The Joy of Intercession

:Intercession

-in this context, the act of praying on behalf of another party ( i.e. person, country, institution etc.).

"story" time

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For the longest time, the Lord had placed someone on my heart to pray for. Once in a while, I would pray for this person :for their salvation and for them to experience the love of God and His presence. I did not pray for this person often but when it was time for intercession, this name will always pop up in my head and I knew it was the Holy Spirit pushing me to pray for this person.

I am not really acquainted with this person so it was hard to know if any changes had happened in their spiritual life. I still prayed and ask God to move one way or the other.

Then...

One glorious night, I physically saw growth in this individual’s spiritual life and it brought joy to my soul. Seeing a loved one surrender to Christ, almost brought tears to my eyes.

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God hears us. He’s listening and that’s what’s so beautiful about Him. How does it make sense that a perfect God would pay so much attention to us, mere mortals who might sin against Him again and again. Isn’t it crazy how God heard my cry, even though I didn’t even take it seriously?

If the Lord says intercede for someone, do so wholeheartedly because the joy after seeing results births indescribable joy. Also, the salvation/deliverance of a party could be fuelled by your prayers.

Intercession allows the Lord to reveal things to us beforehand. In Isaiah 52:8, the Word speaks on how the watchmen jubilate because they see the Lord returning to Jerusalem. As watchmen, as we intercede, the Lord starts revealing to us how He is entering people’s situations; He starts to reveal to us how He’s about to move in the near future.

"Who is the Lord asking you to pray for?"

Quick reminder: Never think that those deeper in the faith don’t need interceding.

||What garment shall we wear?||

It’s that time of the year again where we’ve stocked up all our Black Friday shopping and are cautiously picking the best outfit for each “ end of year” event.

As a gentleman/lady, you always want to look good and elegant. However, sometimes this gets out of control and gives the flesh room to bear awful fruits such as greed, selfish ambition etc. ( Galatians 5:19-21). During this season, we find ourselves putting on the wrong garments and portraying ourselves as people whom God did not call. We start allowing the flesh to dictate our every step and start to find ourselves slowly slipping back into the devil’s ways.

It’s hard to face this reality but it’s the truth.

I believe that in this season, the Lord is not speaking on actual attire, rather the character traits we wear as garments.

The first festive garment we should adorn ourselves with is

• A garment of gratitude . In Philippians 4:6, Paul urges us to always be grateful when asking the Lord for anything. We must house a grateful heart within ourselves and adopt the spirit of remembrance, which would allow us to reflect on the goodness of the Lord throughout the year.

• A garment of praise . In Isaiah 61:3, the prophet urges those in Zion to wear this garment because joy is coming, restoration is on its way. People usually praise because something good has happened but as Christians, our praise shouldn’t be dependent on a circumstance, rather on a person and His name is Jesus.

There are many other garments one can put on this festive season but these are two highlighted this week.

*why the word garment?

:- a garment is a piece of clothing that essentially covers the entire body.

So when we say wear a garment of praise, that is all we should see about you ( i.e. all you do is praise God)

what about worship?

We were created to worship. Man’s original habitat was the garden: the place of communion. In this place of communion, man had easy access to the Father and could effortlessly worship Him; the natural posture of man is to be at the feet of the Father, laying prostrate before Him, all under the ideology of worship. Worshipping God is surrendering to God and sacrificing oneself to Him. This is because when we surrender we acknowledge His plans to be better than ours, we acknowledge Him as the God of the universe -being able to see beyond time. When we sacrifice our bodies to the Lord, we are just returning what was already His. The Bible says we were bought at a price , the precious blood of the lamb ( 1 Corinthians 6:20).

Now that we’ve gotten a glimpse of what worship is, we need to understand how to do it. In Romans 12:1, Paul urges us to offer our bodies as a LIVING sacrifice , HOLY and PLEASING to GOD.

*Living- in Greek zaō, this means to be alive, sometimes quick. It also connotes some form of continuity, hinting at an activity of a daily sacrifice to the Lord. In order to properly and truly worship the Lord, we must be offering/surrendering our bodies to the Lord daily. To offer/surrender, simply means to go to God as broken and imperfect as we are and lay it all down before Him, trusting that through Jesus Christ, He can make you whole.

*Holy- in Greek hagios, means physically pure. We need to understand that no man can attain this holiness the Bible speaks of, apart from Jesus. None of us are holy by our own works rather we have inherited the holiness of Jesus Christ, which allows us to stand in the very presence of the Father ( 2 Timothy 1:9, Hebrews 12:14). To be holy means to be set apart, to be purified and it is only when you associate yourself with Jesus that you can inherit such holiness. When this holiness is attained, we are one step closer to truly worshipping the Father.

*Pleasing/ acceptable- in Greek euarestos, means fully agreeable. The Lord desires to do the purifying process with you so that He can take out the things that don’t look like Him and mould you into the image of Jesus Christ ( Romans 8:29). When we decide to “ purify” ourselves through stopping some habits and cutting some people off, we are not really doing what is acceptable or pleasing to the Lord because He has no say it. When we are presenting our bodies to the Lord we must ensure that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is leading us into this process of worship and not just our intellect dictating our every step.

Singing worship songs and all are still considered worship but it substantially roots from the daily sacrifice of our bodies to the Lord. Remember that when we sacrifice ourselves to the Lord daily we are giving the Lord permission to do what He has to do in us for His glory. Sometimes this may sound a bit scary because we never know the extent to which we may be purified or burnt but what always keeps me going is that He is so worthy. God is so worthy of all the praise that if we were to sacrifice every hour of the day I would do exactly that. He is so worthy of all our worship.