Simple Sunday: Intercession

Prayer.

When we hear that word, we think of one or both of only two things.

The act of praying.
Or the person praying.

Because the act and the person are both spelled the same.

They weren't meant to be distinguished.
The Lord's prayer, is a thing.
The Lord's prayer, is a person.

So when you pray, remember that you are not only participating in an act of communion with God...talking directly to your creator, but that you are a prayer... a person standing, (or kneeling) in between God and what you are praying for.
And when we are praying for others we are standing in between them, their needs, and God.

Intercession.

Interceding on their behalf.

Do we truly have this mindset in our prayers when praying for others?
Or do we just say, ' I pray for..._____' ?
What does that mean.. we are telling God, that we are praying for someone... though He knows what we mean... do we know what we mean? Are prayer's more powerful, more beneficial when we truly feel God's gracious presence as we speak to Him?
Are we specific, do we truly lift up our hearts to God for our friends and families?

Allow the following quotes and scripture to help shape how we view our prayer time when we are truly interceding this week.

'It begins with the heart when we are praying. A heart of clay can be molded to feel what God feels. A heart of stone needs refining... which brings the focus back to us, not on God and others. Our hearts need to be in prayer as we pray, bowing to our Lord, relinquishing any power of it's own. Surrendering.' -Nathan Bryant

'Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.' -E.M. Bounds

'God is not finished with us by  a long shot...this is really about Him. He has called us to keep praying.' -Anonymous

'Prayer itself is an art which only the Holy Spirit can teach us. Pray for prayer. Pray until you can really pray.' -Charles H. Spurgeon

'The one concern of the Devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.' -Samuel Chadwick

'Seeing people come to know Jesus, it appears, is often like an iceberg. All that we see sticking above the water is the success of the minister or preacher. Yet the power that lifted them up is 90% of the iceberg that is unseen beneath the water--- the hours of prayer of an individual or several who stepped out of their comfort zones to believe for things others would have thought impossible.' -tobyMac

'You can do more than pray, after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.' -John Bunyan

'Learn to do good. Work for justice. Help the down-and-out. Stand up for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless.' Isaiah 1:17 Message (How can we accomplish all of that but to pray for it first.)

'You don't have the things you want, because you don't pray for them.' -James 4:2 GWT

'When a believing person prays, great things happen.' -James 5:16 NCV

'For a community to be whole and healthy, it must be based on people's love and concern for each other.' -Millard Fuller (founder of Habitat for Humanity)

'The renewal of the Church will depend on the renewal of our prayer life. The powers of the world to come are at our disposal if we will make the time for quiet hours for fellowship and communion [with Jesus in prayer], which is our Lord's supreme yearning desire.' -Francis A. Mcgaw

'God does nothing but in answer to prayer: and even they who have been converted to God without praying for it themselves (which is exceeding rare), were not without the prayers of others. Every new victory which a soul gains is the effect of a new prayer.' -John Wesley

'[People] have preached, and talked, and distributed tracts with great zeal, and then wondered that they had so little success. And the reason was, that they forgot to use the other branch of means, effectual prayer. They overlooked the fact that truth, by itself, will never produce the effect, without the Spirit of God, and that the Spirit is given in answer to prayer.' -Charles Finney

'Everything starts with prayer. Without asking God for love, we cannot possess love and still less are we able to give it to others. Just as today so many people are speaking about the poor, but they do not know the poor, we too cannot talk so much about prayer and yet not know how to pray.' -Mother Teresa

'Prayer has failed. We are on slippery ground. Only intercession will avail. God is calling for intercessors- Men and Women who will lay down their lives on the altar to fight the devil, as really as they would have to fight [on the front lines of a war.] -Rees Howells

I hope we can all take these quotes and scripture and meditate on the meaning, what God may be telling us through voices of other Christians and His living Word. Are we ready to step up to the plate and truly pray... interceding for others.

We need to remember that there are people starving.
People dehydrating.
People dying in mass genocide.
AIDS.
Haiti.
Japan.
Darfur.
Cambodia.
Libya.
Egypt.
Missionaries.

Short term missions are popping up all over the place as summer gets closer. Churches are on the move. But we need to be praying for these volunteers, these missionaries to have the right heart, to have the right power behind them, to have the courage, strength, ability, words, thoughts, and needs to do God's will.

We need to be those people, even if we are missionaries, or short term volunteers.

We need to be praying for our church.

The whole Christian church.

Catholics need to be praying for Lutherans.
Baptists need to be praying for Methodists.
Non-denominationals need to be praying for the traditionalists.
And vice versa to all of those. And for those whom I didn't mention.

We get the idea.

We need to be prayer warriors.

Intercessors.

I'm going to have a couple posts coming soon highlighting a few mission trips that I have ties to and I hope that we can all be interceding on their behalf... united.
To be the City on the Hill that Christ calls us to be... a City on our Knees.
I pray that this week, we can 'pray until we can really pray'.