Intercession and Prayer

God has chosen us as His sons and daughters, that is a tremendous thing to put our heads around. The all-powerful God who created the universe has also created and chosen man to be His hands and feet on the earth. Wow! That is beyond imagining—but true!

If God is so all-powerful, then why doesn't He solve the myriad of problems we face on the earth? The question is a simple one, but the answer is much more shocking than expected. God cannot intervene in the affairs of man directly because He would violate our free will to do so.

God has chosen to wait for humankind (or, more precisely, the Church-herein after "the Ecclesia") to partner with Him and enter a direct personal relationship with Him. The purpose of this relationship is that we may become like Him and learn of His ways so that the Ecclesia can begin to know what the desires of God's heart are and speak these desires into the world and give them a voice.

We can know God's works by what He does; many people know God on this level who have heard and seen what God does and live a life that reflects this awareness of God. 

Or, we can know God's by His ways, which is to understand who He is; this is an interpersonal exchange with our heavenly Father, which takes us into a more profound knowledge of Him to know Him as He is known.

As God reveals His unconditional love to us, we become aware that God is a lover, not a fighter. He desires more than anything that all of humanity would be saved and not die without knowing and experiencing His deep love for all people. 

As we worship, we are given access to enter into the deeper places of relationship with Him, where we find that He is not just a lover, but He also a King who sits on a throne, and there is a council that surrounds Him. We are invited to join that council and be a part of the decision-making process of enacting the desires of the King. 

Still, first, we are brought to an awareness that we must have our minds transformed and renewed that we would know His ways and reflect His desires through us,₀ this truly pleases our heavenly King.

"…God cannot do anything by Himself today. There is a free will besides His will. If this will does not cooperate with Him, He cannot do anything. The amount of power that the Church has expresses the amount of power that God has because His power is expressed through the Church. God has placed Himself in the Church. The height and extent that the Church reaches is the height and extent that God's power reaches. If the power of the Church is small and restricted, God cannot express the height or extensiveness of His power." 

Watchman Nee₁

God is all-powerful, and He could interact on His own accord, but He chooses to operate through His Ecclesia. When we connect with the love of God and the desire He has for His people, we begin to reflect His desires upon the earth. The Lord uses His people to get done what He wants to be done in the world.

"…The ministry of the Church is to bring the will in heaven to earth. How does the Church bring the will in heaven to earth? It is by prayer on earth. Prayer is not as small and insignificant as some may think. It is not something that is dispensable. Prayer is a work. Prayer is the Church saying to God, "God, we want Your will." Prayer is the Church knowing God's heart and opening its mouth to ask for what is in God's heart. If the Church does not do this, it does not have much use on earth." 

Watchman Nee₁

Some of the greatest examples of prayer and intercession are demonstrated in scripture through the lives of Abraham and Moses. 

Abraham understood God's ways and even challenged God when the word came that Sodom should be destroyed because of the magnitude of their sin. Abraham was a part of the council of God, and by speaking to God about the fate of any righteous people in Sodom. Why would God destroy the city and destroy the righteous people along with the wicked ones? It would be unlike God to do so. It would give God a bad reputation among the nations if He did. 

Abraham reasoned with God to spare the city, even if there were only ten righteous people there, and God agreed.₂

This partnering is a prime example of how God desires to interact with man to reason with Him as only a friend can do; God wants this type of closeness (friendship) with us.

God approached Moses on Mount Sinai after he had received the tablets of stone with the ten commandments inscribed upon them. He told Moses that the people he had brought up from Egypt had rebelled against Him and were worshipping other God's and they needed to be destroyed. 

Moses was a friend of God, and he reasoned with Him by reminding Him that these "people" He was speaking of were His children. And Moses told God that destroying them would only show the nations around them that God had rescued them from Egypt only to destroy them in the desert would misrepresent the true character of God. God listened to Moses and expressed mercy for the disobedient "people," but forbade them from entering the promised land because of their unbelief.₃

We are given many opportunities for prayer and intercession when we worship our God and speak to Him as a friend and share our hearts with Him, He then reciprocates with us. When we make heaven our goal, the desires of our hearts are integrated as what we can do to promote the kingdom of God because God is revealing His heart to us as we begin speaking the language and thoughts of the kingdom. 

The Lord wants us to express these thoughts before the council of God and give our voice to these desires to make them known, that we may empower these thoughts and ideas and give them substance in the form of proclamations, for we are speaking the mind of God and declaring them into the earth and into the heavens.

As we pray for others, we are given an example by Jesus to keep "knocking on the door:"

And Jesus said to his disciples, "Suppose one of you should go to a friend's house at midnight and say, 'Friend, let me borrow three loaves of bread. A friend of mine who is on a trip has just come to my house, and I don't have any food for him!' And suppose your friend should answer from inside, 'Don't bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' Well, what then? I tell you that even if he will not get up and give you the bread because you are his friend, yet he will get up and give you everything you need because you are not ashamed to keep on asking." 

Luke 11:5-8 (GNT)

When we pray for others, we should always keep on knocking on the door of heaven and petitioning God on behalf of others. The three loaves of bread represent provision from heaven. Keep in mind there is an endless supply from heaven available to us, don't just focus on God supplying the immediate need, focus instead on God providing a resource for an entire family, a neighborhood, a city, a county, or a state. You may even think more significantly, for God to use the abundance He has available to supply nations with the resource he has made available to you. 

The bigger question is: "how big is your God?" He is big enough to do more than we could ever ask or even imagine.₄  He is big enough to bring about His Kingdom to our minds and big enough to use us to speak what is in our minds to this world that we may release this kingdom reality for others.

"Good people do good things because of the good in their hearts. Bad people do bad things because of the evil in their hearts. Your words show what is in your heart" 

Luke 6:45 (CEV)

We have an abundance of good₅ that resides in our hearts because of who lives there; when we speak that good into the world, it changes things for the better every time and the kingdom advances forward.

Be Blessed:

Stephen Barnett