Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. ( Romans 10:1 Chapter 10 1 Brethren, my heart's desire and my supplication to God is for them, that they may be saved. )

Paul prays that God would convert Israel. He prays for her salvation! He does not pray for ineffectual influences, but for effectual influences. And that is how we should pray too.

We should take the new covenant promises of God and plead with God to bring them to pass in our children and our neighbors and on all the mission fields of the world.

God, take out of their flesh the heart of stone and give them a new heart of flesh ( Ezekiel 11:19 19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh; ). Circumcise their heart so that they love you ( Deuteronomy 30:6 6 And Jehovah thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. )! Father, put your Spirit within them and cause them to walk in your statutes ( Ezekiel 36:27 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep mine ordinances, and do them. ). Grant them repentance and a knowledge of the truth that they may escape from the snare of the devil ( 2 Timothy 2:25 25 in meekness correcting them that oppose themselves; if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth, –26). Open their hearts so that they believe the gospel ( Acts 16:14 14 And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, one that worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul. )!

When we believe in the sovereignty of God — in the right and power of God to elect and then bring hardened sinners to faith and salvation — then we will be able to pray with no inconsistency, and with great biblical promises for the conversion of the lost.

Thus God has pleasure in this kind of praying because it ascribes to him the right and honor to be the free and sovereign God that he is in election and salvation.