The pastor: partner in His petitions

But, Daddy, you promised to pray for him. Did you forget?" our 4-year-old daughter disappointedly asked as we finished our family prayer. She was right. I had made that promise. Thanking her for reminding me and for her caring, we knelt again and offered a special prayer for him.

Mulling over this episode, I thought of our great need to emulate Christ in His prayers of petition. Our hearts need to beat with the praying heart of Christ for all humanity. Christ our advocate ever lives to make intercession for us (see Heb. 7:25).* His life has ever been over flowing with prayer. As Adolph Saphir says: "In the Lord Jesus Christ we see most clearly the union of prayer and life."¹

Isaiah speaks of the concern of the preincarnate Son of God: "For Zion's sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns" (Isa. 62:1). Moreover God calls on His watchmen to join Him in His tireless intercession in behalf of His people: "I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem, who shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent, and give Him no rest till He establishes and till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth" (verses 6, 7).

Intercession: God's chosen way

Jesus employs a three dimensional strategy in His intercession for us. In this He engages Himself, His watchmen (an gels), and the Father. In His petitions He does not rest; He calls on His angels not to rest; and He calls on them not to give the Father any rest until His glorious purposes are accomplished in His people.

Of course, the Father is pleased with such intercessory initiatives, because He is of the same heart as they are. He Him self is doggedly looking everywhere for intercessors. "I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one" (Eze. 22:30).

Intercession ever flows from the heart of God and needs to overflow our hearts. God still searches our hearts, our homes, and our hurried lives in His quest for intercessors. In His relentless pursuit He looks for someone to "stand in the gap" in behalf of others. It is genuinely amazing to see that God affords us such high honor in calling us to be intercessors before His throne and in sharing with us His burdens for humanity. He actually wants us to participate in the holy intercessory ministry of Jesus.

How do we do this? I think of my childhood and my devout mother. My memory of her prayers still helps me to have confidence in prayer. Passing by her room, I would often hear her pour out her heart to God. It was difficult to dis regard such a profound spiritual encounter. It held me in its grasp. I would leave such moments gripped by the conviction that God must have heard and answered her prayers. She seemed to be in living connection with Him and spoke to Him heart-to-heart as to an intimate and trusted friend.

More caught than taught

This kind of prayer is sacred, more caught than taught. I find myself challenged to emulate my mother's ex ample. I, like the disciples, am asking Jesus to show me how to pray (Luke 11:1).

The disciples frequently observed Jesus in prayer for Himself, for them, and for others. They knew that His life and work were directly linked to His prayers. They were moved when they saw Him "to be in the very presence of the Unseen, and there was a living pow er in His words as of one who spoke with God."²

Jesus poured out His heart to God with such fervent intensity that Paul writes: "In the days of His flesh ... [He] offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard be cause of His godly fear" (Heb. 5:7).

If Jesus sensed the need to pray and intercede so constantly, how much more should we who are pastors? Is it possible that we would rather preach than pray, study and serve than supplicate, organize than agonize. Dare we say that we would rather participate in a prayer seminar than prevail in an actual session of prayer?

A prominent theologian once visited a seminary to evaluate its ministerial training program. At the end of his week he commended the faculty on different aspects of their academic program. Then he paused for a moment and asked pointedly, "But when do you people ever pray around here?"

This question echoes Andrew Murray's challenge when he wrote that God "looks to the thousands of young men and young women in training for the work of ministry and mission, and gazes longingly to see if the church is teaching them that intercession, power with God, must be their first care, and in seeking to train and help them to do it." ³

We pastors may get involved with the routine of our profession so much that we become too busy to connect our lives significantly with God's life. Let us ask ourselves: when did we last shed tears for our own transgressions, weep for the waywardness of our people, and cry out to God about the sins of the world? Samuel Chadwick said it well: "It would seem as if the biggest thing in God's universe is a man who prays," yet there "is only one thing more amazing, . . . that man, knowing this, should not pray."⁴

Partners with Jesus

Once again, let us consider Christ. All His important decisions were conceived in prevailing prayer. All His steps were guided by intercession. He commenced His ministry with prayer at the Jordan. He mingled His teachings and deeds with prayer. He culminated His life in prayer at Gethsemane and on Golgotha. He lived, moved, taught, healed, and died praying.

Hanging on the cross, Jesus inter ceded for His crucifiers! In His anguish He pleaded with His Father for His enemies who delighted to see Him suffer and die: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do" (Luke 23:34). His intercession seemed to anticipate the possibility that some might turn away from their evil ways even at that last moment.

Jesus longs to have us become His special partners in petition for enemies and friends. The Father in His bound less love "raised us up together [with Christ], and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6). If we are seated together with Christ, should we not share in His com passion, and enter into His mighty intercessions in behalf of humanity?

Listen to Wesley Duewel speak of this intercessory privilege of the Christian: "There is no more Christlike role than to be a co-intercessor with Christ for the priorities upon His heart . . . Prevailing prayer is glorious because it unites you with the heartbeat of Christ. It is glorious because in prevailing prayer you share the vision of Christ."⁵

Such is the glorious reality of intercessory prayer. As James notes, the "effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much" (James 5:16). We may feel how unrighteous we are, and there fore how little our prayers avail. This text is not speaking of our righteousness. It calls upon us to claim the righteousness of Christ and become partners in His prayers.

Christ is indeed "The Lord Our Righteousness" (Jer. 23:6), and He is the righteous man whose prayers avail much. Thus when we unite our lives with His, blending our stunted prayers with His concerns and His omnipotent life of intercessory prayer, then our prayers avail much. We are never alone when we pray, for Jesus is there encircling us with His presence, buttressing our prayers with His in their course to the throne of God. Accordingly, our petitions, mingled with His, become truly effective.

In mingling our prayers with His own, Jesus takes up our cause as His own. Infinitely more than the most competent attorney, He takes up a case always fully committed to win. He puts Himself on the line, backed by all of heaven's resources. In continuing to trust Him, we possess His ironclad guarantee to treat our case decisively with a perfect blending of justice and mercy. "No sooner does the child of God approach the mercy seat than he be comes the client of the great Advocate. At his first utterance of penitence and appeal for pardon Christ espouses his case and makes it His own, presenting the supplication before the Father as His own request."⁶

The Holy Spirit and intercession

The Holy Spirit is also engaged with Jesus in this ministry of intercession. "Likewise the [Holy] Spirit also helps in our weaknesses," Paul writes. "For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered" (Rom. 8:26). Further more, Paul assures us that "through Him [Jesus] we both have access by one Spirit to the Father" (Eph. 2:18).

The Holy Spirit is the "implementor" ⁷ who pleads God's cause with us, conveying and carrying out God's will in our lives. "In a truly blessed sense the Holy Spirit gives birth to His petitions within us, and kindles faith within us." 8 Furthermore, the Holy Spirit not only prays for us and with us, but also in us. Paul prods us to pray in the Spirit: "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit . . . for all the saints and for me" (Eph. 6:18,19). As we pray in the Spirit, we enter the mind of the Spirit who "searches all things, yes, the deep things of God" (1 Cor. 2:10). God who knows the mind of the Holy Spirit also knows our minds, responding to our united supplications in accordance with His purposes.

Let us face up to it. Often we do not want to pray; we do not know how to pray, or what to pray for, or when to pray. That is why we need the Spirit to permeate our hearts and to enable us to pray. "Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God" (Rom. 8:27).

Once a friend said that he stopped praying for others simply because it did not work. I asked him how he prayed and how often he prayed. "Once or twice," he said, and then discouragement stopped him from praying.

Intercessory prayer doesn't give up that easily. It is not sporadic. It is continual, perpetual. It recognizes what Paul said long ago that "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph. 6:12). Engaged in such a mighty spiritual conflict, we cannot afford to be lax in our prayer life. We cannot afford to be other than perpetual partners in Jesus' prayer ministry.