Grace & Truth for Intercessory Prayer
Several years ago, a friend called and asked if I would be an intercessory prayer for her. She was in a rough situation and needed to know she had Christians backing her up in prayer.
She followed up her request with an admonition that intercessory prayer was dangerous. Satan would take it personally, and it wouldn’t be an easy task. In addition to praying for her, I would need to pray for my family and myself. She wasn’t looking for people to add her name to a list, she needed serious prayer.
The weight of what she was asking wasn’t lost on me. And I’ll be really honest, part of me wanted to say no. I already struggled with chronic migraines, I didn’t want them to get worse. However, God had already been preparing me for this question. I saw the foreshadowing of it in my life, and after prayer, I agreed.
Candid confession: I am not a prayer warrior.
She Did What She Could
My prayer life has grown over the years. Both before and after the conversation with my friend. Yet I don’t have a war room. If you were to ask anybody at my church to name off our prayer warriors, I wouldn’t make the list.
However, I’m reminded of something Rebecca Hastings wrote in our book, Candid Conversations. She wrote about how God changed her perspective on doing what we set out to do vs doing what we can.
God doesn’t call us to pave our own way. Our purpose is woven into all the things He places before us.
Rebecca Hastings, Candid Conversations
Rebecca shared about the simplicity of taking all we are given, and doing what we can.
That’s what intercessory prayer is all about.
Intercessory Prayer Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All
It doesn’t have to be going to your knees at 4 AM each morning to pray for a certain someone. It doesn’t have to be going to a specific building, room, or place. It only has to be a conversation between you and Jesus for someone or something. If God has laid it on your heart, all you have to do is talk with Him about it.
It would be easy for me to look back over the past few years and call myself a failure. But at the same point in time, I couldn’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with Jesus for my friend. Whether it’s multiple times a day, or once a month, each and every prayer matters to Jesus. And they matter to her, too.
With prayer on my heart, I want to share Michele Morin’s post, Intercessory Prayer: The Hardest Work in the World. But I’d also love to hear from you: do you do any intercessory prayer? Does it have a place in your prayer life?
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Intercessory Prayer: The Hardest Work in the World
By the way, if you’d like to learn more about intercessory prayer, I highly recommend Prayer Shield: How to Intercede for Pastors and Christian Leaders by C. Peter Wagner and The Hour that Changes the World: A Practical Plan for Personal Prayer by Dick Eastman. And when I say I highly recommend them, my friend who asked me to pray for her recommended them, and I’m so glad she did.
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Thanks so much, Heather, for sharing my post! You are a great encouragement!
And you are a wonderful author!
You are so right, Heather, “Intercessory prayer isn’t one-size-fits-all.” And Peter Wagner’s book, Prayer Shield: How to Intercede for Pastors and Christian Leaders, is an awesome book. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for stopping in, Lisa!
it’s so easy to say ‘I’ll pray for you’ … and then waltz off and never give it another thought. i’m trying to focus on praying with a person right then and there. i don’t want to make promises I can’t / won’t keep …
thanks for this challenging post!
Yes! Someone pointed that out to me years ago, so I definitely try to do that now as well. Especially when it comes to digital communication. If it’s a text, email, or social media post, I respond with “praying” and stop right then and there and say a prayer. It definitely makes a difference.