16Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. 17Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. 18Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit. James 5:16-18 NASB, for context.
And those prayer requests are always between people here on earth.
We have no examples of praying to anyone in Heaven, other than God, in the OT or NT.
Please pray for me.
Glad to do so.
Jesus. Conversed with angels. And with Moses and Elijah. Evidently they could hear Him, and he could hear them. Many people in both the OT and the NT interacted with angels. Evidently there is communication between these dear heavenly persons and ourselves.
Revelation presents us with the vision of angels at the Throne of God, acting as intermediaries by offering to Him, with incense, the prayers of the holy ones on earth (Rev. 8:3-4)
The books of Tobit and Maccabees likewise
present the angels and holy ones in heaven (specifically, Onias the High Priest who was martyred, and Jeremiah, 2 Macc 12-15) interceding for God’s people on earth. I suppose you have not kept Tobit and Maccabees in your Bible, but still, it should be interesting to you to see what Jesus and the Apostles and the NT Christians were reading in the Septuagint: *their* Bible.
The strongest testimony comes from St. Paul, who repeatedly urges us to see that we are all living members of the Body of Christ. At no point does he say that this intimate relationship, of giving and receiving prayers and love and spiritual gifts thanks to Jesus Christ -— with Him, and through Him, and in Him-— will cease once you are in heaven!
On the contrary, it is certain that the ties of love and the eagerness in Christ to shower each other with mutual aid are, in that heavenly realm, unimaginably stronger: eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man to imagine, what God has ready for those who love Him.