LifePoint is hosting “Seven Days of Prayer” campaign all this week. The aim of our campaign is two-fold. We are asking the Lord to renew our hearts and move in power as He leads us in mission in 2017. We are interceding for our church family and any others that allow us to pray for them. The last three weeks of preparation has made one thing abundantly clear to me, we’ve picked a fight in the spirit world and the Evil One is fighting back.
Praise God our weapons have divine power to destroy strongholds!
The prayer campaign is part of a larger theme the Lord is leading at LifePoint, learning to L-O-V-E others as God has loved us. Love is the reason we begin in prayer. Prayer enables us to love a person completely, as God has loved us, all in one act; first, true, most and last. Prayer unleashes God’s power among us to love. And, prayer is THE work of mission, not a study of mission. Andrew Murray reminds us, “Prayer is not our work. It is God’s work in us by His almighty power.”(1)
Prayer moves the mighty power of God to work among us.
LifePoint is focusing on two types of prayer in 2017, intercession and supplication. The prayer campaign focuses on intercession. Intercession is the act of intervening or mediating between differing parties, particularly the act of praying to God on behalf of another person.(2) The English word is derived from the Latin intercedo meaning “to come between,” which strangely has the somewhat opposed meanings of “obstruct” and “to interpose on behalf of” a person, and finally “to intercede.”(3)
Intercession takes Christians into the divine battle to appear before God on behalf of others.
Four Scriptures help understand intercession.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness…the Spirit himself intercedes for us. Romans 8:26
Christ Jesus is the one…who indeed is interceding for us. Romans 8:34
he [Jesus] is able to save…since he always lives to make intercession for them. Hebrews 7:25
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions. 1 Timothy 2:1–2a
These passages teach three very simple and straightforward truths about intercession. Jesus intercedes for us. Holy Spirit intercedes for us from within us. And, Christians intercede for others. Intercession was part of a priest’s job description in the Old Testament. In the New Testament Christians become a royal priesthood who intercede for others in the world.(4) Andrew Murray measures the impact of intercession when he states, “God has appointed intercession as one of the means by which others will be saved and Christians built up in the faith.”(5)
Intercession is the Christian’s principle priestly labor in this world, standing between to ask God to save and people to believe.
Intercession fuels the church’s mission in three ways.
- Intercession turns people to talk to God first, before looking anywhere else. When Christians intercede, we get into the space between God and people to say “Father, I must talk to you about this person.” Intercession is the way Christians take hold of heaven and earth to bring them together so God’s will can be made known in the world.
- Intercession sets that which is most important to God as most important to His people.
- Intercession takes the needs of this life to Jesus, to bring Jesus to the needs of life. It’s the first conversation of evangelism; talking to God about people before we talk to people about God.
PRAYER is the first act of LOVE,
and the first labor of mission.
1 Andrew Murray, The Best of Andrew Murray on Prayer,January 22, 2017
2 J. William Thompson and Trent C. Butler, “Intercession,” ed. Chad Brand et al., Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003), 828.
3 LI. D Bevan, “Intercession,” ed. James Orr et al., The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Company, 1915), 1484.
4 1 Peter 2:9
5 The Best of Andrew Murray on Prayer, January 20, 2017