Prayer: The Timeless Secret of High-Impact LeadersSample

The Power of Prayer Partners in 1400 BC

A story from the life of Moses serves as a great picture of the importance and impact of the leader being supported by the prayers of his people. The Hebrews were being attacked by the Amalekites. Joshua was to lead the army out and fight while Moses was to stand on the hill holding up his staff, which symbolized God’s power and victory.

The plan worked, until Moses’ arms got tired. “So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning” (Exodus 17:10, 11).

Fortunately, Moses had two men who took it upon themselves to hold up his hands. These unsung heroes were the difference between defeat and victory: “When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword” (vv. 12, 13).

The point of this event is twofold: First, the people are only able to fully experience victory as their leader holds his or her hands up in prayer for them (1 Timothy 2:1). Second, leaders must be sustained through the prayers of their people.

E. M. Bounds was a successful lawyer, pastor, editor, and evangelist. He gave the last seventeen years of his life to prayer, rising every day without exception at 4 a.m. and praying until 7 a.m. During this period he wrote a series of classic books on prayer. Regarding the event recorded in Exodus 17, in a chapter titled “The Preacher’s Cry: Pray for Us,” Bounds wrote, “By common consent, this incident in the history of Israel has been recognized as a striking illustration of how people may sustain their preacher by prayer, and how victory comes when people pray for their preacher . . . We have a striking picture of the preacher’s need for prayer, and of what a people’s prayers can do for him.”

In his widely popular book Power through Prayer (1912), Bounds included a chapter titled “Preachers Need the Prayers of People.” In it he stated, “Air is not more necessary to the lungs than prayer to the preacher. It is absolutely necessary for the preacher to pray. It is absolutely necessary for the preacher to be prayed for . . . the true apostolic preacher must have the prayers of other people to give his ministry its full quota of success.”

Peter Wagner wrote an entire book on the need for intercession to be made on behalf of spiritual leaders. The thesis of the book is very clear: “The most underutilized source of spiritual power in our churches today is intercession for Christian leaders.” If we hope to be the prevailing church Jesus predicted, we must pray for our leaders. If we hope to become the leaders our churches need us to be, we must train our people to pray for us.