Intercession 

Intercession is love in action. It is a gift of love for another. It may be expressed in the quiet place with the Lord, but it will always outwork into some tangible expression of love.

Joshua 3: the priests going first into the Jordan carrying the Ark of the Covenant while all the nation pass by them, is a picture of corporate intercession.  The Priests risk everything.  They are first in (a work is always pioneered by intercession) and last out.  Even the weakest go ahead of them.  They stand and persevere.  They carry the Presence of the Lord.

A team going into a new place to bring the gospel can take the place of priests, standing to bring those around them into Promise.  The consecration of a priest takes a long time.  It only took six days for the Lord to make the Universe, but he put aside 7 days for the consecration of the priests.  A priest is close to the heart of God.  He must enter into the 7^th day, the Sabbath rest of God.  From there he can intercede.  Intercession can not be maintained by human strength or emotion.

Intercession is the Holy of Holies of prayer.  Prayer is to do with God’s word - receiving it, praying it and believing it.

Intercession is to do with God’s heart.  Intercession is all to do with love, God’s love expressed through us.  Of course it stands on God’s word, but sometimes it appears to go beyond even that for the sake of love.  Jesus could have called a legion of angels to rescue Him in the Garden of Gethsemany, (Matt. 26:53).  He refused because He had determined to make intercession.  He laid down His own rights for the sake of others.

Norman Grubb in the book “Rees Howells: Intercessor” speaks of three distinguishing characteristics of intercession:

Identification      Agony     Authority

Human nature will love those it deems worthy of affection.

God so loved the world ...

His love isn’t limited, it knows no bounds.  It easily takes in the whole of humanity.  Human compassion will run out.  Our own resources are not enough because we select whom we love.  God is looking for people who will dare to share His heart.

God is for us

What is Jesus doing in heaven?  He is the high priest who “always lives to intercede for them” (Hebrews 7:25).  ‘Them’ are those who come to God through Him, us!  How amazing that Jesus is standing before the Father speaking about you! Speaking for you. If we are to become intercessors, we need to know that reality of Jesus interceding for us.  We must experience “God is for us!”

Job in his extremity found the Lord as his intercessor and his friend! 

Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
and he who testifies for me is on high.
My friends scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
that he would argue the case of a man with God,
as a son of man does with his neighbour (Job 16:19-21).

Job entered into the New Covenant by faith, he 'saw' the witness in heaven speaking for him.

The Lord longs for us to be like Him, so that means that He wants us to become intercessors too. Intercession is not just something reserved for a few old ladies, it is the beating heart of the church. It is the most intimate fellowship we can have with Jesus this side of heaven, because it is to do with sharing His heart.

The Holy Spirit

What is the Holy Spirit doing on earth?  “The Spirit himself intercedes for us ... the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will” (Romans 8:26-27).

In 1 John 2:1, John says that if any of us sin we have “one who speaks to the Father in our defence; Jesus Christ, the Righteous One”.  The Greek word used for ‘one who speaks in our defence’ is ‘paraklesis’ which means intercessor, consoler, advocate, or comforter.

Jesus said “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper (Paraklesis) to be with you forever” (John 14:16)

There are really only two intercessors - Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has witnessed everything that happened to Jesus.  He saw him taking your sin into His body on the cross.  He not only saw Him rise from the dead, but He was in Jesus, raising Him up.  And that same Spirit is living in you!

When we intercede, what we are doing is attuning ourselves to the Intercessors.  Samuel said to the Israelites “I will intercede with the Lord for you” (1 Samuel 7:5).  We do not choose what we will intercede for, but we can choose to become intercessors.  We make ourselves available to Jesus and the Holy Spirit and join in their intercessions before the Father.

What is the nature of intercession?

“God so loved the world that He gave His only Son”.  Intercession is abandoned giving - giving until there is nothing left to give.  Giving even though it is your only son.  The Father could have just sent Jesus to accomplish the mission of redeeming the world, but it wasn’t a cold transaction, it was a gift of love.  Jesus came and got involved in people’s lives, and gave Himself knowing that the more He loved them, the more He would be hurt.  Even His closest friends would desert Him.  Even John who laid on His breast; and James, Peter  deserted Him and yet:

- He deliberately set His face towards Jerusalem and the cross

- He turned away from every human instinct of self-preservation

- He refused to exercise His rights (as the Son of God and the sinless Son of Man he had no need to die)

- He willingly let the Father’s wrath and judgement for every sin of every person in every generation fall on Him. He took my place

In all eternity until that awful moment Jesus had never been out of fellowship with His Father.  His Father had promised Him all things including protection “they (his angels) will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone” (Psalm 91:12).

Yet He said,

“My strength is dried up ... my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.  Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet” (Psalm 22:15,16).

Intercession takes us even beyond promise ... or takes us to the place where we are willing to go beyond promise for the sake of those we are interceding for.  It’s done through love.  Intercession always takes us to the Cross, it is the place of helplessness.  Don’t be afraid of that place.  Jesus could do nothing but stay there on the Cross, yet it was there He achieved His greatest work.  As intercessors we will often feel helpless, but beware of hopelessness.  For a short time, Jesus felt absolutely hopeless and abandoned as He was bearing our sins in His body. He was abandoned so that we never would be. However that time passed, and the final cries from the Cross are full of hope: 'Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit', and “It is Finished!”.  Satan will try to lead us from helplessness to hopelessness.  Do not take his hand!

Nothing could have prepared Jesus for that moment.  God Himself, abandoned, helpless.  If we are to become intercessors we will spend a lot of time at the cross.  We will know that sense of abandonment, of helplessness, but one thing will be different.  The sins of the world have already been borne.  We will never be cut off from the Father.

Anger to Intercession

When Moses came down the mountain after meeting the Lord and saw what the people had been doing, his first reaction was of anger and despair at the sin of the people, (Exodus 32:19).  By the next day, he had spent time in the Presence, and his heart had touched the heart of God.  He made one of the most profound intercessions:

Moses:  “Moses returned to the Lord, and said, ‘Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.  Yet now, if you will forgive their sin- and if not, blot me out of your book of life’” (Exodus 32:31-32).

We need, like Moses, to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us out of our fleshly emotions into His divine emotions.

Ongoing, life time intercession

Paul:  “I say the truth in Christ ... that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.  For I wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers” (Romans 9:1-3).

Sometimes an intercession is given by the Lord, and we carry it until its completion a few days/weeks/months later.  However some intercessions take a lifetime to outwork.  They bring us heaviness and unceasing sorrow, and yet in the midst of it there is joy!  Joy of knowing the answer will come, joy of fellowshipping in His sufferings.  Every intercession we allow the Lord to share with us deepens us in our inmost being.  It makes us more fully human, and more like Him.  He will give us exactly the intercessions that match what He has put in our beings.

How do we maintain intercession?

What is our motivating force?  If it is love for mankind we will fail.  We’ve already seen our love is limited, flawed.  What was Abraham’s motivation for giving his only son?

“Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld your son from me, your only son” (Genesis 22:12).

That word ‘fear’ has the meaning of reverential trust.  It was because of Abraham’s trust in the very nature of God that he was willing to give his only son.  “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death” (Hebrews 11:19).

The Lord is willing to share His intercessions where He finds this faith, this reverential trust.  In fact He is longing to share His intercessions with us.  Every work of God is birthed in intercession.  An intercession is a deposit of love from the Father’s heart.  He looks for someone to stand in the gap.  His heart aches when he cannot find an intercessor, and He has to bring judgement, (c.f. Isaiah 59:16)

Are we willing to receive something of His heart, His longing, His burden?  Once we have it we are not free.  It may start small, like an embryo in the womb, but allow it to grow and it will change your life.  We can’t just put it down when we feel like it, unless we are disobedient.  An intercession once given stays with us until we have prayed through to the answer.  We don’t choose what we will intercede for, we receive it as we fellowship with Jesus.  It may relate to the circumstances around us, it may be very far away.  It will always lead us to the Cross where we share in His sufferings.  A heart attuned to Jesus’ heart is the thing Satan most fears and he will try to destroy it.  A heart attuned to Jesus’ heart is what gives Jesus most joy, and where He finds it, He will refine it as gold in the furnace.

To follow through an intercession we must turn away from every instinct of self-preservation.  We so love Him that we give and give and give.  Intercession is very real, and the intercession of Jesus on the cross was flesh and blood intercession.  Ours must be the same, involving our body, soul and spirit.  It is demanding on our time and we need to adjust our lifestyle.  To truly intercede we must refuse to claim our ‘rights’, even be willing to go beyond promise.  To intercede, we allow every dependency to be stripped away from us except, like Abraham, our dependency on the very nature of God Himself.  “Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8).  It rose from the dead!  Intercession is the ultimate expression of love and it never fails.

Assessment: Intercession

Read Rees Howells: Intercessor by Norman Grubb.  Discuss the thing that most impacted you from the book.