Intercessory Prayer

Those types of prayers where you pray for someone else are called “intercessory prayers” or “Interceding” for people

Intercessory prayer is asking God to “intercede” (or work/move) in the lives of others.

Intro: Two intercessions

I have had a few times in my life (probably more than I realize) where God has worked very powerfully in my life. I want to tell you about 2

Rib

I was at a psychic fair, where I was praying for people to come to Jesus and stop chasing after new ageism, when this guy came up and myself and another friend started talking to him. He complained about some pain in his side and my friend just said, let’s pray for you. I was confused, we were supposed to be talking to this dude about Jesus, not praying about a little rib pain. But, we started praying for him, and I felt this guy’s rib pop back into place. We didn’t do anything to push him, his rib just popped right back in.

Sophia

The night before camp, Sophia had an awful night of sleep. She woke up at 2 in the morning and was unconsolable unless she was being held. Aubree was super awesome and took care of her from 2-3, and then she woke me up at 3 so that she could get some sleep too. Sophia was SO grumpy, and I didn’t know what to do because she’s not normally grumpy, so I held her for a bit, which didn’t work, and then I laid her in her bed and started praying that she would calm down. IMMEDIATELY, she stopped crying and was ok. I then prayed for her to fall asleep, which God took a little longer to answer, but I guess it would have been super creepy if she went from wide awake to completely asleep!

Both of those are an example, in their own way, of God working in my life.

Now, here are 3 important things to know about intercession.

Intercession Works

This isn’t just something that happens occasionally, it legitimately happens ALL THE TIME

The Bible even presupposes that we do it!

James 5:13–18 ESV

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

Praying works! Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it. If God never responded to prayers and never cared to listen to prayers, I FOR SURE would have stopped praying! And yet, He shows up time and time again and proves that He is good and loves His people.

What do we do in intercession?

If you’re like me, you can get excited about this! “I actually can ask God to do stuff for people and He’ll do it!! Let’s do it right now!”

So, what do we actually do?

Pray in faith

I don’t know about you, but when I pray for people, I can be a little wuss in my prayers.

Something like “God, if You maybe want to heal this person, that would be cool, but if You don’t that’s ok, it’s whatever You want…” and all of that.

That’s not me interceding on behalf of someone I love to a God who is powerful! That’s me praying weak prayers to a weak God!

If I really needed something majestic to happen, I would not be politely giving God every out, I’d be begging Him to work!

Pete Greig talks about having a friend pray for his wife when she was in the hospital and his friend prayed “If it’s in Your will to take her, let Pete have peace”

He stopped the prayer and demanded that God save her! He said that he couldn’t do life without his wife and that her young children needed her and God needed to heal her!

And then, God did.

Don’t give weak prayers. Weak prayers are for a weak God.

Pray real, honest, authentic prayers. Feel ok with being emotional and asking really big things of God and believing that He can actually do it, because He can!

Pray often

If you had a vision from God that said that if you prayed for something the first time, it would ABSOLUTELY happen, would you do it?

Unless you’re stupid, of course you would!

What if you had a vision from God that said if you prayed for something every day, on the 365th day, you would get it?

It might be more difficult, but I bet you’d still be willing to pray

Just because God doesn’t answer the first time doesn’t mean He’s not answering!

It can be so hard to keep going when you are suffering and feeling like God’s not listening. Perhaps though, He is listening, and He’s just waiting for the moment for your heart to be just right to receive the gift He’s going to give you. But, you’ll never know if you don’t try.

So, what can we pray for?

For some of us, this is opening a whole new world of praying, so then we can start to wonder, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

The big, the small, and the scary.

You can intercede on behalf of others for anything. The big, the small, and the scary.

The small can be something as small as praying for a calm mind and a steady hand on a drivers test. Our leaders have prayed for your drivers tests, and it just so happens a bunch of you drive now, isn’t that interesting!!

The big can be the stuff that is pretty major. It can be prayers for a relationship, for college applications, for directions for life.

The scary can be the stuff that keeps you awake at night. Divorce, major health problems, abuse, addiction. These things are really big and we can feel really small if we look at them alone, but with a community of faith and with the God of the universe, it’s not so scary.

The biggest thing that you could ever intercede on behalf of someone is for their soul.

Your soul, or spirit, is in a position of brokenness before God that is all consuming and will consume you if Christ does not enter into your heart. The decision to follow Christ is the most important choice that you can ever make in life.

It doesn’t matter if you die and someone prays for you and then you come back to life, NONE of that matters if you aren’t a follower of Jesus.

So, pray for your friends, your family, your neighbors, anyone, that they might come to Jesus.

Exodus 32:1-14.

Moses interceded for the Israelites because God was angry at them!

And God listened to Moses!

Now, I don’t think that God was planning on destroying the whole nation, I think that He was planning on Moses becoming the person that could love the people that he was in charge of enough to defend them, but I still fully believe that God relented because Moses acted!

God can relent because you act!

The people around you are in desperate need and are ruined by sin, and yet God can bring them to Himself, so WHY WOULDN’T WE PRAY FOR THEM!

Dwight Moody Prayer List.

So, praying for other people is good, it works… sometimes, but something that we all know and have to talk about is…

Intercession is Not Always Answered With Yes

We’ve all had these prayers.

Asking for someone to stop dying, begging God to keep parents from splitting, even small stuff like not getting sick.

And yet, even when our prayers are awesome, the bad stuff still happens.

The question then, is what do we do with that?

Do we get angry at God? “How dare you take this from me? They didn’t deserve this? Why are you hurting me?

Do we walk away from God? “Clearly He’s not real, so I give up?”

Before we get to the really frustrating bits, we should understand why some of our prayers aren’t answered.

God’s world

Sometimes, our prayers aren’t answered because that’s just not how the world works.

For instance, I don’t like to pray that any sports teams win or lose.

It’s not because I don’t care about sports (I don’t), it’s more about how it doesn’t seem like God’s going to make a call one way or the other, because both teams probably have people praying for them to win!

To me, it would make sense that God let’s athletes be athletes and let them do it.

So, when i’m praying that Sophia’s cough goes away, I believe that He can do it, but I also know that virus’ function in the way virus’ function and maybe God let’s them be that way for a reason.

God’s war

Evil is real and it actively goes against God.

Rape, trafficking, overdoses, suicide, this isn’t something that God made us for, and yet they still happen every day.

This is because evil is real and it is actively working to make everything worse.

The devil is not the winner in the story, not even close, but he’s still going to try to make things as awful as possible because that’s who he is.

So, when we pray that no one will ever be trafficked and then know it still happens, it’s not that God isn’t working, it’s that evil is also still working right now, but there will come a day when evil will be forever finished.

God’s will

This is the hardest one

There are some times when we have to accept that we don’t know as much as God and that He has a plan for our lives that is much bigger and more complex than anything that you could ever fathom.

I would never have asked God to experience panic attacks, it’s not real fun for me, but I now know what it feels like when some of you talk about having intense anxiety.

So, in a small way, the suffering that I have to deal with is helping others, which God uses.

In order to believe in the God of the Bible, you have to believe in a God who has created all of the universe and intricately arranged everything in such a way that everything works in unison and that the very stars and planets down to the smallest atoms and molecules are typically functioning properly.

Do you think that there’s any chance that a God like that might do some stuff that we don’t understand right now?

Now that we’ve dealt with those, when you’re approaching a prayer that has not been answered, let’s ask, could this be from God’s world, God’s war, or God’s will?

And if those questions don’t help, remember that even Christ had prayers that weren’t answered well. On the night that He was betrayed, He prayed, “Father, take this cup from Me.” And yet still, He died for us.

So even Jesus, the Son of God, God in the flesh, the Man who is God, still had prayers that weren’t answered with a yes. We won’t get every prayer answered that way either.

Intercession Points to a Greater Reality

It is so cool when God answers prayers and things are moving and we’re all doing awesome!

But, do you know what happened to EVERY SINGLE PERSON Jesus healed?

THEY DIED!

Even though they had this awesome miracle happen, even though some of them died once and then were raised from the dead, they still died!

And that’s true of you too!

That dude who had his rib popped in is going to die. His rib might be in a good spot on his skeleton, but that’s it.

Answered prayer points to the only answered prayer that will really matter

We see it all throughout the Bible, but one of the most moving is on the cross.

Jesus is hung between two criminals and one of them mocks Him, but the other one asks “Jesus, remember me when you come into Your Kingdom.”

We need saving! We need someone to bring us into the Kingdom of life, because I know that I’m not in it now!

All of this sin and death and evil in the world is not the way it was meant to be, that’s why we hate it so much! And Jesus is the answer to the question that you and I have been asking! “How is this going to get fixed?”

The answer is Christ!

How can I stop hurting people

What can I do to start having my life mean something

What’s the point of all of this stuff that I have to go through?

It’s Jesus!

You were created to be in a perfect relationship with God, and sin has ruined that for us! And yet, Jesus came and lived a perfect life and died as a sacrifice for you and I so that we are not longer bound by sin!

So come to Him! No other answered prayer is going to do anything for you if you don’t come to Him and live with Jesus!

So, this week, I would love it if you could pray (or intercede) for one person. Just one, if you want to do more, that’s great

And, if you’re looking for more resources on this topic, you can check the youth group library for a book called, “How to pray: A simple guide for normal people.”

Questions.

What is the weirdest gift you’ve ever received?

Do you believe that intercessory prayer works?

What can we do when we are faced with prayers that aren’t answered or are answered with a no?

How can we pray for you? (pray for each other)