"Intercession” is a term many people in Christian circles have heard but few really understand. I wrote about intercession in my series on prayer about a year and a half ago, but last month, I got the opportunity to speak at my church’s Men’s Breakfast meeting and this topic is what the Lord lead me to speak on. So while the topic is fresh on my mind, I want to go into greater depth about what intercession is and what it is like. Today, I am going to define what it as well as give some Biblical examples of who did it, then next week I am going to look at some practical ways on how we can intercede as well as explain why we don’t.
First, I want to define intercession in three different ways. Consider it at an elementary level, a high school level, and a post-graduate level. First is what most people understand intercession to be: “praying for someone else.” That is a true and correct definition, however it is only at a basic level. The depth of what it means, however, goes far beyond what many of us have ever grasped.
Praying for someone else helps keep our minds focused on serving God and serving others rather than our own issues. It is important to pray about our current situation and needs, however when we pray for others and their situations, it puts our own problems into a better perspective. It is important to note that this type of intercession is not about getting others to do your praying for you, or you doing others’ prayer for them. It is also important to note that we tend to only pray for others if that person would affect us personally or because of what that person can give us. That’s not intercession. Intercession requires making a stand with no concern about self.
The “high school” level of defining intercession takes this same idea and goes deeper. This level of understanding is easily described in terms of a battle scene. In a battle, an ally is going to get hit at some point. So will you. Intercession is when you go to aid your ally and often fight the enemy or battle they are facing for them or alongside them. The purpose of this kind of intercession is to enable a weakened ally to retreat from the battle to heal or to free them to finish the job they were sent to do.
This often takes place in the form of prayer, but with the mindset of “I am going to fight in their battle,” not merely “I support you but from a distance.” This is the image of “standing in the gap.” Here are some examples. The priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the Jordan and stayed in the riverbed until all the people got across. They stood in the gap and held the waters at bay so the people could enter the Promised Land. Moses stood between God and Israel when the Golden Calf was made. Abraham stood between God and Sodom. Esther stood between her people and Haman by approaching the king at risk of her life. Solomon interceded for a woman at risk of losing her child to a thieving other woman. Even Ahimelech interceded for David by providing bread and Goliath’s sword. These each example gave relief to physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
The “post-graduate” level of defining intercession is seen in only a few extremely rare examples. The only two people I can think of to express this type of intercession are Rees Howells and Jesus Christ. With Rees Howells two things stood out to me. God asked Howells to be in position to literally take the place of woman with tuberculosis, her sickness and her expected death. He agreed and obeyed. God literally substituted Howells for this woman in this disease. Howells did not die, but he should have and that is for another time. Later in life, Howells was leading a Bible college during World War II. He turned a room in the campus into a war room, where he had maps of the battles and a radio constantly updating him on the status of the war. He and his students would pray with the mindset that they were actual soldiers in the battlefield. They prayed as their lives depended upon it. And miracle after miracle after miracle after Nazi blunder paved the way for the Allied victory.
Jesus is the ultimate example of an intercessor. He did, as the last Adam, what the first Adam did not. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, Adam stood there and did nothing while the Serpent tempted Eve. Instead of standing between Eve and the Serpent and protecting her, he let her be the guinea pig. Then when she ate, he did not remember God’s command and love her to the point of offering to taking her punishment for her. He instead was complicit in her crime, eating the fruit willingly. And lastly, when God called them out for their sin, Adam threw Eve under the bus, blaming her for his choice.
Jesus did not do that. Jesus came and upheld God’s law, reminding the people in love and gentleness while standing firmly against the wolves seeking to devour the sheep. He never threw any person under the bus for their sin or to protect himself. And very frequently, he stood between the accusers and the broken. His ultimate stance of intercession was going before the Father and saying something like, “I will take your full wrath upon myself in their stead. Let those who believe me and are of my seed get my righteousness and all that belongs to me.” Jesus did what Rees Howells did for that woman, but on a much larger scale. He took our place, gave us what he had, and took what we had. Jesus became sin itself and when God saw his Son upon that cross, he no longer saw his Son. He saw everything that is evil poured upon him and he crushed his only Son with his full wrath and hatred of sin.
We will not truly grasp what Jesus did for us until we start to see the wretchedness of our sin. Yet, Jesus, who did not have anything to do with sin, took it all so we might become his righteousness. He interceded for us by going to the cross. And yet even in his resurrection, he sits at the right hand of the Father not only preparing a place for his bride the Church, but also interceding on our behalf. Let us not let that work go to waste on us.
Today is the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting. In all the talk about gun laws and enforcement of them, please note that it can only deal with the symptoms of a much deeper issue which will never go away. Intercession, the Biblical way, can deal with the root issue because it addresses the real core of the problem: sin. Next week, I’ll describe some practical tips on how to intercede and things which prevent us from interceding.
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