THE POWER OF INTERCESSION

THE POWER OF INTERCESSION

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; Ephesians 6:18

I once received a message with the following words: “I will be requesting a doctor's report on the wear and tear of your knees any time soon.  Hope you are still remembering me in your prayers.”

As I meditated on the words I realised how easy it is for our prayers to become selfish and how we approach the Lord all the time and it is all about us.

The Father wants to use us as instruments to reach out to others that are hurting, He wants us to learn the discipline of desiring the best for others before we have even received it ourselves.

The day you learn to reach out for others in prayer is the day you will learn the highest expression of love for others.  You have to pray with all kinds of prayer and you have to persevere in your supplication for all the saints.

Your prayers have the potential of winning mighty victories for someone else.  Someone at this moment needs someone to call on the Lord on his or her behalf.  They need someone to cover their backs...

When last did you take someone as your prayer assignment and prayed consistently for them?  What is the wear and tear of your knees like?

When Job prayed for his friends, the LORD restored his fortunes.  In fact, the LORD gave him twice as much as before! Job 42 v 10 [NLT]

When Job obeyed this principle of interceding for others, the Lord restored his fortunes.  Many people have battled to receive something from the Lord because all they have done is to selfishly pray for themselves.

Learn the discipline of standing in the gap for others, that alone can open doors of for you.  It does not matter what the people you have to pray for are like!

They might have hurt you and they might not even be able to reward you for being there for them.  Realize that your reward is with the Lord.  Job prayed for his friends with no regard of how they had criticized him.

Someone is in need of your prayers today, doors for you when you learn to stand in the gap for others.

FROM THE SHEPHERD’S DESK DAILY DEVOTIONAL VOL 1 by Charles P. Magaiza

PRAYER the exercise of FAITH

Prayer is one of the exercises of our Christian life that requires more discipline, perhaps, than any other exercise of faith.  We confess that “prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness that God requires of us.” John Calvin called it “the chief exercise of faith.” [Institutes of the Christian Religion]

When you're being prayerless; you're not being faithful.  Faith proves itself in prayer.

Prayer is not a duty; it's a privilege and something we can enjoy.

When we say “prayerless,” It does not mean completely prayerless.  I mean relatively prayerless.   I mean that we aren’t anywhere close to “pray[ing] without ceasing”.   We aren’t communing with God in prayer, so prayer feels like a burdensome, boring, perhaps futile exercise that we rush through in a perfunctory way or avoid.  When we do pray, our prayers seem feeble and powerless, which just leads to less praying.  We don’t have it in us “to pray and not lose heart”

"Prayer is the soul's sincere desire unuttered or expressed".  In other words, what you will in your heart is eloquent, and God is always listening to what you are willing, what you are determining to do, and what you plan.

What is prayer to you?

Prayer is acknowledging and experiencing the presence of God and inviting His presence into our lives and circumstances.  It's seeking the presence of God and releasing the power of God which gives us the means to overcome any problems. - Stormie Omartian

"Prayer is not praise, adoration, humiliation or confession, but asking. Praise is not prayer and prayer is not praise.  Prayer is asking.  Adoration is not prayer, and prayer is not adoration.  Prayer is always asking; it is not anything else but asking,” Quote John R. Rice

Prayer is one of the most wonderful privileges we are afforded as children of God, and yet it may be one of the most neglected.

Time spent in the presence of the Father prepares us for challenges that will test our faith in Him - moments we could not handle in our own strength.

Effective prayer involves : 1) praise

                                          2) thanksgiving

                                          3) repentance

                                          4) specific request

                                          5) commitment

When we pray, God sees our heart, not our performance. 

Prayer is a dialogue - a two-way conversation between us and God.

How can we hear from God?  It begins with a desire - to know God and to be known by Him?   Jesus said in John 10:27, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me" (KJV)

PRAYER protect us and changes things.  It keep us in the will of God and draw us closer to God.  It make us less selfish beside healing us from all pains and make us stronger spiritually.  Beside giving us peace, it also make us happy and give us hope.

Prayer

Prayer is simply opening our lives to God, acknowledging our total dependence on Him. Prayer is not limited to a segment of our lives or to a scheduled event in our days.  It is an attitude of receptivity and openness which permeates our lives and to which God responds eagerly.  It is living in the presence of God, always in the process of being reshaped and re-created by Him.

The purpose of prayer is not to change God, but to allow Him to change us.  It is to discover and do God's will, not to obligate Him to do ours.  The purpose of prayer is that God's splendor will be displayed on earth as it is in heaven.

[Extracted from "The Praying Life" by Jennifer K.Dean]

The numbers of prayer rally taking place recently due to the coming GE13 is a good sign of Christians unity in Malaysia.  Groups of individual and churches have been holding prayers for peace and righteousness to prevail in our beloved country never seen before.  This is a good sign of better things to come.  Christians are now more aware of their moral responsibilities .

The Bible says a lot about believers' duties as citizens.  We are citizens of two kingdoms: one temporal and earthly, the other eternal and heavenly.  We are called to participate in both the culture and politics of The City of Man, as this world was called, while primarily focusing on the Kingdom of God.   "When Moses commanded the Israelites to appoint God-fearing leaders, he wasn't just talking to a handful of citizens who felt like getting involved ...  And modern Christians are under the same obligation to choose leaders who love justice ...  Today, in our modern democracy, free citizens act as God's agent for choosing leaders, and we do it by voting.

Prayer is not the believer moving the heart of God, but God moving our heart.  When our prayers are full of worship, they are like sweet smelling incense before God.

Worship is not limited to singing praise songs.  It is simply, ascribing worth to something, and this, we can also ascribe worth to God through our prayers.