Prayer

 

The mid-week Prayer Meeting is always a special time in the church calendar and tonight (7 May 2025) was no exception!  Our reading tonight was from Exodus 17 verses 8 to 13 and a extract from Richard Foster's book Prayer was read. The chapter was titled Intercessory Prayer.

"Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If we truly love people, we will desire for them far more than it is within our power to give them, and this will lead us to prayer. Intercession is a way of loving others.

When we move from petition to intercession we are shifting our centre of gravity from our own needs to the needs and concerns of others. Intercessory Prayer is selfless prayer, even self-giving prayer. In the ongoing work of the kingdom of God nothing is more important than Intercessory Prayer. People today desperately need the help that we can give them. Marriages are being shattered. Children are being destroyed. Individuals are living lives of quiet desperation, without purpose or future. And we can make a difference ... if we will learn to pray on their behalf. 

Intercessory Prayer is priestly ministry, and one of the most challenging teachings in the New Testament is the universal priesthood of all Christians. As priests, appointed and anointed by God, we have the honour of going before the Most High on behalf of others. This is not optional; it is a sacred obligation - and a precious privilege - of all who take up the yoke of Christ.

A Magnificent Model

Moses was one of the world's great intercessors, and one particular incident in his life provides a magnificent model for us in our continuing work of intercession. On this occasion the Amalekites had engaged the children of Israel in battle. The military strategy of Moses was strange and powerful. He ordered Joshua to lead the army into the valley to fight the battle. Moses himself went to the top of a hill overlooking the battleground with his two lieutenants, Aaron and Hur. While Joshua engaged in physical combat, Moses engaged in spiritual combat by raising hands of prayer over the conflict. Evidently Moses had the harder task for he was the one who got tired. Aaron and Hur had to step in and hold up Moses' arms until the sun set.

In the military annals Joshua was the general who won the victory that day. He was the person up front and in the thick of the conflict. But you and I know the rest of the story. Back behind the scenes the battle of intercession was won by Moses and Aaron and Hur. Each role was essential for victory. Joshua was needed to lead the charge. Moses was needed to intercede on behalf of he children of Israel. Aaron and Hur were needed to assist Moses as he grew weary.

What Moses and Aaron and Hur did on that day is the work all of us are called upon to undertake. We are not all asked to be public leaders, but all of us are to engage in Intercessory Prayer. And as P T Forsyth reminds us, "The deeper we go down into the valley of decision the higher we must rise ... into the mount of prayer, and we must hold up the hands of those whose chief concern is to prevail with God."

We are not left alone in this interceding work of ours. Our little prayers of intercession are backed up and reinforced by the eternal Intercessor. Paul assures us that it is "Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us" (Romans 8 verse 34). As if to intensify the truth of this, the writer to the Hebrews declares Jesus an eternal priest after the order of Mechizedek who "always lives to make intercession" (Hebrews 7 verse 25).

In the Upper Room discourse recorded in John's Gospel, Jesus made it unmistakably clear to his disciples that his going to the Father would catapult them into a new dimension of prayer. He explained to his mystified band; that he is in the Father and the Father is in him, that he is going to the Father in order to prepare a place for them, that they will be enabled to do greater works because he is going to the Father, that they will not be left orphaned but that the Spirit of Truth will come to guide them, that they are to abide in him as branches abide in the vine, that he will do anything they ask in his name, and so much more (John 13 to 17).

What is it about Jesus going to the Father that so radically changes the equation? Why would that make such a difference in their - and our - prayer experience? The new dimension is this: Jesus is entering his eternal work as Intercessor before the throne of God, and as a result, we are enabled to pray for others with an entirely new authority.

What I am trying to say is that our ministry of intercession is made possible only because of Christ's continuing ministry of intercession. It is a wonderful truth to know that we are saved by faith alone, that there is nothing we can do to make ourselves acceptable to God. Likewise, we pray by faith alone - Jesus Christ our eternal Intercessor is responsible for our prayer life. "Unless he intercedes" writes Ambrose of Milan, "there is no intercourse with God either for us or for all saints."

By ourselves we have no entree to the court of heaven. It would be like ants speaking to humans. We need an interpreter, an intermediary, a go between. This is what Jesus Christ does for us in his role as eternal Intercessor - "There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2 verse 5) He opens the door and grants us access into the heavenlies. Even more: he straightens out and cleanses our feeble, misguided intercessions and makes them acceptable before a holy God. Even more still: his prayers sustain our desires to pray, urging us on and giving us hope of being heard. The sight of Jesus in his heavenly intercession gives us strength to pray in his name.

Recently a student of mine, Jung-Oh Suh - a Korean pastor on a study sabbatical - learned of my research on prayer and brought me a newspaper article (complete with his excellent translation, for it was written in Korean) that describes the story of the Myong-Song Presbyterian Church, in the south-eastern part of Seoul. The Korean churches are well-known for their early morning prayer meetings, but even so this story is unusual. This is a group that began about 10 years ago with 40 people, and today 12,000 gather each morning for 3 prayer meetings - at 4 am, 5 am and 6 am. Jung-Oh explained to me that they must shut the doors at 4 am to begin the first service, and so if people arrive a little later, they must wait until the 5 am meeting. Then he added "This is a problem in my country because it gets cold in the winter! So everyone brings a little pot of tea or coffee to keep warm while they wait for the next service. This is organised, corporate, intercessory prayer.

There are so many ways to go about the work of intercession as there are people. Some like to keep lists of people they are concerned to pray for with regularity. I once visited a very holy lady who was confined to bed. She showed me her "family album" of some 200 photographs of missionaries and others she was concerned to hold before the throne of heaven. She explained how she worked her way through this entire album each week, flipping the pages and praying over the pictures. I was a a teenager at the time but even at that young age I knew that the place where I stood beside that bed was holy ground.