Day Six
To Be or Not to Be…..an Intercessor? He’s Inviting You… Just Say, YES!
As the fasting “from” and “for” emails entered my account over the course of the first few days of our 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting from the sisters who wanted to be part of a Surrender Group, I felt exhilarated over their commitment to this church-wide fasting journey. However, while reading the content of each communication, I literally began feeling a sense of panic. I found myself considering the overwhelming burden of such a responsibility and then immediately felt an unexplainable urgency to make sure God heard every need and cry for His mercy and grace over some truly cataclysmic circumstances.
Then I remembered something I had read recently which said, in the natural, when things seem out of control and nothing YOU’VE tried fixes a thing, you may resort to holding up a white flag in surrender and totally giving up as if all is lost, but in the spiritual, when you are a child of the One true King, you GET to surrender all of the circumstances which are weighing you down and crushing your spirit to the person of Jesus Christ; the One who paid it all.
This thought comforted me somewhat, yet the aching in my heart for the situations these emails revealed and how each sister was willing to surrender it all by being transparent in exposing the pain and hurts touched me deeply, so much so, that tossing and turning was all I could do until I cried out to Him asking, “Lord, did I take on too much? Do you really want me to facilitate this support group?”
As it always does, talking to Him and listening to a favorite worship song, (Waymaker in this case) helped me drift off, and in the morning….
THE Word, yes, Jesus answered me through the following Scriptures: 1 Peter 2:9-10 and 1 Corinthians 14:1-3. He reminded me that He has given us the privilege of becoming intercessors. So if your heart is burdened with the fasting “fors” of the brothers and sisters you are partnering with, please join me in thanking Him for calling us into service in His Kingdom. We belong to a royal priesthood!!!!
One of the most important ways that a priest represented people before God, I’ve learned, was to intercede for them. As believers in Christ and imitators of His ways, we are to be like those priests representing the hurting by carrying their petitions in prayer to God; spoken in Him and through Him. Over time, I’ve realized that intercession is not about presenting God with a laundry list of demands or requests. Instead it involves spending time in God’s presence, seeking His will, and being guided by His Spirit as we offer up prayers on behalf of others.
As Evelyn Underhill put it: Each time you take a human soul with you into your prayer, you accept from God a piece of spiritual work with all its implications and with all its cost- a cost which may mean for you spiritual exhaustion and darkness, and may even include vicarious suffering, the Cross. In offering yourselves on such levels of prayer for the sake of others, you are offering to take your part in the mysterious activities of the spiritual world; to share the saving work of Christ…..Real intercession is not merely a petition but a piece of work, involving costly surrender to God for the work he wants done on other souls.
Yikes, no wonder I couldn’t sleep that night! Thanks, Evelyn, your words perfectly explain the reason for what I experienced while reading the beautiful, yet raw, transparent and yes, even heart wrenching words emailed to me from the women, I now lovingly call my Intercessory Sisters!
It is my hope that you will join me in asking Jesus to increase your desire to be more like Him, to speak His Word with a pure heart, and to reflect His love by becoming an intercessor, taking others into your heart so that you can carry them into God’s presence through prayer.
Love you, Lifecoast family
Jane Butler