How To Be a Good Intercessor
Pastor Henry read from Exodus 32 and Ezekial 22:23-31.He especially drew our attention to verse 30 of Ezekiel 22: "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. "
God was looking for someone to intercede on behalf of this wicked country, but he couldn't find any. What does it take to intercede in prayer? There are 3 qualities needed to do this:
1) Intercessors believe in the power of prayer. They believe that our relationship with God is one in which our communication with God matters. The devil makes us believe that prayer doesn't matter, and this separates us from God, but we need to believe that prayer does matter and that God actually governs the world through us as intercessors.
2) Intercessors care about others. They want to find where God's help is needed and wanted.
3) Intercessors know where to go for help - God is the one who has the power to forgive, heal and restore us.
2 Comments:
This series and the retreat have been making a difference for me already. I find that I am more prone to say quick prayers when walking, driving, waiting, and I feel more in tune with spiritual things. I feel like I am sensing spiritual threads that I had forgotten how to notice, and I am grateful for that.
I struggle with Henry's position linking doubt with evil and would like to continue to work through this. It's been resonating within me.
I am a skeptic by nature and expect that I will always live with some measure of doubt. I even feel that sometimes God places us in positions where we may be more prone to doubt.
When the man with the possessed son came to Jesus for him to be healed [Mark 9], Jesus told him that all things are possible for those who believe. This man exclaimed, "Lord, I believe, please help me in my unbelief!" This open, honest, succinct prayer that confesses both faith and doubt was good enough for Jesus, and he healed the boy. Don Miller, in Blue Like Jazz, describes how God honors faith in spite of doubt. I take great comfort in both of these examples - and I've sort of adopted this little prayer and think of it often.
Is doubt the problem, or is acting upon that doubt and turning away from God the problem?
Is there faith without doubt? Without doubt, faith becomes certainty. If so, is it still faith? Even the disciples were uncertain, and they lived with Jesus for 3 years. How can we possibly do better than they did?
Just some thoughts...
Steve, I appreciate your thoughts about doubt. I have always believed that doubt is good; we are never going to know everything about God until we die. In order to deepen our faith, we need to question and work through our struggles. On the flipside, though, Satan DOES use skepticism to separate us from God. Especially in the U.S., Satan tries to convince us that believing in anything other than ourselves is stupid. That attitude fosters contempt for anything spiritual. I think there is a difference betweeen healthy doubt and sinful skepticism, but I can't really describe it.
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