercede it out to God on their behalf to stabilize them. Not everyone can do it, and there are some who are more gifted in intercession than others, but doing it is command from Jesus himself, “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34).

³⁴A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

Take-aways

Further Reading

You may need to master the Intercessory and Personal Prayers before you can effectively use a burden bearing prayer as it is a more advanced version of intercessory prayer. Burden bearing prayer is a stabilizer tool, while Memory Unblocker is an unblocker tool and Emotion Paper is a diagnostic and healing tool. Healing Methods Overview explains the difference between the four tools and why all of them are necessary to heal the heart of a person.