From the Pastor - August 2018

A few weeks ago, I had a bicycle accident that resulted in the dislocation of my right shoulder.  The first four hours were excruciating, the worst pain I have ever experienced.

While I was laying on the sidewalk, waiting for the ambulance to come, several people stopped out of concern.  I didn't know any of them, but they were willing to help me, a stranger.

A few asked if they could call 911.  Two people offered water.  However, by this time, I didn't need their help.  The ambulance had already been called, and I did not want anything to drink.  There was nothing anyone could do to take away the pain before the paramedics came.  Yet, in my hour of need, I was glad that someone cared.

That is what makes for intercessory prayer — caring about people who are sick or hurting in their time of distress.

Sometimes we think about prayer in a utilitarian way, assuming that praying is pointless unless it will do some measurable good.

But intercessory prayer involves a kind of love that cannot be measured.

In the New Testament, the Greek word for intercession (entunchanein) does not mean making requests, expressing petitions, or even saying any words.  Taken literally, the Greek word for intercession means “being with someone on behalf of another.”

Brother Geoffrey Tristram notes that when Jesus makes intercession for us, “it’s not Jesus ‘talking’ to God about us or for us, it is Jesus being intimately close to his Father and carrying us whom he loves on his heart, and into the very heart of God.”¹

Likewise, our prayers of intercession can be more than a listing of those in need of healing and hope.  They can be a matter of lovingly holding others up before God.  Intercessory prayer, as Brother Geoffrey puts it, “is becoming close ourselves to the heart of God in our prayers of loving adoration, and then bringing those we love and long to be healed with us.  True intercession, true entunchanein, is being with God with those we care for on our hearts.”²

So, let us spend some time with God and pray for one another, for ourselves, for the sick and those who are hurting, and even for those whose names we do not know.  Intercessory prayer is an act of love as we carry those on our hearts unto the heart of God.

Yours in Christ,

~Brian

 

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¹Geoffrey Tristam, "Intercession," (October 20, 2009), https://www.ssje.org/2018/02/03/come-away-and-rest-br-jim-woodrum/.

²Ibid.