Pastoral Articles
I’ll Pray for You
One of the best plays for me to watch in football is a defensive back intercepting a pass and running for a significant gain if not a touchdown. The anticipation and timing of the player and the explosion of noise from his team is exhilarating, especially if it’s your team that intercepted.
Consider if you will this picture in another light – to illustrate a prayer of intercession. The anticipation and the timing of the defensive back is the same, the interception is made, but instead of running with the ball, he hands it off to the opposing receiver. Instead of intercepting, he interceded, ensuring the pass completion.
Now I know that would never happen, but this image illustrates well the prayer of intercession.
Webster’s defines “intercession” as “mediation, pleading, or a prayer on behalf of another.” The Christian Church has always embraced the concept of intercessory prayer without much hesitation. We have been raised to believe we should pray for one another. We might not have called it intercessory prayer, but that is exactly what we’ve been doing. We were choosing to step between God and the person for who we’re thinking about and asking of God his presence and providence for them. We have responded as a means of concern for another, “I will pray for you.”
It is only right that the Christian community pray prayers of intercession because, if for no other reason, it fits the intercessory role of Jesus Christ.
Ask, Seek, & Knock
What a wonderful encouragement from Jesus to his followers. To ask seeking implies you want to find out. To knock implies that you want in. We want to know and experience what we have not yet experienced.
Our Lord promises us that the Heavenly Father will respond to our petitions for greater fellowship and strength to be his obedient people (ref. Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount). Petition prayers do not necessarily remove burdens or change situations, but they are heard by the Father for his activity of “good gifts to his children” (Matthew 7:11). For instance, Jesus at Gethsemane: he asked for the “cup to pass” and it did not, but he was given enough strength to drink from it. The “good gift” of the Father to his Son was not diverting crucifixion but the strength to endure it for the greater victory.
The inner spiritual life is a perpetual life of asking. No experience is faced, whether joyous or disruptive, void of an asking heart. “The paradox of prayers is that it asks for serious effort while it can only be received as a gift. We cannot plan, organize, or manipulate God; but without a careful discipline we cannot receive him either” (Henri Nouwen, Christianity Today, Vol. 32, No. 6).
