THE POWER OF INTERCESSION (Intercessory Prayer)

THE POWER OF INTERCESSION (Intercessory Prayer)

There is power in intercessory prayer. The prayer of intercession is what the world needs today for there to be a change. Many people and even those who are pastors and leaders have turn down intercessory prayers in favour of deliverance and healing prayers and some have gone in totally and only for warfare. But for how long shall we keep pray healing and deliverance for people over and over again. If you have not notice just check around and you will see that out of the  many people for whom the healing and deliverance prayer is done, only a few truly receive their healing. The reason being that these people for whom deliverance is prayed, have not yet come out of the vicious circle in which they are living. So when the prayer is done, they go back to their normal way of live and before you know it, they have fallen back in the same pit and are back to square one.

            This brings me to the subject matter of this message; Intercessory prayer. This has been the type of prayer that many great men of old have used. It has been one of the key prayers of Jesus. In fact, he is the mediator or better of the intercessor between God and man. So to begin with, let’s look at some figures of the past who have been great intercessors.

SOME INTERCESSORS OF THE PAST

Our father in faith, Abraham is the first of such people. He interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah when God was at the point of destroying it. He pleaded with God and begged him not to destroy the town and everybody in it. Genesis 18:20-33 in these verses, we see how Abraham approaches God not to plead for himself but for the people of Sodom. What about you, when you go to God in prayer, what do you ask? Do you pray only for yourself and you family or do you pray for others too. Today our father is giving us a good example, he pleaded and pleaded until God was appeased to a certain point but unfortunately, God did not fine up to ten people who were worthy in the town but I want you to know that lot and his family were saved and it coincidentally happened that lot was Abraham’s brother.

Another great man is Moses. Do you know how many times God had desire to extinguish the people of Israel but he stood between God and them and pleaded for them. Moses was a great intercessor if not the greatest of his time. How many times did Moses go up the mountain to pray for the people of Israel and  not for himself? Most often he pleaded for the people and not for himself and because of him God in various circumstances had to cool his anger and spare the life of the Israelites. See Exodus 32:7-14; Numbers 14:11-19; Numbers 16:41-50... Here we see how Moses pleaded for the people and how he calmed the God's anger. Interceding for a person is far important than any kind of prayer you can do.... this is so because all things are possible with Jesus and when you beg him for somebody, he is likely to solve the persons problems faster than you could ever do it yourself.

Last but not the least is Jesus himself. He is the perfect figure of intercession and all through his life he prayed for the wellbeing of the people around him. He pleaded with God for his apostles as well as for all of us. Though he was God, he pleaded with God for the people round him, he did not try to fulfil it by himself but he prayed to God, this is an example of intercession and this is what we should mostly do. For example Jesus before leaving prayed for his disciple John 17.  So we should learn to pray for others so that God will intervene in their lives.

CONCLUSION

Now after looking at these people of the past, I want you to understand that, intercession is very necessary in our world today. Do you know that no one can go to Jesus except the Father allows him? So then why not pray and ask the father to call souls to himself rather than trying to bring them to Him ourselves. I really like us to turn towards intercessory prayer so that we can make the people around us come to know Jesus and love him. Hope you've learnt something new and that you will be able to use it for the betterment of the people around you.
God bless you

Watch out for the next article on the different types of intercessory prayer and how to do intercessory prayer