40 Days of Spiritual RebootSample

Let's wrap up this theme on intercession today. I would love to hear your thoughts and learning on the subject. I learn from you. I learn by watching how God speaks to you and breaks through communication barriers of fatigue, culture, language and distractions.

We all pray for ourselves. We all pray for others too. At some point or the other there are needs for loved ones, colleagues and others that we bring before God. Praying for others is definitely the ministry of every child of God since we have been given this ministry and this access. So we must persevere and not give up. The power behind persistence is habit. When we make a habit of something, God makes a character of us.

This is completely between you and God. And God is witness of your faithful intercession.

For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you (Romans 1:9).

He will not forget your labour of love and your ‘other-centeredness’. He sees the very reflection of himself in you when you are given to the needs and cares of others. When you carry a burden for someone else, when you carry this burden to God in prayer as if it were your own… you reflect the shepherds heart and you share the shepherd's peace. Many carry the stress and burden of others but in an unhealthy way. They let the injustice and inequality in this world, pain and suffering in this life; they let the cries of others get to them. It affects them. It stresses them. They carry that burden. But they have nowhere to go with it. The scriptures says cast all your cares upon him. Carry your burdens to the Lord. He cares for you. So whether the ones we are praying for have faith in God or not…. we take their burdens to God. We are beneficiaries and helpers at the same time. While we lighten the burden of people in helping them carry their burdens, we ourselves are not ruined and neither is our own peace destroyed because we take it to God and leave it there. This facilitates several bonus visits to the presence of God, extra access to his peace and insight into his working in peoples lives. When prayer gets answered, you’re the one He shares the joy with. And through all of this… (I don’t know how this works but it does), you yourself get sorted. Your issues, your memories, your brokenness, your pain, your inhibitions, your fears, your persistent personal sin, your bitterness and anger issues…. they all get sorted, cleansed and healed. With every trip into God’s presence on someone else behalf, God releases you of a bondage, a broken heart and a bitter root. You didn’t talk about it. You didn’t address it. You perhaps didn’t even know it was there. But one day you realise, It doesn’t hurt anymore, It's not there anymore or It doesn’t matter anymore.

When we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all these things will be added unto us, for the father knows that we have need of these things before we ask. Look at the birds of the air! They don’t look stressed. And not one of them falls to the ground without the fathers knowledge.

Here is the crux of the matter. The things that God heals us from subconsciously and deals with us mercifully; those very things are what keeps us from becoming intercessors. They seem to disqualify us from praying for others. We seem to feel the need to get sorted first, become holy so to speak and get right before we can dare to say to some else… ‘let me pray for you’. Isn’t that amazing? However... When we choose to intercede we become the conduit of God’s healing grace.

Let's give ourselves afresh to God’s design for intercession as He shows us his own character and blesses us no end.

Ephesians 6:18 (ESV) “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints”.