In my 45 year journey with the Lord, I have found that Christians often pray for things that God has already done. Take, for example, how often we pray that God would set us free in certain areas of our lives, or we pray that God would set other Christians that we know free in certain areas of their lives. The reality is, God already did that in Christ before we could ever ask. When Adam and Eve fell in the garden of Eden, the solution for their failure had already been provided, for Revelation 13:8 says, “… The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world.” In a sense, mankind was saved before they ever fell.
Romans 8:2 says, “For the law of the Spirit of life IN CHRIST JESUS has set you free from the law of sin and death.” Notice that this is written in the past tense. Whatever it is you are asking God to set you free from in terms of the reign of sin in your life, He has already accomplished it “in Christ.” Whatever area of bondage in someone else’s life that you are praying for concerning their freedom, they too have already been set free “in Christ.” If you are a Christian, then the person you were that was controlled by any area of sin was crucified in Christ 2000 years ago, and you were raised up in His resurrection, one with His life; and Jesus is not under the control of any sin. God understands what we are saying when we pray for freedom, whether it’s for our own personal lives or the life of some other believer that we care for, and it doesn’t offend Him that we are asking Him to do something that He has already done. He understands our heart, but I do think it saddens Him that so many believers understand so little of what He has perfectly already accomplished. He also knows that if we had a true revelation of His finished work in Christ, then we could simply step into that freedom by faith. Every Christian was Born Free. When you were “born again” you were born into total freedom, whether you knew it or not. The Holy Spirit didn’t give us new birth so that from the beginning we can strive and fight for some degree of freedom. Our salvation is much bigger and better than that. We weren’t born spiritually so that we can fight for freedom. We were born free spiritually so that we could fight the good fight of faith from something that is already happened in full. This is the gospel. It’s what makes the good news so good. What we really need to pray for is that God would give us or the person we are praying for a brighter Revelation of what Jesus has already done so that we and they can simply start believing and thus manifesting the freedom that is already ours.